stops me a few feet from the wagon’s steps. His focus is on Not Trigger. He catches its bridle in his fist. “Mouth her again,” he warns, voice deadly, “and I’ll serve her soup out of your skull.”
“Ack,” I gag. “Why do I get punished?”
Bash’s forehead smooths as he transfers his stunning stare from the animal to me. “Narwari soup is a delicacy.”
“To you, maybe. Geeze. Aren’t you a regular horse-whisperer.”
All three of the alien horses hitched to the cart make eye contact with me, like they totally agree.
“Up, woman.” Five bands of iron clamp around my butt and another five curl over my hip and suddenly gravity isn’t a thing I feel—I’m in the air.
Before I can yelp, I’m on the cart’s bench seat, staring at the back of the Narwari’s heads.
“Slide over,” Bash orders.
“We’re… are we taking a cart ride?”
Bash hits me with a look of utter disbelief. “Does anyone get into a cart only to sit idle? Yes, we’re taking this cart for a ride.”
The whole wagon lists to the side as he plants one large wedge-toed foot on the floorboards and the wagon groans as he effortlessly joins me, plunking his butt on the bench, his tail crammed behind his back before it slithers over the bench in my direction. It stops at my thigh, sliding along my leg, and like it has a mind of its own, it runs itself down to my knee and curls over my calf like a candy cane until it thunks to the floor.
Amused, I stare down at it.
Bash seems determined to ignore that part of his body is touching a human. He takes up the reins, which were lying over the—the front-thing of the cart. I’m coming up blank as to what a person could call it. It’s like a front panel, the below-the-ski-hood to the ski, or the under-the-windshield area inside of a car. As I mull over words, Bash twitches the leather lines.
“What’s this called?” I ask, and I sit forward to tap the front cart panel, but Bash catches me by the shoulder—good thing, too, because we’re moving. One second, we’re at a standstill, the next we’re rolling, and the switch in momentum would have sent me tumbling ass over teakettle right off this ride.
Hooves clop prettily on the rock floor of the quarry, and the wagon creaks lightly. We can’t be going more than a couple miles per hour but from up here, it feels fast as faces begin to practically fly by us.
“The dashboard,” Bash answers me.
“Really? Ha! That’s so cool. We have dashboards in cars! On my planet, a long time ago, we got around by horses and carts too. I wonder if we called this part of our carts a ‘dashboard’ then, and if we did, then the name transferred to the motorized vehicle later? That’d be ironic-funny, because we have a term called ‘horsepower,’ which originally referred to how strong your,” I wave to the Narwari butts ahead of us, hauling us at a decent clip, “animal was, and that saying stuck so now our vehicle engines are measured by ‘horsepower’ even though there are no horses used, just mechanical parts.”
I glance up to find Bash staring down at me, his scaly brows bunched. He’s eyeing me like I might be a few bolts loose for a different kind of wagon than the one we’re riding in. Like a crazy one.
I pat his knee, and he jumps. “Feel free to add to the conversation at any time.”
His tail tightens where it’s gripping my leg.
Bash’s nostrils flare and he stares down at my hand so intensely that I slowly, carefully draw it off like a fast move could make him bite it. “Sorry. No five-finger contact from me. Got it. You, ah, want to tell me where we’re going?”
His voice is rough and sounds like it’s rusting when he faces our destination again. “The kiln house.”
“Neat. What’s a kiln house?”
A jade-green orb eyes me from the side. “A ring oven.”
“Yeah, nice try, but that gives me nothing.” I look to where we’re headed, squinting to get a better look at the building situated at the far end of the quarry, the one I was curious about seeing anyway. How handy that I’m getting a carriage ride all the way there. If I don’t tick off the alien beside me, I might get a carriage ride all the way back.
“It’s where all the brick and tiles are made.”
I twist to look behind us,