glared at the peddlers so they would leave me alone and then took stock of the items I’d trade for that Whirligig: five rolls of cheese, plenty of bandages, Ryo’s ridiculous clothes, twelve weapons, and twenty-seven hibisi blossoms. With Ryo now a full player, I’d stay back and play as a healer. Then I wouldn’t have to talk to him except for emergencies.
Grig touched a cheese, and I ripped it from his hands and tucked it into my bag. “I’m gonna miss the thing,” Grig admitted.
“Don’t get attached,” I said through barred teeth. “It’s only pixels.”
“You all right, sis?” Grig nudged my arm. “You two’ve been bickering since I knew you, but that didn’t sound like banter.”
“I’m fine.”
“Funny, that’s what Ryo said.”
“Well, Ryo says a lot of things and most of them are lies.”
Grig sighed and crossed back toward Ryo. Grigfen took him aside and they talked in quiet whispers. He put his arm on Ryo’s shoulder, and when he let him be, Grig’s loyalty still shone vibrant purple.
My hands unclenched.
What was wrong with me? I’d yelled at him, called him names, tackled him, and tried to force him to drink something he said he didn’t want to drink, and now I was pissed because he wanted to walk away from me?
I was like a barbed wire fence. It made no sense for me to be mad that he would let go.
I folded a bandage and watched him. He pressed his hand to his chest. “Sun’s greeting, travelers! I thank you for your fair trading, and I ask in our lost saints’ name for more. It is not for me that I do ask, but for our people, our roads, and for our king. The Savak queen has threatened, but we do not cower. Here, in this clearing, beneath this warm sky, is where we turn the fight to her. This is where the rebellion starts.” Their loyalty shifted purple. “This is where the tides turn. Who is with me?”
The peddlers shouted in unison.
He was actually good at this now. He called those peddlers to arm and left them smiling and proud to follow behind us.
“How’d you know what to say?” Grig asked.
“My game vision has an etiquette manual. There is very little I don’t know,” Ryo said, pushing his hair out of his eyes. I sighed. Great. Ryo’s special ability was to know everything and then mansplain it back to us.
That wouldn’t get annoying at all.
“Clearly the NPCs have pixels for brains,” I muttered.
After I packed what I could carry, the peddlers got ready to leave with us.
“Which way, Dagney?” Ryo called. He rode a white horse, because of course he did.
I found my horse. “Don’t bite me, horse.” A peddler put a stool out and I climbed onto a leather saddle. I closed my eyes. Find Traveling Boots.
The arrow spun. “Northeast. Here.” I handed Grig and Ryo hibisi blossoms. “In case we come across anything.”
“And we’re likely to,” Grig said.
Ryo nudged his horse and took off, stopping at every sign of life to recruit people to our cause. He kept collecting loyal people, but not one of us shone as bright a purple as Ryo himself. Before he was kind of this cute little obnoxious puppy I had to protect.
Now he was assembling an army.
By the time we settled in a camp for the night, he’d acquired servants, a militia of untrained farmers, and a massive violet silk tent I would not enter if someone paid me. It was rolled up at the back of a servant’s horse.
We had almost reached the King’s Crypt when a shadow raced across the moons.
“What was that?” I pulled on my reins. The horse stopped beneath me.
“Not dead. That’s all I know,” Grig said.
Ryo squinted at the sky. “A zomok. A flying creature that prefers fresh oranges mixed with salmon, and is loyal to its masters if trained from a hatchling.”
Another shadow flashed past. How many of these things were there?
“So like a pet dragon,” Grigfen said.
“No, dragons are not trainable.”
The smell of oranges and the flapping of wings almost masked the whiff of copper and rust, and the whirl of a Savak Wingship.
But nothing could mask the soundtrack changing into heavy drumming. I stopped my horse. I hated when the battle music came on, but I didn’t see any enemies.
“To cover!” I shouted.
The caravan behind us pulled toward the trees, and parents shoved their children under wagons. I searched the night’s sky. There, near the smaller of the two moons, three