Traveler Day 2

"I guess we are not leaving today then, sir?" Sal asked as Bartido and his bodyman performed the same walk through the inn as the previous day.

"No, likely not," Bartido said, and chuckled at the deja vu of it. It wasn't even the first time that he had had this particular conversation with Sal multiple times during a stay in Sallah.

"I don't know why you bother, sir," Sal said, sighing once again. "This time I am cutting to one-half. We do not have enough money to stay more than a few more days. Please remember that we need money to go all the way to our own capital." And then he was striding off to the stables to talk to the driver.

While the man was quite exasperating at times, Bartido didn't know what he would do without him.

While Bartido looked around at the few occupants of the main room of the inn when he passed through, he didn't find the one that he would actually stop to talk to. So he passed right through the room to the door and flung it open and stepped out into the street. He chuckled to himself as he took in the morning air, noticing only after the door had swung shut of its own accord behind him that the loud bang from the door had startled a middle-aged man that was coming from the Capital side of the street and was about to head south.

"Oh, sorry about my brashness," Bartido said amiably as he walked up alongside the man.

"It's alright," the man said, turning toward Bartido. "Just don't break down the innkeeper's door next time, alright?"

"Of course not," Bartido replied, finally recognizing the local magistrate. "I happen to be fond of the man."

The magistrate nodded, but then continued along his way.

Bartido blinked. That wasn't much like the man — he usually would take whatever bait Bartido had set for the conversation, and Bartido would then be able to use the resulting conversation as practice for getting on someone's nerves without actually angering them. He was a great practice for it, and always forgave him for it when he bought him a beer. Or a tall mead. He was fond of those too.

But none of those things were going to be useful that night. The man was clearly distracted by something that would have made the whole game useless anyway. Since the man was walking ahead of Bartido on the same path that he planned on taking himself, Bartido just followed along. Maybe he would get a clue as to what was bothering the magistrate so.

Unfortunately for Bartido's curiosity, but fortunately for actually getting to Grot's place with enough time to possibly get something done, the magistrate turned off the main street to head into one of the paths that could barely be called 'streets'. Bartido shook his head. It was for the best that his curiosity wasn't sated. But he really was interested in what the man was distracted by. So much so that he ended up at his own destination before he even realized it.

The first set of rapid knocks received a usual response. "NO! GO AWAY!"

Bartido couldn't help his smirk. Grot certainly was predictable when it came down to it. The only thing left was to determine if Grot knew who was at his door yet. He knocked again, though using a different pattern.

"BALLENTYNE I'LL KILL YOU! AND YOUR MOTHER TO SPITE YOU!"

That answered that question.

Bartido knocked again, getting no answer. Then he waited about a minute before knocking again, which elicited another insult of his mother. "Why do you keep insulting your aunt, anyway?" Bartido asked mildly through the door, which got a response entirely made up of growling. More knocking, more insults, and more patience. And after a good ten minutes of it, the patience part finally paid off.

The door was wrenched open from the inside, immediately revealing the disheveled visage of Bartido's cousin. His short hair was a mess, and the clothing he was wearing had either been slept in or thrown on quickly and never fixed. Perhaps both. But Grot spent only a split second with the door open in order to spit on Bartido. He struck the younger man right in the chest with the ball of spittle, and then made to shut the door.

Not being someone who could be easily put off, even by saliva landing on him, Bartido ignored the sudden dampness of his shirt and stuck a foot forward, preventing his cousin from closing it once again. "If you want me to go away, it's probably quicker to actually let me say my piece and make the appropriate noises as if you were listening," Bartido said, pushing past the man and stepping inside the small house.

The door slammed shut behind him. "You really think that this is a good idea?" Grot asked heatedly. "It's not like we're friends."

"We're cousins, something entirely different," Bartido replied. "We can remind each other of home. Of childhood. Of playing together on swings, if we're so inclined."

"Shut up."

"Maybe instead we could reminisce about other things. I'm not too picky. There's a lot to choose from when we grew up among the same people."

Grot made an anatomically improbable suggestion referencing Bartido and a frog. Bartido shook his head. "Oh you know me. Anything that moves, so long as she says yes."

Grot disparaged him once again, and Bartido sighed. "I come out of my way to say hi to you and that's the sort of response I get from you? No wonder no one else tries."

Grot started another lewd suggestion, but Bartido raised his voice to cut the other man off. "But I'm not actually here for reminiscing, or even to give you a message from one of our mothers, though there are several outstanding just in case you want them." Grot gave a short and to the point negative and vulgar response to that suggestion, so Bartido pressed on. "No, I'm actually here because you've been exposed."

Finally, blessed silence. A good three full seconds of pure silence. Just as other sounds started to clamor for Bartido's ears' attention his cousin seemed to recover a bit. "What?"

"You're known," Bartido said. "They know what you're doing. Intercepting orders and messages. Giving you the slip with important movements. Attempting to feed you false information where they can. Making you worse than useless."

"Hmph," Grot snorted. "How would a little prick like you know?"

"Do you know anyone else who was exposed and still lives to tell about it? From this country, no less. And now I'm all official."

"It doesn't suit you."

"Eh, it's something that you can grow into," Bartido said. "But that's not the issue here, and you know it."

"I have nothing to do with your failure—"

"Don't kid yourself," Bartido said with a little more ice than he intended. "Just because you're older than me doesn't mean that you should ignore all my experiences. In this case, my experience is beyond yours. Believe it or not."

"I don't."

"I can tell. Doesn't make it any less true."

Grot snorted, folding his arms in front of him. "Alright, hotshot. What evidence do you have, anyway?"

Bartido reached into his coat and pulled out a ratty piece of a scroll that had obviously been torn off. The writing on it was only a simple sentence, and Bartido had long committed the words to memory. The spy at the crossroad is finished.

Grot snatched the scrap right out of Bartido's hands. Not that he was holding onto it very hard. Not when he had wanted the other man to take it.

Grot pulled it up to his face and read it. Once. Twice. Thrice. "This means nothing."

"If that's what you choose to believe," Bartido said.

Grot pocketed the piece of scroll. He sighed, and then Bartido's mistake became apparent as he was thrust out of the door that he had moved to stand in front of. A well-placed shove on the young man and then another shove on the door itself ended with Bartido stumbling just far enough backward to be staring at the outside of Grot's front door once again. Another sigh, this time from Bartido. "I'm trying to do you a favor, and this is how you treat me?"

Nothing.

Not that Bartido had expected to get anything once he'd left the house. But he had meant to continue the conversation a little longer. He should have stepped away from the door so that it hadn't been quite as easy for Grot, but he had been so confident once he had gotten in that he had let his guard down. Oops.

No matter. The message had been relayed. He wasn't going to get any further with Grot that day, and there wasn't enough more to do to justify staying yet another day. Certainly not to Sal. And he had spent quite enough of the man's goodwill. And the money that he had for the trip, for that matter. As long as he left the next day, he would definitely be fine. It only became an issue if he hung around yet again.

So he wouldn't. Mission accomplished.

Walking back to the inn, Bartido started to whistle, knowing that he was just a hint off-key and had a weird rhythm, but in a good enough mood not to care. Jaunty waves at all of the hawkers on the main street — winks for the ladies, of course — and then he burst into the inn. He opened the door with just enough force for it to kiss the stop before it hit the walls.

Sal immediately approached him, though he was nowhere close to the only person in the room. It was just about noon, after all. "How did it go, young Master?"

"Much better this time," Bartido said, bringing out a smirk.

"Then I hope that we are to move on tomorrow morning, and make it to the border," Sal said.

"Naturally," Bartido said, looking around the room, and then spotting the young woman he wanted to see. Switching his grin for his best winning smile, he dismissed Sal. "Before sunrise, Sal."

A little swagger in his walk, Bartido draped his coat over his shoulder as he walked over to where Gertrude Silvaner was eating her own lunch. "Well hello there," Bartido said by way of greeting.

"Didn't I tell you to leave me alone?" she said tiredly.

"You told me to go back to the inn," Bartido said, sitting down across from her and hailing the innkeeper. "It's not my fault if you ended up in the same place I did."

The look she gave him would have curdled milk. Bartido had to prevent himself from swallowing nervously. He was saved — or perhaps she was spared having to come up with a response stronger than the look — when the innkeeper made it to the table. Bartido ordered lunch and then smiled across at the young woman.

"Always, always, always," she muttered, shaking her head. Curious. Bartido merely raised his eyebrows. Gertrude took a bite of her lunch and simply looked back at him.

Figuring this was an invitation for him to say something, Bartido's smile widened. "What brings you to the crossroads town? And long enough to see you multiple days in a row?"

Chew, chew, chew, then swallow. Immediately stab another forkful and stuff it in her mouth and continue to look at Bartido.

That… was actually kind of unnerving. Bartido waited until she was about to finish chewing and said, "I figured I'd make a little conversation, is all."

She put the next bite — her second-to-last — in her mouth, and continued to watch Bartido with something between a glare and a stare. Bartido opened his mouth to attempt once again to get her to speak, but found that he couldn't think of something that might work before the last bite was in her mouth. The instant that was so, she picked up the napkin, wiped her mouth, rose, and left by the front door.

Bartido was tempted to walk after her for an instant, but decided against it. There was such a thing as coming on too strong, even if his interest in her wasn't really about having someone to share his bed that night. It was more about what the heck that look reminded him of. A liook that was probably going to be turning over his mind repeatedly.

But after that careful study of her face from across the table, he did know that he had never seen this woman before his time in Sallah. And as he dug into his own lunch, he wondered why a woman he was 100% sure he had never met before reminded him so strongly of something that was definitely in his past.