Chapter Sixteen

“Purchase my services? What in particular are you looking for?”

Korro’s voice sounded curious and faintly amused, but his face was all business.

“I want you to smuggle me out of Rockmarsh. Preferably tonight.”

“That is not an easy job with the Grand Paladin hunting you. I can do it, but it will not be cheap.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I just got paid then. One hundred gold for me and my friend’s safety.”

His face didn’t change much, but it was clear that Korro wasn’t very impressed by the number.

“I would normally ask double that for what you are asking, and the price only increases with the involvement of Validus. You are an associate of the Guild so I will give you a discount, but for a job this dangerous I can ask no less than three hundred gold.”

Three hundred gold? I don’t have that much, and he knows it. Maybe he’s trying to haggle me down to two hundred gold, but even then, that is all the money I have. I need to save it to buy supplies in the next town or I might die in the wilds long before Validus catches me. Well, I will probably be fine, but Xorvos won’t be.

“I do not have the gold for that. Would you perhaps be willing to lower the price to something within my price range?”

“I already did. The day you entered Rockmarsh you spent a good handful of coins on a sword you barely know how to use. You would not have spent the last of your gold on an investment like that unless you had more money to throw around. Two seventy-five for the job but it will not drop much further.”

Crap, I forgot the blacksmith I went to was working with the Thieves Guild. He must have told Korro about the sword I bought, and now he thinks that was my money and not Ralisdor’s. I have a plan to drop the price more, but it’s risky. If I mess up, then I’m screwed. But I’m screwed if I do nothing anyway, so I have to at least try.

“One third of my reward was to go towards protecting me from Validus, but he almost killed me even while I was with one of your people. I would like an additional one hundred and fifty gold for the job I did for you and for failing in keeping me hidden from him.”

Korro took a moment to consider her words, with a slight frown of displeasure. He did not seem angry necessarily, but it was still enough to fill Shuka with fear.

Did I go too far? What if he kicks me out, or takes back the money he gave me? Even if he just says no it will be bad.

“You are perhaps more cunning than I had originally thought.” Korro grumbled. “Braver too. Fine you can have your coin, you are right after all, I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain.”

Xorvos blinked in surprise at his response, but Shuka just sighed in relief.

“In that case I will pay you the two hundred and seventy-five gold to get me and Xorvos out of here.”

I might be able to bring the price down to two-fifty with a bit more haggling, but I don’t want to push my luck. I will still have fifty gold left after this, and that should be enough to survive until we can get back in contact with Ralisdor.

Shuka took fifteen platinum coins out of the pouch Korro gave her and placed them back onto his desk. Korro took the money and put them back inside his desk.

“Well then, a deal has been made. I will have someone prepared shortly and you will be out of the city before the morning. After that though, you are on your own.”

“Actually.” Anirak interrupted. “I would like to volunteer for this job.”

Korro raised an eyebrow at her.

“Really? The pay is rather average, and the danger is high. Don’t tell me you have taken a liking to these two.”

“Hardly. I’m just bored, and this seems like fun. And besides, Validus isn’t as scary as you think. He’s strong sure, but I could outsmart him any day of the week.”

“If that is what you want then I see no reason to deny your request.”

“Great! Well, we better get going then, wouldn’t want to give the guards more time to prepare.”

*

Two hours later Shuka and Xorvos were a few miles away from Rockmarsh hiding in the middle of the marshy wetlands, far away from any roads. Anirak had helped them escape the city by hiding them in a couple of crates and bringing them out in a wagon. How she did that without the guards inspecting the crates, Shuka didn’t know, but it worked. Once they got out, she left them to fend for themselves though. It wasn’t easy setting up a small camp without any of their usual camping supplies, but Shuka managed to pull through with her survival skills. It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t even comfortable, but after a bit of work, they at least had a place to sleep. It was almost comforting for Shuka to be finally doing something she was familiar with. This was hardly the first time she had to survive the night in the wilderness, although she usually had more supplies when she did it back home. She also found that she much preferred forests over swamps.

Gods, why is everything so wet! How am I supposed to sleep when I am soaked up to my knees in swamp water and surrounded by mud. I can’t even dry us off with a fire, because it might be seen by someone looking for us. Not that it would even be very easy to light a fire with how damp all of the wood around here is. Oh well, just one more thing for me to deal with on this very shitty day.

While Shuka was grumpily setting things up, Xorvos was just sitting on the ground feeling useless. He didn’t have any survival skills and there was nothing to fight so he just sat there waiting for Shuka to finish. Eventually the silence became too much to bear, and he spoke up.

“Are you sure there is nothing I can do to help? I can start a fire with my gauntlets if you want.”

“We aren’t starting a fire tonight. It will be far too easy to see in the darkness and we need to stay hidden.”

It wasn’t a great start, but Xorvos was determined to make himself useful so he tried again.

“Do we need any food? I could try finding some berries or something.”

“You won’t find much out here, and we should stick together to reduce the chances of us being found.”

“What do you mean?”

“Right now, we will only be discovered if they find our camp. If you go foraging, then that will just be one more thing they can find out here. They only need to find one of us for us to be screwed.”

Xorvos didn’t have anything to say to that so he just stayed quiet. It was late, but he didn’t feel like sleeping. There were too many thoughts going through his head for him to get any proper rest. Eventually Shuka finished setting up and went to her makeshift bed to get some sleep.

“What are we going to do?”

“Huh?”

Shuka was half asleep when Xorvos asked his question.

What’s he asking in the middle of the night? If we don’t get any sleep tonight, then traveling tomorrow is going to be hell. Sleeping in would be a problem too.

“We are going to wait for Ralisdor in the next village. Didn’t we go over this?”

“That’s not what I’m worried about. All we can do is run and hide and if we get unlucky or mess up, we are dead. Isn’t that terrifying?”

Shuka thought back on the last week and understood what he meant.

All we have been doing is traveling and already we have had far too many close calls. How long until there isn’t someone else to bail us out of a bad situation?

“It is terrifying but what do you want me to do about it? It’s not like there is an easy way to prove we are innocent or get Validus to stop chasing us.”

Shuka turned in her bed as she talked to face her friend. It was only now that she saw his face. It was full of fear and worry, like he was on the verge of tears.

I sometimes forget with how big he is, but Xorvos isn’t as tough as he looks. He’s been in less dangerous situations than me, at least I encountered the occasional wolf or bear while hunting. He must be taking this even harder than I am.

“Look, it’s going to work out. Once I get my curse removed it will be much easier to explain the situation. At worst we will have to spend a year or two in jail, but chances are good we won’t even have to do that. All we have to do is survive until Lancrin and everything will work out.”

Xorvos wasn’t convinced.

“It can’t be that simple, you’re just lying to me to make me feel better. We are stuck in the middle of a swamp with no supplies all alone and being chased by the strongest paladin in the entire Empire. And even if you do get the curse removed, how are you going to convince Validus that you’re not actually evil? He is going to chase us down until he kills us.”

“We can’t do anything about things that only might happen in the future. Right now, we just have to worry about the present so there will be a future to worry about later. I know it looks bad now, but I am sure the situation will have changed by the time we need to worry about proving our innocence. We can’t plan for an uncertain future so just focus on right now. And right now, we need to sleep so we’re not useless tomorrow from fatigue.”

“Come on Shuka, how is the situation going to change in any way but for the worse. The more he follows us the more he will mistake your actions for crimes and the more he will be certain of our guilt. And it’s not like we can make any allies on this journey with you turning everyone against us.”

All Shuka wanted to do was sleep and end the worst day in her life, but Xorvos wouldn’t allow it. And now that he started blaming her, she started to get mad.

“Look, if you are going to blame anyone blame the witch, not me. And as for allies we will meet back up with Ralisdor in the next town. Even if he can’t help much, I can just go to a Vondoom Orphanage and show them my Vondoom necklace, and they will probably help us. Wait… Shit, I left it at the inn!”

Shuka was searching through her belongings looking for her necklace but finding it nowhere. She was so preoccupied with it that she didn’t even see the guilty look on Xorvos’ face in the dark.

“I… have your necklace. It’s right here.”

A silver V glinted in the moonlight as Xorvos held out Shuka’s symbol of Vondoom.

Where did he get that? I left it in my room, and it wasn’t exactly out in the open either. Was he looking through my stuff? Why would he do that?

“Why do you have my necklace?”

“Well, when you ran off, I was really worried about you, but I didn’t know what to do. Then Ralisdor suggested we hire someone to scry you, but he said he needed something for the spell to focus on. I found this while I was searching your room and thought it might work.”

The discovery of this invasion of privacy only infuriated Shuka further.

“Ralisdor got someone to scry me? What the hell! If I ran away, then I obviously didn’t want to be found.”

“Well maybe we wouldn’t have had to do it if you were a bit more open about your situation. I had no idea what was going on and I thought you had gotten into some kind of trouble. And you were! You were being forced to work for the Thieves Guild and I could have helped you if you had just told me what was happening.”

“Oh really?” Shuka snapped back full of biting sarcasm. “Are you sure you wouldn’t have gone on a one-man crusade to ‘save’ me and just make everything worse? Because all it would take is a single poorly thought-out threat and the deal I had with them would be off and all hell would break loose.”

Tempers were rising and now both of them had few thoughts of sleep. Neither wanted to give in to the other and so they argued deep into the night, only finding sleep hours before morning.

*

It was just before noon when Shuka woke up. Her fatigue had made up for the poor sleeping conditions and allowed her the luxury of sleeping in. Sadly, this was not a time she could afford luxuries.

Shit, we were supposed to leave just as the sun was rising, how is it already this late? We have to get moving before they find us.

Shuka shot up in an instant and found Xorvos’ sleeping body just of to the side. She started to frantically shake him awake, but it was taking longer than she liked.

“Get up already, we slept in! We have to get moving now or they’ll find us.”

It took a moment for Xorvos to process her words, but when he did, he immediately sat up and scanned the surroundings for any enemies. After he saw the coast was clear he relaxed a bit and almost laid back down to continue his rest before Shuka stopped him.

“I said we are leaving NOW!” Shuka snapped. “They are going to start searching the area again now that it’s bright out and I would rather be somewhere else when they reach this spot. I’m surprised they haven’t found us already but let’s not push our luck.”

Xorvos was still half asleep but Shuka’s tone woke him up the rest of the way.

“Alright, I’m getting up. Do you want to take down the camp or should we just leave it?”

“Leave it. There is nothing important we can get from it and it will just take time we don’t have. Hopefully we will be far away from it by the time it gets found.”

Shuka was already picking up the few belongings she still had while Xorvos was still looking at their makeshift camp.

“What about food?” Xorvos asked. “I haven’t eaten since lunchtime yesterday and I didn’t bring any rations with me.”

It had been close to a full day since he had a proper meal, and he was starting to feel the effects.

“We will forage a bit while traveling and I will see if I can catch some fish the next time, we make camp.”

Goddamit, I’m hungry too, but there is no time. I don’t want to sustain myself on berries but it’s better than getting an arrow in the back while cooking a fish.

Less than a minute later, Shuka and Xorvos were trudging through the murky swamp water on their way to their next destination.