Einfeld, she mused as she listened to Alexi’s tale. She’d heard something of its coup though she’d been young enough and immersed enough in her own troubles to have missed anything beyond that it had happened. She knew even less of its people. There were not many Einfelders about on the roads she’d traveled, she’d heard mention that they were a strange, reclusive people. She supposed it explained that faint burr of an accent in some of Alexi’s words that she’d not been able to place. A hold over from his country of origin perhaps? 

“I like to stay on the move,” she admitted. “Too much idle-time does not suit me.”

That had been one of the bad parts of convalescing, all the idle time to think of mistakes and all the things she’d lost. Her need to be busy had only grown as she’d been idle. 

“I have been her most often, but that’s because there is work to be found here easily, seeing how it is so central to everything. That’s how I came to know the Locust and Florie. It’s like a second home, but I don’t think I’d say I like staying there. Just that it is comfortable and I know my way around.” 

Not that her first home was something she visited if she could. She hadn’t even gone home when she was wounded, just sent letters and what money she could. She was largely rootless, something that hadn’t been so apparent when she’d been in the company, at Big Jim’s side. 

“We stayed at the Ocean once.” She admitted with pleasure. She hadn’t been to the coast often, staying mostly inland. The few trips to the shore were typically to get someone to a boat and to escort someone inland. They did not linger but for that one time when they set up camp on a beach with white sand and trees heavy with fruit. They had stayed a whole week before the ship bearing their contractor had arrived after having been blown off course. But then that had been the east coast not particularly near to Einfeld. 

“I haven’t spent much time on the coasts.” She added wistfully just as Honey snorted and drew her attention back from daydreams of warm waters, hot sand and the sweetly fermented juice of those white-fleshed nuts she’d loved so much. 

She cursed herself for the inattention and looked down the road some, her senses trying to catch all the things that might be lurking. Noting, silence, not even heavy silence. Just normal people passing through the woods silence. But then she saw it, a tree, felled and blocking the road. The narrow road that while well paved did not offer much of a shoulder. The underbrush was thick enough and came right up to the road that a horse would not be able to get buy. It was a complaint often lobbied at the King, that he did not tend to his roads. He cried poor and lack of funds for infrastructure and threw himself another party. That is until some messenger of his, or some friend of his is robbed and then the underpaid workers with dull machetes were employed for a little

“Well,” she said dismounting from her horse and moving towards the log. “Let’s hope this is from the storm a few nights ago.”

But then the messenger had passed them and she’d not seen his hoof prints on any of the crosspath’s. She unsheathed her sword.