Ren took a place on one of the luggage carts making the journey to Marina. His milk was loaded on with the rest of the goods. The rider was a fellow Tunish villager who knew Ren well enough that charging him for the seat felt wrong, and so he did not.

The journey had started in the middle of the morning, tipping toward early afternoon, and they had been moving along the path for close to three hours. A pair of brown gogins pulled the cart at a steady pace, the creatures making occasional sounds that sat somewhere between a cluck and the low rumble of a large predator cat. They were reliable animals, and the road had been kind to them so far. The scenery along the path had shifted gradually from the familiar slopes and huts of Tunish into open country, wide stretches of land with tall grass on either side bending gently in the wind, the kind of landscape that had nothing urgent to say and was content to simply exist around you. Ren had watched it for a while before allowing his eyes to close.

It had all been seamless until the cart stopped.

Ren had his eyes closed and was drifting toward sleep when the halt and the mild backward lurch of the cart snapped him awake.

"What?"

Ahead of them, blocking the road, stood four men in steel armour with red uniform visible underneath. Each carried a lengthy halberd, the kind designed with reach in mind, for those who decided that running was the better option. They stood without urgency, the posture of men who were accustomed to people stopping for them and saw no reason to pretend otherwise.

The rider leaned forward and exchanged pleasantries with them, his voice warm and easy, clearly working at their good side. From what Ren could hear, the soldiers recognized the rider, which made sense. He was a regular on this path. The rider dipped his hand into his deep pocket and produced a small pouch of coins, the light clink of it telling Ren it was copper inside. A straightforward bribe. These soldiers were posted to watch for enemy crossings and discourage bandits. They had no authority to restrict civilian passage. But that was how it worked everywhere, apparently even in a world as different as Enesh. Corruption found its footing wherever humans gathered in sufficient numbers. They simply wanted what they could take, and the system had long since made peace with that.

The matter seemed resolved. The rider urged the gogins forward and the cart began to roll again. Then it passed alongside the soldiers and one of them got a proper look at Ren.

"Hey!"

The cart stopped. Both Ren and the rider turned. Neither of them needed to be told why.

"Are you from here?" The soldier was medium height, wide through the shoulders, arms folded, wearing the particular expression of a man who had already decided he was going to enjoy whatever came next. "Where did you come from?"

This one will escalate things if I give him the chance. Ren read him plainly. The mischief was sitting right there on his face, not even making an effort to conceal itself.

The soldier’s colleagues drifted closer, all of them looking up at Ren with the same idle, predatory curiosity.

"You know, I did not notice from a distance." One of them tilted his head with exaggerated consideration. "He looks like a rat. Smells like one too, most likely. Probably a spy."

"Can you not speak?" The wide-shouldered one raised his voice.

Ren ran a quick, quiet assessment. Decent mana reserves in each of them, not enough for projection, and their control was ordinary at best. He could put all four of them down before they reached a count of six, clean and efficient, and be back on the cart before the dust settled. But the rider was sitting right beside him, and the rider had done nothing wrong. Making him an accomplice to an assault on soldiers, even corrupt and contemptible ones, was not something Ren was willing to do to a man who had given him a free seat out of simple goodwill. The rider would not want to run. He would not want to hide. He had a regular route, a reputation on this road, a life built around the predictability of these journeys. Ren chose to be responsible about it, even though it cost him something.

"I am from Tunish," he said, and he let the confidence sit in his voice without apology or softening.

The soldiers pulled back slightly, just a fraction, the involuntary adjustment of people who had expected something pliable and received something that was not. They had wanted a shaky voice. Visible discomfort. Something they could press on and watch give way. They were recalibrating.

"Oh, really." The wide-shouldered one recovered quickly, smoothing his expression back into its previous smugness. "Since when do people from Tunish have narrow eyes like that? Are you a spy pretending to be a local? We have been catching quite a few of those lately."

Clearly a bluff. Ren did not argue the point. He glanced sideways at the rider and saw the tension gathered in the man’s shoulders, he was apprehensive. Ren let out a slow breath through his nose. He already understood what these men actually wanted. They would not believe him if he declared himself a Tunish resident from now until the sun went down. There was only one language they were genuinely interested in, and it was not words.

He reached into his bag, found the pouch by feel, and pulled out two silver coins. He held them out toward the soldier.

The soldiers’ eyes caught the gleam of the coins immediately, drawn to them the way eyes always were.

The wide-shouldered one stared at the silver, then slowly dragged his gaze up to Ren’s face. He turned his head to one side, pursed his lips, and exhaled with long and deliberate disappointment.

"You must be out of your mind if you think two silver coins are enough for us to sell our nation. Our motherland." He delivered it with genuine indignation, the kind that seemed to surprise even his colleagues slightly. The man was genuinely committed to his greed in a way that was almost admirable for its audacity.

A vein surfaced on the side of Ren’s head. He wanted very much to reach down and introduce the man’s face to the heel of his palm. Briefly and efficiently and only once. But no. That would be irresponsible. He filed the desire away neatly. Perhaps another time, on a different stretch of this road, when he was traveling alone and the consequences were his alone to bear, and if this particular soldier had the misfortune of still being posted there when that happened.

"Your nation Combec might be worth two silver coins," the soldier continued, warming to the performance now, finding his rhythm, "but Maldrin is worth considerably more. She is valuable. A proud nation. We could not possibly sell her for anything so modest as two silver coins. It would be an insult to our king."

Ren reached back into the bag without a word. His fingers closed around the coin pouch itself this time, the whole thing, and he drew it out. The sound it made as it moved was a soft and continuous chiming that apparently carried a remarkable power over the soldier’s composure. The man’s throat moved in a visible swallow. His colleagues fared no better, their eyes finding the pouch and staying there with the focus of men who had forgotten they were supposed to look indifferent.

The soldier took the pouch from Ren’s extended hand quickly as if he was wary of tjose who.msy be watching.

He cleared his throat.

"I believe you. Tunish man, clearly. You have an honest face, now that I look properly." He straightened and assumed the bearing of someone dispensing a favor. "You should be more careful going forward, however. Not every soldier on this road will be as understanding and generous with their time as I have been today. Some of them are not reasonable men." He stepped aside with a magnanimous wave of the halberd. "You may pass."

Ren turned forward and said nothing.

The rider clicked his tongue and the gogins moved.

Several minutes passed in easy silence before the rider spoke, his voice carrying a quiet sincerity.

"I am sorry, Sir Ren. I know you did that on my account. You could have handled them differently."

"Do not flatter yourself," Ren said, his eyes on the road ahead. "I chose to be merciful. I was in a generous mood, and it cost me some coins I can replace. Violence is not always the right answer, and even when it is, it is not always the right time." He paused. "Given what seems to be coming for this country, we may all see more of it than we can stomach before this is over. No point adding to the supply unnecessarily."

The rider nodded and let it rest, and the road rolled on beneath them.

The journey continued without further incident over the days that followed. No additional soldier checkpoints appeared. No wild beasts came pressing in from the tree line in the early hours. No bandits tested their luck against the cart or its occupants. The gogins held their steady, reliable pace, and the landscape changed slowly around them as the days passed, the open grassland giving way gradually to denser terrain and then to the wider, more traveled roads that signaled proximity to something larger. On the third day, at a bright and punishing noon with the sun sitting directly overhead and making no apologies for it, the shape of Marina emerged ahead of them on the horizon. Its outline sharpened with each passing minute, growing from a suggestion into a certainty, until the gate stood before them in full, tall and solid and unhurried.

They paid the entry levy without trouble. The guards checked the cart and ascertained that all was well.

One of them stepped back and nodded.

"Welcome to Marina," he said, and moved aside.