Chapter 420 Tax Fraud And The Great Escape

DRAKENFELL — MAXIMUS SOUTH TRANSPORT ROAD

The prison carriage was an insult to engineering, to craftsmanship, and to the concept of prisoner transport as a discipline.

Guinevere Ashford sat on a wooden bench that had been designed by a person who had never sat on anything and hated the people who did. Iron bars surrounded her on all four sides. The wheels beneath the carriage hit every rock on the road with the precision of a driver who was doing it on purpose, and the jolting was rhythmic enough to constitute a pattern and violent enough to constitute assault.

Her manacles were silver-lined. Her wrists were raw. Her hair, which she had managed to maintain at a presentable standard throughout her trial, her sentencing, and her dramatic execution interruption, was losing the war against humidity and incarceration.

She had been yelling at the guards for forty-five minutes.

“I DEMAND A CUSHION.”

The guard on horseback to the right of the carriage did not respond. He had stopped responding at minute six. The decision to stop responding had been a survival mechanism, because responding to Guinevere Ashford’s demands was an activity that consumed energy, produced no results, and encouraged additional demands.

“I have a dragon. A DRAGON. Do you understand the diplomatic implications of transporting a dragon-bonded prisoner in a carriage that smells like wet dog and broken dreams? This is a war crime. I am going to file a formal complaint with Hale Ironholt, who owes me a cushion because he sat in a chair during my trial and his chair HAD a cushion and mine did not, and the disparity is documented.”

The guard on the left side of the carriage looked at the guard on the right side. The look said: How much longer is this road? The answer was four hours. The look that followed said: I am requesting a transfer when we arrive.

“Also,” Guinevere continued, because Guinevere Ashford did not require responses to sustain a monologue, “this carriage has no ventilation. I can smell my companion. He smells like regret and a diet I will not be investigating further. The least you could do is open a window, except there are no windows, because this carriage was designed by a sadist with no aesthetic sensibility and a grudge against fresh air.”

The companion in question sat across from her.

He was enormous. Roughly the size of Hale, if Hale had been constructed by a less sympathetic architect. His jaw was wide. His arms were thick. A scar ran from his left ear to his chin in a line that suggested the scar’s origin story involved a blade and a disagreement and the disagreement had been settled in the blade’s favor. His hands were manacled in front of him, resting on thighs that looked like they had been built for violence and maintained through commitment.

He was the most terrifying-looking human being Guinevere had ever shared a confined space with, and Guinevere had once been locked in a broom closet with Finnick Shadowclaw during a game of hide-and-seek that she had rigged and he had won by refusing to acknowledge the game’s existence.

She looked at him. The looking was direct, unafraid, carrying the specific energy of a woman who had been sentenced to death and rescued by a dragon and was currently being transported to a maximum security prison and considered the transportation the most offensive part of the experience.

“Ew.”

The word was delivered with the flat, aristocratic disdain of a woman who had assessed her seating companion and found him aesthetically insufficient.

The man looked at her. His eyes, which were small and deeply set beneath a brow that could have been used as a shelf, moved across her face with the slow, careful assessment of a creature encountering something it had never encountered in its natural habitat.

“What are you in for?” Guinevere asked, because she had been yelling at guards for forty-five minutes and required a new audience.

The man’s voice, when it arrived, was significantly higher than his body suggested. The voice was soft. Almost gentle. Carrying the specific timbre of a man whose exterior had been assembled by a war god and whose interior had been furnished by an accountant.

“Tax fraud.”

Guinevere blinked.

She looked at the scar. She looked at the arms. She looked at the hands that could have crushed a skull and were resting gently on thighs that could have kicked through a castle wall. She looked at the face that had made three guards reach for their weapons when the carriage was loaded.

“Tax fraud.”

“I miscalculated my herd deductions for three consecutive years.” He looked at his hands. “My wife told me to hire a professional. I thought I could handle it myself.”

Guinevere stared at him for five full seconds.

“You look like you eat people.”

“I’m a shepherd.”

“You are six foot four, covered in scars, built like a siege engine, and you are telling me you are a shepherd who went to Maximus South for math errors.”

“The scars are from shearing. Sheep are aggressive.” He paused. “The big ones.”

Guinevere opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “What is your name?”

“Bertram.”

“Bertram the shepherd. Tax fraud. Aggressive sheep scars.” She looked at the ceiling of the carriage, which was close enough to touch if she raised her arms and low enough to make her feel entombed. “I am in a prison carriage with a man named Bertram who committed shepherd tax fraud, and this is my life now. This is where the Moon Goddess has placed me. My dragon is in Drakenfell. I am in a box. Bertram is across from me. Everything is fine.”

“What are you in for?” Bertram asked.

“Fifteen charges. Assault, attempted forced marking, stalking across two sovereign territories, forgery of royal documents, filing a false criminal accusation, aggravated assault, assault by projectile, unlawful shifting, sustained psychological abuse, resisting arrest, and several others I cannot remember because the list was long and I was making jokes during the reading.”

Bertram’s eyes widened. The widening was gradual, progressive, each charge adding another fraction of an inch to the distance between his eyelids, until his eyes were approximately twice their resting size and his mouth was slightly open.

“You seem nice though,” he offered.

“I am a delight, Bertram. The charges are misleading. Context matters.”

The carriage hit another rock. Guinevere was lifted three inches off the bench and landed on her tailbone with a force that made her vision flash white.

“I WILL SUE EVERY PERSON INVOLVED IN THIS TRANSPORT,” she screamed at the bars. “I WILL SUE THE DRIVER. I WILL SUE THE HORSE. I WILL SUE THE ROAD. I WILL SUE THE ROCK THAT JUST ASSAULTED MY SPINE. THAT ROCK HAS A FAMILY AND I WILL SUE THEM TOO.”

The guard on the right side of the carriage developed a sudden, intense interest in the tree line.

Bertram watched her with the concerned fascination of a man witnessing a natural disaster from a safe distance, except the distance was three feet and the disaster was his seating companion and the safety was an illusion.

“YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED,” she continued, pivoting to the guards. “I AM A WOMAN OF NOBLE BIRTH. I AM DRAGON-BONDED. MY COUSIN IS THE KING OF NORTH SKARDOS. MY EX-BOYFRIEND IS AN ALPHA KING. I HAVE CONNECTIONS IN EVERY KINGDOM ON THIS CONTINENT AND WHEN I GET OUT OF THIS CARRIAGE I AM GOING TO—”

The carriage stopped.