Orfeus finger-combed through her hair and, with a shrug, focused on the view outside. It wasn’t as fun to taunt Rivasoa when it was clear she was a good person.

The cart trucked along. It wouldn’t be long before they reached the next town, one Orfeus thought was called Shornover, a smallish place but one the train passed through. About mid-afternoon they could catch the quartertrain to Tinctora. Normally. Had the Elders been able to shift the usual timetable of the quartertrains enough that one had departed Eldergrove with Rivasoa, reached Tinctora, then returned without heading on to the coast as it was meant to? That was more power than Orfeus had expected from those mumbling cream robes.

Orfeus leaned forward and tapped her knuckles on the driver’s compartment. He turned to her amicably enough. “Let us off at the next stop, we’ll walk,” she said, and shot him a warm grin to make it seem more personal. She leaned back in the cart as he increased his speed to still not terribly fast. “Do you have provisions?” It was half a day to the outskirts of Farflung from here. Not unmanageable for the inexperienced, but not fun.

“I’ll manage,” Rivasoa said.

“We can stop at a wayhouse if we need to.” Orfeus patted her guitar case. “With this, I can get us the good stuff.” She crooned to her guitar, “No breadcrusts and cold soup for us, darling dear. Only bread-middles and hot soup.”

“I also have plenty to trade,” Rivasoa said, eyeing her.

They got off the cart and Orfeus stretched, sniffing the air. Fresh and clean. There were only a few roads here for carts and the like, but there would be frequent signposts: settlements, even of only a few hundred people, were never far away. She saw a few houses here and there, farmers or just folk that liked solitude.

A sign by the road said Shornover, pointing after the cart, Eldergrove back behind them, Farflung pointing into a field of wheat. Orfeus strode forth.

Rivasoa kept pace better than she expected, striding serenely through the field and the oak forest that followed without looking remotely out of place, even with her perfect grooming and stature and flower-bright robes. Like some old god of the woods. Orfeus rummaged in her bag for apples and passed her one.

Rivasoa took it and looked at it, wrinkly and small from wintering in the larder. Orfeus brindled joyfully in anticipation of parrying any insult, but Rivasoa took a careful bite and made no insult at all.

“You’re prepared,” she said. “Did you bring water?”