Yuriko’s malaise lasted well into the next day, but they continued to press on. Desire didn’t sense any of the nameless, but that was only to be expected. Yuriko thought they must travel through the main roads and since her group used the backroads, there was little chance of overlap.

Still, by the afternoon of the next day, on the 61st Day of Water, they had little choice but to take the Faron-Haveena Road. Closer to the city, the surrounding landscape grew more and more cultivated, until there was hardly an empty field. There were a few crops traditionally grown during the Season of Water, such as carrots and other root vegetables. Most of the fields they passed had a maturing crop, and there was at least a guardian beast of some sort at the edge.

Dogs, aggressive goats, and farm boys to name a few.

The dogs barked at them rabidly, and a couple even charged at her, growling menacingly. One even nipped her trousers but was stopped by her condensed aura. She shook the mutt off and it flew back into its territory to resume barking.

The farm boys were the worst, though. As one, they all glared at the travellers and kept their hands close to their slingshots or quarterstaves. They eyed Yuriko and the others especially hard considering that they kept the hoods of their ponchos up. Well, she did. The others pushed theirs back enough so that their faces weren’t completely shadowed. Less suspicious that way.

They were hardly the only travellers along the Faron-Haveena Road, though the feds didn’t call it that. From what Yuriko heard, the Haveenains called it simply, the Haveena Highway. It stretched from Faron’s Crossing to Cierra Village and went through several Haveenian villages in turn before reaching the city itself. Then, it passed right through the middle of Haveena, out the opposite wall, and then onwards to Kadrac City-state.

The highway was filled with merchants, refugees, and warriors. The first morning that they started on the road, they saw a troop of levies marching north. They all stepped off the road to make way, of course, as did the rest of the travellers. The warriors didn’t wear ponchos, but everyone else did. It was a sunny day though, so Yuriko was the only one in sight with her hood up.

As the conscripts and their professional handlers came closer, she could already feel their eyes on her. Most of the gazes were curious, but the officers definitely had a tinge of suspicion in them. Yuriko’s heart pounded in nervousness. Would she have to lower her hood? While she was sure that they wouldn’t recognise her, she knew that she was too memorable. And since they were headed to the battlefront, word of her would reach those who knew her.

As they came closer, she saw one of the officers shift their path towards her. Her hand sought her arming sword’s hilt. There were at least two centuries of troops. Two hundred men and women, as well as dozens of fellow travellers.

Desire’s wordless song drifted into her ears. Then, the Chaos Lord grabbed the back of her hood and pulled it off her head. Yuriko blinked at the bright light and found herself staring into the officer’s eyes. The young man blinked, then shrugged and returned to his troop.

Through her rather restrained perception aura, Yuriko noticed that her hair had turned black, was quite a bit shorter, and her face had changed. It was all an illusion, of course, and she could break it as easily as breathing. Er, in fact, it was rather fragile and any forceful movement of her Anima could break it.

She held her breath while the conscripts passed. Afterwards, she pulled back her hood and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thanks, Dee,” she said.

Desire huffed, “You’re welcome, master.” She looked somewhat pale though, even through the hasty illusion she put on herself. “I can’t keep this up for long, since you didn’t feed me properly,” she added with a pout.

“Ehehehe.”

A new troop marched up the highway that afternoon, and also the next morning. They had spent the night at a village inn. The cost of a couple of rooms was nearly fifty Shekels, the price of a week’s lodging at the Golden Willow dormitory back in Rumiga City. The reason being that there were too many travellers at this time. They really shouldn’t have taken rooms, but camping out in the open would have been too risky.

On the afternoon of the next day, the 62nd Day of Water, they finally came within sight of Haveena City. Yuriko wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.

For one thing, its walls were nearly thirty paces tall, and its battlements were patrolled by a squad of crossbowmen at all times. The River Caradec flowed within a few hundred paces of it too. In fact, part of the city spilt over the walls and there was a mixture of slums and warehouses next to the river. Barges and riverboats plied the waters of a wider Caradec, though few actually went upstream.

Even as they walked closer to the walls, Yuriko saw a heavily laden barge push off from the quay and lumbered drunkenly downriver. It tilted heavily on the right side, er, starboard side, and it was a wonder that it didn’t capsize. As for what it carried, there were hundreds of wooden crates on it. Why they didn’t balance the thing out, Yuriko didn’t know.

There was a line to enter the city proper, and they reached the end of it mid-afternoon. It was at least several hundred paces long, and she wondered how long it would take to enter. Most of those in line were merchants, farmers with carts of produce, and other travellers that she couldn’t even guess the background of. Many more split away from the main road and headed towards the slums.

“Shouldn’t we?” she pointed towards the docks.

“I doubt we’d find out what we’re looking for there,” Gwendith murmured. “We’ll look, but I’d rather live in a cleaner area.”

“Uncle said to never ever stay at an inn in the docks district,” Braden offered, “and he’s right. There’s more than a city’s fair share of riffraff there.”

While waiting, she conversed with Sheamus and the twins, trying to brush up on her Wojan. After a week’s travel and practice, she could converse well enough but her accent still had Imperial overtones. Well, as long as she didn’t try to chitchat too much with the locals, she should be fine.

The line moved faster than she expected though and it was barely evening by the time they arrived at the gates. Desire put up another illusion for Yuriko and herself. The gate was quite grand. Wide enough for three or four wagons to go abreast. However, the lanes were currently blocked by something covered in canvas. The gate guards looked fierce and stern but they only looked at Yuriko’s group passingly and waved them through. It was the merchants and farmers that they examined more thoroughly. More often than not, those people were brought to one side and had their luggage and goods checked. As for travellers like themselves, they were handed a pamphlet and waved through.

Huh, wasn’t that too easy?

Yuriko blinked down at the sheet of paper that was handed to her. It was written in Wojan, of course. The letters were different from those used by the Empire, but at least the words were still composed of letters rather than characters. Ikash, the language of the Northern Barbarians and the Beast-kin of Bella plane, made use of complex and unique characters to write words. For that matter, so did Old Imperial. Anyway, her eyes swam as she stared at the pamphlet and she experienced the beginnings of a headache.

Shaking her head, she folded the pamphlet in two and put it into her hip satchel. She noticed Heron taking a look before doing the same, except he put the paper into a pocket in his poncho.

The city of Haveena was much bigger than Rumiga City and had been constructed on low and flat land. The city centre was higher than the docks and slums, of course, built on a man-made hill. The streets inside were paved with cobblestones and were curved towards the middle, where there were drainage holes every twenty paces or so. Pedestrians walked on either side, on a raised pavement while the inner lanes were devoted to carriages and riders.

This was only the second place she’d seen horses, the first was in Bella. They were a quite bit shorter here than those in Bella, and she overtopped their withers by more than a dozen inches. The horses were stout and muscular though, and even a single one could pull a heavily laden wagon.

“Are we going to live in an inn?” Braden whispered quietly, his voice borne by Asami’s Facet. “Or would you rather we rent a house? We’ve a few contacts we can use to keep things quiet.”

“Aren’t your contacts, your uncle’s?” Heron answered through the wind whisper.

“Uh, yeah.”

“And isn’t he a traitor?”

“That’s true, too,” Orrin sighed.

“Then I think renting a house from your uncle’s contact would be too dangerous,” Heron said, “What about the rest of you?”

“Sounds logical,” Gwendith said easily.

“I’ll go where you want to go, Lady Yuriko.” Sheamus said slowly.

“I guess an inn would be safer,” Yuriko decided.

The council did give them an operating budget, but she wasn’t sure how long it could last. She brought her own funds and she wasn’t sure if the others did so as well. The town wasn’t exactly rich and neither did they hold too much of the Federation’s coin. Alderman Rivos had given her a purse worth ten thousand Shekels. Ninety gold coins, and an assortment of iron, bronze, and three different-sized silver coins. She split the coins up equally among the nine of them and gave the excess to Gwendith to manage.

“How much for a night’s board and lodging?”

“It was ten Shekels for a single room,” Braden said, “but it would be more economical to rent a big room…well, two big rooms. Fifty Shekels for both, I think. Ah, but that would be at the Solemn Flower Home, located in Bonifar’s district area. Ah, that’s the western one.”

“I hope that’s not a ratty place,” Asami grunted. “Fifty Shekels, huh? We can afford to stay for several weeks safely.”

“That’s not counting our food,” Braden reminded her. “The big rooms don’t come with free meals. We can also rent a kitchen or buy from their commissary. Meals there shouldn’t be that expensive.”

“Either way, I think we have enough to spend. Not lavishly but no need to be too cheap,” Asami insisted.

The streets were narrow and twisting at times, but they eventually made their way towards the western district. The houses were built with overhanging second storeys, leaving the streets feeling a bit more claustrophobic than Yuriko was used to. Also, there was the unbelievable stink that made her eyes water.

She drew her hood back over her head and Desire released her illusion with a gasp of relief. After which, the Chaos Lord nearly bent over coughing when she inhaled a particularly noxious cloud when a horse passing by them excreted into a canvas bag hung right underneath its bum. Practically all of the carriages reeked of horse excrement, and Yuriko caught sight of someone emptying a porcelain pot into a hole next to a home. The alleys were stinky too, and she saw rubbish piled up next to the walls.

Wagons containing rubbish, and manure were in plain sight. Coupled with the enclosed spaces, and the crowded streets, it was only because of the mild weather that the stench of sweaty bodies wasn’t overpowering. What was troubling was that with her perception aura expanded, it was as if she had her nose pressed right next to the source. She hadn’t realised earlier why she was smelling it so acutely, while the others weren’t so bothered until she retracted her aura away from a refuse heap.

Now, she could probably learn to exclude odours from what she could perceive, but she’d never needed to before. So she retracted her perception aura and limited it to within her immediate vicinity.

After a couple of hours' walk, they finally stopped in front of an old-looking building made with yellowed bricks and tacky thatching. The sign on the door had a bouquet of wildflowers and she didn’t need to read the words to know that this was their destination. Only…

The open door revealed a common room filled with diners listening to a bawdy song from a scantily clad girl, and what words she caught only made her blush.