"So," Ember began, with a gesture at the cliff now getting farther away in the distance behind them, "why do you even have bandit attacks, anyway? You've mentioned before that this is a regur trade route, so shouldn't it have some sort of, I dunno, improvements, reinforcement, that sort of thing?"

  By the time the cart had made it to the upper level, the st of the bandits was nowhere to be seen, and so the three of them had settled in as much as possible as the engineer coaxed the whining artifacts to their safe limits of operation. It was difficult to estimate precisely because of the retive ck of ndmarks, but despite its size and load the cart was easily twice as fast as Ravenna and Fern had been on foot, even pushing themselves, and likely even faster. The four days from Junction would undoubtedly drop to less than two, barring any unforeseen trouble.

  Immediately after she'd pinged for aetheric traces and found nothing of note, Fern had buried her nose in her new astrology book with an almost concerning hyperfocus. Ravenna couldn't seem to push through the awkwardness to bring up their issues, so she too had fallen silent. The healer's question gave her a chance to speak about something, at least. "It's hard to pin the bme precisely," she began, shifting atop one of the crates and pcing her gloved hands on her p. "My typical answer is 'the aristocrats', of course, but there's more to it than that. There's simply not much out here; no need to have any sort of presence, to devote time and people and materials toward improving the situation when all it would do is make shipments and transport a little safer and a little cheaper. Or at least that's probably how it's seen in some noble's or merchant's bance sheet. You don't build an empire, mercantile or otherwise, on altruism."

  Ember frowned at this. "Can't fault your reasoning, I guess. But even that doesn't spontaneously create bandits out of ordinary citizens, you know?"

  She sighed quietly. "No, it doesn't. It's the same problem as it's ever been, really. People who have nowhere else to turn to, no other way to support themselves, will end up going outside the boundaries that their society establishes, whether it's a small community or a city the size of Bckgss Bastion. Either the resources aren't there to support them - safety, living space, and food, at a minimum - or they've been pushed out for other reasons that have nothing to do with scarcity."

  The healer pondered this for a moment. "You're a noble though, yeah? You've got holdings - including Angelisse's, once that deal goes through. If you have the power to do something about the situation, why not? Or is creating things like that beyond your ability, or against some sort of Rules or something?"

  Ravenna blinked, then crossed her arms. "I... can't say I've given it that much thought," she murmured, "but you may be right. Bandits don't do what they do because they like it, after all. It's a rough and dangerous way to live. If they had another way to survive... if I could provide that, somehow... but how, is the question." She fell silent. All this time I've simply accepted the existence of bandits, and in doing so, given the other nobles a lever to use. That is what they do, after all; exploit those with no other option. Coerce with coin, threaten with steel. But what if that lever... simply wasn't there to be used? To create, instead of destroy... "Hey... Fern," she started, hesitantly. "You did guild jobs for a long time, right? How would you compare that to, um... the 'skill set' bandits have?"

  Fern paused mid-turn of the page to look up. "What? Oh." She sighed quietly, and put a marker in the book. "Sorry, I wasn't paying much attention, I'm trying to wrap my head around all this stuff. What was the question?"

  "If I was trying to employ bandits in a more productive way, do you think the guild is a good model to follow?" she summarized.

  The fallen hero blinked. "Employment, huh. Well, I can't say I think much of the guild, considering they're run by nobles and they tried to kill me. Er, twice? I think? And you once? Wild when you look at it like that." She paused for a moment to think. "I guess the nicest I can offer is that it's a functional model. But it's vulnerable to the rich and powerful steering it to their own ends, and that's kind of the problem you run into with any sort of system, ultimately. If something works well enough, someone's going to try to exploit it for themselves; and the nobles have the power to get there first, or make the most attempts at whatever it is. Everyone else just has to py along, especially if it's the only game in town. Which it is, at least in Pinsgate."

  Ravenna frowned. "And the guild themselves would undoubtedly look unkindly on any competition, and seek to remove it from the picture. I suppose there's no easy answer to something like this."

  The three of them - plus the two in front who were rather pointedly ignoring the conversation - sat silently for a while as the cart whined along at an easy pace. After a moment, Fern reopened her astrology book and resumed her reading.

  "There's never an easy answer when lots of people are involved," Ember offered eventually. "But if you're trying to fix something that's a big problem, maybe start small first, instead of trying to take on the entire world yourself, yeah? You're only one woman, and there's a reasonable limit to how much you can expect of yourself. Pushing too far is just gonna lead to failure and discouragement."

  Ravenna gnced over at the fallen hero and sighed quietly, before returning her gaze to the healer. "You're right. There are things I still need to fix in my own house before I go trying to work on someone else's."

  By the time the cart stopped for the night to let the merchant rest - that was the main concern, after all, since he was the one paying everyone else to do their job - the outlying farms of Junction were just barely in sight at the edge of the horizon. Or they would have been, if there had been enough light to see.

  Dinner was a meager affair; Ravenna had intended to spend a little more time in the port to restock for the trip back, but finding transport and getting on the road had come first. The compressed bars were hardly bad, just... not very pleasant, compared to a proper meal. Ember had no qualms at all, of course; none of the hardships of travel prompted so much as a raised eyebrow. Even the shared realization that they had a single tent and only two sleep sacks between them only elicited a little shrug. "Won't be the first time I've slept out under the stars," she expined, "and I wouldn't expect it to be the st, either."

  "Why don't you turn in first, Your Ladyship?" Fern offered, with a little smile. "You've been through the worst of it, after all, compared to us two."

  Ravenna looked over at her, several emotions warring on her face for a moment. But a simple "okay" was all she returned, before cleaning up and retiring for the night. The merchant and engineer had already gone to their separate tents, so it was just the two of them now, sitting around the dying fire.

  "Not going to join her?" Ember prodded. "Even though she clearly wants you to?"

  Fern shook her head. "I thought we should talk a while first, since we haven't had the chance tely. And..." She sighed softly. "I dunno if she 'clearly' wants anything right now."

  The healer leaned back a little. "Worried about her head, huh?"

  "Yeah. I am." She gritted her teeth. "A lot more than I thought. She just - I don't know how to expin it, it's like, she's right there, she's the same person I've known all this time, and yet - she's somehow... wrong." A brief pause, and when the fallen hero spoke again, her voice was lower, more hushed. "I think there's something broken in her, but I don't know what to do about it. Or if I even can do anything. I've seen people suffer injuries before, but never anything like this."

  Ember looked over at her evenly. "It's barely been over a day, you do realize that, right? Look, I'm not an expert on this kind of trauma, but shit takes time. Time to heal, time to process. You were in bed for - I don't even remember how many days it was, after that poison nearly killed you. Even if you survived, for reasons I still don't get, it took time for your body to deal with the damage." She squinted. "And as I recall, you weren't exactly 'yourself' right away either, judging by the difference I've seen."

  "So you're saying I just shouldn't worry about it?" Fern half-growled. "Just pretend everything is fine and normal?"

  "I'm saying," the healer returned patiently, "you shouldn't reach the worst possible conclusion so easily. It won't help either of you. If you want to help her, then just be there for her. If she wants space then she'll tell you, but if I had to guess, she feels too guilty to ask for your presence when you're not offering it."

  She didn't reply immediately, just staring into the fire for a little while. Eventually her expression softened from frustration to grudging acceptance. "Do you always have the answers somewhere up your sleeve?"

  Ember ughed quietly, and this time the smile got to her eyes. "No need to pout at me, kitten. If I have any answers it's because I failed life's testing in the past, many times over. The lessons are a lot harder to forget, or dismiss, when they come with scars attached." She paused for a moment. "Even if they're the wrong lessons. So, y'know, don't assume I'm always right."

  "I suppose that's a fair enough warning. Also, that's the second time you've called me 'kitten' now," Fern noted.

  The healer blinked. "Ah. ... Should I not?"

  "No, it's fine, I'm just - not quite sure how to take it," she admitted. "I would say you didn't seem like the sort of person who would go for pet names, but then, you didn't seem like the sort of person who would hang around us two fools at all, after this miserable ordeal. So perhaps I've gravely misjudged you and what you're looking for."

  Ember waved a hand dismissively. "Nothing like that. I just still haven't gotten paid, that's all."

  Fern turned to regard her. "Oh? I don't think so. You're smart enough to know when it's time to cut your losses, and if that was all you cared about, you would have been gone already, back where you could find plenty of work."

  She blinked. "Well... fine then. Maybe I just wanted to make sure you two would stop floundering around each other and talk it out. Which you still need to, I should note. Is that better?"

  "Nope, still not good enough. Of all the things you seem like, a matchmaker is definitely not one of them."

  She huffed quietly, caught on the defensive for the first time in - how long had it been? Not that she minded terribly, all things considered. "What exactly are you looking for, detective? What do you want to hear from me?"

  Fern smiled. "The truth, naturally."

  Ember sighed, and tilted her head back, away from the faintly glowing ashes, and looked up at the stars. "The truth, is it? That's hard. I guess... it's just comfortable around you two. I am, I mean. In a way I don't understand, and that makes me want to - I dunno, figure it out."

  "And stick around, and be comfortable with us. Yeah?" she prompted.

  The healer hesitated, then sighed. "... Yeah. Something like that."

  Fern grinned lightly, though it was hard to see in the dark. "There now, that wasn't so difficult, was it?"

  "You're a persistent little... thing, you know that?" Ember grumbled. "And Her Ladyship is probably missing you right about now, too."

  "Perhaps. But don't forget," the fallen hero returned, rising to her feet, "you're allowed to want to be happy, too."

  Happiness, huh? She watched the silhouette vanish into the tent, and began smothering the ashes. Happiness and comfort. When she puts it like that, it doesn't sound so bad.