The transport manager set their vaporiser down, looking as though they couldn’t believe their luck. They took the book carefully and flipped through several different lenses on their set of spectacles, staring at it. They whistled through the hole in their neck. “Yes, honoured patron! That will do very well!” They put it carefully down and began sorting hurriedly through the items on their table. “But this is far too much a trade! Would you look also at some other recompense?” They waved behind them. “Perhaps a pet?” Elegant chrome robots perched on a sort of tree at the back of the stall, not unlike the cat furniture Linden made. There were chirping mechanical birds, small humming orbs, an eight-legged creature covered in artificial fur.

“No,” Rivasoa said coldly.

The transport manager dropped their hand, blinking.

Orfeus stepped in between them and tried to think of something Rivasoa wouldn’t turn her nose up at. “Perhaps some fruit,” she said.

Rivasoa shot her a grateful look, almost more surprised than grateful, as though Orfeus were incapable of doing anything thoughtful or kind.

The transport manager brightened again, and with a flourish produced a lumpen orange fruit, fuzzy and large. “Freshly engineered just this week,” they said proudly. Not quite what she had been aiming for. Rivasoa placed it carefully in her bag with a nod of thanks.

The transport manager beamed and turned to the next would-be passenger, whistling cheerfully through the neck, one possessive hand laid over their new book.

Farflung’s flyers were made for transport of goods, not people. They were beautiful, glimmering with gold, solar foil etched as circuity across the cockpit and wings. Orfeus and Rivasoa undertook the journey tucked in at the side of the small cabin alongside the trade goods, machinery parts and looped lengths of cable. Perhaps some of this was destined for Threadgall at the Tinctora Hub.

Travel by flyer was dizzyingly, nauseatingly fast. Orfeus sat with her arms folded over her stomach, and they did not exchange much conversation.

This wasn’t how she often travelled. If she had a week free just for her and the road, she would walk, if she didn’t have an Elder following in her footsteps and a Wolf who knew how many steps behind.

The flyer wasn’t headed to Tinctora, but the small town of Rountree, midway between it and Hollyhock. Orfeus stood on the blessedly solid ground and stretched extensively, as the flyer pilot hopped out and set to unloading.

Rivasoa came out a moment later. “Where is the wayhouse?” she said.

“It’ll be somewhere. There’s always a wayhouse,” Orfeus said. She looked around, because this would be an embarrassing time for that universal truth not to be true. There it was, the building a little way behind the tall tree that gave the town its name. No outward sign distinguished it as a wayhouse, but conversation spilled out from the invitingly open doors.