“What? What did you say?” The oldest guard snapped, shooting a hard glare at the only civilian in the coach.

Two months ago that look would have shaken her to the bone.

One month ago it would have made her freeze, and think fast, trying to figure out an excuse that wouldn't get her killed.

Now? Now the halven girl met the guard's suspicious gaze with a blink and a confused smile. “Sorry, I was just sorting through what recipes I had that might interest you.”

The guard opened his mouth, then nearly bit his tongue as the carriage jolted, bouncing the four of them up and down. It rattled through the darkness, heading to a prison that didn't exist.

It jounced and jostled with every stone on that lonely path, and Chase bounced up and down with it, grimacing at the toll it was taking on her backside. She really was getting too thin, lately. Her butt had lost most of its comfortable padding thanks to an active life on the road, and adapting to human hours meant spending far too little time on meals, so there wasn't much chance of regaining those comfortable inches.

And speaking of human time...

She raised her gaze to the grim-faced guards who shared the front of the wagon with her, and smiled. “So! I'm thinking sfogliatella with ricotta for dessert tomorrow. But if you've got enough almonds, I could make dinoche instead. Which do you think everyone would prefer?”

The guards stared at her like she'd declared herself the sixth pope.

All save for Matteo, who laughed and slapped his knee. “I told you she was eager for this job! Some of the trickiest pastry to make, and she offers it like it's nothing!”

“Dinoche's not that hard,” Chase said, glancing up to Matteo, but keeping the older guard in her peripheral vision. His name was Sergio, and he was the only one she hadn't managed to convince....

...not that she was surprised, not really. The man was at least fifty, and he'd been guarding some of the most dangerous beings in the world for perhaps a decade or more. Going by the way the world worked, that meant he was probably around level 20 or even more at whatever he did.

The other two guards, Matteo and Nunzio, were barely in their thirties or perhaps not even there, it was so hard to tell with humans.

They'd bought her story easily.

But Sergio, Sergio might be a problem.

Fortunately she had planned for that.

“You won't have to worry about the menu for a long while,” Nunzio said. “Our head cook's still calling the shots. It's the assistant who got fired for buying bad food that laid up half the garrison—”

“Caporale Marino!” barked Sergio. “You do not give operating intelligence to uncleared civilians!”

That killed the conversation.

Yeah, Sergio was going to be a problem. Chase squeezed her eyes shut. “Sorry,” she said. “I don't want to cause trouble.”

“It's not your fault,” Matteo reassured her. “After we find a... bad guy, everyone's on edge for a while. You've got nothing to worry about, the Wizard has cleared you.”

“But the Scout hasn't,” Sergio said. “Until that happens, you watch your mouth.”

Chase kept her face straight. Of course they would have Scouts. It would have been foolish to assume otherwise.

Good thing they hadn't.

“Look, as far as I'm concerned she proved her worth when she turned the— when she turned him in.” Matteo glanced back at the locked door of the prison wagon. Chains jingled within, restlessly, clanking and clunking as the occupant tried to escape.

As if on cue, a guttural snarl ripped through the air, and the guards cringed... all save for Sergio, who was watching her like a hawk.

Which is why she let out a little gasp, and covered her face. “He's horrible! Why don't you just kill him! The things he tried to do to me...”

CHA+1

Through the carefully-gauged gap in her fingers she saw Sergio's face soften, just for a moment.

Chase hid her smile, and gave an artistic shudder as she lowered her hands. Sergio's eyes were hard once more when she was looking, but she knew she had him. At least for now.

The problem was that he was the sort who wouldn't put aside his suspicions for long... but she wouldn't need him to put them aside for too long. Just long enough.

“He deserves to rot. I'm so very glad there's a prison out this way!” Chase said, folding her arms and turning around to stare out the front window. “Cooking you the best food I can for the next few months is the least I can do.”

“It might not take that long,” Nunzio said. “You just missed one of our bosses, but she should be back in a few weeks if things work out.”

“Marino...” Sergio cautioned.

The younger man raised his hands. “I know, I know. Just saying that one of the people who can approve her hiring might be back soon. That's all.”

“Oh good!” Chase said, sighing. “I still don't know why I have to stay at the prison the whole time. But... I really don't have any other place to go, so it's all the same to me.”

“Well, once you get approved you can visit the town. You just can't talk about the prison or us, or anything else,” Matteo said, eyes flicking to Sergio.

“He's not joking,” Sergio said. “This is serious business. Perhaps the most serious thing you'll ever do in your life. You break your silence, then a whole lot of people die. Us included. So if this is a girlish whim, if this is some infatuation with the one who rescued you—” he shot Matteo a look, and Matteo protested.

He protested maybe a bit too much. Chase hid her grimace.

“I get it,” she interrupted. “And it really isn't that. My family... they're gone. I don't know where they are. I don't know what he did to them. I have no money and no prospects, and I might as well work here. Halvens aren't like humans. We don't HAVE whims. We like stability and boredom, and I understand that a good prison has both.”

She watched Sergio's face clear a bit, as she spoke. He knew that. Everyone who knew halvens knew that, knew they were the opposite of adventurous types.

It wasn't his fault he didn't know Chase. Didn't know that she was a bit of a deviant, as far as halvens went.

“Well. In that case, we'll see what the Scout says.” Sergio nodded, as if to himself.

“He'll be annoyed we woke him up,” Nunzio pointed out. “Maybe we get her checked out in the morning?”

“Regulations are clear,” Sergio's lips thinned. “Everyone gets scouted. Even assistant cooks.”

“It's all right,” Chase patted Nunzio's hand. “I have nothing to hide.”

And that was the biggest lie of the night.

But if any of them doubted her, it was lost as the horses screamed, and the coach slammed to a stop.

With a yell the guards went flying, and Chase scrambled to avoid slamming into the boards between the front compartment and the driver's seat. She heard the driver shouting, and above it a voice rose, guttural and snarling.

“Stand Down and deliver!”

It wasn't exactly the famous line of highwaymen everywhere, but it was close enough, and to someone who didn't know the difference, it was good enough.

“No, no, like hell!” Sergio barked, untangling himself from the pile of guards and stomping on Chase's hand in the process.

She gasped, as red light flared in the coach, glancing upward in time to see a red number '12' floating out of her head, and through the roof of the coach. It joined the other damage numbers from the collision.

“Stay here! Stay down!” Sergio told her, drawing his short sword and jerking the door open. A gun cracked and splinters exploded next to his head but the veteran guardsman just rolled out of sight into the darkness, and she heard him scrambling away.

“You go right,” Nunzio said, gesturing to Matteo. “I'll hold the carriage!”

“What about me?” Chase shrieked, faking panic.

“It's not you they want! No way this is a robbery!” Matteo told her. “This is players, it has to be! Stay down until help comes!” He dug in one of the bags to the side of the compartment, and pulled out something that looked like a paper-wrapped rod. Leaning out the door he pointed it up, and fire flared. Something hissed out of the rod and went skyward, and a second later green light flashed far above.

Okay, that's new, Chase thought. She hadn't expected that.

But then Matteo was gone, slipping into the night, green light flashing on drawn steel before he was out of view.

“I'll keep you safe,” Nunzio promised. She nodded, making sure fear showed on her face.

They were good men. Just on the wrong side, that's all.

She hoped she didn't have to kill them.

The fact that they were reacting just like the last time one of their carriages had been attacked was promising. The light in the sky was new, though, and it wasn't going away anytime soon.

It would have been a problem... except that the plan didn't depend on darkness.

Movement to her side, and Chase glanced around. She saw nothing for a second, then she saw a blur in the air, as if an errant cloud of mist had entered the carriage.

“Pommel Strike,” someone said, and Nunzio whirled, knife out—

—and fell as something cracked into his head, sending a yellow '125' into the air.

Then, as Chase watched, the mist solidified, showing dark green cloth and black fur, and a red mask over a face that the halven girl couldn't quite make out. The mask only concealed the figure's face, but the overall shape of the head slid from her vision. The more she tried to focus on it, the less the details stuck in her head.

But it didn't matter, because she knew who was behind the mask. “Cagna,” Chase whispered, “we're going to have to go with plan F.”

“Are you sure?” Cagna growled back.

“Positive.” Chase reached up to the fur around her neck and stripped it off. “Renny?”

“Here!”

And with a quick wiggle and a rush, a tiny plush toy poked its way out of Cagna's coat and leaped for Chase's throat.

“Oof!” Chase barely caught him, tucking him into place, and fiddling with the fringes that he'd sewn onto himself earlier that night. With a few tucks, he'd be almost indistinguishable from the ratty stole she'd worn to this point.

“Here,” Cagna said. “Here's hoping you don't need them.” She offered a simple wooden case, and Chase shot her a smile of thanks as she slipped them into the hidden pocket behind her shift.

“You're going to have to make it look good,” a muffled voice said from behind the wagon's partition. It was a man's voice, mean and low and barely on this side of the edge of sanity. “Going to have to get bloody.” He drew out the word, turning into a lunatic's gasp, and even though Chase knew him, knew it was an act, still she shuddered.

“I don't like you this way,” Cagna whispered back. “Get ready to yell, Bastien.”

“Oh, I'll yell... but will Chase scream?” Again, with the dragged-out word.

“Let's do this,” Chase said, and spread her arms.

“Sorry, then.”

And without any more preamble, Cagna drew a knife and stabbed her.

Chase didn't have to fake the scream. It hurt. But immediately after her first yell, Bastien roared, roared so loud that the carriage shook.

Chase barely heard Cagna say “Camouflage,” and then her friend was fading, back into the misty space of nothingness. A whisper of cold winter's air was all she left behind, as she left the carriage, left Chase to bleed and thrash around.

It wasn't a deep cut. But Chase spread the blood around as best she could, until she heard shouts and running feet returning. And just as Matteo came back into sight, she let herself fall limp off the seat, mouthing words once she couldn't see his horrified face any longer.

“Silent Activation, Feign Death,” Chase shaped the words and felt her muscles go limp, felt her eyes roll up, and her senses dull.

Your Feign Death skill is now level 7!

She'd practiced as much as she could to get it as high as she had. But time had been short, and the window of opportunity didn't allow perfection. This was the crucial part of plan F, this was where everything worked out... or it didn't.

Every vision she'd gone through had suggested that it would, but fate was far from a certain thing. Every omen she'd read had left out a few important details, or shrouded them in indecipherable terms.

So her faith and divination had been augmented by reason, logic... and the knowledge that she would have to gamble at some point here.

Then the guards were back, yelling, and wood was breaking in the back of the carriage. That was the second part of Cagna's distraction, the faked escape. Matteo was shaking her limp form, but she couldn't see him since her eyes were turned up.

Matteo's screams cut off when her bowels voided. That's about the point he dropped her back on the seat and left her seemingly-lifeless corpse to its own devices. Chase hated this part of the skill, but it was necessary to sell the performance. To sell the con. People who got killed suffered that last indignity, everyone knew that. Especially a bunch of hardened prison guards.

She could barely hear in this state, barely feel as the coach doors shut, and it rattled to a start again. This close to the prison they couldn't dump her body. This close to the prison, they'd have to take her inside.

Secret prisons required secret graves, after all. That was the nature of the dark business. That was what Chase and the others had learned, after spending several weeks studying the place.

And only when the 'fur stole' around her neck squeezed three times, did Chase come back to herself. With a thought she canceled the skill, and blinked her eyes, coughing and gasping as her breathing quickened.

“We're here,” Renny said, as she sat up on a stone table meant for corpses much bigger than her own frame. “They bought it.”

“Good,” Chase said, staring around at the empty operating theater, and the many, many sharp tools and medical instruments laying haphazardly around the workspace. “Now comes the hard part...”

CHASE'S CHARACTER SHEET

Spoiler: Spoiler

Name: Chase Berrymore

Age: 15 Years

Jobs:

Halven level 11, Cook level 5, Archer level 7, Gambler Level 2, Grifter level 12, Medium level 7, Oracle level 15, Painter level 2, Teacher level 6

Attributes / Pools / Defenses

Strength: 65 Constitution: 38 / Hit Points: 103 / Armor: 10

Intelligence: 68 Wisdom: 117 / Sanity: 185 / Mental Fortitude: 55

Dexterity: 128 Agility: 66 / Stamina: 194 / Endurance: 0

Charisma: 206 Willpower: 55 / Moxie: 261 / Cool: 65

Perception: 92 Luck: 220 / Fortune: 312 / Fate: 44

Generic Skills

Archery – Level 1

Brawling – Level 8

Climb – Level 15

Dagger – Level 2

Dodge – Level 13

Fishing – Level 14

Ride – Level 10

Stealth – Level 18

Swim – Level 7

Throwing – Level 31

Halven Skills

Fate’s Friend – Level N/A

Small in a Good Way – Level N/A

Cook Skills

Cooking - Level 20

Freshen - Level 12

Archer Skills

Aim – Level 9

Demoralizing Shot – Level 2

Far Shot – Level 1

Missile Mastery – Level N/A

Quickdraw – Level N/A

Rapid Fire – Level N/A

Razor Arrow – Level 8

Ricochet Shot – Level 20

Gambler Skills

Ace in the Hole – Level 2

Assess Challenge – Level N/A

Cardsharp – Level 9

Gambler’s Fortune – Level N/A

Hold’em – Level N/A

Grifter Skills

Feign Death – Level 7

Fools Gold – Level 4

Forgery – Level 11

Master of Disguise – Level 15

Old Buddy – Level 7

Pickpocket – Level 19

Silent Activation – Level 30

Silver Tongue – Level 32

Size Up – Level 8

Unflappable – Level N/A

Medium Skills

Bad Fortune – Level 15

Crystal Ball – Level 9

Focus Vision – Level 5

Fortuna – Level N/A

Good Fortune – Level 16

Palmistry – Level N/A

Séance – Level N/A

Stack Deck – Level N/A

Oracle Skills

Absorb Condition – Level N/A

Afflict Self – Level 1

Diagnose – Level N/A

Divine Pawn – Level N/A

Foresight – Level 42

Grant Vision Level 7

Influence Fate – Level 11

Lesser Healing – Level 44

Omens and Portents – Level N/A

Random Buff – Level 9

Short Vision – Level 16

Transfer Condition – Level 15

Painter Skills

Fast Dry – Level N/A

Painting – Level 5

Teacher Skills

Lecture – Level 24

Red Ink – Level 3

Smarty Pants – Level N/A

Unlocked Jobs

Farmer, Herbalist

Gear

Enrico’s Last Hand