Crow clicked his tongue and turned back to stare out the window on his side of the wagon. This woman didn’t seem to care if he keeled over and died so long as he learned his place on the way down. Her arrogance was annoying. The king had picked him for the mission because he had valuable skills that none of the knights could even hope to imitate, but she was acting like he was as disposable as a novice burglar. Her insistence that rationing the food was more important than his need to make up for a year of being underfed made him wonder how much they had been given for the journey though. If he’d been slapped on the wrist for eating just half a piece of bread, it seemed that the portions they’d been assigned were not nearly enough to satisfy his ravenous, prison-induced appetite.

A tense silence fell over the cart as they bumped slowly down the cobblestone road. Crow drummed his fingers impatiently against his knee, watching large houses pass sluggishly by the window. They were still deep in the land of the upper class, nowhere close to the border, and he was already losing interest in the trip. He would have preferred to spend his first day out of prison on his feet, walking to exercise disused muscles and asking around the local taverns to find out what he’d missed while he’d been locked up in a cell. Instead, he was stuck with a trio of inhospitable knights who wouldn’t even let him have a snack for the ride. It felt like a waste of a perfectly lovely morning.

Slumping irritably against the pile of blankets he’d claimed for a backrest, he glanced at Penelope again. She certainly looked like she was paying attention to him, but if she was anything like her entitled comrade, she probably wasn’t used to criminal guard duty. His lip curled upward in a mischievous smirk as he suddenly thought of an entertaining way to pass the time.

Righting his posture, the thief examined the supplies in the wagon until he came upon a particularly long and lumpy bundle. He smiled knowingly and crawled over to it, working the knotted twine that kept the sack bound deftly with his fingers. “Don’t mind me. I’m just looking,” he assured the knight, peeking at her over his shoulder before he continued what he was doing. As expected, he had found a collection of miscellaneous weapons that had been stowed away as spares for the knights. He whistled and lifted a finely crafted sword, drawing it from its sheath to get a better look at it. The silvery blade glinted sinisterly in the soft light of the early day, and he turned toward Penelope with a sly glint in his eye.

“This is an impressive piece of work,” he commented with the calculating air of a critic. “The king must think highly of you three to supply you with a blade this lovely.”