“What’re you so worried about? She can’t get away,” said the driver, looking back over his shoulder at me. It was the kind-looking man who had first approached me. He smiled, just like he had when we’d met, and said, “It’ll be a bit before we get to our noble friend’s country. You can just take it easy back there.” He sounded like he was talking to a child. Then he said that if I got hungry, I could feel free to eat some of the fruit, and he pointed to the cargo. There were a few boxes there, with provisions this noble had apparently provided so that I could eat. And I could eat, notwithstanding my bound hands.
“I don’t want any fruit,” I spat and sat down in a corner of the cargo area. I didn’t want to eat anything whose provenance I didn’t know.
Instead of eating, I started asking questions.
“What do you mean to do with me?”
“Us? We’re not going to do anything with you.”
“Then let me go.”
“Ha-ha-ha! When we’ve finally got you?” The “kind” man laughed: That had to be a joke! “We bring you to this guy, he pays us enough that even bandits like us won’t go hungry for the rest of our lives.”
“I’m not worth that much,” I said slowly.
“Hey, no arguments here. But there’s certain…types out there who’d do anything for a kid like you.” He shrugged and claimed he couldn’t understand it. But he went on: “I hate to break it to you, but you’re not getting out of here, no matter what you say.”
I pondered how to escape my plight.
“Please,” I said, trying to think while I begged. “I’ll do anything you ask. Just let me—”
“Don’t you ever shut up?” The not-so-kind-after-all man looked like he couldn’t believe he had to deal with this. He turned a cold gaze on me. “You’re supposed to be thirty years old, right? Use that grown-up head of yours and think about exactly where you are.”
My breath caught.
“Or maybe we gotta beat the lesson into you before we sell you off?”
This was one unexpected, and unwelcome, effect of my going to so many countries and asking so many people for help: These men knew very well about the illness that consumed my body.
“They say you instantly heal from any injury.” The well-built man took his knife in hand and looked at me. “Maybe we should see if that’s true. Here and now.”
“Please…don’t.”
“Then sit down and shut up.”
I lowered my gaze and fell silent.
“You’re lucky. We’re the nice kind of brigands,” the first man said mockingly. “Otherwise, we’d have a little fun with you before—”
Thump.
He was interrupted by a bump that made the entire cargo platform seem to jump. One of the boxes broke open and poured out some apples.
“That was some bump. Think we hit something?” the man with the knife grunted.
A second later, the wagon screeched to a halt, the man holding the reins executing an emergency stop.
“Hey! Why’d you stop us?” the other man growled.
“I heard something. I’m gonna go see what’s happening back there.”
“Why bother?”
“Matter of prudence.”
The man hopped down from the bench, giving me an ever so slightly better view of where we were going. A broad, grassy plain spread out as far as I could see. If I were still a free woman, it was a scene I could have come to see any time I wanted. Knowing this might be the last time I would see it made everything seem especially vivid and precious.
The driver was back a moment later. “Nothing there,” he said with a shrug and a grunt.
“I told you.” His well-built counterpart grunted back at him, and then the driver got the wagon going again. The apples went tumbling around the cargo area—until they stopped at a woman’s feet.
“An apple! It’s my lucky day,” she said. She bent down and picked it up, polished it with her sleeve, and took a bite. “Ugh! This is terrible.” She scowled and spat it back out.
Wait…who was she?
I was frowning even harder than the woman who had appeared out of nowhere.
She looked to me like she was in her midtwenties. She had wavy white hair, and her trademark color appeared to be sky blue. She wore a white robe and a pointy hat decorated with blue ribbon—she was a mage. I could tell she was sexy even under her outfit, and as she stood up again, she puffed her chest out self-importantly.
Her expression, I might add, was supremely confident.
“Ahem!” she coughed, and those blue eyes fell upon my two kidnappers. She was clearly waiting for them to notice her.
And notice her they did.
“Huh?! Wh-who the hell are you?!”
“And how the hell did you get on this wagon?!”
The well-built man and the driver both turned toward her, the former getting ready to fight.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha, oops! Spotted me, did you? I guess for your sake I’ll stop sneaking around!”
They hadn’t spotted her; she’d given herself away!
I might have been exasperated, but the woman didn’t care. She let her hair billow and flung her robe back dramatically, then shouted at the top of her lungs, “You’re kidnappers, aren’t you? Capturing a girl who doesn’t age in order to sell her is low, even for the likes of you! You scoundrels!”
Apparently, this mage had also heard the rumors about me. She gave me a quick glance—and then produced her wand.
“Believe me, I would love to put an end to you right this minute—but I believe that even the worst villain deserves a chance to do better. So here’s your chance.”
The men looked at each other, and then, without a word, they raised their weapons.
The woman hardly seemed to notice, let alone care. She continued to talk at them. “If you’ve learned your lesson, then get off this wagon. If you go now, I won’t come after you.”
“We’ve come too far to back out now!” the well-built man exclaimed as he rushed her.
“Yeah, you little fool!” The driver belatedly grabbed a weapon.
As they’d told me when we were having our little conversation, if they kidnapped me, they were on track to get enough money to live the rest of their lives in luxury—so they weren’t about to run away.