“What took you so long?” Dayton demanded the instant she stepped out of the kitchen with three leather sacks slung across her back and another bag in each hand.

 

“Just gathering up some odds and ends.” She set all the bags down in the heap already piled in the tiny kitchen courtyard that doubled as the herb garden and chicken coop. The fowl clucked and pecked at the leather bags, then returned to their hunt for grubs and spiders when they affirmed that the new things were not, in fact, food. “Is that everything, then?”

 

“Almost. There’s one last thing to grab, but, well…” Dayton’s cheeks colored slightly while his jaw set. “If you’re going to be working for me as my guardian, I thought you might save me from back pain and haul the box out for me.”

 

Cara rolled her eyes. “You’re having a laugh at me, aren’t you?”

 

“No! It’s really heavy, and not something I can handle well on my own.” His face fairly flamed now, his nose turning an especially delightful shade of shiny red. “I just thought that since I’m paying you—”

 

“Okay, I think it’s time to set some ground rules.” Cara rolled her neck and cracked her knuckles. Dayton stepped back, his flush fading into panic. “Calm down, I’m not going to hit you. Now, you’ve hired me to act as a Guardian Hero, yes?”

 

A stiff nod.

 

“That means protecting you, my marque, from beasties and baddies who decide that they want to do harm to you and yours, by whatever means possible. I’ve staked my reputation on this quest—sorry, you’d call it a job,” she amended when she caught his look of confusion. “So you’ll be getting my full and undivided focus toward keeping you safe. 

 

“That does not mean”—she stabbed a finger toward the pile of bags—“that I’m some sort of glorified servant. At worst, I’m a glorified bodyguard. As such, you can ask me, politely, to do things, and I might do them, if I feel like it. You cannot and will not order me like a lordling. If anything, it should be the other way around.”

 

She held up one hand, forestalling his splutterings. “I mean it. Orders given by me might mean the difference between you living and you dying a rather dramatic, painful death. The marsh monsters have a taste for tender, unworked bodies.”

 

Dayton squeaked and clapped his hands over his mouth.

 

Cara hid a smirk, keeping her face stern. “I, on the other hand, would be tough chicken like that rooster.” She gestured toward the barnyard cock, who surveyed these intruders on his domain with a wary eye and a careful step that kept his spurs sharp. “Are we clear? Do we all understand each other?”

 

Dayton nodded, his clothing suddenly seeming too big for his body. It’s like he’s trying to disappear, she thought with a frown. She had to draw him back out, otherwise the trip to Cadens would be unbearable and he’d give her a mediocre recommendation at best—definitely not what she needed to get on the Guild’s good side. 

 

“Now,” she said briskly, “did you need some help with a box? Seems to me we’d be out faster if I grabbed it for you, though I might need some help.”

 

She raised her eyebrows, prompting him, and he took the offered olive branch with a one sided, self-deprecating smile. “Would you mind awfully helping me out with my luggage, ma’am?” he asked, polite as if he were addressing one of his masters at the abbey. 

 

Then he smirked and added, “For I am far too weak to manage well on my own, and you are strong and hale and hearty enough for three.”

 

Cara laughed. She reached out to link arms with him, startling a real grin from him. “Yes, of course, Acolyte Halfend. Lead the way!”

 

The box, as it turned out, was hidden in the bushes growing by the edge of the stable’s midden heap. 

 

Cara had to acknowledge his craftiness in choice of hiding spot. The horse manure ensured that the nearby plants grew in, full and lush and dense enough to hide a fairly large object, while the smell kept almost everyone away. Certainly no one approached if they didn’t have to, which meant it was less likely someone might stumble across it accidentally.

 

The box was actually a chest, wooden slats rounding in a domed lid secured shut with wrought iron straps and an impressive looking lock. 

 

The oak wood had been stained a rich brown and gleamed as though newly polished. It looked for all the world as if it had spent the night safe in a wealthy merchant’s bedchamber, not exposed to cold and damp and dung. 

 

Cara bent over to grab the chest’s handles on the side and pulled up. The chest lingered for a moment in its depression before coming free. 

 

She steadied herself, marveling at the weight. For such a small container—the chest-box couldn’t have been longer than her forearm and was only half again as wide—it felt as though it were filled with the blacksmith’s iron scrap collection.

 

When Cara finally made it back to the luggage pile with the chest, Dayton held the lead rein of a brown mare with white socks and a black mane. She lipped at the kitchen’s parsley patch, and Cara gently nudged her head away with the toe of one boot. 

 

“I suppose we’re not riding, then?” she asked, eying the chariot-wagon hooked to the mare’s harness. 

 

The chariot-wagon’s body was a glossy black lacquer, only lightly coated with road dirt. Four entwined circles of mother of pearl represented the four gods—Cern, Luarin, Riana, and the Morgana—that the Priests’ Guild worshiped. 

 

The chariot-wagon was smaller than some of the other vehicles Cara had seen before: Big enough for their luggage, but not large enough to hold them, too. As it was, they’d have to load the mare with any of the spare packs that couldn’t be squeezed onto the chariot-wagon.

 

“I’ll buy you new boots at the other end,” Dayton said with a wink and a smile. He seemed to have slipped into his charming facade again, which suited Cara’s mood. Better to start her first quest with a would-be rake and bard than a scared boy about to mess his trousers at the sight of a blade.

 

Cara picked up a box from the pile—not the chest she’d retrieved for Dayton, but one she’d taken from her own room. Inside, she had packed what little clothing she thought could survive a trek to the Capital: Two chemises, a pair of skirts, her forest green canvas bodice, a few spare shirts, and her second-best pair of leather trousers. 

 

She currently wore her best pair, of course, her red cloak, and a creamy linen shirt underneath a tight leather lady’s jerkin that had reached the limits of her clumsy leatherworking abilities to expand it. It would have to do until she could buy a new one—or perhaps she could ask Dayton for the coin to buy a replacement, on the pretext of greater protection. 

 

She looked down at her chest and grimaced. A new jerkin would protect her modesty, at the very least.

 

She stowed the garment chest into the far edge of the chariot-wagon, flush against the wall that curved behind the horse’s rump. It rattled slightly, and Cara worried for a moment that the odds and ends she’d packed in it hadn’t been cushioned by her clothes as she’d anticipated. 

 

But she shook off her concern and reached for a set of bags. Nothing in it was particularly fragile, and repacking it now would only take more time. She wanted to be away before the lunch crowd came in and saw her in trousers and shirt and jerkin. The dress might be able to hide her figure, but the jerkin and trousers left comparatively little to the imagination. 

 

If one of those drunken idiots from the day before saw her, she might have to break their noses before they’d stop staring down her top.

 

The packing took little time, even with the added supplies from Jeffrey. Cara cinched the last buckle on the mare’s luggage harness before nodding to Dayton. He brought the mare’s head out of the weeds and, clucking encouragement, turned her head to face out of the kitchen courtyard and toward the track that led to the main road. 

 

Cara turned back once to watch the inn’s familiar wooden palisade fade into the woods and dust cloud behind them. No one stood on the wall to wave goodbye to the Apprentice Hero and Acolyte. She hadn’t expected them to, honestly, but it still stung.

 

She turned back to face the woods ahead, forcing herself to scan the woods for signs of uncanny creatures and wily bandits. If Dayton saw a tear roll down her cheek, he was tactful enough not to mention it.

 

Hours passed. They walked. 

 

Cara was in the middle of tallying what she’d need to purchase to prepare for the Trials when the wyvern swarm attacked.