Val once again found herself travelling on the road.
"At least this time it isn't by foot," she thought.
Despite all her misgivings about returning to Ulareg, Terry had made a compelling point about getting to the city as fast as possible to secure the potential bounty of metal. Now, she found herself sat alongside of Keth on the front of a horse-drawn cart. Two of Terry's bodyguards flanked the cart on each side as they followed the roads that led away from Cain's Point, which in the recent weeks had finally lost their muckiness from the spring thaw.
In fact, it felt like summer wasn't that far away. Nights were still chilly, but the morning's dawn now saw heavy dew instead of icy frost. As they had been getting ready to depart Cain's Point earlier that morning, the area had been shrouded in a pre-dawn mist. In the cool morning air, Val was very much thankful for her heavy travelling cloak which warded away the worst of the chill. Over the next few hours as the day grew hotter, Val found herself starting to sweat - the cloak suddenly felt more oppressive rather than helpful.
Reaching up she unclasped the cloak and removed it from her shoulders. She folded the cloak into a bundle and placed it under her bottom, giving herself a nice cushion from the hard wood of the cart's driving bench.
The movement seemed to startle Keth who was now staring at her.
"Why have I never thought of doing that?" he mused.
This shocked Val. Aside from politely introducing himself and a few brief exchanges that had only amounted to pleasant greetings, her interaction with Keth over the past few days had been pretty much non-existent. If fact, that last sentence probably broke the record of number of words that he had ever spoken to her.
Val paused a moment before responding. She felt unsure how she should interact with the boy. Keth was basically an employee of Terry's, so he was the merchant's eyes and ears for this operation and Val felt that made things.... a little weird. She couldn't quite place her finger on it.
Then again, he was only about one or two years her senior, which put her at some ease. The two guards, a man and a woman, looked to be in their late 20s and wore very serious expressions. Despite the danger that Val knew she was headed into, she felt that going into this situation all serious just wasn't her style. If she was going to connect with anyone on this trip, it would be Keth. It was time to get to know her travelling companion a little better.
"I've been on the road pretty much non-stop for the past two years," Val finally replied. "You pick up things here and there."
Keth gave her a slight smile, "No doubt."
"How long have you been working for Terry?" Val asked.
"Full-time? Not that long. He only recently hired me on to tutor his son in metalmancy. I've been doing that for about a year."
"And before?"
"I worked for Terry, but I wasn't officially on his payroll. Basically, I would help out my dad from time to time - running errands and messages, things like that. When my father found out that I was a metalmancer, he would get me to help with some of the salvage operations. I'd separate alloys back to their base metals. Terry would give my dad a bonus for doing that, and dad would pass that bonus on to me."
"I'm a little jealous," Val said. "Being able to work with your dad like that must have been great."
"My dad is.... very serious about his work," said Keth. "Working with him was about the only time I would ever see him."
Keth looked back to the two guards before leaning in. Val felt herself flush at this movement. Before she could ask what the boy was doing, he began to whisper.
"My father and Terry both share a trait where they only spend time on people they consider useful. He's probably been kind to you because of this. Just be cautious. Now, laugh."
"What?" she whispered.
"Laugh, like I just told you a joke. They are watching."
Val glanced back briefly and saw the gaze of the guards locked on her and Keth. She let out the biggest laugh she could muster.
The boy gave a slight laugh himself, pulling himself away from her to his original position.
"Well," Val thought. "If things weren't awkward before, they sure would be now."
The two fell into silence and Val began to think on how to proceed. Of course, now that the topic had been broached, she was dying to ask Keth more about what he had meant by that statement about Terry.
Val thought about all the interactions that she had with the merchant. Was his kindness really just about her being useful? She hadn't had any interactions with the man before her sister had fixed the bridge, so she wasn't sure if she existed in the merchant's mind outside of being labeled "useful" to the man. Mand was the powerful one, so was Terry attempting to use her just to get access to her sister's power?
Val couldn't picture Terry doing that. From the interactions that she had seen that the man had with his wife and son, he appeared to be a caring and thoughtful man.
Then again from her perspective, there was a sudden shift in the interactions between Terry and Carl ever since the merchant's family had arrived. Things were still professional, but recently, there now seemed to be a coolness between the two. Val had just attributed it to Terry's family reminding Carl on how much he missed Claire, but perhaps there was a little more than that.
One thing was for sure, Terry did send her on this mission despite her trepidation on returning to Ulareg. Despite the threat on her life, one of the last things that he said to her was "I have to stay and organize the rest of the metalmancers as they arrive, you would be more USEFUL retrieving the cache."
She would definitely have to press Keth more about it when they could find some time alone. For now, she had A LOT to think about.