He was standing with a contract sheet in one wide hand, his expression carrying something that was not quite an offer and not quite an order — that specific Eskar look that meant he'd already decided something and was giving me the courtesy of the appearance of choice.
"Group assignment," he said when I reached him.
He turned the contract so I could see it — heavier paper than the board postings, the guild seal stamped in green wax.
"I've been brought in as secondary on an escort. Noble retinue. Lady Ankerita Solhani is traveling north to Verasten. It's a three-day road. The group already has a senior blade and two Class Threes. They needed a body for the trailing position."
He paused. "I told them you'd fill it."
I looked at the contract. Then at him.
"They wanted Class Five minimum," he added, with careful neutrality.
"You qualify, technically."
"I qualify technically," I repeated.
"It pays twelve silver for the round trip," he said, like he was putting a card on a table.
"Split at completion."
Twelve silver was not rat clearance money.
-
[SYSTEM NOTICE]
Twelve silver for an escort mission.
On a trading road.Your divine potential is truly being realized.The goddess is going to be furious.... Honestly? I'm a little glad.
-
I stopped giving attention to the system notifications anymore and kept my face look straight.
Then I looked back at the contract. At the guild seal and at the words "Noble Retinue Escort — Priority Designation" printed across the top in the careful hand of whoever had filed it.
Eskar was watching me with the patience of a man who knew he'd already won and was simply waiting for the formality to conclude.
"You need me," I said, "or you need to not tell Chelsea you let her nephew spend another week chasing rats in a warehouse?"
Something moved behind his eyes.
Not quite guilt, not quite. More like a man recalibrating his approach.
"Both," he said, after a moment. Honest, at least.
I took the contract from him.
Twelve silver. A noble lady's retinue. Three days north on the Verasten road, where the treeline thickened and the world got quieter and darker in ways I found, if I was being truthful, considerably more interesting than warehouses.
[SYSTEM NOTICE]
This is your cue to accept, grow as a person, and step into your role as a vessel of divine covenant.Or you could ask if the merchant has a garden that needs weeding.Your call, genuinely.
*
The horses were ready before dawn.
That was the first insult of the morning.
I was not, by nature, a before-dawn person. I was an after-dawn person.
A mid-morning person, ideally.
A person who believed strongly that the sun had the right idea — take your time, rise gradually, and let the world come to you.
But escort contracts ran on the noble's schedule, not the mercenary's, and Lady Ankerita Solhani apparently believed that the road rewarded the early bird.
So there I was, standing in the guild yard in the grey-purple dark of pre-morning, breath clouding faintly in the cool air, watching a stable hand lead out a brown horse that looked at me with the specific contempt that horses reserved for people they could sense were not enthusiastic about riding them.
"Don't," I told it.
It blinked at me slowly.
"I mean it."
Eskar appeared at my side, already mounted, sitting on his grey gelding with the effortless ease of a man who had been on horseback since before I was born.
In this life, anyway.
He looked alert. Genuinely ready to begin a day, which I found quietly offensive.
"You're talking to the horse," he observed.
"We're establishing boundaries."
"Get on the horse, Jake."