Bastion

Bear and Lena. They’re giving Bear his Greens afore they leave, and Lena’s gonna be on her Journeyman’s travels. They’re married,” he added hastily.
    Jakyr eyed the two of them with interest. “So you two are the cause of that near-incident last year. I’m surprised you haven’t made a comic song of that, Trainee.”
    “Call me Lena, and what makes you think I haven’t?” Lena asked, tilting her head to one side. Jakyr broke out into laughter.
    “Well done. Just picking your time to debut it?” he asked.
    “Some things are like wine and cheese: They need to age properly before you bring them out in public,” Lena replied archly.
    “Well said. Now, if you don’t mind my joining you?” Jakyr waved a hand at the bed, which at the moment was the only place to sit.
    As an answer, Mags and Amily moved over on the bed, making room for him. Jakyr took a seat.
    “Here’s the rough plan. Mags and I, Amily’s escort, and you and Nikolas will be the only people knowing your route. You will be avoiding inns, buying supplies as you need them, and overnighting in the caravan at Waystations. Bear, you and Lena will take the caravan. You were probably told that, but I have made a change, and Nikolas approved it. You’ll have a third party hidden in the caravan the entire time. Amily and her escort will leave once you’re gone and will catch up with you at a Waystation; the only people who will know which Waystation it is will be the person with you and Amily’s escort. At that point, the person with you will take Amily’s place, and Amily will go into hiding in the caravan. Meanwhile, Mags and I will leave going in another direction, double back, and pick you up on the road somewhere between here and the start of our Circuit. We’ll know your route, so it will be trivial to find you. And at that point, we’ll all become a team. This district has a reputation for being a particularly thorny one. The bandits that holed up in The Bastion were only the most obvious of the problems. This is no sinecure; it will be a real job, even a difficult job. We’ll have our work cut out for us.” He looked at each of them in turn. “Bear, I am counting on you to win people over with your skills and willingness to share them. Lena, these folk don’t see Bards all that often; they are more likely to talk to you than to me and Mags. You’ll be very valuable to us.”
    “What about me?” Amily asked, sounding just a touch forlorn.
    “You, my dear, will be your father’s daughter, possibly the most valuable of all,” Jakyr said with conviction. “I’ve been told of how you have mastered the art of seeming invisible, quietly observing and listening. Healers often have assistants. I know you’ve helped Bear out in the past, so you will be Bear’s assistant. You will be the one that goes to the locals and the markets for supplies, which will allow you to talk to them without anyone official-looking about. The more you can act like a common servant, the better. People will take you for being at their social rank, as opposed to the rest of us, and they’ll put down anything elevated in your speech as simply a matter of coming from the capitol. What Lena doesn’t uncover by coaxing it out, you likely will by gossip and eavesdropping.”
    Amily nodded happily. “I’ve watched Bear and Mags bargain enough, I think I can do it too.”
    “Don’t bargain too sharply,” Jakyr chuckled. “We want them to think they’ve been more clever than the city girl. That will put them off their guard with you. We can certainly afford to be a little bit cheated in return for getting a lot of information.”
    This was a side of Jakyr that Mags had never seen, one of the network of Nikolas’s intelligence agents as well as a Herald. Clearly, he knew his job and how to do it well.
    “All right then, I’ll leave the four of you to plan. I don’t think I need to emphasize that we keep this just among us, right?”
    “Everyone else gets told Lena and I are going out on her Journeyman’s round, and I’m going with her to teach,” Bear agreed. “And we got lucky to get offered the caravan, so I can carry a lot of supplies with me.”
    “And I’m going to visit unspecified relatives,” Amily added. “I’m going to be quite unhappy at being separated from Mags for at least a year and maybe more, but, then, I would be just as separated from him if I were here, which is something I’ll tearfully tell people over and over