Purity of Mind

Chapter 9: The Witchdoctor

The next morning, we were forcefully evicted from the outlander's quarters.

Most of the day shift was awake and most of the night shift had just started dozing off when a dozen guards marched out of Chankota and started rousing everyone. They weren't gentle, and a few altercations did little to change that; instead, more guards arrived as reinforcements.

There were a lot of people in the caravan, including some guards of our own, and it might have escalated to something nearing a riot if Magen hadn't intervened. He managed to talk our people down, start organizing the caravan, and even had some people get moving immediately. This seemed to placate the guards, though it did little for us.

Dalostaed and I had taken it upon ourselves to start loading up wagons, even though the wizard had never unpacked to begin with. We just chose nearby merchants and started pitching in, having wordlessly decided that urgency was more than justified in this situation. At one point, Magen stopped by.

"Any word?" He asked me directly, ignoring the wizard's servant. Dalostaed kept loading boxes, pretending not to eavesdrop.

"It'll be an hour at most." I said. "But I think everyone's got the message to get packing, so hopefully we can start getting out of here as soon as possible."

Magen shook his head. "Not about that. I mean, good work, yes, thanks for pitching in, but I'm asking about your patrols."

I shrugged. "I haven't had the chance to go on any; the guards woke me up."

The look of consternation that Magen had been wearing the entire morning failed to dissipate. "Damn. Long-shot anyway. Apparently bandits hit the town last night. It was shortly before day shift was heading to bed, I was hoping you'd spotted something."

"I haven't seen any bandits." I answered truthfully. Disguising my surface thoughts while lying was a lot easier when I didn't actually lie.

"Well it's pissed the city off even more than usual, and that's saying something." Magen elaborated. "They know damn well we didn't have anything to do with it, but when all you have is a club, everyone looks like a target." He shook his head. "Thanks. I'm going to move down the line and ask around. As soon as you've loaded this one up here, I'd like you to go find the wagons I've sent ahead. I had to do something to make the Chankotans see that we were cooperating, but I don't like splitting up if there's bandits about."

"Understood." I said. Magen nodded and walked off.

I turned to help Dalostaed, but he'd apparently finished loading the wagon during the conversation. Maybe he had actually been working and not listening. "You go ahead," he said.

I wanted to stay and help anyway out of a sense of guilt, but that same guilt meant I couldn't stay; I couldn't risk any of the city guards picking up on it. I managed a "Thanks, Dalostaed" and started heading back out into the desert.

The paths in the deep desert that we'd passed through on the way out of Opal weren't marked; if you wanted to go anywhere other than in circles, you had to know what you were doing. Magen had some kind of complicated telescope that he'd used to navigate by the stars. I wasn't so lucky, but this far away from the deep desert, the trails were at least a little bit marked. That I could follow.

It didn't take long before I caught up to the other wagons. They'd apparently chosen this spot to make camp for the day, though the night shift was still awake. I nodded to one of my fellow day shift guards. "What news?" I asked.

"All's clear," she told me. "No sight, sound, or smell of bandits. If I hadn't heard the bells last night I'd suspect the 'kotans just made them up to get rid of us."