“Whoa, Burnish!”

  For once the stubborn horse listened and dropped to a trot. He’d put good distance between them and the merchants, most of whom—if they were even bothering to chase Jessica—had mules or old mares. They weren’t catching up to Burnish any time soon.

  “What’s your name?” Jessica asked the lizard girl between her legs.

  “Riza,” the lizard girl said bluntly.

  Now that they were no longer galloping on cobblestone, Jessica felt the lizard girl trembling against her back. From her perspective, Jessica was an adventurer about to press her into a life of getting mutilated.

  “Okay, so, I am from another world, but I’m not gonna press you into my harem or anything! I mean— I say that like I even have a harem. I don’t. And I’m not planning on starting one,” Jessica said.

  Riza’s stark white hair, bunched up around her head like a cloud, rustled as she tried to turn around to look at Jessica.

  “What are you going to do with me?” she asked in a voice so paper thin and wispy it reminded Jessica of a snow flurry. It felt almost exaggerated how helpless she sounded.

  “I didn’t think that far ahead, to be honest. I guess I oughta drop you off where you came from,” Jessica said.

  The head underneath Jessica’s chin swept side-to-side.

  “I-I— we can’t go back…”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s gone. There’s nothing left.”

  Before Jessica could ask what was gone, Riza started sobbing.

  Emotional stuff was not Jessica’s strong suit. She was bad enough at processing her own emotions let alone someone else’s. Then there was the awkward fact that, until a moment ago, Riza had been an abstract damsel-in-distress. Now she was a named character even though Jessica had only just met her.

  “Uh… there, there?” Jessica said, patting Riza as the lizard girl let out hiccuping sobs.

  “Th-Thank you…”

  Jessica curled her fists in triumph at choosing the right response. Admittedly, it probably wasn’t healthy to handle the girl’s trauma like a dating sim dialogue tree (not that she had any notion of what that was), but results were results.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” Jessica asked.

  Riza sniffled. “My tribe is gone. We were hounded out of our ice caves by slavers. We lasted for a few months, but they— they picked us off. One by one.”

  Jessica ran out of things to say and kept trotting out ‘there, there’ as a tried and true classic. What she pieced together through the sobs and sniffles was that a band of animalar slavers had hunted Riza’s tribe of polar lizards to extinction in order to sell them to adventurers.

  Reptile girls were the newest fad and polar lizards were the rarest according to Riza. Jessica hadn’t expected fast fashion for kemonomimi, but here it was.

  As Riza’s tale continued, Jessica had a sinking feeling she wasn’t going to be able to just spring the girl from slavery and call it a day’s work. Whenever they broached the subject of what to do next, Riza not-so-subtly implied she ought to stay with Jessica.

  “You uh… you sure you don’t have family anywhere?” Jessica asked.

  Riza shook her head.

  “Any clan members?”

  “They were all killed or ensl—”

  “Right. Sorry, sorry. Um… is there an animalar city for runaway slaves, or…?”

  Riza shook her head.

  “What if I left you at Fort Neusa?”

  “The soldiers will send me back north into Kantai,” Riza said, referring to the wilderness Fort Neusa guarded against.

  “Where you’ll be…”

  “Captured by—”

  “Captured by slavers. Right. Yup. Um… Hmm. Gotta think about this one,” Jessica said as her mind scrambled for how to avoid adopting a pet lizard. A horse and a snake were bad enough. Plus, there was something off-putting about Riza and how desperate she was to come home with her.

  “C-Can I stay with you? No, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t ask that! But I have nowhere—”

  “Maybe. Gimme some time to think,” Jessica said, hoping a convenient way to pawn her off would appear between here and Elsifeya City.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  After Riza’s story concluded they rode into mid-afternoon and eventually the square turrets of Fort Neusa poked through the treetops.

  The ‘fort’ was little more than a palisade stretching a 150-yard gap between two cliffs. In the middle was a keep and a few extra turrets flanking a gate which was currently open and brimming with guards. To Jessica’s relief there was also a small village built to offer amenities to the garrisoned soldiers. She could even see the familiar sign of a Traehagen General Store.

  “I’m guessing you’re hungry?” Jessica asked.

  Riza nodded vigorously.

  Jessica hopped off Burnish and tied his lead to a hitching post beside a few other, lesser horses whom he did not care to share hitching space with.

  She patted him on the cheek. “Sorry boy. I’ll get you a treat.”

  Upon entering the store, Jessica was shocked to find that Traehagen General Stores were laid out exactly like a certain chain of combined gas station/convenience stores popular in the Ohio area. The food was a little more rustic, the lighting more natural, and the walls were logs instead of drywall, but in every other respect down to the enchanted ice chests with ale in them, this was that specific convenience store. There was even a kitchen with magical glowing scrolls and quills to write down an order with.

  Jessica squinted. “This is Sheetz. This is literally just Sheetz.”

  “Is that dangerous?” Riza asked.

  “It depends on the area,” Jessica explained. “The Fort Neusa location looks alright. I’m thinking about the mutton cutlet sandwich. How about you?”

  Riza gaped at the sheer size of the menu and the absurdness of scribbling down what she wanted.

  “They have already hunted it for us?” Riza asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Jessica nodded.

  “But they do not have bugs…” Riza said in disappointment.

  “Hopefully not.”

  “A-Anything is fine!” she squeaked, burying her face in her hands.

  Jessica squinted at the bizarre reaction. “Y’alright?”

  A slit eye peeked through her fingers. “I have no way to pay you in kind. My feathers were taken from me when I was captured.”

  Jessica shrugged. “I’m not expecting you to pay me back. You only just got rescued from slavery. I assume your 401k is gonna be inaccessible for a little while.”

  Riza’s eyes went wide. “I had many feathers by my tribe’s standard but I was well shy of four hundred and one thousand. I do not know that I could trade for so many in several lifetimes!”

  “Like I said. Free.”

  Riza shook her head so hard it turned her white hair into a snowstorm. “It is dishonorable for a member of the Sapikola tribe to accept a gift from an outsider without one to give in return!”

  “You kinda already did accept a gift when I rescued you, didn’t you?”

  Riza gasped and fell to her knees, slamming her tiny fists into the wood floor. “No! I am a disgrace! The last of the Sapikola tribe has spit in her ancestors’ face!”

  Jessica looked around at the other customers eyeing her like she was a mother who just hit her child. It also did not look great that the lizard girl was still wearing slave rags.

  “H-Hey! How about a payment plan? We can figure out some way for you to pay me, okay? You can stop slamming the floor now.”

  Riza looked up with beads of tears in her eyes. “B-But I have nothing to give.”

  Jessica thought about the mountain of work awaiting her as soon as she got back to Elsifeya. Katarina would want her bedtime story, Cappy’s torn clothes needed to be taken to the seamstress, the queen’s morphine needed to be restocked, Burnish had to be groomed, and if all that wasn’t bad enough she still hadn’t cleared a space in Melisande’s old apartment for a three thousand-pound snake monstress.

  “You probably know how to do stuff, right? Living in a tribe and all?” Jessica asked.

  Riza icicle slits gleamed with fire. “All members of the Sapikola tribe must know how to hunt and fish and to fight with bow, spear, sling, and club and to build huts and tend to animals.”

  “Ever told a bedtime story?”

  “I remember the ancient tales grandmother Pola told. I will try to tell them as she did. Would you like me to do so now?” Riza asked.

  “I’m fine for right now but that’s good to know.”

  While waiting for Jessica’s mutton cutlet sandwich and Riza’s berry salad, Jessica explained to her what she would be doing at the castle. Whether the overzealous lizard girl actually understood any of it was yet to be seen. There were moments when Riza felt unusually lucid, as though she were in on something Jessica was not, then the very next moment she would seem, for a lack of a better term, ‘primitive.’

  “I leave it in your hands to decide what amount of my surplus labor value is enough to repay you for rescuing me and giving me this meal. Until such a time I am bound to you in debt.”

  Jessica realized with dawning dread that she had just independently recreated serfdom, all while trying to get the lizard girl out of her hair.

  “Can we call it something other than being bound in debt?” Jessica asked.

  Riza cocked her head. “Shall we say I am in bondage to you until I have served your needs?”

  “Oh, wow, yeah, no, that’s even worse. How about volunteer service? You’re putting in volunteer hours?” Jessica asked.

  Riza bowed her head to the floor. “As you wish, mistress.”

  Jessica pulled her up. “Nope. Not doing that either. I’d literally rather you call me bruh.”

  “Yes, bruh,” Riza said.

  “Jessica is fine.”

  Aside from their meals Jessica bought Riza a pair of leather boots and a brown linen dress along with a couple apples for Burnish. Fortunately, the inheritance Sir Hayek unwillingly bequeathed was large enough to buy anything shy of an aristocratic title.

  Jessica sat outside at a table and watched Riza and Burnish race to see who could devour their fruit quickest. The winner was Riza by a landslide which left the little lizard girl enough time to gorge on the half of Jessica’s sandwich she couldn’t finish.

  Riza’s hunger was in spite of her being several inches shy of five feet and so light Jessica and her noodle arms could throw her on a horse. For being a small, supposedly helpless girl, she was quite hale.

  Riza noticed Jessica’s gawking and flushed. “I am not usually so gluttonous. My captivity left me quite hungry. I had nothing but cockroaches, fleas, and crickets to eat.”

  “I’m so sorry, Riza. That must have been awful!” Jessica said.

  Riza shook her head. “No, they were quite good. There were simply not enough of them.”

  Jessica nodded politely and offered to buy her another meal which Riza respectfully declined on the grounds of not wishing to put herself deeper into debt. And with their meals finished there was nothing left to do but deliver Queen Samara’s package.