Purity of Mind

Chapter 10: The Nine

"What the hell did you say to him?" Magen asked me.

It'd been three days since I'd talked to Dalostaed. He was night shift and I was day shift, so it wasn't as though avoiding each other was difficult, but now that we were settling the caravan again - this time at the much friendlier empire city of Putluru - people were changing shifts in earnest.

I shrugged at Magen. "Just a dumb argument." I said. "The heat's been a bit much."

Magen nodded. "It happens, but you'd best reconcile quick, or at least learn to work side by side. Utijan is our next and last stop, and we'll be needing everyone left to help unpack."

I looked around at the numerous wagons that were already unpacking. Merchants, mostly, and a whole lot more than had been allowed at Chankota. "What about here?"

"You're free to help out, so long as the heat won't be a problem." Magen's tone indicated he didn't quite believe my story, but his surface thoughts had already moved on. He wasn't going to ask questions.

"We're out of the desert now." I said. "The grass is almost green. Should be cool enough to keep my temper."

"Good." He said, and moved down the line.

I made my way up the caravan to the group of wagons that I'd guarded on their rather quick departure from Chankota. Their guard recognized me and nodded. "Hey, Bishop," she said. "Magen need anything?"

"No," I replied, "I was just checking to see if anything needed to be unpacked up here." Left unsaid was the fact that this was about as far from the wizard's wagon as I could get.

She shrugged. "We're not staying. Magen sent us on ahead like he did because we're not actually part of his caravan." She tapped the side of the wagon closest to her, and I noticed a different flag painted on it.

"Oh? Where are you headed?"

"Dynasty, eventually. So we don't dare get too close to Utijan, because you know how they feel about supplying the enemy."

I managed a chuckle. The Dynasty and the Empire had technically been at war with each other for the past hundred years, though it had been nearly that long since a battle had actually been fought. "I can imagine. So why go this far west at all, can't you just head north from Opal?"

She laughed. "I keep forgetting this is your first trip."

I hadn't actually told her at any point, but gossip traveled pretty freely around the caravan. "That obvious, huh?"

"Sorry," she said finally. "Looking at a map it looks like an easy trip, Ruby's up there along the way. You know much about the other Jewels?"

Opal wasn't the only Jewel of the Desert. Pretty much any city that survived in the desert got that title, so long as they'd named themselves accordingly. Even that wasn't a strict requirement; Sapphire's actual name was Crossing Dunes, but nobody called it that and you'd be hard-pressed to find a modern map that used the latter name. "I mostly just know about Opal," I said finally.

"Ruby's an outlaw haven. Founded by people who believed that true anarchy could really work. Idealists, of all things. Most of them met the wrong side of a crossbow about a month after that founding, but the city's still there so I guess they were at least a little bit right. Anyway, they're big believers in 'personal freedom', up to and including the part where they feel free to take your stuff if you're a small group of traders with only one or two guards. If Magen were leading this whole caravan to the Dynasty, then sure, it'd be safe just because there'd be too many of us to kill. But he's not, so we take the long way around."

"Makes sense." I said. "I-"

A cough from behind me interrupted what I was going to say. I turned around and peered into the completely shadowed visage of the wizard.