Juncture 4.4

The next morning, Jake and I walked out of the office into the blustery yellow day, seventy years or so before the Common Era. I was decked out in Roman military garb, dull metal armor covering my head, arms, legs, and chest, and heavy cloth over the rest of my body. Avice had handed it to me, and when I had complained about its lack of shine, she had impatiently informed me that the armor was dull and pockmarked because it had been in several real wars, and she knew it was trustworthy.

I also had a short sword and small shield strapped to my arm. I felt pretty cool, standing there, looking the part.

Jake got the worse end of the deal. Since he had obvious malformations, we had to keep him hidden. He was wearing a heavy grey robe, complete with hood and cowl. Underneath that, he was wearing a mask which he had apparently designed himself. It looked like the traditional happy jesters mask, made of white porcelain with carved swirls and sigils coursing over the surface. The difference between this and other jester masks was that while half of the face looked happy, with the smile and up-curved eye, the other half had inverted these details, making that side look depressed.

If I was forced to describe what he looked like, I would have had to say that he looked like some sort of evil alchemist.

It was pretty cool, but not as cool as my outfit, in my esteemed opinion. We made a pretty neat-looking team though.

Anyway. We emerged in a yellow-grassed field underneath a colossal marble waterway. Jake looked up, looked at me, pointed toward the aqueduct, and said “We should follow it.” They were the first words that he had said to me the whole day, and they were good ones.

We began travelling. After about ten minutes of following the waterway and appreciating the scenery, a city appeared, just past a hill that had been keeping it hidden in the distance.

I looked at Jake, he looked back at me. We both nodded, and kept walking in silence.

By the time we arrived at the outskirts of the city, the sun had dipped, obscuring itself behind the city we were heading toward. From where we were facing, the sun was a deep orange, almost red. It was beautiful. Unfortunately, my stomach was grumbling hard enough to distract me, and I couldn’t focus.

We had been walking for the better part of three hours, and I was both bored and starving. The heavy armor I was wearing made every step difficult, and I was pretty sure I had gotten dehydrated. Jake looked none the worse for our journey, but again, it was hard to tell underneath the mask and the robe.

We reached a large, open, wrought-iron gate. Two guards, wearing similar clothes to what I had on were stationed in front of it. They were both wearing short scarf-cape things that draped over one shoulder. One of them yelled out something that I didn’t understand.

Right, Latin. It had completely slipped my mind that the people wouldn’t speak English here. I kept my mouth shut.

As I was worrying about what to do, Jake stepped forward and said something that sounded similar to what the guard had shouted. In the midst of the language I heard him say my name and gesture at me. The guards nodded and stepped aside, lowering their spears. Jake stepped through, and I followed.

“What was that!” I hissed at him when I caught up, matching my pace to his. He kept walking briskly, forcing me to half-skip, half jog in order to keep speed with him.

“I’ve got an earpiece connected up to a translator,” Jake whispered back at me, his voice muffled slightly beneath the mask, “It hears what they’re saying and tells me what to say.” He stopped for a second and cocked his head slightly to the left. “Did you not get one?”

I shook my head. “No, I didn’t. I guess Siegfried or Dierdre or whoever only wanted one of us to be able to talk to them.”

“Well I agree with their decision.” Jake replied. “This way the person who has the translator will be able to take control of the mission in case anything goes wrong.”

I grumbled something about mutiny, but didn’t respond. Instead, I asked “So, what are we looking for, exactly? I wasn’t told, apart from that it’s pretty important.”

Jake was quiet for a minute, thinking to himself. Then; “I think it’d be better if I didn’t tell you right now. There’s no real reason that you need to know, and you might compromise the mission. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s why you weren’t told what it was before now.”

“That’s bull. What, do you think I’m going to have some sort of objection to whatever it is we’re grabbing?” I asked, irate.

“Probably, yeah. Look, just wait a bit. You’ll figure out what it is soon enough. Meanwhile, we need to find somewhere to stay the night. We’ll get what we need tomorrow. Look around for an inn or something.”

“Alright. I need something to eat, too, I’m starving.” I said.

Soon after we found an inn and bought a room with money that Jake had in a pouch. Luckily for me, the inn also had a bar-type place, and when Jake went up to the room I ordered us two meals. I sat down at a table and waited.

The meal I got was the best I had ever eaten. It began with a large wooden bowl of stew, silky with large chunks of meat. I was also given a heel of bread to mop up the liquid with. The next course was just a large chunk of meat settled nicely on a plate next to a mound of crispy potatoes. I spent upwards of an hour eating that meal, and I heavily debated walking back to the office just to come back here and eat it again.

I was incredibly satisfied when I went to sleep that night.