They rode silently for about an hour until her curiosity got the better of her. Since she had agreed to their demands, she figured she was owed at least some inkling of where they were going and what to expect.
“How far away is the village we’re heading to?” she asked, trying for a casual and innocent tone.
“About half a day’s ride,” Ty replied shortly.
“What are you planning to trade for the belladonna? It can be quite costly in my experience.”
“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that,” Ty replied condescendingly.
Ena bristled, turning slightly in the saddle to look at him. “Why can’t you just tell me? I’ll find out soon enough anyway.”
“We’ll tell you what you need to know, when you need to know it,” he said with finality.
Ena huffed but fell silent. They clearly still didn’t trust her any further than they could throw her, despite her having agreed to do the locator spell. But that was just fine for now. She could be patient. They’d let something slip eventually about their plans, she was sure of it.
They continued to ride in silence for much of the morning, weaving through the dense oak and pine forest. Despite being without her sister or her Coven, Ena felt at home in the forest. The birds shuffled in the leaves on the ground, looking for bugs, and squirrels scurried up and down the trees, collecting and storing acorns for winter. The trees swayed in the occasional breeze, more of their leaves dropping gracefully with every gust. The everyday signs of life and death were a comfort to her, and she knew that she was never alone. Gaia’s presence was everywhere, guiding her.
Losing herself in the signs all around her, shealmostforgot about her human company. The three men didn’t speak much, only occasionally exchanging a few words. It made her wonder what their relationships were to each other. They didn’t look much alike, so they were likely not closely related. But Ty was obviously the leader. The other two deferred to him and followed his decisions, but whether that was just because of hispersonality or any sort of formal leadership position he held among the daemons, she wasn’t sure. Come to think of it, she didn’t know much at all about the organization of daemonic society.
Beyond that, though, they also felt like…friends. The way they spoke to one another, and the way they seemed to operate with a certain level of unspoken understanding between them, it was clear they’d known each other for a while. She definitely felt like an intruder into their tight-knit dynamic, but that was their own doing, not hers.
Around mid-morning, Turner reached into one of his saddlebags and pulled out two apples. Wordlessly, he directed his horse a bit closer to Ty’s and handed one to him before offering one to her.
“Thanks,” she said, slightly surprised at the gesture, since Ty had been the only one to offer her food so far.
Turner simply nodded in reply and kept riding. Steig, on the other hand, clearly had a stick up his ass about something. He’d barely looked her way all morning, and when he did, it was just to scowl in her general direction.
She ignored him and ate the apple gladly, wiping the juices off her chin when she finished.
Towards the afternoon, they arrived at a road. They’d likely been keeping to the backwoods since they fled her village so they’d be harder to track and follow, but arriving at the road meant they were getting closer to civilization. There were only so many established roads this side of the Chasm Mountains, the main ones being the Chasm Road, which ran parallel to the mountain range and connected the Auster and Aquilo Covens, and the Western Road, which led to the Occidens Coven and the Endless Ocean. There were other smaller roads which branched off from those as well, connecting various villages to one another. But this road, if it could even be called that, was clearlynot a main road. It was barely large enough to pull a single horse-drawn cart down and could only tightly fit two of them abreast on horseback. It was the least significant road Ena had ever been on.
Not for the first time, Ena wondered where exactly they were. While she had regularly traveled north along the Chasm Road to visit the Aquilo Coven and assist the villages that ran along it, she’d only been west exactly once in her life. When she was fourteen, Heran had taken her and Greya to visit a Sacred Pool that was about halfway between her Coven’s village and the coast of the Endless Ocean. Even though members of her Coven were forbidden from traveling west, Heran had made an exception because the sacred waters of the pool were necessary for certain potions, so they’d made the trip expressly for the purpose of collecting the water, and they had not lingered. They hadn’t stopped at any villages along the way, and they had kept to the backwoods. So her current unfamiliarity with her surroundings made her, again, think that they had traveled west.
It was quiet as Ena and the daemons walked along the barely there road, the only sounds the clomping of their horses’ hooves on the packed earth. The road was clearly not frequented by travelers; they didn’t see a single person or horse track the entire time. After about an hour, Steig signaled something to the others and they came to a stop. At first, Ena questioned why they were stopping. She almost missed seeing the path; it was so hidden by the trees and undergrowth that it wasn’t until Ty’s horse turned off onto it that she realized itwasa path.
They walked single file down the path through the woods for a few more miles until the small clearing of a village became just visible through the trees. Ty signaled to the others to stop as they dismounted one by one, readying to walk their horses the rest of the way into the village. Ty offered her his hand to help dismount, but Ena ignored it and swung her leg over the tallhorse herself, nearly losing her balance as her short legs reached for the ground. As soon as she righted herself, Ty grabbed her shoulders and spun her to face him. The men and their horses surrounded her.
“Okay, witch, here’s what’s gonna happen,” Ty said. “We’re metalworks traders here on a scouting visit. We’ll go together to the village’s guesthouse, where you’ll sit at a table with Turner while I talk to the villagers.” He gestured to the younger daemon. “You won’t speak unless spoken to, and you won’t leave Turner’s side. When I create the distraction, Steig will slip into their kitchen and get what we need. On my cue, we’ll leave quickly and quietly and meet Steig back here in the woods.”
“Wait a second,” Ena said, putting two and two together and feeling pissed at the result. “You’re gonnastealthe ingredients? Why don’t you just trade for them?” she asked incredulously.
It made sense that they were posing as metalworks traders, just as Ty had all those years ago. She’d glimpsed one of their saddlebags filled to the brim with various metal goods, including knives, daggers, hatchets, ornate goblets,andsilverware. She knew they could easily trade some of those items for what they needed.
Ty looked at her the way one might look at a confused child. “We don’t want to alert them to the fact that we have a witch with us, or tip them off to what we’re doing by revealing the ingredients we need. So,” Ty said, invading her personal space, and looking down at her. Gaia, he was still so tall. Ena hated the way that, despite everything, her stomach still flipped at his nearness, just as it had all those years ago. “If you so much as breathe a word about who we are, or whoyouare, people will get hurt. Do you understand?”
Ena ground her teeth together, and stared into his green eyes with all the venom she could muster. Truthfully, she was appalled that these men would choose to steal from thesevillagers, but she wasn’t really that shocked—they were daemons after all. Still, a mounting feeling of guilt built inside her, knowing it was her supplies, and her spell, that was the cause of this. But she would cooperate, and let them think she was obedient, if only to lure them into a false sense of security. The more they underestimated her, the easier it would be to get the information she needed and escape.
Shoving down her indignation, she took a deep breath and plastered on a saccharine smile. “Yes, Master,” she said.
Something flared in Ty’s eyes at that, something more than the satisfaction she’d caught last time, something that looked almost…hungry, but before she could fully parse it out, he turned away from her and began to lead his horse directly into the village, forcing her and the others to follow.
As they entered the clearing of the village, Ena was now certain that it was not one of the villages along the Chasm Road, and that therefore they had indeed traveled west, because she didn’t recognize it at all. The village was small—tiny, really. Maybe ten worn-down stone houses sat clustered around a crumbling well. Their thatched roofs were clearly old and needed replacing, as significant patches of rot were visible on some of them. Towards the edge of the settlement was a large stable, and it was probably the best-kept building in the village. It was big enough to house probably twenty horses—far more than this village could need. Across from it was an extremely run-down guesthouse. Ena could tell it was a guesthouse because it was bigger than the other single-story stone houses, and had a dilapidated second story that Ena desperately hoped did not collapse while they were inside. Past the houses, deeper into the forest, she also glimpsed a second clearing in the trees and what looked to be an agricultural field. She couldn’t say for sure, but from this distance, she guessed it to be a field ofrecently threshed hay and a small orchard of what looked like apples and other tree fruits.
Since the villages this side of the Chasm Mountains thrived due to prolific trade routes, most were accustomed to visitors and travelers, providing hospitality for them as a way to create mutually beneficial trade relationships. The more relationships and ties a village had to others, the more security they had. That way, if one village was impacted by bad weather or misfortune affecting their crops or trade goods, they could rely on their trade relationships, and oftentimes the goodwill from previous trades, to get them through the hard time. This village, given what Ena could see, likely raised orchard fruit and horses, and used those resources to trade for other things they needed, just as her Coven traded their potions and spells.
Ty strode confidently through the village and up to the stables just as a young stable boy emerged. He jovially greeted the boy, handing him the reins to his horse, before confidently explaining that they were metalworks traders scouting for new trade relationships.
The boy’s eyes widened in excitement. While many villages had their own blacksmiths and could make some metal goods, the most significant deposits of metal ore were located near the Chasm Mountains, and thus metal goods were harder to come by the further west the village was. The high-quality metal goods these daemons carried were likely highly coveted by most of the mortal villages, and for that fact alone, they were probably welcomed with open arms at most places they went. Ena had to admit, it was an ingenious cover for their true purposes.
