After her encounter with Mercy, Jessica was on edge. She had made sure to do everything right, including leaving Mercy’s necklace with the castle steward and sending Riza to notify the hostile Adventurer’s Guild about the bodies of the people Mercy murdered.

  Unsurprisingly, the guild didn’t believe her story that Mercy had killed them. Somewhat surprisingly, their deaths were instead blamed on a monster attack. Given the alternative was being blamed for a triple homicide, Jessica considered it a win.

  As if smelling her anxiety, Mystiferia came out of the woodwork to periodically ambush Jessica and remind her how one slip-up from her, Riza, or Naga was all it would take for her to wring Morkal’s location out of her. A week of this and her nerves were stretched to their breaking point. When Mystiferia next ambushed her while she was cleaning, she snapped.

  “If you’re gonna do it then do it!” Jessica screamed.

  Mystiferia circled behind Jessica and drew a single nail down the small of her back where it lay exposed by the maid outfit King Capra had insisted upon. Someone—who Jessica dearly wanted to punch—had corrected him on what the maid ensemble was ‘supposed’ to look like.

  “I have waited over a century to catch Morkal. What makes you think I’m in such a rush now? I’m an elf, after all. We’re known for…”

  Jessica realized what was coming a second too late and Mystiferia succeeded in startling her with a whisper in her ear.

  “Taking our time.”

  Jessica curled her fists.

  “Adventurers are antsy. You want to see progress. Character development. For that, you need to break rules. And I’ll be waiting,” Mystiferia said, scribbling her nails on Jessica’s neck.

  There was very little Jessica could do to get back at her, but that didn’t stop her from spending the rest of the afternoon thinking up ways to do so.

  Inspiration struck as she was walking behind the other maids leaving for the day. If Mystiferia was going to send someone to trail her if she left Elsifeya, she could waste their time by simply not going to see Morkal. In one fell swoop she could get a vacation and make someone else the target of Mystiferia’s ire. There was just one problem:

  “I think you should go. Why should we hold you up?” Naga said as she wrung Jessica’s aching body like a washcloth. Her spine sounded like a popcorn machine, but the real prize was a subtle twist in Naga’s coils that cracked her hip like a walnut.

  “Ah!”—the momentary bliss made it hard to focus—“I’m worried about Mystiferia using my absence to mess with you two. She knows I’ve got enough pull with Galloway and the queen to make an arbitrary arrest difficult, but I don’t know if she would try it while I’m gone.”

  “I’m willing to risk it,” Riza said with a yawn.

  The lizard girl was currently laying on the bed with her feet in the air reading a book on the history of the animalar. Jessica thought she looked like a stereotypical teenage girl reading a magazine. Not that anyone did that anymore on Earth. It was all doomscrolling nowadays.

  “If you both promise to be on your best behavior and give Mystiferia nothing to work with we can give it a try. But I really don’t want to come back to find your heads on the chopping block, okay?” Jessica said.

  “I promissse. Besssides, the royal children love me. She wouldn’t dare,” Naga said, easing up on her coils.

  Jessica was absolutely certain Mystiferia would dare. Nonetheless, she trusted Naga and Riza to keep their heads down. Or maybe she just really needed that to be the case. Either way, she decided it wouldn’t hurt to let Galloway know her plans and hear his thoughts, so the following day that was what she did.

  “I’m sure the king and queen would grant the leave,” Galloway said as they started the process for synthesizing naloxone.

  It was the first batch of the stuff so Jessica had insisted on seeing it through start-to-finish before Galloway started doing it solo.

  “Frankly, I think you could push back more. I don’t think His Majesty is sure what to do with you, to be honest. He’s defaulting to what he knows other servants under him do. You could probably whip up your own work schedule and hand it to him.”

  If she could get past his stupid advisors, Jessica thought.

  “By the way, do you mind keeping an eye out for Riza and Naga while I’m gone?”

  Galloway raised an eyebrow. “Your harem? I suppose I could, but they seem to be getting along just fine here. What are you concerned about?”

  Echoes of Galloway telling her how much people respected Mystiferia rang in her ears.

  “Oh, you know… just… anything. Really anything. Anything at all. Maybe step in if they run into trouble, keep them out of the dungeons, that sorta thing. I don’t intend to be gone that long. A week at most,” she said.

  “Taking ol’ Burnish?”

  “Yup. And traveling light. I’m thinking we can make Sawcone in two days, stay for a couple, then come back.”

  He nodded appreciatively. “It’s a long way, but Burnish is a good horse. I’m glad he’s got a new owner. Not that the… circumstances were the best. But you can’t blame a horse for its owner.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Jessica chuckled darkly. “Mystiferia might.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Uh… nevermind. Let’s talk about something else,” Jessica said like it was a dialogue tree. “How’s your… it was your granddaughter that liked horses, right?”

  “Bonnie? Oh she’s not a fan of horses, just adventure. It just so happens that horses get mixed up in adventure quite a lot. I remember she was really young when Shimmer foaled Burnish. Maybe about four or five. But she pointed to the horse and said, ‘That’s a main character horse!’ I don’t even know where she got the term ‘main character’ from. She was real disappointed when a regular old un-reincarnated knight became his owner. Wonder what she’d make of being right after all.”

  “Where’s Bonnie now?” Jessica asked, thinking of Melisande Hayek.

  “Still adventuring. I get a letter from her every month or so telling me what she’s been up to,” Galloway said as he yanked open a drawer thick with papers. “She’s with an adventurer named Van Hollow. She’s got an aptitude for charm and control spells and such so she’s his party mage. I might be a little jealous, truth be told. Bonnie gets her love of adventuring from me. Shame adventurers don’t want old men in their harems!”

  Galloway laughed at that until he started coughing and hocking up phlegm. Sadly no one had crossed over old man yaoi and isekai yet, Jessica thought. Though she thought this in a formless, wordless sort of way where she was personally unfamiliar with the concepts involved.

  “If I come across her in my travels I’ll say howdy,” Jessica said.

  As soon as she finished the alkalinization Jessica took off to the castle kitchens to pack dried food and water and took her supplies out to Burnish along with a big bag of mint candies. Sensing a journey, Burnish stood up from his lazy afternoon nap, nickered, and trotted a little circle in his stall.

  Jessica patted his nose. “We’re gonna ride hard the rest of today so we don’t lose a day. Is that alright with you?”

  The war horse snorted and stomped its feet which she took to be an enthusiastic yes. She didn’t know how often Sir Hayek took him out, but she had been so busy after rescuing Riza that Burnish had done nothing besides some daily exercise and play with the other horses who struggled to keep up with him.

  Once Burnish was packed and saddled, Jessica mounted him. Already she felt a rush of freedom and she hadn’t even taken him out of the courtyard yet. Itching to go, she clicked her tongue and squeezed her legs and he leapt straight into a trot. Burnish kept at this gait until they were outside Elsifeya at which point he took off at a full gallop.

  On the one hand, it was probably bad that peasants and merchants were diving out of the way to avoid getting plowed over by the half-ton stallion. On the other, she was having way too much fun to put the brakes on him. She let Burnish run for as long as he felt like and he only stopped when he met the sharp rise out of the plains.

  The two traveled for as long as light lasted and even a little beyond before Jessica spotted a pond off the side of the road and took Burnish over to it.

  In a rare moment for her, Jessica was actually hungry and not just intellectually aware that eating was good for her. Hard bread and dried meats and fruits were what she ate and they were the most delicious thing she’d eaten in years. For dessert she and Burnish split some mint candy.

  The next day of riding was more touch and go. They passed several parties of adventurers heading toward Elsifeya and a few watched her closely as she passed. Luckily, if they knew about the bounty, none of them had seen Jessica’s face, let alone when it was pressed to the mane of a horse. She hoped none of them felt inclined to ask about her when they arrived in Elsifeya.

  Despite some close calls, she and Burnish approached Sawcone just before sundown after a day and a half of near constant riding.

  The rustic forest village looked almost identical to when she departed it on Burnish’s back a month ago. Almost, because there was now a three-story lodge with rows of smoke-belching chimneys sitting just outside the village walls. The smell of roasting seaweed permeated the air.

  Before going looking for the Serfs, Jessica stopped at Traehagen and got a sandwich for herself and some hay for Burnish. An idea occurred to her while she was checking out.

  “Any chance you all would be interested in selling mint candy at your store?” Jessica asked, twirling one of the striped candies between her fingers.

  “You’d need to speak to the Traehagen Franchising Guild,” said the bored teenager behind the shop counter. “They handle inventory decisions for all branches.”

  Jessica clicked her tongue. “Good to know. Oh! That reminds me. Do you know where the Serfs are?”

  “They live in the manufactory. Got dorms upstairs, I think,” he replied.

  “The entire hamlet?”

  The boy shrugged. “S’pose so. Mostly keep to themselves. Makes sense cuz us Sawconers are free men.”

  Jessica shrugged and walked away. The Barleyfielders ought to have been free now too but prejudices died hard. She was too tired from riding to lecture the kid on his manners.

  Once she and Burnish had some carbs in them she led him by the harness out to the lodge. She tried the front door and found it locked.

  “That’s… weird. Are they shut up for the night?” she asked Burnish.

  Burnish did not have a reply to that.

  She found a window on the side of the building and peered inside. It was impossible to make out much through the salt-coated window and the dense clouds of smoke and steam. It took several rounds of loud knocks before someone came to the window.

  Eric Whitehill-Serf unlatched the metal clasps and tugged the window up, setting loose a plume of salty smoke.

  “Who’s that? Oh! Lookit that, it’s Jessica! What’re you doin’ here?”

  “I was coming to see the Serfs. Are they in?” she asked.

  Eric rubbed the back of his neck. “Well… yeah, but we gotta finish out the work day first. Got a couple more hours to go. After that you’re welcome to come in, provided you get the foreman’s approval.”

  “Work day? Eric, it’s almost 7. What do you mean ‘work day’?”

  “That’s cuz workin’ in a manufactory’s tougher’n longer than workin’ in the fields. Our work runs six in the morning to nine at night."

  Jessica blinked. “I’m sorry, what? Who the hell is this foreman?”