“He cheated, I know it!” the vixen fumed. “He knew from the moment we sat down what you were. I mean you gave away more than enough clues with your behavior, but even if you’d done everything right his cockamamie magery would have picked you out like an ogre in a squad of lutins!”
Jacob clung to the bottom of the cage tightly as it swayed like the deck of a ship in a storm. The Deaf Mule and the duel far behind, Valencia was still letting her frustration and humiliation bleed into her motions. She was engaged in a running one-way conversation with him and she seemed to frequently forget that her audience was at the whim of the hand gestures she was using to prove her points.
“Aye, twas an improper contest right from the getgo, and especially unsporting of him to take advantage o’ the deadweight I were dragging around with me,” she stated.
Even if he had a viable means of response, Jacob would have ignored the statement. He wasn’t about to feel bad about hurting Valencia’s chances in an idle contest, not when his own life was in such a state of upheaval.
The physical upheavals, at least, came to an abrupt stop as the vixen paused to see if she had anything else to add. Coming up blank, she gave a satisfied ‘hmfph’ and nodded in agreement to her own analysis of the situation. “As for you, bucko” she said, “we’re going to take this as a learning experience. From what I was able to see we’ve got a lot of work to do before the week is up.”
“You need to stop looking like you are paying attention to what people are saying. You’re an animal now. You don’t understand a word flying through the air around you. Don’t watch people unless they make sudden motions. Do some lizardy-type things instead.” She set the cage down on a low wall framing the path through one of the Keep’s many courtyards.
She clasped her hands behind her back and started pacing the path before him. “And if you must do something for a human reason, always cover it with a plausible action. For example, if you want to take a closer look at something lizardly uninteresting, go get a piece of food first so that the sudden change of postion looks more natural.” After several moments she stopped and turned her eye admonishingly to the side, fixing her gaze upon him without altering her position, “You were watching me, weren’t you?”
With a guilty start Jacob realized he had been doing just that. He gave his head a small shake to clear away the sensation. He hadn’t even thought about watching her, or rather he had but hadn’t thought to think anything of it.
“Surprising how easy it is to fall into old behavior even in a new body, isn’t it?” the vixen asked mirroring his thoughts. She hopped up onto the wall next to his cage and sat down cross-legged. “It’s very hard to pull off a convincing act in this game. It’s a constant act of vigilance to keep our human instincts at bay.” Her voice was uncharacteristically soft and compassionate as she talked to him about the profession he was being asked to take up.
“It never works well, but it’s at least passable in the short term. When you have to go on a long-term assignment that can last months or even years without a break, though, that sort of approach will drive you stark ravin’ mad, and what’s worse is that you’re bound to slip up eventually.” Jacob resisted the urge to quirk a smile at her sense of priorities. “In those cases,” she continued, “you have to remake your mind.”
“It’s not quite going feral like I’ve heard of some folks around here doing,” she said, looking up as she searched for the right words. “It’s more like finding acceptance that you are an animal at the moment. It’s accepting that things that would have been important to you as a human just aren’t anymore. The entire nudity thing is a good example. Relieving yourself in public in the middle of your floor will be another, I think you’ll find out before too long.” Jacob couldn’t suppress a reptilian cringe as she revealed that hitherto unthought of complication.
“It’s tough at first, but ya get used to it quick enough when you’ve got no choice. Speaking of which,” she declared rising once more and stepping down from the wall, “now that you’ve had your dry run, it’s time for the real training to begin. For the rest of week you are going to go without any real human interaction. As of now until you depart, people will talk about you, they will talk at you, but none will be permitted to talk to you.”
The concept didn’t strike Jacob as that much worse than what he was already experiencing. After all, it wasn’t as if he had any way of talking back if people addressed him anyway. Valencia appeared true to her word, he noticed as she abruptly picked up the cage and began a leisurely stroll into the Keep humming a simple melody to herself.
The cage swayed gently in tune, and the Watcher become pet found the experience very helpful in earning his ‘sea’ legs. The predictable period and only slight incline allowed him to focus on how to brace himself with less effort than the frantic grip with which he had clung earlier. He lost himself in the simple exercise until a sudden interruption in the pattern left him unpleasantly off-balance as his muscles shifted incorrectly.
The intelligence woman had halted before a door much like any other in the Keep and was fumbling a key into a lock. With a swift twist the mechanism was undone, and she took him inside. After looking around, Jacob realized, with a bit of surprise, that it must be her room. Larger than his own, it contained a bed accompanied by a tall dresser against the middle of one wall, while a pair of tables and a small collection of chairs filled the open area flanking the large fireplace dominating the opposite one. An armoire of some dark wood occupied a third wall flanking a door that probably led to her privy.
Unlike the bare stones of his own quarters, Valencia’s chambers were decorated with a few hunting trophies over the bed and a large map of the world covering a considerable portion of the fourth, unclaimed wall. Small cloth banners and wall mounted candleholders filled in the bare patches elsewhere, but avoided covering so much of the stone as to make the room feel crowded. All in all the space would have had a very noble, regal feel if not for the clothes strewn in messy heaps everywhere, Jacob decided.
The vixen set him down unceremoniously on the dresser and proceeded to ignore him. It was strange watching her go about her business without concern for his presence. He felt almost invisible. She played her part to the hilt, even going so far as to leave the door open when she went into the adjoining room to relieve herself. Jacob had looked away abashedly, only to be reminded of the pressure building in his own body that would demand action soon.
As if to further emphasize the point, Valencia returned to the dresser and poured some food and water into his cage. The meal consisted of a variety of dead beetles, their bodies in varied states of disrepair. Though he’d satisfied some of his animal tastes before, eating several kinds of bugs, they had never quite looked so disgusting when he was larger. His keeper apparently had little sympathy, not even meeting his eyes before she turned away.
When Valencia began to blow out the candles illuminating the room one by one, he realized she intended to call it a night. It came as a bit of a surprise to him as the night hadn’t really worn all that far, but it was also a relief that he’d be able to delay relief until she was asleep, at least. He was subjected to one last bout with embarrassment when the scant illumination leaking in from the corridor allowed his nocturnal eyes to pick out a silhouette of her disrobing before crawling into bed.
And then…. Nothing. He was alone in a wooden prison in a twilight land, with only the soft sound of Val’s already deep breathing to mark that space continued forward in time. For a few minutes there was a surreal nature to the experience, but then there was only mind-numbing boredom. The hours oozed past in a slow crawl, and after taking care of biological necessities, there was very little to occupy his mind.
As a result he found himself spending quite a bit of time studying his impromptu teacher. She seemed far different in sleep than when awake. It was more than just the fact that she wasn’t twirling around and tossing out random accents. She seemed somehow more… vulnerable, it was only by that comparison that he was able to understand just how guarded she remained beneath the cloud of unpredictability that she threw up.
Occasionally her face would screw up against something and she would shift position atop her mattress until her problems moved on. For some reason Jacob found himself feeling inexplicably sorry for her, unable to find peace, even in her slumber.
The dawn would have passed without observation in the windowless room if not for the triplet of knocks on the wooden door which roused Jacob from his contemplation of nothing and Valencia from her sleep. The vulpine fell out of her bed, fur in a total state of disarray. Muttering to herself she slipped a robe on and stumbled over to the door.
She opened it up and treated the petitioners to a bleary eyed glare. “I told you to meet me in the morning,” she told the pair.
Benlin stated respectfully, “It is six o’clock,” while Sam stood nearby trying to keep from staring in shock at the vixen’s appearance. Jacob started at the sound of the mage’s voice, unaware that he would be forced to confront his squad mates so soon. He grimaced as he thought of them seeing his soiled cage and what passed for his meals these days.
Valencia gave each of them a deadpan stare for a few moments, and then turned and returned to her room with a few shakes of her head and a sigh of agitation. “Bloody buggers don’t even know what sane people consider morning to be,” the fox muttered as she grabbed random articles of clothing from the chaos and slipped them on. Jacob could barely see in the dimness and couldn’t imagine she had any better idea what she was putting on. She somehow located a brush on the dresser and attacked her unruly fur with several swift firm strokes.
Without another word or warning she snatched Jacob’s cage up off the dresser and then slipped from the room through a crack in the door denying further view of her demesnes to the visitors. The increased light of the hallway forced the gecko to squint and he gratefully accepted the excuse not to look his squad mates in the eyes. After a few moments, though, it was only his own shame that kept his gaze fixed alternately on the floor of his cage or on Val.
Eventually, as the silence approached the one-minute mark, Benlin cleared his throat and said, “If the two of you continue to study everything except each other, this is going to be a very long assignment.”
Two? Confusion won over embarrassment as Jacob looked up. His reptilian jaw dropped slightly at what he saw. Sam was wearing a dress. It was just a simple affair that any woman might wear without anyone taking note, but he had simply never seen his commanding officer in one before. She actually looked quite nice in it.
“No stares, no embarrassment?” Sam asked bluntly, looking at him. Suddenly feeling comfortable once again, Jacob chirped out once in agreement.
“Ok, now that that’s settled, I expect you both to respect the strict no-talking-to-my-pet rule,” Val informed the new arrivals. The Watcher in the cage turned up a corner of his mouth at his companions as they nodded in compliance. “Good!” the vixen declared, some of her customary energy at last catching up with her.
They moved in a close group through the corridors along one of the various routes that seemed to frequently lead to the library. The double doors were swiftly located and they let themselves in. Fox Cutter was absent, as Benlin had claimed he’d increasingly become of late. An assistant was ensconced behind the main desk, though, and the young lady politely handed a set of books to Valencia when they passed by.
The spy thanked her and then settled everyone down at one of the nearby tables. She set the stack down casually, though strategically situated so that Jacob could read the names scribed along the spines. “Kadan’s Book of Beasts”, “The Grimorum Animalia”, and one simply titled, “Lizards”. The fox slid the last from the stack and then set Jacob atop the latter two, presumably so she could open the large book, but it had the convenient side effect of allowing the gecko to see the pages as well.
“We’re going to find out exactly what Jacob is,” she said to the two humans. “The appearance of authenticity is crucial in this business. I’m not sure if the people you’ll be pretending to be will know this or nae, but it can’t hurt to know anyway. ‘Specially if yo’r to take proper care of the wee little critter.” Jacob thought he caught his friends hiding smiles, and stuck his tongue out at them in good humor, turning it to clean his left eye at the last moment so Valencia couldn’t fault him on behaving unnaturally.
They began flipping through the pages, most of them containing inked illustrations of various reptiles. It took some time but eventually she stopped and spun the book about to face the two Watchers directly. “Look familiar?” she asked, proud of her work.
Benlin shook his head and Sam pointed to the picture saying, “Jacob only has eight fingers and toes.” Valencia’s face fell into a frown as she quickly turned the book back around and scrutinized both it and the transformed Keeper. “So he has,” she admitted. She flipped the page once, revealing an almost identical picture with the requisite change. “Better?”
Jacob studied the drawing intently. The author had been more concerned with the color of his illustrations than the fineness of his lines, but still it conveyed a fairly good impression of the animal it represented. Was that what he looked like? He couldn’t pick out anything that didn’t fit, but still it seemed strange to think that was what other people saw when they looked at him. He crawled over to his water dish and paused to study the slight reflection it offered. His face, he found, wasn’t all that different from that which he possessed when he walked on two legs.
The main difference he found was that his eyes had lost the last of their human color, the blue iris having succumbed to the almost solid shiny black of his species. He stared into them, somewhat comforted by the humanity he thought he could still detect in them, though he admitted to himself it could just be a trick of his imagination.
“Magdalainian Gecko,” Valencia read aloud from the page. “Hmm… hope that doesn’t set the rusty little gears in peoples’ heads turning. Magedalain Island is one of the friendlier places toward Metamor. Comparatively.” She puzzled over the little wrinkle for a few moments and then returned to skimming the passage. It seemed Jacob’s relatives-in-species were nocturnal, something he already knew. They pretty much ate whatever they could get their fingers on, and on the island that usually meant bugs and fruit. The creatures were able climbers like their brethren around the world, and spent their days ensconced in trees and their nights prowling the beaches.
“In summary, just another lizard, then?” Sam asked.
“Guess so.”
The rest of the morning was spent in conversation as Val helped the trio through the basics of discrete communication. It was the verbal equivalent of what she had instructed Jacob to try with regards to hiding his actions. It wasn’t nearly as bad as Jacob would have imagined. It was the closest thing he could have to a conversation with his squad mates without actually speaking. They picked up pretty quickly on how to orchestrate things so that they could give him information without it seeming like they were talking directly to him.
It seemed that even as Val was running him through hoops, the intelligence agency had a pair of people working on his friends. Over the next several days they would supposedly be drilling fictional backgrounds into their heads, making sure they could stay in character, and receiving a crash course in the state of the Midlands.
They each had their doubts about how they’d be treated down south as well. Sam had long ago come to terms with her new body, though she stilled carried on as one of the guys. Still, it was one thing to accept one’s status as a Metamorian woman, and quite another to accept being a woman in the eyes of the Midlands. Benlin, for his part, expressed a severe lack of enthusiasm for the level of intellectual interaction he expected would be forthcoming from his new peers.
After the morning had waned, the four had gone their separate ways, and it was some time before Jacob saw his friends again. Valencia kept herself, and consequently him, pretty busy over the course of the next six days. There were several firsts to be experienced in his new form, including being held in someone’s hands, horseback riding, and the first time he managed to fall asleep while being carried around in his cage.
It was mostly exhaustion that had allowed the last of those achievements, but after getting over the initial shock, he was surprised at how much less nervous he was from then on, having awoken safe and sound once. Thus it was that he was reasonably relaxed on the seventh day, when Valencia took him up on the ramparts.
The wind was remarkably light, just barely enough to pull a few lone strands of the vixen’s fur. Val set him down on top one of the blocks of stone, confident the cage was heavy enough not to be seized by the small breeze.
Jacob was grateful for the perch, it was hard to get bored of the sights Metamor’s heights could offer. It was an eastern exposure, offering him a view of half the formidable snow-capped peaks that gave the Keep its importance. Crawling up to the edge, he was able to look down the structure’s own impressive verticality, amplified by the way the ground fell down and away sharply from the base at that point, the slope riddled with paths of dubious safety for anyone seeking to move faster than a crawl.
He was dimly aware of Valencia striking up her pervert routine with a pair of guards that had come to see what traveler was walking their walls. It was the type of thing that would have elicited a headshake and a small smile from the gecko normally, but he was trying to be careful about falling into such human gestures. The most an unobserved observer might have noticed would have been a glint of mirth in the black, reptilian eyes.
All of a sudden the world was jarred and he found himself falling. As he and the cage rolled in their descent he briefly caught the horrified expression on the rapidly shrinking face of one of the guards, followed a split second later by Valencia’s. Admidst the rush of air generated by his motion he suddenly realized he was going to die, spread across the rapidly approaching earth.
He scrabbled along the bars and unlatched the door with the quick spring Val had shown him. Snapping his body in one giant flex of muscles he threw himself away from the cage, already seeing that the container’s trajectory had carried him much too far away from the wall. Dreadfully short of his mark, he tumbled around once being granted a much, much closer view of the ground. That was when he was suddenly hit by a wagon with such force that it wrapped itself around him. Or at least that’s what it felt like.
When his innards stopped trying to obey the downward momentum, he found that he was entrapped by boney yellow bands, tipped by black claws that might as well have been lances. A huge, brown-feathered wing stretched out above his head, flapping powerfully once buffeting him with even more air. He was clutched in the talons of a hawk. A very large and dangerous hawk, given what he was.
Jacob instinctively began to change, prompting a cry of protest from the avian. The reptilian Watcher quickly thought better of the idea as he felt himself beginning to fall out of the bird’s grasp. The talons obligingly wrapped themselves around his frame again as soon as he shrunk, leaving the gecko to ponder exactly how hawks killed their prey.
The ground danced tantalizingly and frighteningly far below as the bird banked and flapped its wings for height. He saw the top of the wall getting closer as his captor carried them back eastward. As soon as they passed the edge of the first stone Jacob willed himself toward morphic form, freeing himself of the bird and surrendering himself to gravity. He hit the stone hard, feeling flesh bruise and skin break as his speed was nullified.
He picked himself up and was surprised to find the bird perched on the top of the ramparts, examining him intently with its amber gaze. In a pair of heartbeats, it too had grown to a more human size. A Keeper, Jacob realized; he’d been saved by a fellow Keeper.
“Are you all right? I didn’t scratch you did I?” the golden-feathered figure asked in concern, the voice colored by the screeching of it’s species.
“I’m fine. This is all my doing,” Jacob replied, inspecting the injuries. It was nothing that would show in a few weeks. “I’d have had to count myself lucky even if you had done anything. Thank you for saving my life, …” He trailed off suddenly realizing he had no clue whether his rescuer was male or female, preventing him from tacking on even a respectful address.
“Jessica,” the apparently female hawk supplied for him extending a wing awkwardly.
“Jacob,” the gecko offered in turn. He took the proffered limb cautiously, and gave it a light shake. He didn’t have any close acquaintances among the Curse’s feathered victims, and had no idea how fragile morphic wings were, or even in what manner one was supposed to grab them. The bones felt wrong to his brief contact, but the hawk seemed none the worse for his inexperienced grip; not that he was familiar with the signs of veiled discomfort on an avian face. “Thank you, Jessica.”
“No problem,” she said, cracking her beak slightly in an expression that Jacob guessed served as a smile. “It was just luck that I saw it happen. I thought someone had just lost their pet at first.” She seemed to shrink down a little as if abashed and her voice became apologetic, “Not to suggest that there is anything wrong with how you choose to live.”
Jacob smiled, “I was practicing blending in as an animal for work. I’m a member of the Euper Watch, I don’t normally go around in cages.” With a frown and a bit of embarrassment as he realized what condition he was in, he admitted, “Or naked, either, for that matter.”
The hawk gave a slightly screechy laugh. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t wear many clothes myself. We don’t have a lot to hide anymore, really.”
Jacob felt his face go flush at the comment, but hoped it was hidden beneath the green of his skin. Either way Jessica didn’t seem to take note of the fact, looking instead down the wall where a trio of figures was running rapidly toward them. “Your partner?” she asked pointing with her talon toward Valencia.
“You might say that…” Jacob commented feeling something odd stir within his chest.
“I really should be off then. It was nice meeting you, Jacob. I’m glad you’re alright.”
Jacob gave her a distracted nod and then, as she transformed, said, “I owe you one.” The bird dipped her head and cracked her beak again in response and then took off, riding the winds back up to the skies above the Keep.
A frantic Valencia and the pair of confused guards arrived a few moments later. The vixen threw her arms around him and held him tightly, “You’re alright! Thank goodness, you’re all right!” At the contact Jacob felt a lot of emotions finally begin to break free of the shock of the event. Primarily fear.
“AndbythetimeIgotthereyou’dalreadyfallentwentyfeetandIdon’tknowhowIwouldhavebeenabletolivewithmsyelf IwasjustplayingwiththeirheadsandIdidn’tknowhe’dbackupintoyouand-” The fox babbled while clutching him, her words not even really registering. Strongest among the confusing melee of emotions Jacob was starting to feel was the need to get away.
He extricated himself from the furry embrace and started toward the nearest steps down. Confused, and almost hurt, Valencia jogged lightly behind his long strides. “Jacob?”
“I need to be by myself for a while,” he said in a clipped tone. The fear was feeding his survival instincts and painted anything that came between him and the need to get away as a threat. He felt an inexplicable anger rising to the surface in search of a vent. He wrestled with the emotion, knowing that he wasn’t really mad at the fox. He didn’t want to lash out at a relative innocent, especially one that was trying to make amends.
“I’m sorry, I should have seen it coming. I know that doesn’t make up for it, but-”
“It’s ok, really.” With the amount of rage getting through, he knew it wouldn’t sound convincing, but it was all he could manage at the moment. He really needed to get away.
“But where are you going? What are you going to do? Why won’t-”
“Just Back Off, Val!” he barked, an almost physical heat accompanying the words. The vixen stopped dead in her tracks, stunned, while the Warden went down the stairs two at a time. She found her voice again for one final protest at about the same time he reached the bottom.
“But you’re naked!” Valencia called after the rapidly departing geckomorph.
“I know, Val! I know!” he shouted over his shoulder without looking back, continuing his forceful departure, as if he no longer cared about the trivialities of clothing.
Jacob needed to think. Bereft of targets the anger popped like a bubble leaving him alone with the rest of the confusion. His feet carried him purposefully through the courtyard, never in doubt of where his mind wanted them to go. He stalked up to the base of the tower and placed both hands firmly onto the stone before quickly pulling himself upward.
Normally the climb was a leisurely thing that he approached as another might a casual hike, but just then he felt hunted. He climbed upward with forceful motions, pouring the turmoil of his mind into the action, letting it bleed off into the exertion until only the exertion remained.
By the time he reached the top and found a seat on the slanted tiled roof, his breath was coming loudly, his chest heaving in and out and filling the area with the sound. Every beat of his heart could be felt within his chest and the blood pounded insistently in his ears. He felt like he had just run two miles. He felt alive.
It was then that he was able to realize that it was death he had been fleeing when he’d thrown himself into the climb. He had never come so close to death in his life, not when he’d been kidnapped and Cursed, not during the Siege, and never during his job. Even when his cold-blood had caught up with him while clinging to a wall last winter, he hadn’t felt the sharp prick of mortality so acutely. He stopped gulping at the air and leaned his head back against the crenellation’s rough tile, willing himself toward a more controlled recovery.
He was just so… powerless in his other form. He was at the mercy of a world much greater than him, and greater still than a gecko. The world that was spread out below him from his own little corner of it atop the spire. He shook his head, unable to face the world at the moment and focused instead on the sky. The sky didn’t expect anything from him; it didn’t swirl about him in a cloud of danger. There weren’t even any clouds in it that day, petitioning for interpretation or admiration; just the endless open blue.
For a while after his body had calmed completely he let his mind simply idle, taking in the unmarred, unthreatening expanse. He couldn’t say how long he might have stayed there staring at it if not for the winged form he caught wheeling over the castle. With feathers spread wide in glorious freedom, Jacob became certain that it was Jessica or was at least willing to believe it was so. Soon he spotted another hawk slide in alongside her in playful flight. She wasn’t alone, he thought with a small smile.
And that was the answer, none of them that partook in the vast, unpredictable world were alone. Even as someone had looked out for him in his moment of peril, others like Sam and Benlin and the other Watchers looked out for him at other times. Even Valencia, he supposed. And he looked out for them. He felt the calm spread to his heart at last. He tossed a wave of gratitude at his savior, doubting she saw it but also knowing it was unimportant. After one last deep breath he started to climb back down.
He could stand leaving himself even more vulnerable to the perils of life because he could put his trust in his squad mates, his family, to look out for him. And he would go so that he could do the same for them, so that he would be there ready to help if they needed him.
He would have missed her entirely if someone near her hadn’t sneezed loudly at just the moment he was passing by. A floppy-pointed wide-brimmed hat was pulled low over her face and she leaned nonchalantly against a shadow-chilled wall with a concealing blanket wrapped around her frame. Knowing herself discovered as Jacob walked toward her, Valencia looked up with a firm frown on her face and a quick glare at the sneezer. She looked like she was hunkering down to weather another explosion, which contributed in no small part to the pang of guilt that Jacob felt.
“Well, you know, its my job and all…” she explained after he’d arrived trailing one foot in the dirt in front of her, focusing on it rather than him.
“I know. I know you were just trying to help back there, too, and I’m sorry I pushed away so hard. I had a lot of weird feelings to work out.”
“Hey, you’re smack dab in the middle of the world capital of weird feelings, Jake, its no big deal,” she told him. “Heck, most people wouldn’t even have called that an outburst. It was only shocking in contrast to what I’ve seen from you so far.”
“Thanks,” he said with a wan smile. He looked off into the sky over her shoulder, gauging the sun and said, “So, we still have half a day left, I don’t suppose there’s anything you can still teach me in that time?”
“You’re still going through with it?” she asked with a single brow arched in surprise.
“If there’s another cage available.” Looking toward the western wall he said, “I don’t think my old one is going to work out so well anymore.”
Valencia gave a pointed toothed grin and said, “We’ll go pick up another one right now. I’ll even take the heat for the damage to the one you broke.”
“How gracious of you,” the gecko replied wryly.
“I know, that’s just the kind of person I am. Now, I believe that someone here has gotten six minutes of conversation too much.”
Jacob awoke early the next afternoon feeling fairly refreshed. Valencia had let him sleep in his own bed on the final night, telling him it was tradition. It supposedly was meant to be a reminder of one of the many reasons it was important to come back from assignment alive; to be able to feel the sensation of sleeping in a real bed at least one more time. After having spent a week on the floor of a cage, Jacob already appreciated just how powerful an incentive that could be.
To be honest he was a little surprised Ben and Sam hadn’t already arrived to drag him off. They had stuck to a more traditional sleep cycle during their week of training, and he’d thought that the three of them would have left sometime in the morning.
He donned his Watch uniform to report to Andrea one last time and find out what his squad mates plans were. He set the shiny lantern-within-a-shield badge carefully into the fabric. Being a keeper of the peace wasn’t a job he’d sought out in life, but it was one he had come to appreciate, and he looked forward to when he’d be able to return to it.
His packing consisted mostly of laying out his cage and a small jar of beetles on the desk, which he did before leaving his room and making his way to the Chief’s office in the Keep.
“Come in,” came Andrea’s voice through the door in response to Jacob’s knock. When the gecko entered the large man looked up from the stack of reports spread out on his desk and asked, “How are you doing, Jacob? Word is that you had a pretty harrowing experience yesterday.”
“I’m surprised anyone heard about it at all. The entire thing was over in less than five minutes,” the Watcher said.
“That’s the rumor mill for you. Finds out about everything, spreads like the plague, and is usually about as accurate as a drunken, one-eyed lutin that’s just been used as an ogre’s punching bag. Still, I’m glad to see that you’re alright.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Jacob intoned respectfully.
“So what can I do for you?” she asked.
“I’m just checking in one last time before leaving the Keep.”
“Leaving the Keep?” Andrea asked with a bit of surprise and a furrowed brow. “You mean with Sam and Ben?”
“Yes, to the Midlands,” the Watcher answered, a bit confused.
“Jacob, Sam and Ben told me that yesterday’s event had shaken you pretty badly and that you’d decided not to go. They left this morning.”
Andrea had barely finished the last word by the time Jacob was out the door dashing down the Halls. He practically broke down his own door, as he turned the handle without breaking stride and let the wood absorb his momentum. He whisked the cage and the jar off the desk and was out of the chambers in less than a breath’s time, not even bothering to shut his door behind him.
He leapt down stairs at reckless speeds, taking them in controlled falls more than actual steps. He bowled over and didn’t even slow. There would be time for apologies later, months later if he had his way.
He burst out into the courtyard across it and into the stables. He grabbed the first horse with riding equipment that he could reach, ignoring the stablehand’s protests as he spurred the startled beast out of the stall.
He was force to pull back hard on the reigns a few minutes later when a pair of Guardsman interposed themselves between him and the gate. “Get out of my way!” the gecko shouted.
“Where are you off to in such a hurry?” the leader asked, unshaken by the force or the urgency behind Jacob’s voice.
“No where until you get out of my damned way, and you’d better do it damned quick or where I am going is straight back to Chief Sumerin to explain to her that everything went so wrong because the Guard was playing games with us again,” the Warden spat vehemently. While the Guards didn’t answer to Andrea, the man did make it a point to find ways of ensuring they regretted getting territorial with his people.
The Guardsman met Jacob’s fierce glare steadily for several moments before slowly stepping aside and waving for his men to do the same. The Guards could be annoyingly by the letter at times, but they weren’t pushovers and Jacob got the impression the man didn’t yield out because of the threat so much as because he believed that Jacob wasn’t about to do anything that would harm the Keep.
He and the horse thundered through the streets of Euper then beyond into the open land flanking the road south. He pushed his steed hard, probably a little too hard, but he showed enough restraint to keep from running it to death, and that was all he expected of himself at the moment.
The first interruption to his focus came from a divergence in the road, and a wooden post with a board nailed to it. Affixed to the weathered road sign was a piece of paper fluttering slightly in the wind. If it hadn’t been blocking the information on the sign, Jacob would have blown past it without looking back. As it was he seized it in a four-fingered fist, ripping it from the wood.
He hesitated only when he caught the familiar sight of Benlin’s neat script distorted across the violent folds his grip was imposing on the paper. The gecko stopped and smoothed it out almost apologetically against the signpost.
“No further, Jacob,” commanded the first line on the crinkled surface. “The town of Laselle lies just a ways down the road.” The sign and a small vision of clustered squares on the horizon lent truth to the statement. “Metamor’s territory ends where you stand now. Much too warm a welcome waits ahead of you.” Jacob looked again toward the village, visions of gecko-fueled pyres dancing in his head. Oddly enough, he found that he didn’t care, and was half-prepared to barrel through Laselle and catch his friends anyway. The author of the letter seemed to realize this, and twisted a knife in his gut, sealing the argument. “We’re going to look for Martin, but we need you to stay and hold down the Keep in case the little dirtball comes wandering home on his own. He’ll need one of us to be there for him. We know this isn’t easy on you, but it’s the way it has to be.” The letter ended, “Love Sam and Ben.”
It was the type of thing none of them would have said out loud, so plainly, to one another on the job, or at any other time. It seemed appropriate at the moment, though.
Jacob couldn’t bring himself to let the letter fall to the ground and instead carefully folded it up and put it in his cloak pocket. With a small tug on the reins he turned his mount back toward Metamor, keeping his own gaze southward a few moments longer. The excuse at the end of the letter had been tripe, but it was the kind of tripe he couldn’t just ignore. Another flick of his hands sent the horse walking slowly back north, leaving a good portion of his heart to wait next to the sign post until it could welcome his friends home again.