"So, you're heading out on Monday?" Dad asked, over dinner.

  "Yep," I said, before spooning another mouthful of leek-and-potato soup into my mouth. "I've got a bunaps, I pnned out the route, and I did a little test drive on some of the dirt roads out in the try to chee assumptions. You mind cheg my work, actually? I'd rather find out I missed something now, rather than when I'm five hundred miles away and just broke an axle on a rockslide I wasn't expeg."

  "Sure, sure," Dad said. "So, who all is going with you, again?"

  "Talia and Faith, plus Emily Redwater, one of Duke Redwater's daughters," I said. "She's a fully-trained Healer, and she's also Amelie Rosepetals' hearth-daughter."

  "Oh, that Emily," Dad said, nodding. "Yeah, I've heard about her. Local Healer's Guild has been hyping up their prodigy for a while now, and Amelie 't go ten minutes without talking about how proud she is of her children."

  "Does she at least talk about Robert?" I asked.

  "Oh, for sure," Dad said. "Says Robert would've made a good Healer too, but that she's also proud he's making food carpenter instead. I'm gd Jenny was looking for an apprentice when she was- errand-boy for the publishing house isn't bad work, but it's not something you take as much pride in as building good furniture, you know?"

  "Yeah, I getcha," I said, nodding. "Right, well. Here's the map." I reached into my coat- the dowo having so many bag of holding charms on its pockets was that I kept pretty much everything in my coat, and became very unwilling to take it off even in situations where it was textually inappropriate- and pulled out a map that was big even folded up into sixteenths, and rinted on thick, tough paper.

  Dad took the map and scooted ba his chair, humming quietly as he unfolded the map and began to read it like a neer.

  "...Huh," Dad said. "You're not going around the Bck Desert?"

  "The way I figured it, the Bck Desert is dangerous to travelers more because it's just dry aively lifeless, and you 't resto food and water," I said. "Not because it's, you know, full ons that will eat you, or whatever. So long as we cross the Bck Desert quickly, then we should be fine. Besides, it'll shave a whole day off the trip- why wouldn't I gh it?"

  "You know there's no roads in the Bck Desert, right?" Dad asked. "Wheeled vehicles don't tend to agree with deep sand, after all."

  "I'm aware," I said. "I've got two sets of these steel ptes ected to each other like a , and when I get to the desert, I just loop those over the wheels to make a way bigger tact patch, letti through the sand without w about it."

  "...Alright," Dad said, relenting. "I think you could afford the extra day's detour, but clearly you did think this through, so... I don't have any arguments to make besides 'I've got a bad feeling about this.'"

  "You might want to listen to your father," Mom said. "He's no oracle, but his intuition is rarely wrong."

  "It will be fine," I said. "Besides, I want to see the Bck Desert for myself. I don't want my trip across half the tio just be pins, forests, and rivers. Those are cool, but I live ier; I've seen those things before. I wanna see something different."

  "It's your funeral," Mom said, shrugging.

  "Sorry, hon," Dad said, shrugging helplessly. "You know how stubborn we Iro me."

  "I disowned my own mother more than two thousand years ago, and I still won't talk to or about her," Mom said dryly. "If we're arguing over who's to bme for Joseph being a stubborn jackass, I think we safely point the fi me."

  "I mean, it could also be the case that I'm just 18, and being stubborn is a on symptom of that dition," I pointed out. "Fuows I'd hardly be the first teeo settle on a mildly inadvisable course of a and refuse to take the adviy elders that would push me off that course."

  "He's got us there," Dad said. "Whatever the case may be, though, have you at least talked this over with your passengers?"

  "Talia wants to see the Bck Desert too," I listed off, ting on my fingers. "Faith says she's fih it, as long as we pa extra week's worth of food and water. And Emily just kinda shyly says 'Okay, sounds good, whatever you say.'"

  "...Are you sure she's cut out to join the Adventurer's Guild?" Dad asked.

  Memories swam to the surface.

  "So, Emily," I began.

  We'd just finished a hypnosis session, preparing her for the most basic application of the Are Arts, and she was feeling more awake than usual- a on side effect of ing out of a well-executed trance.

  "Yes?" Emily asked, turning to face me.

  "I have to say, you really, really don't seem like Adventurer material to me," I said. "You're a lovely person and I'm gd I met you, but you're just... You're kind of a pushover, holy. You're not very assertive, you don't seem very fident, and you are so fually unskilled at the basics of bat that I have had to teach you how to properly form a fist so you punch things without breaking your thumb four times now."

  Emily ged a little, before wilting.

  "I just... I don't get it," I tinued. "Why the hell do you want to join the Adventurer's Guild? It 't just be for the education- you're a favored daughter of Duke Redwater, you just go to a normal high-quality uy that doesn't ence you to get into fights stantly. Help me uand, here."

  "...Do you... really o know?" Emily asked, gnawing at her lip.

  "...As much as I want to ence you to be more assertive and stand up for yourself, I 't let that defle stand," I said, my shoulders sagging. "I'm sorry. But... Yeah. I do, in faeed to know. My job is to protect you, and that means I have to keep you alive by any means necessary. If it turns out the best way to protect you is to vince you to stay home and keep walking the path of the Healer?" I shrugged. "Well, that's what I have to do."

  "...Alright," Emily said quietly. "I'll tell you."

  "...I had my doubts," I said after a long pause, thinking about what Emily had told me. "But... when I asked her if she was cut out for the Adventurer's Guild..." I paused again, chewing on my thoughts, trying to massage them into coherent, well-formed sentences. "...I mean, here's the thing. Anyone who is cut out for the Adventurer's Guild has something deeply wrong with them. Saable, and right-thinking people are generally very unfortable with violence- seeing it or doing it. Someone who's fortable with violence, who live with themselves after using it regurly to make a living... There's something wrong with them, you know?"

  "I'm aware," Mom said dryly. "I did marry your father, you know."

  "Hey now," Dad said, as though he did not still carry the trauma of the War of the Roses in his heart, as though the white-hot, rapturous anger did not still burn indest in his soul every time he saadin.

  "Are you going somewhere with this, Joseph?" Mom asked.

  "When Emily told me her reasoning for joining the Adventurer's Guild," I said carefully. "My first thought was... 'Holy shit. There is something deeply wrong with this woman.'"

  "Ah," Dad said.

  "So, yeah," I said. "I do think she's fucked up enough to join the Adventurer's Guild. Frankly, I think she's a better fit than I am, and I literally decapitated a man ireets."

  "Are you worried for your own safety?" Mom asked.

  "No," I said. "She likes me, and takes the whole 'sworn protector' thing very seriously. She's culturally a half-elf, after all, so to her, the idea of an elf being a knight isn't a silly joke, it's an evocation of the old stories she was told as a child by her hearth-mother."

  "Well, that's good," Dad said. "Seeing as you'll have to share a portable house with her. Hey, by the way, did you want your mother or I to help you make it even bigger on the inside, give you some more room?"

  "Huh? Oh, no, it's fine," I said, shaking my head. "Jenny does really good work with folding furniture, and the space we've got is used really effitly. I've been sleeping in one of the rooms in that thing ever since I got it back from Jenny, and I actually really like it. But, um, I wasn't finished. Like I said, I'm not worried about my safety. Just, uh... Just that of everyone else around her."

  "...She really is Adventurer's Guild material," Dad marveled.

  "You should be saying that like the deep insult it is," Mom said bndly.

  "Hey now, our son is Adventurer's Guild material," Dad protested.

  "No, he is not," Mom said. "Joseph may be a bright young man with a remarkable talent for violence, but he is not an amoral brigand who's only out to enrich himself. That is what an Adventurer is, Napoleon. They're not the Hikaano equivalent of Mage-Knights- that's the Rangers and you know it. An Adventurer is just an unusually wealthy bandit who doesn't necessarily pay tithes to Fingers."

  "That just means he has a moral pass," Dad said, shrugging. "The fact of the matter is, Ariel, our son is capable, both in body and spirit, of looking a man in the eye, and accepting that he might have to kill them. The part at the end where a typical Adventurer would milk the situation for all it's worth, and steal everything that isn't nailed down, that part he won't do, but... Frankly, that just means I trust him more with the sort of bullshit the Adventurer's Guild is called on to handle."

  "Right, well, if you two are doing my qualifications and my moral pass?" I asked.

  "Sorry," Dad said.

  "What's your feedba the route I've pnned?" I asked. "Aside from the risks involved in crossing the Bck Desert."

  "Hrm... Well..." Dad hummed quietly. "...You're following the major roads, and mark all your stops for the night in major towns or cities, instead of just drawing a straight line across the ndscape. That's good, means you paid attention when I taught you this. Let's see, let's see... Ah, here we go. This town here, Bardale, is almost entirely human, and noted as being particurly hostile to elves. I'd suggest you go around it, rather than through it, and definitely don't stop there for the night."

  "Fair enough," I said. "Alright, where's the pce that'd be a good alternative stopping point for the night?"

  "Let me get my almanac out, I o chee things..."