The Questing Game

"I'd prefer your blessing," she said earnestly.

"Our blessings are irrelevant."

"Not to me," she said. "I know that guarding me has been something of a chore for you, but I see you as more than just the people that keep me whole. You're my friends, and I won't do this unless you agree to it."

Binter and Sisska looked at each other, then they stood. Sisska answered for them. "Then you have our blessings, Highness," she a

"All you have to do is get those Vendari warriors to Wikuna in three months," she replied. "That's all I ask of you."

"They will be there," Sisska said with an eloquent nod.

"What about me?" Azakar asked.

"With Sisska going home, I'll need you to take her place," Keritanima told the young Knight evenly. "Sisska oftens accompanies Miranda. That'll be your job when we get back. You just go with her and keep someone from sticking things in her, or shooting her. Until then, Zak, I need you to be silent. What we're about to start could get all of us killed if word leaks out."

"I can keep quiet, Highness," Azakar assured her. "On my honor as a Knight, I'll not betray your trust, by word or by deed." Binter and Sisska gave the young Knight approving looks at that, and Keritanima knew that he had only improved his standing with them that much more. Honor was life to the Vendari.

"I take it you want me to help you with the plan?" Miranda asked.

Keritanima nodded. "I've already got the framework thought out," she answered. "I just need some help with the particulars."

"I do hope you're not going to just kill him when we arrive."

"Oh, no," she suddenly seethed, holding out a hand with her short, sharp claws exaggerated. "He's going to pay for what he's done to me. I'm not going to kill him, Miranda. I want him to be alive to taste defeat. When I'm done, he'll wish he was dead."

"At least Tarrin and Allia didn't spoil you that way," Miranda said with a teasing smile. "Let me finish this dress, and we'll talk about it."

Life aboard a ship on the open sea was a tedium of monotony. Every day, the same view awaited them, and often the same meals were served. The people they saw were the same people day after day, and the sounds and smells aboard a ship rarely changed from the norm of daily business. But for the crew and the Marines aboard Sailor's Pride, the norm became abject terror.

It came from many sources, but the prime source of it was Princess Keritanima-Chan Eram. All she did all day was sit on a stool near the bow with a writing slate in her lap. She would sit there for hours on end, ignoring food, ignoring the weather, only leaving when darkness forced her below decks. She would sit there with a blank piece of parchment, a Tellurian pen, and a frightful look of seething hatred burned across her features. To the collective knowledge of the entire crew and Marine complement on board the ship, she did not once put pen to paper and write out even one word for nearly ten days. The men had no idea what she meant to write, but many of them quietly speculated that it was going to be a list of the people she was going to kill when they returned to Wikuna. Others thought it was going to be a will, but most of them believed that she intended to take her father with her when she died. That she was furious enough to kill anyone who irritated her was plainly known aboard ship, and anyone with even half a brain avoided the bow like the plague. It got so bad that the ship's captain, a bandy old bull Wikuni called Longshanks, ordered the foremast's sails furled and the spi

But then the fury left her face, and she began to write. Nobody could get close enough to see what she was writing. Nobody was that crazy. The girl seemed to have an almost supernatural ability to know when people were watching her, and whenever she sensed it, she stopped writing and covered her work with a leather portfolio cover. Many sailors refused to even speculate, for they believed it was a list of soon to be deceased individuals, and they didn't want their names added to the bottom of it. They did get just a bit curious when she just wrote, and wrote, and wrote. For days, she wrote, at a pace that seemed desperate at times, pe

But she wasn't the only thing to worry about. Never more than two feet away from her were those Vendari monsters. Bigger than anyone on ship, even a bear Wikuni, those two nine-foot tall walking destroyers kept everyone away from the dainty Princess, threatening a gruesome end to any foolish enough to look at her strangely. Even stripped of their weapons, not a single man would think of trying to cross them, unless he had a ca

The only one of the unusual passengers the Wikuni would even come close to harassing, a

The five of them were quite the unusual passengers, but even their tremendous importance and status dulled as the days dragged out. The sailors got used to the Princess sitting with her slate and pen, writing out what seemed to be an entire book full of pages whose contents were a jealously guarded mystery. They worked around the Vendari and the human, and learned that the little maid was twice as nasty as any sailor ever was, and was more than willing to drive one to the edge of madness, only to let her human bodyguard put an end to any advances the sailor may make on her. They learned to leave her alone, more than one learning the hard way. The last one had been buried at sea after the little mink sank a foot of steel poinard into his gut when he decided not to take no for an answer. The fact that he was found in her room said everything that needed to be said about what he was doing.