Free Diplomats and Fugitives (The Emperor's Edge Book 9) by Lindsay Buroker Page B

about her hair. It wasn’t as if she wanted to impress these men with her looks.
    “There are only two twigs sticking out of it,” Maldynado said. “I thought you might be thinking of going back for more.” He nodded toward the forest in the direction she had been looking.
    Basilard elbowed him, then gestured to Ashara. She had no idea what he said. Ignore him , she hoped.
    “What am I doing out here?” she muttered to herself in Kendorian.
    Careful not to mash her berries, she climbed back into the bed, finding her spot where none of them could see her. The lorry soon rolled into motion again, the steam engine chugging as it powered the vehicle up a slope. After Ashara put away her gathered goods, she pulled a leather thong out from under her shirt. A silver locket hung from the end, and she opened it to admire the tiny portrait of her children. This was what she was doing out here. She couldn’t forget it.
    • • • • •
    At the end of two days, Basilard knew far more than he had ever wanted to know about the infamous macadamia blight of the Kyattese Islands. But he knew nothing about their Kendorian comrade, or why Maldynado was still wearing the turkey hat. He clunked his head on the roof of the cab every other time he stood up, causing the small brim to push down to the bottoms of his ears. Each time it happened, their driver, Corporal Jomrik, who had informed them he was personally responsible for the army lorry, glowered back at Maldynado, as if his hard head might be damaging the vehicle. Maldynado ignored him. The driver muttered to himself and occasionally reached up to bump his knuckles against a pair of dried duck feet dangling above his seat. Basilard could only assume it was some Turgonian superstition he hadn’t heard of before.
    Someone must have told Jomrik that the mission would not be without peril, for he kept his rifle balanced across his lap as he drove. It hadn’t been out of his reach for eating, sleeping, or peeing, even though, since leaving the lowlands, they hadn’t seen many others on the highway. Now and then, lorries laden with logs had trundled past, heading toward the city, and they had crossed a Kendorian trader sitting on a wagon pulled by two stocky lizards. Basilard had been watching the road every moment of the trip, hoping to spot Elwa. He feared she and the courier must have chosen the back trails instead of traveling along the highway. During the summer, the snow pack was high enough that sticking to the pass wasn’t as imperative.
    “Your people have a border post up here somewhere, don’t they, Ambassador?” Corporal Jomrik asked in a thick drawl that marked him as from a rural part of the republic. “I haven’t been over the pass before. Not much out this way, I’ve heard.”
    No, most of Turgonia’s massive republic lay to the west of the capital, because that’s where the fertile land was. They had appropriated a lot of the mountains for timber and ore, but few people lived out in this range. It was more of a buffer zone between Turgonia and its neighbors.
    A few more miles , Basilard signed, making sure Maldynado was watching.
    “Around the next bend,” Maldynado informed the driver, his mouth full as he munched on an apple.
    Would it distress you terribly to translate my signs verbatim? Once in a while? Basilard did not want to sound ungrateful, since it wasn’t as if Maldynado was a trained translator, but Starcrest had sent him along for this purpose.
    “I like to add flair,” Maldynado said.
    Jomrik frowned back at him. “You’re not getting crumbs on the floor of my cab, are you?”
    “Of course not. Apples don’t have crumbs.”
    Jomrik glared at him, pulled a rag out from under his seat, and tossed it at Maldynado before turning his attention back to the road. The corporal couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, but he was not intimidated by Maldynado’s warrior-caste airs or the fact that Maldynado was, as he mentioned daily,