It’s like deja vu. But in reverse. Now we’re the assholes chasing someone down for stealing our mask. Life’s funny like that sometimes.

  The moment we’re outside, I realize we have a problem. “Um, Piper…where are the horses?”

  She sheepishly replies, “Yeahhhh, about that.”

  “…You didn’t hitch the horses, did you?” She just shrugs and shakes her head at me. “…Goddamnit, Piper.”

  So we’re doing this on foot. We bob and weave our way from one end of the crowded street to the other just in time to watch the soldier leap straight over a vendor’s table without even touching it. Piper lets out an astonished “Whoa” when he does it.

  He’s got a red hood pulled up over his head now. As if that’s gonna make him look any less conspicuous. Not to mention the mask wailing like a banshee in his hand while he runs. Piper and I bolt around either side of the table and then meet back up in the alleyway behind it just in time for the fucker to grab a carousel of stone cookware and send it crashing to the ground in front of us. Shoddy stuff shatters all over the place. I stop and yell, “Shit!” and then the two of us carefully hop around the mess.

  After that, we take off in a mad dash down the alleyway to catch him. Now here’s the thing, Piper and I are no athletes, but we do keep ourselves in pretty decent shape despite all the boozing and whatnot. But man—this guy is fast. He just keeps gaining distance on us the longer we chase his ass. It’s like one of those nightmares where you run and run and don’t get anywhere. And then it gets even worse. In the next alley, when we’re already about to lose the guy, he leaps off the ground, presses one foot against the wall to his left, and then launches into the air to grab onto a scaffolding attached to the opposite wall. Piper and I slow to a stop and watch him swing himself up the rungs before somersaulting about ten goddamn feet through the air back to the wall he started on, grabbing onto the gutter at the top before flinging himself up to escape across the roof.

  I point at him as he disappears over the edge and pant, “What is he, some kinda fucking ninja? How the hell’d he do that?” Piper is already climbing onto the scaffolding to chase after him. I grab onto her shoulder to pull her down. “Piper. Hey, Piper!”

  She throws my hand off and spins around to face me. “What?”

  “He’s gone! There’s no chance. No way we’re catching up with that guy.”

  She lowers herself to the ground and then hunches over with her palms resting against her legs, saying between breaths, “Who does that??…Who just steals…somebody’s…” She watches me stare at her in silence for a second. “…Shut up.”

  We both scan the rooftops as she straightens up and uses both hands to press in on her lower back. “”Okay, how do we find him?”

  “Uh, we don’t.”

  She twists her body to face me. “What do you mean ‘we don’t’? He took off with Mazi! Little guy’s prolly scared stiff right now.”

  “Well, it’s not like I got the asshole’s home address before he ran off. Barely said two words to the guy.”

  She puts her hands on her hips. “I wasn’t gonna say anything but you were actually kind of a dick to him.”

  “Yeah, well, he was kind of a dumbass. Sorry, you know my stupid-tolerance is low.”

  “Still. Maybe try being nicer to people. It’s something you seem to struggle with.” I acknowledge her criticism with a tilt of my head and then she starts glancing up and down the alley. “I guess…we’ll ask around. See if anyone knows him.”

  “Ask around? He’s just some random soldier. Looks like every other random soldier around here.”

  She puts a finger to her chin and thinks. “...He had a fucked up face, right? His neck was all cut up. And he had—”

  “They all have fucked up faces!” I’m doing the thing with my arms in the air but this time I don’t care. “And fucked up legs. And arms. And heads and necks and bodies. They’re fighting a war! He could be in any part of the country by the end of the week. We are never finding this guy.” I wait for the next volley to be thrown my way but all she does is let her arms droop to her sides and then walk past me with her head down.

  I guess that’s that. So long, Mazi. I follow after her and so begins the search for our wayward horses.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  The first one we find easily enough. It’s getting broom-slapped by a very perturbed florist as it feasts on the flowers outside his shop. I take a whack from the broom myself when I run up to grab the reins. The second horse we have a bit more trouble locating. It isn’t until we hear a shriek and the sound of glass shattering that we decide to investigate at a nearby shop and, lo and behold, the horse has found its way inside and is just about to knock an entire display case over when Piper and I run over to wrangle it. As we’re struggling to drag the animal outside by its hitching straps, a shrill voice behind us demands, “You’re gonna have to pay for the mess that beast made in here! Just look at this place! This is gonna take me all day to—”

  A second, much more pleasant voice interrupts the first one, “Mother, please, you can’t fault them for what an animal has done. Surely you can let this pass.” The man talking has a perfectly coiffed mane of cream-colored hair and is dressed to the nines in a silvery-mauve satin suit that glistens with reflected light whenever he moves. Guy’s even got a flower sticking out of his breast pocket. He couldn’t look more out of place in this dump. Especially after the mess the horse made. He looks right past me toward Piper and says, “Can I help you get the animal outside?”

  I answer for her, “Nope, we’re good.”

  “Actually…” I turn around and see Piper tugging fruitlessly at the reins as she eyes the man up and down. “...If you wouldn’t mind.”

  Fuck.

  He walks past me without acknowledging my existence and then starts shushing the horse while running his gloved hand up and down the side of its neck. “What’s her name?”

  Piper answers, “Her name? I didn’t even know it was a her!”

  The two of them start to lead it out of the store together as he tells her, “A magnificent creature like this needs a name, don’t you think? Let’s give her one now, shall we?”

  Piper snorts and guffaws, “Okay! What do you think we should call it? —Her?”

  I’m still standing in the store with that wench of a shopkeep glaring a hole into the back of my head. To say I don’t like where this is going would be one hell of an understatement.

  By the time I’ve made it outside, they’ve already discussed the whole horse-naming thing and landed on ‘Bellene.’ Which is a dumb-fuck name. I’m jogging over to grab the other, nameless horse when Piper tells the coiffed man, “I really hope we weren’t too much trouble for your mother. She seems sweet!”

  Sweet? What the fuck? The man replies, “Oh she’s not actually my mother! You’re not from around here are you? ‘Mother’ is just how we refer to ladies of a certain age. My mother is in the palace.”

  Piper stops walking and leans away from him as her eyes bulge. “The palace? Wait, who are you?”

  The man takes Piper’s hand to lift it up as he bows over it. “Prince Travis, of course.”

  Can’t say I saw that coming.

  The prince spends the next half hour or so showing us around town. And by ‘us’ I mean Piper, while I tag along kicking rocks like a dick. I’m a little surprised he hasn’t recognized her yet, being a fellow royal person and all. But in his defense, she kinda looks like shit right now. She’s still beautiful, don’t get me wrong. But spending a week on the road fighting and drinking and getting drenched in the pouring rain without so much as a change of clothes would make even the goddess of courtesans look like an aged dog turd. Smell like one, too. Frankly, I’m embarrassed for both of us.

  He explains that he’s here to visit the troops, shake their hands, tell them what a great job they’re doing dying for their country. Piper tells him how beautiful his kingdom is and he responds that it’s not nearly as beautiful as she is. Which is surprising since she sorta looks like a drowned rat that got into some red hair dye before it died. I’m relegated to trudging along behind them with the rest of the prince’s entourage, which consists of a man to carry his bags and two beefy fellas that I assume are bodyguards in disguise. Eventually, I hear an audible growl from Piper’s stomach which prompts the prince to ask her if she’s hungry. She responds, “Am I! You wouldn’t know a good place to eat around here would you? We sort of lost our lunches.”

  I see this as a great opportunity to butt into their conversation and show the royal dingus how well her and I know each other. “Piper’s favorite food is olives. She can eat a whole bushelful, though I have no idea how. I can’t stand the things.”

  The prince lights up and exclaims, “I adore olives! Bit of a connoisseur myself, actually. You know, I would love to get the opinion of a fellow enthusiast. What if I have you try the ones in the palace gardens and tell me what you think of them?”

  I am so fucking stupid.

  Two very important things occur to me while we’re making our way through town. The first is that I am not nearly as charming as I thought I was. And the second is that the prince’s entourage has been steadily growing this entire time. There’s five of these beefcake guys now, and they keep getting closer to me the farther we walk. Now, everyone knows that things are clearer in hindsight. But you’d think some things would be more obvious than others. Maybe it’s the years of boozing that are to blame. Or that I was blinded by jealousy. Hell, maybe I’ve just been hit in the head too many damn times at this point. Whatever it is, I should’ve figured this thing out a lot sooner. It isn’t until we all turn the corner into an alley where twelve more of the prince’s thugs are standing with crossbows pointed at us that it finally dawns on me. “Um…Piper?

  “Yeah?”

  “...I think we fucked up.”

  “Yeah.”