Blood For Wages

6: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

"What the fuck do you mean he ain't here?" Fia asked, her eerie eyes boring into the face of the woman standing before her.

The woman was trying her best to maintain a haughty composure, but her best wasn't nearly good enough. In spite of her greatest efforts her eyes kept skittering around Fia's face, taking in the mud and dust caked hair that she'd tied up, the half-healed scratches on her cheek, the Kynish tattoos that adorned the shaved sides of her scalp and ran down the sides of her neck like incantations.

Fia wasn't sure how she was looking after over a week on the road, four days of which had been spent on the run with Gunn in tow, while she utilised every skill and ounce of cunning she had to stay ahead of his pursuing gang of vengeful longriders, but she doubted she was ballroom ready.

The room that she, Gunn and this unexpected woman were standing in was extremely comfortable, extremely clean. Unlike the rest of the Three Horseshoes Inn, this small suite of three rooms, located right under the eaves and accessible only by a narrow staircase, seemed to have received the sort of recent scrubbing that it probably hadn't had since the building had been knocked up however many hundreds of years before. The cushions were plumped, the upholstery on the couches free from stains or wear. A set of decanters sat winking invitingly at Fia on a side table under the larger of the two windows. There was no sign of dust, nor a single cobweb to be seen in the beams above. It was all very pleasant, except for the fact that it was bereft of one significant feature.

"I said, what the fuck do you mean Gray ain't here?" Fia repeated. "Meet him back here in Last Hallow, at the rooms at the top of the Three Horseshoes Inn, he said. With this man," and she jerked her head at Gunn who sat, still shackled at the ankles and wrists, on a chair by the window, "still breathing, he said."

The woman took a breath, glancing from Fia to Gunn. She was dressed in a garb that was all too familiar to Fia: the dark blue and charcoal grey of a soldier of Frekifold. She licked her lips. Straightened her back.

"As I have vouchsafed to you already, Miss McCrae, I am just a dispatch rider sent by Captain Gray, who's been called away on other business. As a captain of the Tribeland of Frekifold, right hand to the current commander of the armed forces of Countess Vanora, it's no wonder that he is detained by affairs of greater import than meeting with the likes of you."

"Ouch," Gunn said, staring unconcernedly out of the window.

"I'll just leave this piece of shit with you, then," Fia said, her words rime-covered. "If you'll hand over the gold Gray promised me, I'll be riding on."

The messenger swallowed again. Fia noticed that she made no move to produce a purse.

"He's fucked me," Fia said.

Gunn barked a laugh from behind her. "That's somethin' you come to learn quickly about Captain Cameron Gray, Miss McCrae: if he's talkin', chances are he's lyin'." His tone was light, but Fia detected a vitriolic anger underlying his words. "That son of a bitch's word's worth less than mine––'course, my word's rare as grass around a boar wallow, but when I give it I keep it. Gray though, he'd piss on your back and tell you it's raining just for fun."

It was odd, but Fia had never thought that about the man when she had known him before. Of course, she'd had a different life then, with different cares.

Fia let out an inaudible sigh through her nose. She beat her hat against her leg a couple of times raising road dust from her trousers. Outside, rain began to patter on the wooden roof tiles of the Three Horseshoes Inn.

"Guess you better just fucking tell me what the deal is then, messenger," she said, one hand coming to rest on the hilt of her broadsword. "The new deal that is."