The Exile

Chapter Five

The next day they were up and out at the crack of dawn. The condition of the road improved as they neared the town and the caravan made quick progress to arrive in plenty of time for the market.  

The town was small but bustling, with a large square and a couple of side streets taken up by stalls. Frank had stayed back to watch the trucks and provisions, while V and Isaac took up position around Tom's stand and looked intimidating as prospective buyers came up to inspect the drones before the auction. V might be biased but she thought that Tom's drones were attracting more interest than any of the others on their street.  

The people who browsed the stalls were an interesting bunch and V was getting a valuable education listening to Tom giving them the hard sell. 

A rich bonded woman, dressed in an impractically close fitted scarlet dress topped with a necklace made up of dozens of strings of precious stones, was the current recipient of Tom's charms. She was shadowed by a personal servant drone, a beautiful young man at least 10 years her junior dressed head to toe in sleek black designed to show his physique to best effect. The jewels he wore at the cuffs of his shirt and through his ear lobes matched his owner's necklace and the red accents to his outfit echoed her dress. He was an expensive accessory but, V suspected, also a practical one.  

From the way he scanned the crowd, and his artfully relaxed stance, he probably had a skill not unlike V's own. He was a bodyguard disguised as a pretty pet.  

Casually, V let her hand fall to the knife at her belt and the man's eyes snapped to her instantly. Smiling back at him she allowed her hand to continue to fall past the knife down by her side. He held her gaze a second more then went back to scanning the crowd.  

His eyes were as she had expected, almost completely void of intelligence or personality, like looking into the eyes of a shark. A pretty, lethal trap for any unwary mugger or thug who bothered his mistress.  

"Mrs Constable," Tom was at his most courteous, "It is a pleasure to see you again. How is William working out for you?" He indicated the shark drone. 

"He is wonderful, everything you promised. I feel quite safe walking through town with him, despite the awful reports of scavengers coming right into the territories. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night for fear, if I didn't know I had him around. He's a blessing." Mrs Constable gushed and V grinned to herself. Who was buttering who up for this transaction? 

"That is most gratifying to hear Mrs Constable. I had hoped he would put your mind at ease." Tom said. "Is there anything I can help you with today?" 

"Well, my husband and I are considering purchasing a whistler and I thought I would come and seek your opinion on the matter. . ." 

V allowed her attention to drift back to the crowd, while keeping one eye on the dangerous shark drone. Just in case anything set him off. Personally, she'd rather take her chances with the scavengers than have that at her back all day, she's be drawing her knives every time he made a sudden movement.  

V's thoughts on the quality of Tom's drones must be bang on though if the likes of Mrs. Constable were doing business with him. And asking him for whistlers no less, which right now were the most in demand.  

The majority of the populace had to make do with the public whistling stations, you paid them a couple of quid and a message of your choice would be sent through the whistlers to any other station in the country for your correspondents to collect. To V's ears the whistlers on their towers sounded like the twitter of bird song, but to those with the skill the cries could be heard miles distant and passed from tower to tower to transverse the Isles in a matter of hours, then be re-captured as words on paper and delivered to the addressee.