OoOoO
It took the Factionists longer than expected to organize themselves together and be ready to travel. By the time everyone in the area of Falerik was gathered and arrangements made to meet with their Moaanese supporters along the way to Utunma, Vinie was visibly seething with anxiety. Lhara for her part did whatever was asked by whoever asked it, whether that meant loading armor and weapons onto the back of ox carts or preparing food in the kitchen of The Drunken SkinPainter alongside Bakko. In the few sparse minutes she managed to steal to herself, Lhara also slipped outside of Falerik to forage for herbs closer to the forest. She had no idea what kinds of plants would grow further south around Utunma, and so she filled the pockets of her tunic and cloak now.
Less than a day after Yidu first burst into the basement with news of the army, the Factionists were on the move. They traveled with such haste that Lhara rued not being able to wonder more closely at how the greenness of the Gorian countryside grew wilder and stranger still. Another forest awaited them to the south, swallowing the road in a thick wall of lush, sticky heat that stretched on as far as the eye could see from Teeth to west. The trees here sported odd, waxy leaves as large around as lambs, and the canopy was alive with long-limbed creatures that watched their caravan pass with bulbous eyes. Soon it grew too warm for Lhara to bear her cloak any longer, and she stowed it on one of the carts. The humidity made a monster out of her thick, heavy hair, and wearing it tightly plaited along the scalp became less a choice and more a necessity.
At the center of this chaotic dash to Utunma, Vinie and her inner circle rushed about like harried shepherds trying to bring in a flock before a storm. To Lhara's unexpected relief, Jath was not apparently part of this inner circle. He worked alongside the other Factionists without complaint, but without any regular companions either. That left him always open to answer Lhara's questions about what was happening around them. Compared to Vinie's bowstring-taught worry, Reyson barking orders at anyone within arm's reach and Gideo's uneasy attempts at optimism, the honest welcome on Jath's face whenever Lhara approached him was a lifeline in a world suddenly full of strangers.
Apart from Reyson, the two of them were also the only 'inlanders' amongst the Factionists, or so Vinie's people referred to her and Jath. Like Lhara, none of the sea-folk seemed to question Jath's unearthly paleness. If anything they just brushed it off as a variation of how inlanders were, much like how Lhara distinguished between the warm sienna of Dhalad's faintly wrinkled face and the fiercely smooth umber of Vinie's.
Halfway to Moaan on the second day since Falerik, Lhara struggled to help Jath and several of the men push a jammed cart wheel over an obnoxious tree root in the path. Vinie had thrown her hands in the air and suggested that they just wear the armor and carry the weapons the rest of the way.
"No, we need everyone fresh when we get to Utunma," Kiiss had said. "In this heat, lugging heavy gear by hand will have us all ready to fall down without a fight." The fact that Kiiss stood by not helping to un-stick the cart in question somewhat undermined the point, but Reyson's agreement was enough to sell it. With Reyson, Gideo, and Yidu all joining in to shove, the cart had come free shortly anyways, and the hurried march south through the jungle continued.
Yidu approached Lhara shortly afterwards, falling into step beside her on the edge of the crowded track.
"You're going to swelter in those heavy things," the younger girl told her.
Lhara could hardly argue otherwise. Her woolen pants and tunic, made for life in the oft-chilly mountains, were just about wringing wet with sweat. Grinning playfully as if they were not racing on the heels of a Gorian army company, Yidu pulled Lhara into the bushes and just about wrestled her into a change of clothes. Five minutes and several insect bites later, Lhara emerged feeling both infinitely more comfortable and baring more skin to the world than she ever had before while fully dressed.
The surprisingly durable, breathy fabric of the bottle green pants, sleeveless white shirt and leather vest which Yidu had given her were definitely more suited to this climate. The bugs hiding in the waxy leaves on all sides of the road were only too happy to take advantage of Lhara's newly exposed arms though. At least, until Yidu came to the rescue yet again with a bottle of clear yellow oil which she told Lhara was made from pressed seeds. Lhara added everything Yidu said to her growing list of things to tell Magda when she returned to Trosk. Yidu for her part seemed delighted to be in a position to teach someone something and have them listen eagerly in return.
No longer melting and safe from the jungle's tiniest predators, Lhara decided to find Jath and share her new knowledge from Yidu. Picking him out from the winding column of southerners making their way along the bumpy path wasn't difficult. Lhara slipped from one side of the road to the other through the Factionist retinue, squeezing out in front of Jath. As always, his previously blank expression lifted in a smile at the sight of her.
"You look like a long-time arrival already," he said, taking note of her borrowed clothes and oily arms. "Are you more comfortable now?"
"Much. Aren't you roasting too? Yidu said that black is a terrible color to wear in these lands."
Still wearing the face-to-foot dark browns and blacks of clansfolk garb which he had arrived at Trosk in, Jath's white hair was clearly plastered to his forehead with sweat. He demurred though with a polite shake of his head.
"I found eastern Goran to be just as warm if not more, especially at high sun on the open plains. Nadathan and Sula assured us that keeping covered would protect against the fiercest of the sun's rays. And the cloth the clansfolk work is I daresay similarly thin and airy like that of the southerners."
"Well, if you change your mind, I'll bet I can ask Yidu to dig up some other spares for you."
A bird shrieked from a twisted branch stretching overhead above the road; an eyeful of a creature with bright red and blue feathers and beady, white-ringed eyes. Some of the Factionists looked up as they passed underneath the bird, one even whistling back at it. Jath and Lhara looked up curiously too.
"It's so colorful!" Lhara remarked. "Not at all like the ravens and eagles that live around Trosk."
"Yes...quite beautiful," said Jath.
"Lhara laughed when the strange bird squawked again, wiggling its long tail feathers before taking flight and disappearing above the canopy. "I don't know if I'd call it beautiful! More like silly. Kind of like how the poor moth in our Tale of Tales must have looked when it tried to paint itself for the butterfly."
Jath seemed surprised; he glanced at Lhara and nearly tripped on another one of the roots that kept jamming up the Factionists' carts. "You still remember the tale even now?"
"Of course! Since we're going to be walking for a while it looks like, do you want to continue our game?"
"I...I'm afraid I've forgotten how all of the lines went, which means that you've won, Lhara."
Lhara didn't want to win though; she wanted entertainment for yet another long walk. At this rate her boots were going to be in grave danger of wearing thin.
"I don't remember them all either," she fibbed. "which means it would be a draw anyways. So we might as well continue, and keep telling the story since it didn't get properly finished."
Something must have bit Jath in that moment, because he flinched suddenly and swatted at his neck with one of his gloved hands. How he could stand to be wearing gloves in this heat and humidity, clan-made or not, was beyond Lhara. When he took his hand away, a tiny smear of blood from some indelicate insect bloomed dramatically red against the white of Jath's skin.
"Here, take some of this..." Lhara reached up and smeared some oil from the back of her wrist onto Jath's welting neck. "Best to keep all your blood inside of you...before Utunma."
The reminder of what the Factionists were hurrying toward at the end of the road brought a sudden dark pall into the moment. Once again Lhara was aware of the tense mood of their companions and the urgency which drove their every step. When they reached Utunma, there would be destruction and death awaiting them, just like there had been at Trosk.
Jath's voice brought Lhara back to the present. "After the painted moth fled, shamed by the mockery of the butterflies, it went in search of a stream; to clean or drown itself it did not know."
Having thought that Jath did not wish to continue the Tale of Tales, Lhara looked back to him in surprise. Jath walked beside her, waiting expectantly with a faint smile clinging to the corner of his lips. Then he nearly walked into a low hanging branch which Lhara had to catch at the last moment before it clotheslined him.
Lhara couldn't help but laugh. "At the pool, the moth washed the paint from its wings. Looking sadly down at its plain reflection, it was shocked to see another reflection beside it in the water...!"
OoOoO
By the time the Factionists made it to the outskirts of Moaan on the evening of the third day, it was all Vinie could do to keep dismay off her face. Less than two hundred additional Factionists were gathered outside the city waiting for them. Added to the three hundred they had brought from Falerik, they still didn't have even half the numbers of a Gorian army company.
"We're not going to win this fight."
Vinie didn't realize that she'd spoken aloud until she felt Gideo, Reyson and Kiiss watching her. The four of them sat gathered around one of the many campfires which the Factionists had lit along the road. The jungle undergrowth on all sides was trampled as far back as the trees; evidence of the army's having passed this way already on its way to Utunma. A few fruit bats flew overhead, freshly awoken for the night and also the only creatures bold enough to approach the sprawling Factionist campsite.
Gideo stirred the fire with a long stick, its glow shadowing the bones of his face and making him look older as he regarded Vinie. The usually tidy stubble across his chin and cheeks was beginning to tread dangerously close to bearded territory. Vinie was overcome with an overwhelming wish that it was just the two of them camping by this roadside, in which case she might go to him now and tuck herself against the broad, warm planes of Gideo's chest next to his heart. That way she might pretend that the disaster she was leading them into was not real. This was all her fault. Her and her stupid prison-hatched fever dream of a future they could call their own.
"You give up easily," remarked Reyson.
Jerking upright from leaning on her thighs, Vinie glared at Reyson. "I'm sorry; tell me where the odds play out in our favor?? You said yourself today that a Gorian company will be near a thousand men strong!"
"Well then, our predicament is easily solved. We need the Moaanese Guard."
Gideo threw his stick into the fire, stirring up the embers and throwing sparks. "Yas, but we have nothing to offer Lord Xolani and Lady Oesu in exchange. Even if Nadathan and Sula could have done anything about Princess Ellorae's convoy, by now it's too late for that plan to do us any good." He heaved a deep sigh, burying his hands in his hair, which like his beard was beginning to get a bit too long.
"If I recall..." Kiiss spoke up, having been quiet for unusually long with a small flask of something spicy smelling in hand. "...the regents never specified that they needed a hostage to serve as insurance against the crown. They just said they needed some guarantee of good faith and protection." Seemingly unflappable, the art merchant dropped a wink in Gideo's direction. "Value can be found in surprisingly unexpected places. So, what else do we have to work with?"
"Desperation and harsh language? Kiiss, if you have an idea I would love to hear it right now!" growled Vinie. "If not the king's sister, then what else could we possibly get our hands on to buy Moaan's support by morning?"
"Excuse me...but if I may?"
Jath, the quiet young inlander recruit had apparently been listening to their conversation in passing from beyond the fireside. He and the mountain guide from Trosk, Lhara, stood a short ways behind where Reyson sat, water sacks full after what was no doubt a trip to the spring on the edge of the clearing. Lhara's expression was just as inquisitive as the rest of theirs as they all looked at Jath. Whatever it was Jath wanted to say, it seemed the two, who to Vinie's amusement and relief were fast becoming thick as thieves, were not in on it together.
"You have a thought to add, Jath?" asked Vinie. "Bury my bones; we could use some of that right about now."
Flicking a quick glance at everyone seated around the fire with his outlandish white eyes, Jath drew closer. "I could not help but overhear the situation, and how we are in dire need to win the support of Moaan's regents before facing the army at Utunma. There was a plan to take King Mahir's sister, Princess Ellorae as a hostage for the regents, but the plan fell through. Is all that right?" When met with nods of confirmation, he continued. "I think I may be able to offer an alternative, of a sort. Not near as powerful leverage as a royal prisoner, but still, perhaps enough to meet the Moaanese requirements..."
"Don't be shy, boy," said Reyson. "So long as it's something we can procure before dawn, any idea is a hundred times more than what we have now."
Curiosity was written all over Lhara's face, and Vinie imagined her expression echoed that of the mountain girl. She met Gideo's eye. Hope flickered between them. Whatever Jath had in mind, she and Gideo already knew that they would try it. They had to; winning the spears of the Moaanese Guard was just about their only option right now.
Something changed in Jath's demeanor then. He both held himself straighter and yet somehow seemed to close off and fold inward at the same time. When next he spoke his usually inland-cultured voice became downright sophisticated.
"I offer myself then, as firstborn heir to the Saurivic family of Vaelona and distant descendant of First King Amenthis himself. My name is Jatheryn Saurivic, of the line of Taebor Saurivic. Lord Xolani and Lady Oesu are unlikely to find a hostage any closer in blood to the crown than a member of the Amenthis family themselves."
"You're one of the White Saurivics!" Reyson exclaimed, springing to his feet and upsetting his bowl of rice. "Rumors about you came to us in Blue Stone. I dismissed them as the twisted half-truths of the gossips at the time."
"Well now, how do you like that? A Gorian nobleman amongst the rebels...and a family heir at that!" Kiiss was laughing aloud, clapping her hands (the blue paint was beginning to chip on her nails) together like a giddy maiden.
Others along the roadside campsite were beginning to take notice after Reyson's outburst of surprise. Curious heads swiveled up and down along the road, squinting to see closer in the late twilight. Jath for his part said nothing, simply standing with rigid posture and impassive expression beneath the weight of the Factionists' scrutiny.
It was Lhara who was the only one who actually seemed dismayed at the revelation. "Wait, wait! Jath isn't a hostage, he's one of you! Isn't he?" She turned a wide eye on Vinie. "You can't use him as a bargaining chip just because of his name."
"Of course they can, they have to!" exclaimed Kiiss. "Wild Child, there are hundreds of lives at stake here. Now is not the time to hold back cards in the hand, not when we have the means to go all in standing right in front of us."
"There you go referring to people as objects again." Gideo frowned at Kiiss.
"Yas, please don't Kiiss," said Vinie. "But...Lhara, I'll tell you things as they are. You lost a lot when the army attacked Trosk. Besides family and friends killed, I don't imagine your village will ever really feel the same again." She stood, the firelight making the black pearl bound on her brow gleam like a third eye. "The same thing is going to happen to my home now too. People are going to die, people we care about and who have risked a lot to help us. If we can't arrive at Utunma in strength, we won't be able to save anyone. In fact, we'll most likely be added to the dead once the army is done with us. So, Jath...Jatheryn, I'm going to ask you this once. You are free to answer in any way, but if you say yes I'm going to hold you to it." Vinie crossed the fire lit circle to stand directly in front of Jath. "Are you sure you're willing to let us hand you over to Lord Xolani and Lady Oesu as their hostage?"
Lhara, standing between Vinie and Jath to one side, didn't know what to do or say. Jath was just about her only friend right now, stranger in a strange land as she was. The memory of Trosk and The Giant's Shoe burning was always in her mind though. If Jath was willing to do this, what right did she even have to try and insist otherwise? She could only await Jath's answer with the rest of the Factionists.
"I give you my explicit permission to deliver me to the regents of the south," said Jath. He turned to Lhara, and once again Lhara could feel the ghost of Trosk hanging between them. "The Factionists couldn't protect Trosk, but we might yet save Utunma."
Vinie smiled and took Jath's hands in hers, a bittersweet gesture despite the hopeful look in her eyes. "Thank you, truly. Gideo?"
"I'll take him to the State Hall," said Gideo, rising to his feet. "By the sea, let's all hope that Xolani and Oesu are willing to accept."
"Take Dhalad with you," said Vinie. "Just in case. We'll be waiting here until midday tomorrow. Tell Xolani and Oesu what has happened, and have them mobilize the Guard as fast as they can."
While the Factionists made their plans, Lhara and Jath were left alone for a few brief moments. Unsure what else to do or say, Lhara jabbed Jath in the shoulder with an accusatory finger.
"First you have me bring you to the other side of the world, then you get me mixed up with the Factionists, and now you're leaving me to muddle my way along in their midst on my own? If this was all some elaborate plan to recruit for the cause, then I'm not impressed."
Jath did not return her feeble smile. Instead he caught Lhara by the offending hand and held it between his own. To her surprise, he bent his head and pressed a kiss to her rough, bug-oil covered knuckles. His lips were warm. Lhara was reminded of descriptions of courtly gestures by gallant knights to noble ladies from one of Tarun's books, and her ears grew hot.
"Thank you for trying to stand up on my behalf, Lhara," Jath murmured. "I grow more indebted to you with every passing day."
Lhara was still trying to straighten out what had just happened when Jath disappeared into the darkness of the jungle behind Gideo and Dhalad. She had always laughed at the flowery descriptions of blushing maidens in Tarun's books, thinking them ridiculously bashful and unassured. Yet there she stood in the middle of the road, rooted to the spot and glowing almost as scarlet as one of the Factionists' campfires.
OoOoO
"Are you ready?"
Gideo, Dhalad and Jath lingered beyond the view of the State Hall's guards, tucked away into one of Moaan's many narrow alleys. The soft snores of people sleeping on their rooftops in the summer heat could be faintly heard. The citizens of Moaan slept, blissfully unaware of the hundreds of Factionists camped in the jungle beyond their city walls.
With apologies, Gideo had tied Jath's hands together in front of him. Whether the lack of his hands or silent nerves was to blame, Jath felt off-kilter and leaned slightly against the alley wall to steady himself. Dhalad patted his shoulder, and Jath straightened up.
"I'm ready. Lead the way."
It was time to see if the Factionists were to meet the Gorian army at Utunma alone or not. Gideo's broad hand was firm but reassuring on Jath's upper arm as he guided him out into the lamp light. As soon as they stepped out into the street the guards were upon them.
"Halt! Who approaches the State Hall at this hour? State your business."
Gideo spoke for the three of them. "Rouse Lord Xolani and Lady Oesu. Tell them that their insurance has arrived, and that if they would protect their people there isn't a minute to lose."
OoOoO