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much since I had no desire to start off the following day with a hangover. Eventually, I stumbled back to my room although, truthfully, I don’t actually remember the trip, and collapsed into bed and a dreamless sleep. This was something of a relief because I’m certain that if I had dreamt, it would have been dreams of Page, and that was simply not something that I had any desire to revisit just then. I was moving on with my life, and if she wished to remain entrenched and unchanging in hers, that was her business, and I absolutely, positively did not wish to dwell on it.
    Which is why I’m sure you’ll understand my aggravation over the fact that I continued to dwell on it even after I had left Bowerstone behind and commenced my journey along the eastern road out of town.
    I had a pack with my few possessions slung on my back. Through a lifetime of practice I had developed the knack of traveling light. I had a few changes of clothes, a flintlock pistol stuck in one side of my belt, and a cutlass dangling from the other side. I was rather proud of the cutlass, having taken it off a pirate who attempted to attack me in my sleep. I’d wakened just in time to kick it away from him and gun him down with a single shot from my pistol. He died with a bullet in his brain, which is as good a way as any for a pirate to die.
    I also had my flintlock rifle slung over my shoulder. It was a generally reliable weapon, and I’d had it for many a year, ever since lifting it off the body of a dead soldier whose aim had not done such a worthy weapon justice. Many in my line of work gave names to particularly favored armaments, and I was no exception. I had named it “Vanessa” after the first woman I’d ever slept with. It was certainly better than naming it “Prostitute,” which would have been just as accurate but a good deal less romantic.
    The buildings of Bowerstone thinned out and eventually gave way to a small village with a name that I didn’t even bother to remember. A stench wafted from the south. One of Reaver’s factories, no doubt, belching out smoke and fouling the air. Granting Reaver the license for building it had been one of the actions that helped fill the Bowerstone treasury and had fueled Page with the sort of outrage and suspicion that kept her bound beneath the city streets. On the other hand, the money in the treasury had helped to shore up reserves so that, when terrifying times had befallen the city, our leader had had the money to spend on the resources—soldiers, weapons, and the like—that saved lives. Not as many lives as we all would have liked, of course; but still, there had been method to the madness.
    Not that Page saw it that way. Clearly, she had no idea why people couldn’t make all the same morally uplifting decisions that she did without having to make sacrifices down the road that could have genuine life-and-death consequences. Gods knew that I had met many women in my life, and had it off with quite a few of them. But Page remained the single most infuriating female I had ever encountered.
    So why the hell had it been so difficult for me to leave her behind? Why did I feel like her eyes were upon me, studying me, judging me, and finding me wanting the entire way?
    How was it that she was able to annoy me even when she was nowhere near?
    I passed my first night away from Bowerstone in a roadside inn that was little more than a ramshackle hut held together by the fervent desires of the owners. I spent the early part of the evening listening to the local townspeople discussing matters of state as if any of their opinions were informed or even mattered. They seemed quite divided on the subject of our noble leader, some singing praises while others chanted dirges. It was fascinating that what some people saw as steely resolve, others saw as stubbornness. What some described as being willing to make hard choices, others declared to be proof