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Stories from the Verse
Con Verse Lea
Chapter 68: Beam 150
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Hastings 249
The next morning after a light breakfast of cold rice mush with honey they began to discuss their next steps with Warren, now Spider, and a few other outlaws, similarly clad to conceal their identities. Ashleigh was present in her dress as Viper, and Beam guessed that at least some of those present were ignoring the fact that he was married to Ashleigh and thus this was her and that her father, Warren Gunsmith, was Spider. Some secrets were apparently only pretended. There were probably many people who could have betrayed Spider to the authorities. He wondered which one did.
That, though, was not the issue at hand. Rather, Warren was going to have to flee the territory. He could not flee the country--there was no place in this entire world that was not part of the country, unless you found a way to travel to another planet, which they weren’t even thinking about doing, as far as he could tell. The best plan was to travel to a different general’s territory and connect with the outlaws there, then settle down and become peasants in some back village where new residents wouldn’t be likely to be noticed. Ashleigh wouldn’t be able to visit, probably wouldn’t even know where they were, but then, some secrets had to be very secret.
The complication was her mother, Warren’s wife. Somehow she was going to have to be extracted from home, but the house was certainly being watched. If Warren went, they would grab him. Indeed, they would probably grab Beam if they saw him.
“I think I have a plan,” Beam said. “Anyway, I have the starting point. It will depend on your daughter, but if they’re not looking for her--which is a risk, because they might be--or if they decide they need to follow her to get to either me or you, she can pull this off. Then once we manage to get her back here, you leave for parts unknown.”
“It would be safer,” Warren suggested, “not to bring her here, but to meet elsewhere.”
“Absolutely, but I see two--no, three--problems with that. The first is, I don’t know where anything else is, so if somehow I lose Ashleigh, although I can still find you I can’t guarantee I’d be able to find safe pathways to reach you. The second is I don’t know how long this is going to take. We’re going to have to assess the situation when we get there, and might have to observe for long enough to determine the pattern of the watches and such. You could be waiting in the wilderness for days. The third is, if we fail, you might not know it.”
Warren nodded, and then Beam added a fourth problem. “On top of that, if you’re out there, it increases the chance that you’ll be caught again. Our survival depends on them underestimating us, and every time we confront them and raise our response, we both use our resources and reveal what we have to them. I’d rather not have to rescue you again. We’ll have to meet you here.”
“The problem then,” Bron said, “is what we do after that. We can’t really stay here, but I don’t know where we can go.”
“Right,” Beam said. “We’ve been in a lot of worlds where we had problems, but this one is unique. It’s not like we can take a castle and keep it, or find a hidden bunker, or take over someone’s pub and live there. And frankly, camping and hunting does not really appeal to me, and can’t go on forever, which of course we could. Any ideas?”
No one offered any ideas.
“Well, I guess first things first. Let’s go get Missus Gunsmith--”
“Amanda,” Warren offered. Beam was almost embarrassed he had forgotten that.
“Right,” he said. “We’ll figure out how to extract Amanda, and then find a campsite in the woods and go from there. Everyone pack up. Viper, you’re going to need your civies, so we’ll have to go by way of your glade, but you’ll also have to bring everything with you. Let’s get started; the day is slipping past.”
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with twenty other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #470: Verser Turnings. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
