(CW: direct references to in-universe slavery)
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From the diary of Knocks-on-Wood, Caravan Drover to Vyra Demnevanni: Midnight. 20th, First Seed. 1E 655. Trade Job: Seventy-Two. Route: Tel Enora -> Kemel-Ze. Progress: 34km. Wind: North-West, 309°. Weather: light ash. Lunch: Jellied nix-eels and mushroom assortment (Kemel-Ze style), with shalk egg. Progress Report: Conditions calm. No sickness. Decent spirits amongst the crew – all gotten paid on time. Caravan made good progress despite ash. Cargo all accounted for. Vyra did not yell at Drels, or any of the crew today. Ahead of schedule for once. [Scrawled in the margin: She's not as green as she was once. Almost competent now.] Miscellaneous Notes: Breakthrough. Finally, Vyra's talking again.
Had thought I'd fucked it thoroughly. Vyra, being Vyra, the former pride of Kemel-Ze, hadn’t even given me a sideways glance for weeks since she found out.
[Scrawled in the margin: Can't blame her much. What kind of fucked excuse for a father does she have, employing some schmuck to spy on his favourite bastard?]
Had expected I’d have to talk sense into her, but she approached me first. Sat with me at the start of the night watch. I'd told her to get some shut-eye. It would be her turn in four hours, she needed all the sleep she could get.
“You’re on Sydras Demnevanni’s payroll,” she had said in response. First words to me in weeks.
Told her then, bluntly, that she wouldn’t like what she was going to hear.
“This isn’t about what I’d like, Knox—” [Scrawled up in the corner of the page: But she’d end up getting her way in the end, wouldn’t she?] “—You've been on Sydras' payroll. Since the beginning.”
“Vyra,” I’d told her. “Don’t.”
“Don’t you fucking ‘don’t’ me, Knox. You owe me some fucking answers.”
[Scrawled in the margin: Don’t owe her anything asides from what’s on the dotted line.]
“Demnevanni,” she continued. "Does he know about the Tel Mora shitshow from last year?”
Put my head in my hands. [She's like a battering ram when she gets riled up.]
“Answer the question, Knox. Does he know what really happened up en route from Tel Mora? What really happened with that job? Does he or doesn’t he?”
“Vyra, I'm his damned spy, you know the answer—”
“Don’t fuck with me. Does he know about that job? Does he know about Trade Job Fifty-Nine?”
[Should have lied. Should have just fucking lied.]
“No.” It came out so quiet. You could barely hear. “No, Vyra, he doesn’t.”
And she hadn’t expected that. She’d stepped backwards. She looked at me like I was something new.
“You didn't... so does he also know, then, that I now know—?”
“No, Vyra. He also doesn’t know that you now know about…”
“The fact you’re spying on me. That I know you have been spying on me for years. He truly doesn't know? I-- Why?”
Couldn’t bring myself to squeeze out a lie to that one. Couldn’t bring myself to say anything. Vyra might be a half-dwarf heretic who hadn't tried to even like the chimer she now lived among, having left her brass castle, and still, couldn't think of anyone except her damn self – [Scrawled in the margin: Who are you trying to kid, Knox?] – but she'd been wronged, well enough. And when you travel with someone for years, you also learn their tells. And Vyra – she saw straight through mine.
“So… what, Knox, you don't care? You don't fucking care?”
That, I just shrugged. What was left to say?
"I don't. I don't actually give a damn about Sydras Demnevanni."
And that was when she laughed – threw back her head and cackled. Laughed like the whole world had gone mad except her, echoed through the crags.
[Scrawled in the margin: Girl's fucked in the head.]
[Scrawled in the margin, directly underneath: No more than you, Knox.]
“Fuck me, Knox,” she’d told me. “I'd spent the past hundred days wondering if you were somehow loyal to him.”
“Loyal to Demnevanni?”
What had he ever done to deserve loyalty? That old wizard-lord wouldn't dare stand within five feet of a guar, not for his life.
[A note scrawled in the margin: He pays damn well. It’s the easiest damn coin you've made since you left the Marsh. You send a packet of coins home every month, don't you forget it.]
“Don't say it like it's fucking implausible," said Vyra. “I know he's a cunt, but—” Hist be damned, should have seen the grin on her then – Vyra was beaming. “Knox, you should have said. Would have made trusting you a damn sight easier.”
“Didn't know you trusted me one bit, Vee.”
Vyra huffed and crossed her arms.
“Knox, has it ever occurred to you that I have to trust you? The rest of the crew can go back singing up with the tones for all I care but this – this right here? Doesn't work without you. Besides—”
[Scrawled in the margin, somewhere: Think that was a compliment.]
[Scrawled in the margin, somewhere: She's called everyone but you incompetent. Keep your guar steady.]
"Besides what? Where's this going?"
"I want to do more jobs like Fifty-Nine again."
[Scrawled in the margin: Trade Job Fifty Fucking Nine]
“Vyra.”
“Which means I really have to trust you.”
“Vee.”
[Scrawled all along the margin, in rough strokes: Why, in the name of all the damned gods and beasts and things unholy, does Vyra, a bastard merchant who's never given a shit about tearing anyone else down to get what she wants, give a damn about what happens to Telvanni slaves? Is it guilt? Is it something personal? It couldn't be out of a sense of justice – she knows how this world works, she's too damn smart for that. Can't figure it out.]
“Knox, I've thought things through. I think we can minimise the risks—”
“There's no playing safe with that kind of cargo. Telvanni—”
“You think I don't know what the Telvanni do to them?”
[Scrawled, in larger and larger letters: Why does she care? Why does she care so much? What does this mean to you, Vyra?]
“Not so loud,” I snapped.
She dropped her voice to a fierce whisper.
“By all the fucking tones on this fucking plane of existence – Knox – Knox, please—”
“Please what?”
[Scrawled in the margin, somewhere: First or second time Vyra had ever said please in her life, I reckon.]
“Think about it. Just think about it. I – I can't just do the same-in same-out for another five years, pretending like nothing is wrong with this damn world. I'll actually kill someone.”
“Vyra, you can't—”
“Shut up. This will be more fucking important than anything we've ever fucking done in our sorry lives.”
I’d given her a hard look.
[Scrawled up in the corner of the page: What the in the four corners happened, Vyra? What happened in that little clan of yours, that raised you and fed you, where you never wanted for much, that you'd toss yourself out with the nix-hounds?]
[Scrawled up in the corner, directly underneath: Hate it when she's right]
Then I’d sighed.
“Shit, Vyra. You've really thought about the risks of taking on wanted folk as travellers?”
“I know the risks.”
“And when we get caught?”
“I know the risks.”
“And you’ve thought about the rest of us? What getting caught might mean for the likes of us? A Marsh exile, two Ashlander vagabonds, and a half-deaf sewer rat you've made out to be a stableboy—"
“Lyr isn't—”
“—I know she isn't – Let me finish.”
She halted.
“Jade's already got a price on his head out in Hammerfell. I can’t step foot in half the kingdoms of Argonia else they’ll have my head. You know what will happen to us?”
“I’ll take the fall—”
“But they’ll blame us. We're the leftover scraps, the dregs, the scum they've raked off the bottom—”
“You're not scum—”
“—But we're scum to them. And they're the ones that matter. They're the ones with the noose, Vee. Think about that.”
Vyra looked at me like she wanted to tear me apart. But didn't say anything.
Things got real quiet, after that. Didn't have much else to say. Vyra, reckon by the way her hands twitched, she started counting the stars. New moons, plenty of them out.
[Scrawled up in the corner: Know it's her favourite sky. Know she's sentimental for it, despite the fact that she pretends she couldn't give a damn. My theory's that she likes to count to keep it all in check. Always stock-keeping.]
It got comfortable after a while.
[Scrawled all along the margin: If I close my eyes, it’s not too far from the cornerclub days again. Trading stories about old jobs gone wrong and things gone sour like we could have been friends. Back when Demnevanni was still bank-rolling his favourite bastard daughter’s scheme to fleece all the other wizard-lords to Oblivion and back when we spent every coin of his dirty money after pay day on Flin and Wildgrass. We’d pour our hearts and guts out, then head out of town, gaze up at the stars, and smoke in a ditch somewhere. She’d count them, tell me shit about magnetic fields and constellations. Always surprised me that. On the worst days, I forget she’s anything other than a Caravan Master. The damn thing she refuses to call herself. Vyra, call me Vyra, she says— gets short with you otherwise. Like a Caravan Master might.]
She stood up suddenly. Held my gaze.
“I won't go ahead with it unless you’re on board, Knox."
"That's bullshit, Vee."
"No. No it's not." She looked me dead in the eye. “And you're not scum to me, Knox.”
Didn't say anything to that. [Scrawled at the bottom of the page: Hate it when she's right.]. Simply watched her walk off, shrinking from big to small as she moved up towards the horizon, up towards the smoke still billowing from the campfire. Still smouldering. Tried to look away. Looked up instead.
[Scrawled in the margin: Burnt silver, that colour – she'd say the tone, wouldn't she? – where she'd been looking, her patch of stars up in the sky. Pretty. But not much else to note.]
The rest of the watch was uneventful.
