Running from the guards was a new experience for me, at the time. Granted I wasn’t really running from them then. Technically speaking, everything I’d done in that fight had been self-defence, except maybe that execution. But nobody had seen that anyway, so it hardly mattered. On the other hand, Gruin correctly reckoned that Rogrid’s guards wouldn’t be inclined to listen for long if they found an oreling and an outsider standing over the hacked-up bodies of six locals.

  So we ran.

  We didn’t actually have much idea of where we were running, mind, and if we were more world-wary we might have stopped to consider that before wasting all the energy involved. Or, better yet, we might have realised how innately suspicious a pair of clear outsiders sprinting openly through the streets is when six men had just been stabbed to death mere minutes earlier.

  Gruin was more travelled than me, but…Grynkori. He simply didn’t have the equipment to think the way humans did. Orelings are dutiful, obsessive creatures and the notion of hurling people in a cell for no reason other than finding them at a sprint the same night people were killed was as foreign to him as was suicide to most humans.

  I, for my part, could fully empathise with the pathetic urge to do as little work in any situation one ever found himself, but I still didn’t understand the full extent of chronic laziness and murderous apathy that tended to plague the guard forces of larger cities like Rogrid. And so we both continued running.

  Eventually though we had to stop, or rather I had to stop. Grynkori are built for distance and endurance if nothing else, and by the time my lungs were heaving with the effort of matching even Gruin’s tiny legs he barely seemed to even have beads of sweat on his brow. He seemed disgusted as I stumbled to lean against a wall and drink in mouthfuls of hot air.

  “If that’s how you run from a sextuple murder, I’d hate to see you fleeing from something less severe.”

  I glared at the Grynkori, but didn’t retort. Whatever air I’d have used to do as much was far better spent keeping myself from losing consciousness on the spot.

  Long minutes passed of us stumbling and heaving along, now. Or rather, of me stumbling and heaving while the Grynkori practically swaggered his way through the streets as if that five-pound hammer weighed nothing at all, and the mile we’d just run had been mere yards.

  “What now?” I asked at last, having gotten at least a few whispers of breath back, even if I was still drenched in sweat. Funny that. There was a chill in the air that, now I’d stopped sprinting, was becoming more felt by the second. Wouldn’t be long until this sweat had me shivering like a naked man in a storm. Thoughts of shelter came almost unbidden.

  “Now we find a bloody drink,” Gruin growled, “these wounds are aching.”

  I gave those wounds another once-over as we walked, and decided he’d gotten off rather lucky considering everything. Or perhaps he hadn’t, and I was merely seeing a more overt showing of oreling resilience than I’d yet gotten. The bite upon his shoulder didn’t seem to be healing any faster than a human’s body would, but it had been shallow enough through sheer thickness of skin and density of muscle that the Grynkori already had most of its mobility back.

  By contrast, his fresher wounds looked like they’d be a lot longer in repairing themselves. That sparked another question of mine.

  “How fast do your people heal?” I asked him abruptly, and the Grynkori just frowned at me.

  “I don’t know. How fast do your people heal?”

  I saw his point, it was just hard to answer a question like that. What did you compare it to? Other healing, obviously, but if you didn’t already know how fast the species you were talking to could repair itself…

  “Wounds like those would have me bed-ridden for…days, at best, and probably wouldn’t close up for weeks or months.”

  Gruin grunted. “Eh, sounds about the same for me then. Minus the bed-ridden part since Grynkori aren’t tiny little baby bird creatures like your race.”

  I ignored that slight, and we retreated to the most convenient—read: cheap—inn either of us could find.

  By now, our funds were starting to run somewhat low. Very low, rather. Gruin was apparently not so great at spending his money with discrimination, and I’d had only a handful of coins on me when I went in that river. With the ‘monster’ around Ringle being no more than a bear, a much-needed injection of currency hadn’t come to us. That meant that eating, drinking and sleeping under roofs had become something of a concern.

  That latter thing seemed less of one for Gruin, whose body was preternaturally resistant to the extremes of temperature an unshielded night sky might attack him with, but if I slept out in this weather I had about fifty-fifty odds of ever waking up again, and those would get worse with each new night I did it. Clearly, something had to be done.

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  “You know, there is mundane work that could be done,” I suggested one morning, groaning at the stiffness in my joints. A lifetime of featherbeds really had left me ill-prepared for travel on the roads, and that softness was not yet banished from me.

  “Pah, mundane work,” the Grynkori seemed almost affronted at the notion, “it’s beneath me!”

  I resisted the urge to point out how statistically uncommon an object being beneath him actually was, and chose instead to be somewhat more diplomatic.

  “Maybe, but so is starvation.”

  He didn’t stop his grumbling over a little thing like logic, though.

  “Better to starve than be worked by humans, I’ve seen how your lot operate.”

  I blinked at that. “What do you mean?”

  The Grynkori stared at me as if I’d just asked what colour the sky was.

  “Your kind toil away your lives on simple little tasks while limiting most of your knowledge, if all of you put your heads together properly you could progress a hundred years in the next generation but instead you keep most of yourselves ignorant and stupid just so that a tiny few can eat better.”

  My temper rose at that, because he’d actually struck something of a nerve. As a merchant’s son, I was a useless social parasite who mostly existed to convenience the upper nobility who disliked travelling for their wares and required my father’s trade routes for their land’s economy to remain healthy. And like all parasites, I had a great many ideas about how I was actually important for some reason.

  “We serve a function, just as the peasants do. People are suited for different jobs—”

  —the Grynkori started loudly, exaggeratedly snoring as I said that, and I was taken aback by how bloody rude he was. Theirs is not a culture that tolerates the mincing of words, you understand, and for someone born drowning in upper-class euphemisms it was quite hard to adjust to.

  Maybe I’m just somewhat robust as a person, or maybe, more likely, the many recent shocks I’d suffered had left me more malleable than I’d have been a month sooner, but whatever the cause I managed to restrain my immediate irritation and just glare at the Grynkori instead of starting another fight.

  “My people divide labour properly, we all work and we all think.” He said it proudly, like it was something to admire. The fact that it was did not have much relevance to my ability to recognise that, however, and so my mood remained thoroughly sour.

  “Then you won’t mind working now, so that we both don’t starve?” I pressed him, and Gruin seemed halfway through disagreeing when our food arrived.

  Small amounts of it, of course. Little plates of black toast and egg, strips of sausage. Enough for a child maybe. Neither of us had a drink.

  “I ordered beer,” the Grynkori scowled at the poor serving girl with such murder in his eyes that I suddenly found myself nostalgic for the bear. She, of course, was near-catatonic with terror.

  “S-sorry sir, but…Uh, you didn’t pay enough for beer.”

  The Grynkori looked like he was seconds away from flipping the table and proceeding to massacre everyone in the building. I was speaking fast, actually somewhat fearing he’d do it.

  “That’s okay, we understand, we’ve been having money problems for a while anyway,” I forced a too-wide smile and glared at Gruin, all while subtly moving my hand closer to my sword. If he went mad right now, I could draw my weapon before he drew his. Hopefully the better edge on my sword compared to those thugs’ would let me open up a wound deep enough to kill him before he killed me.

  Fortunately, that test did not become necessary. Gruin relaxed a moment later, the sight of strength and tension leaving his muscles like seeing a river recede back after threatening to burst its banks. I felt all my fear drain out in one, long breath.

  The girl took her leave quickly, and we were left to finish our meagre meals in silence. Only once he’d literally licked his plate did Gruin speak again.

  “Maybe…We should find some more mundane work,” he sighed. I felt a shot of relief at that, for all of two seconds before it occurred to me that I had no idea how.

  That led us to a long and tedious search, because Gruin barely had more idea than me. We resorted to simply walking around and asking people who looked like men of property whether they’d be willing to employ us. Not terribly efficient, or quick. And it was humiliating from start to finish.

  On the other hand, it did work eventually. After a few hours of being stared at, laughed at and, more than once, spat at, Gruin and I found out that there was a fortunate opening at a nearby mine. That was very odd, as Rogrid was a city perpetually working with as many miners as it could have needed. I didn’t notice this of course.

  The man we spoke to in order to get this position was one of the grumpier human beings I’d ever met, seen or even read about. Short and squat almost like a Grynkori himself, though no less unfriendly towards Gruin’s kind than anyone else in Rogrid seemed to be. His eyes shifted as he spoke.

  “And you want me to take on an oreling’s labour?”

  Gruin met the man’s scrutiny with as murderous a glare as I’d ever seen from anyone, but seemed content to let me do the talking. Perhaps he’d realised how little success we would enjoy through his usual belligerence…Or perhaps he merely considered addressing this man directly to be beneath him.

  Either way, it meant I didn’t have to deal with another brawl starting up and getting me tangled in it.

  “Surely you know of how great a boon he would be here,” I tried to press the man gently, “the orelings are famous for their mining ability just as much as Rogrid’s men are!”

  I must have had some secret talent for saying the exact wrong thing. The man’s face scrunched up and his hands curled into fists, I took a reflexive step back as I readied myself for sudden violence. It didn’t come of course, but I was still on edge.

  “What use do we have for a damned oreling?” the man snarled, “Rogrid’s men need no help from those cave-dwellers to do what we do.”

  Right, of course. People didn’t generally like being corrected when believing they held a monopoly on excellence in their field. I thought fast, brain whirring as it churned away in search of a way to difuse this faux pas.

  “But you’re short-staffed at the moment, right?” I asked, giving him an out, “you need the work, and if you can’t get Rogridans then an oreling is the next-best thing, surely.”

  His face twitched, that way the truly stupid’s do when they’re recognising a good idea while every screed of them wants to hate it.

  “Fine,” he spat, “we’ll take you on.”

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