Ch. 14: Shelter

Adrian had no problems with trudging through the forest. As a prince, he was used to terrain that had been at least a little cultivated by human hands, but he was used to working hard, so he was fine in a place that was a little more wild. Unfortunately, Adrian had a big problem with his current situation.

Bastion had been complaining about Rosy ever since the stream incident. Half a day ago. The guy had been complaining nonstop for half a day, even though nobody cared about what he was saying at all. It was getting on everyone's nerves by now. Even Adrian, normally the picture of peace and understanding, was moments away from punching the guy in the face and leaving him in the woods by himself, if only they hadn't needed the bigot to introduce them to the Resistance.

"As reckless as you are, I bet you don't even know where we're going, do you?" Bastion asked somewhere towards the end of his complaining.

"We're coming up on it now. I'd say another hour and we'll be there. Maybe earlier if you shut up." Rosy answered Bastion, her irritation showing through. From her response, Adrian wondered if her bloodlust was starting to show up, but, remembering what she did to the last guy on the receiving end of her bloodlust, Adrian didn't dare bring the topic up.

Skeptical and mistrustful to the end, Bastion didn't shut up, and it took then about an hour to get to Rosy's destination, an abandoned cabin in the middle of the forest. 

Clearly, the cabin had been through some sort of war, because the outside was a mess and the glass on all the windows were broken, but it was a pretty nice sized cabin. Not quite fit for a noble back in Uriah, but close in size.

The closer they got to the cabin, the more clear it was that nobody had been maintaining it for quite a while. The wood that comprised it was starting to rot, and there were a few conspicuous holes in the walls. There were even a few the size of a full-grown human, but neither Adrian nor Bastion dared asking Rosy where she learned about the cabin. Unfortunately, Lily wasn't as tactful.

"Miss Rosy, this place feels creepy. How do you know about it?" She asked, tugging on Rosy's legs.

"An old target used to own it. He actually made that hole in the wall. Don't worry, though. He's the only one who knew about it, and he's long gone." She explained, pointing to a hole on the front-facing wall of the second floor. Not even Lily was dumb enough to ask how the hole was made.

"Please tell me that you got rid of the body." Bastion muttered, but everyone else ignored him. 

The interior was just as destroyed as the exterior. The entrance hall had a hole in the roof that went into the bedroom upstairs, and a large bloodstain on the carpet. The kitchen looked like it had been ransacked, and all the food haphazardly thrown all over the place in it was moldy and disgusting, smelling unbearably bad. Luckily, they still had enough food left in their bags to tide them over for quite a while, so the lack of food here wasn't a problem. 

Rosy and Lily claimed the master bedroom with the huge hole in it, while Bastion and I claimed separate rooms in the old servants' quarters (Unfortunately, Adrian ended up getting the room with the hole in the floor).

"What are you doing?" Shortly after we claimed our bedrooms, I found Rosy alone outside, pulling a bucket up from a well situated behind the house.

"Bathing. Changing our scents should keep the Markers confused for a few days, so we'll all have to do it tonight." Rosy explained, lugging the bucket back to the house. As it turned out, there was a nice bathtub like nobles used right inside the house. Adrian ended up helping Rosy fill it so that she and Lily could take their bath first.

"Was the guy who owned this place a noble or something?" He asked while they were filling the tub.

"Nope." She immediately shook her head, "Actually, he was a coordinator for merchants who specialized in the slave trade."

"Your country's made slavery illegal? Doesn't seem like it was that culturally advanced." Adrian wondered. As soon as it came out of his mouth, Adrian realized how bad that sounded, but Rosy didn't seem offended at all. She just shook her head.

"You're right. Noctus isn't that advanced. My father basically legalizes everything as long as he gets a cut of the profits, including slavery. Luckily for me, I needed some information from this guy about one of his clients, so I started tracking him." 

"I thought you said that this guy was your target?" He asked.

"Once I realized what his actual income was, compared to his reported income..." She trailed off, but the implication was clear. No greedy tyrant liked losing money, and Adrian didn't have a positive view of the slave trade to begin with. It was pretty much completely outlawed in Uriah for a reason, after all. He couldn't really blame Rosy for changing her target, even if the idea of assassination left a bad taste in his mouth. They finished the filling of the tub in silence.

"I think that's enough. Can you scrounge up some clothes while I find Lily?" Rosy asked him once the tub was full.

"Sure. And what it's worth, I don't think that you made the wrong choice, even if it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. If you have to cause pain, at least you did it to someone who probably deserved it." He told her.

Adrian managed to find women's clothing, but only moth-eaten maid uniforms, which not only wouldn't fit either of the girls, but also would probably infuriate Rosy. Instead of showing those to her and getting slapped, Adrian found some moderately intact men's clothing a few sizes too big in the master bedroom instead, and left those for Rosy instead.