2 Moonlit

The boy waited, as dark-grey clouds drew across the black sky, only revealing the brightest of stars. He wasn't sure how long he was supposed to wait, and just the pure chance of waiting in vain made him nervous, almost anxious, as he tiptoed back and forth, turning abruptly whenever he heard a sound in the dark, empty streets. It was already quite late, and only few people, mostly of the kind he did not want to meet at night, were still wandering the cobbled roads of Voestrun. Only a block away, barely a hundred meters, a river flowed through the town, and the constant purl of the water allowed him to relax a little bit.

"Hey there", someone said, and the boy snapped around immediately, tensing his muscles reflexively, before he realized the person he had waited for had finally arrived. His face relaxed again, now looking at the small, hooded figure before him.

"You're late, Lia", he said, pretending to be annoyed.

"You're early, Fran", Lia responded, imitating his tone.

Fran grinned at her, trying to get a better peek at the noble daughter's face.

"You sure no one noticed you leaving?", he asked.

"You ask me that every time, no one has ever noticed", she responded, pulling her hood up slightly, a perhaps actually annoyed look on her face now.

"Just making sure", he said.

"Even if, what would you do about it, huh?", she asked provocatively.

"Run. Get the fuck out of here and make sure they don't see us together", he responded, first serious, then with a grin.

"Fair point", she smiled again. Thank god for that smile, he thought.

"You said you wanted to go somewhere specific that you needed my help with?", he asked, an eyebrow raised. They were still standing in the middle of the street, and he hoped nobody would come by until they started moving. It wasn't entirely safe to stay at one place for a long time during this time of night.

"Oh, right", her face brightened up more, "you know that there is a mercenary camp right outside of town, right? You said you know how to get out of the gates at night."

"Wait, what? You want to go to the mercenary camp?", he asked, perplexed. This was not what he had expected. Usually she just wanted to explore the parts of the city she didn't get to during day. Going out of town at night was crazy. Especially with these mercenaries around. Who knows what they would do.

"Yes", her facial expression still had a smile on it, completely unchanged by his reaction, "let's go."

"Wait!", he said, stopping her by the arm as she started to move, "are you crazy? What do you think mercenaries do with little girls that just walk through their camp at night?" The moment he said that, he regretted it.

Her smile disappeared as she looked up to him. "I'm not a little girl, and I'm not crazy. Now let's go." Her voice was harsh, and he immediately let go of her arm. She stepped past him, in the direction of the nearest city gates, closely behind which the Band of the Cormorant had set up their camp.

Fran caught up to her, now walking side to side, while he looked around, ensuring there wasn't any danger in the nearby area. The night had gotten colder than he had expected, and he wished he had brought his anorak along. His simple vest barely kept him warm, but it would have to do for now. Lia seemed fairly comfortable in comparison, her grey coat covering the majority of her body. Fran had told her to get one for her nightly journeys and was happy she listened to his advice. It's been almost five years since they first met and started to go on trips through the town when her parents and majority of the rest of the city had gone to sleep. Their guards really must be unprofessional to not have noticed her leaving almost once a week for the past five years, Fran thought, but then, most of the guards and soldiers in Voestrun were next to useless anyway. The only reason the city watch wasn't a complete disaster, was because the crime rate was so low in the first place thanks to the universally high living standard in Voestrun. Praise the guilds, he thought.

"You gonna tell me what you are planning to do in the mercenary camp?", he asked, trying to avoid her gaze as they continued walking. It would take them at least five more minutes to get to the door in the wall that the butcher often left open after closing his shop. Fran never understood why they didn't just bring in the pigs through the main gates, making a door in the city wall seemed like a careless contradiction, especially when you gave a pair of keys to a practically brain-dead butcher, who more often than not forgot his knifes in the hollowed corpses of the animals he butchered. Fran had been lucky enough to find one a year ago and now always carried it with him as a mean of security. Probably a false one, as Fran wasn't sure what exactly to do with the knife should a burglar or worse threaten him. So far, running had always done him a better job.

"Maybe, but probably not", she responded.

He frowned, but not towards her, and kept quiet. Angering her had never gone well for him, and he had no reason to. She had things she wanted to do, and they weren't of his concern, even if he enjoyed showing her around the darker parts of the city. Fran wasn't a noble. His mother had died giving birth to another child that he had never met. His father had left with said child, and he never saw him again. Fran had lived in a small hut in the poorer areas of the town that belonged to his parents, and got along by doing little jobs for some of the understanding and friendlier townsfolk. He didn't consider it a hard life.

They didn't speak as she followed him towards the door in the city wall. It was right behind the house of the butcher, and the smell of blood and fresh flesh creeped into their noses, even now. Fran had made sure that none of the guards at the wall would see them, he knew the routes and paths around the randomly scattered houses that were built in this area without any sense for order and logic.

"It smells disgusting", Lia commented, whispering.

"Butcher", Fran whispered back.

Contrary to his expectation, her face did not tense weirdly in disgust at the thought of killing animals for a living. Rather, she just nodded, before holding her hand in front of her nose to reduce the smell.

"Let's go", she said again.

Fran nodded. He really hoped the door was not locked today. He was not really appreciative of the thought of having to pick the lock. It would take way too long, and with his more than unrefined lockpicking skills, it would probably also make quite a bit of noise.

The two young adolescents snuck the rest of the way along the wall, before Fran carefully pushed down the heavy iron handle of the door. It dipped down easily, and he pushed against it. No problem, it opened immediately and he stuck his head through to make sure that no one was waiting for them on the other side. Clear, and the next building, a farmer's house, was also quite some distance away, which should make it easy for them to get out and to where they wanted safely.

He pulled his head back and nodded at Lia, before letting her step through first.

"STOP!", a voice suddenly burst out from behind them, and Fran jumped around in shock, noticing the butcher who had just come around the corner of the building.

"STOP!", he yelled again, before starting to run. Fran jumped back around, and pushed Lia, who also seemed shocked through the door and out of the city walls.

"I KNOW YOU, YOU RAT", Fran heard, before he closed the door behind him and started running along the wall in the direction where guards were less likely to be near. He dragged Lia along, but she seemed to be able to keep up with him by herself, so he let go of her arm. Fran didn't notice the door opening behind them, and just heard the shouts again, but he was confident that the butcher wouldn't be able to catch up to them; he had tried this before.

"COME BACK! HEY, KID! God dammit", was the last they heard, before they disappeared behind a range of trees that separated someone's farmland from someone else's.

"You okay", he asked in between heavy breaths.

"Of course", Lia responded, leaning against a nearby tree. Her breathing had already calmed down and she looked down at him amused.

"For someone who supposedly has to run a lot, you are oddly out of shape", she commented with a cheeky grin on her moonlit face. Her hood had been pushed back by the wind, and her silver-blond hair almost seemed to reflect the stars of the dark night sky. Fran grimased.

"Thanks for that", he said, before straightening himself. She chuckled, and he smiled.

"You think he is gonna keep chasing us?", she asked, not an entirely worried look on her face.

"No, doubt he would come out here by himself just for that. He might alert the guards though, no idea what they would do, honestly."

"I heard that they don't really want to enter the mercenary camp. They think the soldiers there are barbarians or something like that", Lia said, chuckling a bit more.

"You make it sound like you know better", Fran responded, an eyebrow raised at her, as he stepped back to lean against a tree.

"Maybe I do." Lia looked at her left hand for a second, before grinning at him. He knew what it meant when she did that. It's her way of expressing 'don't question me'. He had no idea where she had gotten that habit from, but he definitely wasn't going to question her about it.

"Where did you hear that anyway?", he decided to ask instead.

"I sometimes spy on my guards." She said that so casually and with such seriousness, Fran couldn't but laugh. She looked at him sceptically.

"You know", he said, "usually, the guards are there to protect the princess from being spied on."

"I'm not a princess", she responded, her eyes narrow, a little ray of death shooting straight from them into Fran's.

"You'd make a good one though", he grinned. This was the only way to make fun of her that he wouldn't actually have to regret, since it flattered her at least a tiny bit every time he called her a princess.

"Also, you are about as important to Voestrun as Princess Greycloud is to Avalon", he added quickly, extending the flattery.

"Shut up", she said dryly, "and that's not true."

She didn't seem genuinely annoyed, but Fran didn't mean to continue the mockery. If they were to send out guards, they would probably come fairly soon, and he wasn't planning to just sit here and wait til they did.

"What are we gonna do now?", he asked her.

She scratched her forehead for a moment, before pulling a strand of hair out of her face.

"We are gonna go to the mercenary camp", Lia responded then, and Fran wasn't able to find a hint that she was joking. He sighed.

"You serious? They'll find us for sure."

"No, they won't. Not if you are as good as you always pretend to be", she said with a provocative smile.

"Come on, this is different. In the city…", he wanted to say that it was easier, but he also didn't want to hurt his pride more than necessary, "I know the city, I don't know the camp." He considered this argument solid, but her smile didn't move an inch.

"Sometimes you can only truly test yourself by walking into the unknown", she quoted, but he didn't know who. He never knew who she was quoting, but her tone changed whenever she was doing it, so he had gotten used to it.

"Kyrion Nahas", she added, ready to educate her friend, "the Sanddancer. He won thirty-six arena fights in a row, before being hired to be Harusk's highest elite assassin. Harusk was the emperor of Braktea like… 200 years ago, I think."

Fran listened to her, while scratching the top of his head.

"Cool. Can we decide what we are actually going to do now, please?", he asked, not trying to sound too sassy.

"A bit of history would do you well", she said with a chuckle, ignoring his plead.

"Well, I'm gonna head to the mercenary camp now", Lia straightened up, before trying to orientate herself, "it was that way, right?" Her finger pointed along the wall, the direction they came from. Fran nodded. This girl would lead him straight to his grave at some point.

He hurried after her again. He had gotten used to it. She never let go of her stupid ideas as soon as she had started to pursue them.

"Wait", he called out as quietly as he could, "at least be sneaky about it."

"How'd we do that", she asked, smiling curiously at her frustrated friend.

"Just follow me." Fran cursed soundlessly, as he began leading her through the outskirts of Voestrun.

They had barely walked a kilometer, as the camp of the Cormorants became noticeable behind a small hill and a short forest range. Smoke from their many fires still drizzled towards the sky, but it didn't seem to be extraordinarily active at this time of night. Fran guessed it to be around two full hours after midnight by now. It probably wouldn't get much safer. Thankfully, the guards from the city didn't seem to have been alerted, or maybe they just didn't care. There was no point in hunting two children outside of town in the middle of the night. He just hoped that they wouldn't be waiting for them when Lia and him would sneak back into the city. Fran noticed how excited the noble girl was becoming, the closer they came to the camp.

"You really like adventure that much, huh?", he shook his head, as they climbed through a thick bush.

"Some doctors call it adrenaline, and yes, I love it", she chuckled a bit, before suddenly pointing at a nearby stem they were about to pass.

Fran sighed and flicked the sleeping bug off the wood. Lia smiled happily, as she hopped by the tree. That woman.

The two continued to approach the mercenary camp through the shadows of the trees. The night had slowly gotten brighter, as the clouds had now completely cleared up and the moon shone faintly down onto the dark-olive landscape around Voestrun. It was mostly quiet, brief breezes rustled the leaves of the trees around them, and they could hear men laugh occasionally. Fran wondered if a mercenary camp would be completely quiet at any point in the night. They probably set up night watches. There would definitely always be someone awake. God dammit.

"You sure about this?", he attempted for a final time.

"Yep", Lia simply responded, not even stopping in her track.

Fran nodded. It was hopeless. She would go in there, no matter what. There was a time that he wondered if her desire for adventure was some kind of sickness, but he denied the thought, as it had not been contagious to him.

They reached the end of the treeline. Barely ten meters from them, a long line of horses was chained to a tree, and a little stall was set up, that likely held food for the animals. Behind that, there were at least six more rows of mostly wake horses. Fran stopped Lia, who was about to simply walk up to them. He put a finger on his lips, and pointed to the right, where a little hill lead past the contemporary stable, and seemed to run along the border of the camp. Slowly, they skulked around the horses, before reaching the elevation unnoticed.

Lia stopped him, before looking him in the eyes.

"Wait here", she whispered, before putting her finger on his lip, and turning away from him.

"Are you kidding m-", he began, but she had already slid away and onto the hill, while he still stood at the bottom, no three meters from a large brown horse. Fran sat down and put his face into his hands, as he prepared to wait through the long, cold night. Again.