Treegotiations

You ever see a tree standing alone in a field? Yeah probably some horrible deal took place there (well that some hangings, illicit meeting for sex, and the occaisional shitty game of hide and seek).  I swear people plant one lone tree in a field explicitly to serve as a meeting place for bad people.  Sure it might not start out that way, but thats how it always goes. All this to say I wasn't surprised I was to meet someone in a meadow with a singular tree as the focal point. It was great for line of sight and I could see the rider long before she arrived (though if I was smart this is also bad in the time of long range fire arms, the other day someone demonstrated a rifle to me that can hit someone accurately at the spec on horizon range, we are in scary times).

She was riding a black horse and dressed in red, so even if I was having vision problems (I don't normally, but some of the crap I had been doing to free up my magic had had some weird side effects, like one day I saw in black and white, it was amazing, I literally saw the world in black and white) I could have seen her from miles away.  The red outfit was a flashy cocktail dress, not exactly the kind of thing you expect blackmailers to use, for a moment I thought maybe some poor common person had been roped into helping the blackmailers, or some dumb noblemans wife had thought she had stumbled upon a means to making easy money.  Alas both those were of course wrong.

"I don't have all day you know, I have important things I have to do." I always tend to start conversations with annoyance.  The sun was high in the sky at this point, and it felt hot, whether it was or not I'll never know I only report how it felt not how it was.  I remember wiping sweat from my brow for what felt like the eight hundreth time that day.

Her voice was like getting stabbed, each sylable was pain, I've heard death rattles from creatures long gone to time that sounded more pleasant.  You could record someone having bad gas, and play it over the sound of small animals dying, and it would be more pleasant than listening to this woman talk.  You notice I say this all before I write what she said, because I want you to understand just how horrible what she said sounded like. 

"What you got something better to do?" The question was insulting on top of her horrid voice.  Clearly I had more important things to do, having my toenails ripped out by a drunk blind person would be more important than dealing with her.

"Look just leave the prince alone, he's an idiot, but he's my idiot, and I don't really want to have to kill you." I didn't, because if that was her normal voice I couldn't imagine what a scream would sound like.

"We don't care about the prince, we care about you Trezzie poo, and you fell right into our trap." Trezzie poo, if I'm alive and you try and call me that, I'll devise of a method for death beyond what even your worst nightmare can come up with.

"What trap? A tart on a horse in the middle of a field does not a trap make," Its true damn it, a trap is an easily ambushed spot with multiple men, beasts, and preferably some enviromental danger. That's a real trap damn it!

"I'm the trap Trezzie darling, ME!" She shouted the last line and then started looking like she had to go to the bathroom really bad, I could see sweat forming at her brow, but nothing was happening.

"Well your voice is pretty awful, but if the best you can do is look constipated I got business elsewhere, leave the prince alone ok?" I started walking off (because you never leave your horse by a meeting place, thats an invitation to losing your means of escape), she grabbed a hold my arm and I responded by drawing one of my pistols and sticking into her face.  "Let go of my arm or I'll blow a hole through your face." She continued to grimace at me, but then in a breath of exasperation she let go of me.

"What are you?" She was panting heavily, whatever she'd been trying to do (most likely conjure magic) had used up a lot of her stamina in its inability.

"Pissed off for wasting my time, you see me again it'll be the last time." I left annoyed at having wasted an afternoon, though there was a new wrinkle in my antimagical hoopla.  It appeared not only could I not conjure magic, neither could others do it to me (which explained why the three idiots I shot in town were really easy to defeat, they were coming at me unarmed).  Now more than ever I had to find someone from that blind order, because as cool as it was to be magic immune, it was also horrible not being able to use magic myself (mostly because without magic I didn't have necromancy, without necromancy, I was bound to die like the rest of you plebes and thats not what I ever want to happen!).