Page 30 of Condemned

If she was his, he’d keep it long so he could grab it when he wanted to.

Once they reached the florses, Timin cut eye, mouth, and nose holes in that bag then pulled it over her head, tucked in her hair, and cinched it at the neck. They still had no adequate shoes for her. Sighing, he led her to Kondio. She could ride with him. So much for making her walk.

“At the next town with a market, we can get her clothes and shoes, and so on, and a warm coat for the mountains.” The list was getting long. “This is going to cost us.”

Kondio guffawed then leaned down from the saddle to grab Avalon beneath her arm. “Miss fancy thief had better pay us back then.”

He helped heave her up to sit before the mauleon. The bag on her head had kept her quiet. The cloth over the saddle should stop her thighs chafing.

“The priests should pay us well,” he mused. “If not, we can surely find another buyer.”

“A discreet one?” Zo led his florse closer. “You said it’d be bad if her identity was discovered and I know the priests won’t blab, but anyone else might.”

In other words, life could get complicated for them if Omage said no. Takk mounted his florse, gathered the reins. “Let’s hope it won’t come to that then.”

He’d thought this through but keeping the human girl had a lot of consequences.

The vow to rescue her would hold. He did not go back on promises.

Well... He eyed her as Kondio jabbed his heels into his florse. They trotted toward the road through the last spindly trees. He wouldn’t go back on that, unless she made life too dangerous for his soldiers. They were his top priority.

The day’s temperature dropped as clouds swept in. Despite his orders, the girl ended up swathed in a cloak as Kondio somehow recalled he was a gentle mauleon, or something. She wouldn’t have frozen; it wasn’t that cold. Maybe having a naked female sharing his saddle had taken a toll.

His orders weren’t really orders anymore. They were no longer in the army, not since her execution had been signed off. He was no longer their commanding officer.

It would probably take a while for their attitude toward him to change. And his attitude toward them.

Zo rode up alongside and matched the pace of Takk’s florse. “So you know—I almost forgot this—that mouse pet she has is probably a bot.”

“What the fuck?” Takk twisted to stare at Zo then at the girl.

* * *

J’kai replayed theaudio. The last time, at the stream, it’d been corrupted but this time she had it down clear. The mouse was a bot. She focused her tech dissection specs on the florse of Kondio, watching carefully until they rode out of range. The mouse was perched behind the mauleon, tucked into a bedroll. Though mostly hidden, the tactical specs managed to catch some of the details, highlighting and diagramming the creature in bright reds and blues.

She’d studied tech, memorized blueprints in the archaic section at Huge Library. The library was named after the city of Huge. Huge City was named after its founder, Bartholomew Huge, and was only a medium-sized place, which confused the tourists immensely.

Recreating old tech was a lucrative business, if you could do it.

This mouse-bot though, and bot it was indeed, held many dark spaces where her specs could not decipher any logic to the wiring and so on. There was a neat little multi-fuel reactor burning at its core. The rest? She didn’t understand it much at all.

Once she killed the girl, if she killed her... Assuming a command would come was not wise. If it came, she could catch the bot and study it, pull it apart.

She rose from her hiding place and jogged after the mauleons. Purchasing a new florse would be wise.