A Tale of Crown and Country

Reila

Another night spent sleeping against a tree gave Reila a crick in her neck and an achy back. Morto had seemed to lighten up on her, giving her more food than the rest of the band, though he still wouldn't believe he had the wrong girl, no matter how hard she tried to convince him otherwise. He insisted he had a complete and accurate description to go by, and that he'd met her before. His answer for why she'd never seen him before was she had most likely hit her head somewhere. When she answered that she had no recollection of such an incident, Morto stated that she'd proved his point.

    Reila had a lot of time to think as the next two days of travel went by without much interaction between the men and herself. They didn't stop for lunch, simply passing food from hand to hand. The men spoke amongst themselves, but never with Reila. If it was because of who they thought she was, or who her horse was tethered to, she didn't know.

    First she took to watching the bandits interact amongst one another. She could separate the men into three distinct groups that hardly interacted with one another at all. The largest group, by far, comprised of almost every single man in the band. They were hired help, she realized. A brotherhood ran between them but it was motivated by money and money alone. Next came the second-in-commands, as she called them; the right-hand man, the trusted adviser. Reila could think of a dozen examples of such men. They ranked higher than the rest of the men, and were more in tune with what was going on than the rest, who were only along for the money, the adventure, and whatever bar stories that could come of it. Finally there came the leader: Morto Domev himself. As Reila watched him, she noted how different he was from the rest of the men. He was quieter, less rowdy. He watched his men–and her in particular–with an eagle's eye. His men regarded him in the way rats watch cats: singularly, scared, but in as a group gained the possibility of overthrowing. Not that any of the men seemed too inclined to do so; Morto might have scared the men a little, but they also respected him in a way Reila didn't think possible amongst kidnappers and thieves.

    Her mind slowly wandered from her observations–which she thought Yvid might be proud of–to Castin. Castin who'd been in the back of her mind since their separation. She wondered what he was doing now. Had he come looking for her? Had he abandoned her? She instantly regretted  maintaining the conflict between them. That one stupid conversation had driven a tiny wedge between them, and they were both just so passive aggressive towards one another. Reila supposed the presence of the Wairton siblings had something to do with that; not being forced to interact with one another had been the cause of the lengthened argument, she was sure of it.

    The more she thought of Castin the more she started to panic. What if this wasn't resolved? What if the King couldn't help her? Or worse: wouldn't help her. What if she never saw him again? Or her family; the family she'd left in search of something she was now sure had never existed in the first place. Regret flashed across her mind the closer they got to Aldira. As much as she tried to force her rational mind to cooperate, she found herself panicking more and more. Every logical thought that crossed her mind scared her. Every torturous hypothetical situation made her heart ache. Her mind and her heart were at war, and there was no clear winner. She understood why Castin fell prey to his heart. Feelings couldn't get you out of a problem, but they were a hell of a lot better at calming you down than thoughts were. There are thinkers and there are feelers. Reila was a thinker and Castin was a feeler. They come in pairs, she realized. The feelers need the thinkers to keep their heads on the straight and the thinkers need the feelers to make sure their heads aren't on too tight. And right now Reila's head was on so tight she'd started panicking about hypothetical future events.

    Reila's eyes stole her attention. She'd caught a glimpse of stone and rock, of artifice springing up from the natural world.

    Aldira.

    It begged her attention like an injured kitten. More like an injured bear, Reila corrected. A sandy coloured stone wall lay at the end of the dusty road they'd been travelling on. It stood out against a backdrop of turquoise waters and blue skies. Fluffy white clouds traipsed across the sky, but Reila felt like the weather was mocking her. As beautiful as human technology could be, the sight of the long-awaited city sent shivers up her spine. It had been the city of her dreams, where all her burning questions could be answered, where she'd dreamed of finding out who she really was. Now it was the city of dangers and disasters, a city of impending doom; a city of unforeseeable futures.

    Morto Domev grinned sadistically at her obvious discomfort. In his eyes she hoped to see more of him, more of the man she had come to realize was not the ruthless bandit leader. She only saw motivations of greed and hatred. Where the second one came from she didn't know; all thoughts  and feelings were dominated by Aldira.

    Reila gulped as Morto clicked his horse into motion. Hers followed reluctantly behind, a bit like its rider. The bandits made their way towards Allriya's capital like a strange party of friends after a long journey home; if one of those friends was there by force and the others feared their self-appointed director who himself carried a secret.

    That was the other thing Reila had come to realize. The scars, the eyes, the strange glances and glints in his visage: Morto had a secret. And Reila wanted desperately to know what that was.