"Tony," EeDechi tapped the table, signaling the mouthy guildmaster to look her way, "How about I join the Warrior Captain selection instead? I guarantee I could easily get elected as the Warrior Captain."
Old Tony shook his head. "We're entering the martial tournament just to clear out the obstacles in Brain's path. Every elite adventurer who could go toe-to-toe with Brain in the arena wouldn't bother chasing after the Warrior Captain post. The Warrior Captain demands absolute loyalty to the royal family—you have to spend your whole life protecting the king and the royals at all costs. That's not the kind of gig we adventurers go for."
"Besides," Old Tony went on, "you know full well that women can't enter the Warrior Captain selection. It's the rule."
Old Tony's words were clearly meant to talk EeDechi out of stirring up trouble, but he didn't expect her to blow her top.
"What! What kind of bullshit rule is that! This is straight-up discrimination against women!!!"
Old Tony froze for a second, then waved his hands in a panic. "No... no, that's not what I meant. It's tradition—the Re-Estize's never had a female Warrior Captain since it was founded."
EeDechi fumed, jumping to her feet and yelling, "What outdated tradition? I'm going to break that tradition today! Princess Renner hires you guys to manipulate these rigged contests and says she's stirring up the already murky waters even further? I'm going to filter, settle, and distill this murky water and give the world a clear and pure one!"
Barrett poked EeDechi in the side with his finger, whispering a reminder, "Captain, Princess Renner is our employer too. She pays us twelve flower gold coins a day."
"Oh," EeDechi paused mid-rant and sat back down in her chair. "Yeah, that does ring a bell."
Seeing EeDechi's cocky attitude simmer down a bit, Old Tony quickly chimed in, "Even if you beat all the contestants, including Brain, and came in first, the old king wouldn't let you become the Warrior Captain. The final say on who gets to be Warrior Captain is still in the old king's hands."
"That makes sense." EeDechi nodded, for once agreeing with someone else's opinion. "The root of it all is with the ruler."
"In fact, if you want to become a general, you could head to the Roble Holy Kingdom in the east of the continent," Old Tony suggested. "I've heard there are many female generals there, and the Holy Queen, heh heh, they're all stunning beauties with slim waists, long legs, and fair skin…"
EeDechi shot him a furious glare.
"Ah, no, I mean they're all burly, broad-shouldered, muscle-bound, battle-hardened iron women." Old Tony backpedaled immediately.
The three of them talked for a long while, and during that time, other adventurers who knew Barrett joined in. They gathered around the table, sipping malt beer and chatting about anything and everything.
The night grew late—there is no feast that does not come to an end. The meeting had wrapped up ages ago, and after the booze-up, the adventurers in the tavern started drifting away one by one. Some were plastered, staggering on their own two feet, while hauling their passed-out buddies over their shoulders, weaving this way and that toward their inns.
Others were so drunk they couldn't even walk, so they just shoved a few chairs together into a makeshift bed, flopped down, and crashed right there in the tavern for the night.
EeDechi and Barrett had gone toe-to-toe with a bunch of adventurer boozehounds that evening, but neither was the least bit tipsy. Barrett had an iron liver, though his face was flushed bright red, like a ripe apple in late autumn.
As for EeDechi, her mouth was like a bottomless pit—she'd drunk five adventurers under the table, all of whom had come over with flirty intentions to toast her. Her expression didn't change a bit, as if she'd just chugged a dozen bottles of plain water, without even hitting the privy once!
Stepping over the chaotic mess of tables, chairs, and bottles in the tavern, the guildmaster Old Tony saw them out the door.
Dim yellow light spilled out from the tavern door, casting flickering shadows outside as the clamor gradually faded into the distance.
Standing at the tavern entrance, Old Tony suddenly turned serious. He warned, "In the Re-Estize's power struggles, no one can stay on the sidelines. The Adventurer's Guild has declared its support for Princess Renner, and the undercurrents are already starting to swirl.
"Tonight's bound to be a sleepless one for a lot of folks. Some are gonna start coming after us—you two are close to Princess Renner, so watch your backs extra careful."
It was deep into the night now, the sullen crescent moon tucked behind heavy clouds, showing just a sliver of dull yellow. A sharp early winter wind sliced like a blade, slipping through the gaps in their clothes and chilling them to the bone. Barrett shivered, the booze wearing off in a hurry.
He nodded. "Thanks for looking out; we'll be on our guard."
EeDechi and Barrett said goodbye to Old Tony and left the Golden Harbor tavern.
The pair strolled slowly down the main street, using it as a way to walk off the meal. At this hour, everything was dead silent—the banquet had run so late that all the shops were shuttered and dark, the streets empty except for the odd carriage rolling by. The clip-clop of hooves mixed with the sharp jingle of bells, whisking passengers toward the cozy warmth of home.
EeDechi watched one carriage fade away, letting out a long yawn and mumbling, "Let's head back soon; I'm getting sleepy. We came to the tavern meeting by carriage, right? Do we really have to walk all the way back?"
Barrett pondered for a moment, remembering a nearby spot where carriages gathered, and nodded. "Let's grab a ride."
He led EeDechi around a corner, but before they reached the place he had in mind, an old four-wheeled open carriage came rumbling toward them. The coachman yanked on the reins, the black wooden wheels ground to a halt, and the carriage eased to a stop right beside them.
"You two need a lift?" the coachman called out eagerly.
"You bet!" EeDechi replied, jumping at the chance. Sure, this coachman's Justice Value was on the low side, but she wasn't picky right now. It was like someone handing her a pillow just when she was nodding off.
Barrett frowned, though, and asked in a low voice, "Why do I get this weird vibe that you don't really look like a coachman?"
He had once worked for a while with a former coachman who'd switched careers to become an adventurer, so he knew a thing or two about what made coachmen tick.
As for this coachman right in front of him, well—though he sported a ratty old straw hat, gripped the reins in his left hand, and cracked the whip with his right, putting on quite the professional show—Barrett had a nagging gut feeling that the guy wasn't a straight-up coachman.
"Sir, you've got a keen eye; you saw right through me. Just two weeks ago, I was still a farmer. You must be an elite adventurer!" The coachman nodded, admitting it, and squeezed out a groveling smile.
"The seasons have turned, harvest was lousy, so I sold off the family cows, picked up this used carriage, and headed to the city to scrape together some cash. But rest easy, you two—my driving skills are second to none!"
Barrett didn't bite one way or the other. He could hear horses whinnying and axles creaking up ahead; not far off, more carriages were lined up waiting for fares. He grabbed EeDechi's arm and started to walk away.
"Hey, you two." The coachman's groveling smile shifted to outright panic. "Take pity on me, please. I've got to earn enough to send my daughter to the artisans' guild to learn tailoring. I'm just a few gold coins shy of the tuition."
The coachman's wrinkles bunched up on his face, his look downright wretched. EeDechi felt a sudden wave of sympathy. "Don't leave; we'll take this carriage."
Barrett helplessly climbed aboard the open carriage with his captain. He'd wanted to bail earlier not because he doubted the coachman's skills, but because of that faint, nagging unease gnawing at him.
A veteran adventurer couldn't always pin down why that feeling popped up, but you learned to roll with it. Still, with the captain dead set on the ride, he had to tag along.
The coachman thanked them up and down, got the destination clear—Lamb Street near the palace—and whipped the carriage into motion.
The night was pitch black, with hardly any folks out on the roads; everything was dead quiet, broken only by the steady clip-clop of hooves echoing off the streets.
The rickety open carriage had just a two-seater bench, EeDechi and Barrett planted side by side, her on the left, him on the right. The suspension was shot, so it jostled them around a fair bit.
After a couple of massive yawns, it looked like the buzz from slamming back over a dozen bottles of beer, champagne, and whiskey at the tavern finally caught up to EeDechi. She rested her head against the carriage backrest, rocking with the motion, and straight-up dozed off.
Barrett wasn't the least bit sleepy; bursts of late-night early winter chill whipped by, making his mind even sharper. After the carriage had gone a ways, he scanned the empty streets around them and realized the coachman wasn't following the route they'd taken to get there.
"Hey, coachman, you sure you didn't take a wrong turn?" Barrett asked, confused. "We're headed to Lamb Street."
"Don't fret, sir, I'm just cutting through a shortcut. You want to get home with all haste, right? I'll swing through the slums in a bit, and we'll be there before you know it." The coachman answered without glancing back.
He cracked the whip and started softly humming some nameless ditty. His hoarse voice drifted on the night wind, like a forlorn spirit crooning in the breeze.
Barrett shut his eyes, leaned back against the carriage seat, and let it go. The carriage kept rumbling on, and before long, the lights from the houses lining the streets thinned out, everything sinking into hush.
Bit by bit, the carriage quit its jostling, speed dropping off. Barrett cracked his eyes open and saw they were cruising through boundless night, the nearby sights all fuzzy and hard to make out. But he knew damn well this wasn't the slums—it felt more like empty outskirts.
And why was the carriage slowing? Because the coachman had undone the harness strapped to the horse's back. Cut loose from the carriage, the horse bolted off into the darkness ahead, trailing slack reins, until its shape vanished.
The carriage lost its drive, slowing more and more, the axles gradually quitting their squeaky spins, until it ground to a halt.
Glancing around, hazy shadows lurked on all sides, the road beneath the wheels a blurry smear. This solitary carriage sat like it was adrift on a lake of ink in the night, stalled in dead silence.
"You took a wrong turn!" Barrett sensed something was seriously off; he tried to stand and warn the coachman, but couldn't straighten up. He thrashed twice, only to realize that every spot where his body touched the carriage seat was stuck fast, like it was welded solid—he couldn't move an inch.
"Damn it! What the hell!" Barrett tried to muscle up off the carriage, but it did zilch. EeDechi was still parked next to him, head lolled against the backrest, out cold.
Barrett lifted his head and spotted the coachman who'd freed the horse, now facing them dead-on, standing ramrod straight on the driver's perch. He flung his arms wide, robes fluttering with no wind, like a scrawny scarecrow.
The coachman's lips twitched, and his wrinkled old skin peeled away in chunks from his face, like plaster crumbling off a wall, laying bare a young, vicious, ice-cold mug underneath.
He cocked his head, split into a grin, flashing eerie white teeth.
"You two adventurers, welcome to my domain, the Territory of Despair."