Oops, We're Fugitives

Setting Course

She was saved from further obligations by Reggie. He leaned around Will in an effort to grab the hair comb, which was quickly and irritably rebuffed by Will. That failing, he stood up and reached for Idris. "Reggie, quit it! This isn't the time for practical jokes!" Will snapped. Reggie backed up, shaking his joined hands in pleading.

Idris opened his mouth to say something, pointing the comb at Reggie's chest. Reggie seized the opportunity and the comb, but found he couldn't get it out of Idris's grip. Idris barely reached Reggie's shoulder, but what he lacked in bone length he more than made up for in muscle. It was a common rumour around the castle that he could bench-press with his eyebrows. Morgana believed it. 

Accepting inevitable defeat, Reggie let go of the comb, making another pleading gesture to Idris. Idris looked at Morgana and Will, as if to say what do you normally do in this situation? but relented and passed Reggie the hair comb.

"Thankyou!" Reggie said. "If anyone would for once acknowledge that I do actually have something to contribute to this team, you'd all have known several minutes ago that I know where Harcourt is." Everyone stared at him.

"How do you know that?" Morgana asked. She winced as Idris gave her a look of disapproval – she wasn't holding the comb.

Reggie visibly preened for a moment, basking in his moment of contribution. "I've got a second cousin who's a serf in the capital of his province. He'll know whether Harcourt is home in his Mesconite castle, he's very up to date on political matters."

"Have you ever been there, though?" Idris asked. Reggie's smug smile faltered slightly. "Well, uh, no, but – you know what, I'll teleport next to my second cousin and hope he's not standing next to a pile of dung, and if Harcourt's home I'll go beg him to harbour 4 fugitives for a few days, if he's not I'll ask for directions, and teleport back." Smug smile back in place, he tucked his legs under him on the bed, holding his boots aloft after a protest from Will about mud on the bed, and disappeared in a cloud of orange.

The other 3 looked around at each other. "If he lands in a pile of horse dung, he better not teleport back onto this bed. It's bad enough having to share it with 2 boys, let alone one filthy, stinking boy. I'll murder him if he does." Will commented.

He was saved from drastic measures by a cloud of orange sparks that appeared near the ceiling. A mercifully horse-dung free Reggie dropped from the above them, hitting the bed with a sound somewhere between the soft whump of hitting comfy blankets and the thump of hitting the slats of a bedframe which does not have a covering of comfy blankets. Somewhere closer to the latter.

Reggie's eyes widened in silent agony and he rolled back flat onto the bed. "Get up, you idiot," Will said, poking Reggie's shoulder. "Did you find your cousin?" Reggie bit his lip, eyes watering. Will rolled his eyes, reaching to grab the other boy by the lapels, but Idris leaned forward and gently smacked Will. Will rolled his eyes again, releasing Reggie.

After a few pained breaths, Reggie pulled himself into a sitting position, wincing. "I forgot we didn't have proper mattresses," he lamented.

"Idiot," said Will, "Did you find your cousin or not?"

"Second cousin, and yes of course I did, I teleported into the space next to him. Thankfully the space next to him was a mostly unploughed field, so no mud or horse shit." He swung his mud-and-shitless legs against the bed in delight. "He nearly had a heart attack, thought I was an assassin, and tried to run me through with a pitchfork before he realised it was me, then tried to shove me under the yoke of his ox so no one would see me alright, alright, I'll get on with it," – this was in response to a growl from Will – "anyway, he said Harcourt is home in his Mesconite castle and has been for about 2 weeks, and something else I've forgotten, but I'll remember it eventually if it was important. Also. I stopped him from giving me a hug so I wouldn't smell like ox," he said, with an accusing look at Will, "I'll never forget his look of betrayal. That's on you."

Will ignored him. "Can't you just teleport us all there? You've teleported me places with you before."

Reggie brushed invisible dirt of his jacket. "You know perfectly well that I can, but there's also the matter of all our stuff, as well as the horses. If I teleported us all at the same time, or even within a few minutes, we'd displace so much of the matter around us that we'd create a vacuum here and cause an explosion there. Which would kill all of us, by the way. Simple physics."

"Yeah, but surely you could just teleport us one at a time? How long would we have to wait for the space to be arranged?" Morgana asked. "You teleported the 3 of us that day."

"That day?" Reggie scoffed. "When we were half the size we are now? I couldn't take all of us, no way. But, taking into account how far the place is from here? About 3 days before the space could rearrange safely," Reggie said. Groans went up from everyone. "That's what I was meant to tell you! Wait, no, it's not... hmm. Whatever the thing I was meant to tell you was, we'll be better off just riding there and staying together. Wait a second..." Reggie said, horror dawning on his face. "3 days... does that mean we'll miss the date?"

"What date?" Morgana frowned.

"The date!" Reggie cried.

"What date?" Will said.

"The audit, of course," Reggie said in exasperated tones, face sagging with despair.

"Reggie, I'm not sure they're going to care if we're not there for the audit if they think we're traitors to the crown," Morgana felt compelled to point out.

Reggie looked at her, ruffled/(flatly/in annoyance/like Sokka when he can't believe the others). "Don't be such a wet week. Are we even sure that the audit is 3 days' time? What even is 3 days when there's no clocktower to keep track for us?" he asked, or rather philosophised aloud.

Will sighed, although it seemed like more of an expulsion of compressed air, it came out with so much irritable force. "Well, let's see, shall we? 24 hours to a day, 10 days to a week, 3 weeks to a month, 12 months to a year..." Will trailed off, expression dripping with sarcasm.

"Yes, well thank you for just giving me a simple yes. The my-student-is-a-bit-slow teacher voice was unnecessary," Reggie said, miffed.

"Your stupidity was unnecessary," Will snapped.

"Ok, ok, quit arguing," Morgana interrupted. "As we've just surmised, we don't have the time to waste, especially if we plan on getting back to the castle before the Guards catch up and in time for the audit, which we'll count as a bonus to survival but won't take priority over surviving. For starters, we can't stay here for long. There's not many Guards who'd know this place, let alone think to look for us, but it's more than likely that Guards will be on their way to Harcourt's fiefdom, if the commander who discovered me thought he was somehow in kahoots with us. They'll use him as bait. They'll be expecting the traitor's acolytes to come running to him now that they've been exposed," she added bitterly.

There was silence for a moment. Reggie and Will started bickering about who got which part of the bed, and Morgana flopped back onto the bed despondently, repeating Reggie's mistake and getting a ringing/smarting head for her trouble. She glared at the moulding ceiling, distantly wondering without any particular degree of hope if a miracle would happen, and a message would appear in yellow font on the ceiling saying ALL CHARGES HAVE BEEN DROPPED, COME HOME, YOU'RE TOO VALUABLE. She waited a little longer, but no message appeared, adoring or otherwise, and she decided that the best miracle actually worth hoping for was that her head would stop throbbing. An escalating argument between Reggie and Will wasn't doing anything to dispel the ache.

"Everyone quiet." The voice was calm, gentle even, but the bickering fell silent. "There are more important things than who gets to sleep where. We do not have time to waste fighting amongst ourselves, not when we're fighting to prove our innocence as well. Please, take an inventory of everything we've got with us/bring out the maps so we can chart our route, and endeavour to do so without squabbling."

"Fighting for our innocence?" Will asked. "Who wrote you?"