Vera's Story(To Love and To Lie)

Chapter Eight

When Vera went downstairs for breakfast the next morning, Derek told her that the guide he'd told her about was at the corner table if she wanted to meet him, so Vera decided it would be nice to actually go out safely today and went over.

The guide was wearing a hood and eating little pieces of the goat leg he had chopped up into bits.

"Excuse me? Are you the guide Derek told me to meet?"

The hooded person's head turned sharply in her direction and a familiar high male voice exclaimed, "You?" And then pulled his hood back to reveal curly red hair and a pale face covered in freckles. It was Tom, the boy who had guided her back to The Slider yesterday.

"You!" Vera exclaimed.

"I should not be this surprised, I already knew you were here and that you had bad direction skills." Tom admitted, returning to his meal as Vera slid into the chair across from him.

"So when you said you had business here with one of the girls you meant Mira?" Vera asked.

"Yup, Mira has given me a lot of guide jobs, mostly she asks if I can guide people she likes because she can't."

"Ah,"

"So, your name is Allie?"

"Uh, yeah,"

"Well, Miss Allie-"

"Mistress," Vera corrected.

"Mistress?" Tom asked confusedly.

"I'm married,"

"Oh, okay, where's your husband?"

"Let's work out the contract first."

Tom pulled a sheet of paper and a pen out of his coat, and held the pen at the ready. "Firstly, what exactly would you like me to do for you?"

"I need a guide, and a bodyguard. Someone to get me out of trouble and keep me out of trouble. I'd like it if you taught me some useful skills over the duration of our contract."

"I can do that, how long will this last?"

"Until I find my husband."

"Would you elaborate a little on that? That's a really nonspecific timeframe. Do you have any idea where he is?"

"I'm almost one hundred percent sure he's in this city or near it. We had a really bad argument and he left our home and came here, supposedly on business. He was gone for almost two weeks and he didn't send any word so I came after him. If we confirm the contract I'll tell you what else I know about his situation."

"Well, alright, but if my position here as a-" He pauses for a moment and glances around before going on in a lowered voice, "-ahem, as an illegal alien from Wistera is exposed, then the contract is broken. Also I say that if this goes on for more than three months then the contract is broken and I'm free. Finally, you have to pay me a minimum of one gold a day, but depending on how hard everything ends up being I'll want extra for the trouble. Oh, and of course, this will be sealed the Allessian way, and we are bound by the contract."

"I'd also like to add that neither of us are allowed to harm the other in any way and we're not allowed to expose the other to any of the people they're hiding from." Vera adds carefully.

"I agree to that wholeheartedly." Tom says, nodding.

Tom writes all of that out, Vera reads it, and then they both prick their thumbs, stamping the page with blood and then signing their names.

"That should be enough, but if you'd like we can go to the nearest Allessian contractor shop and make it doubly official."

"This is fine, I don't want to go into an Allessian shop. Come up to my room with me and I'll explain everything else."