"Why did they have you imprisoned?" We were traveling down the same road my captors had intended on going down, but I hoped the destination was different, at least he took my shackles off.
"Wanted to ransom me for being an ambassador."
"From the east?"
"From the west." He laughed, it was an odd thing to hear from someone with a throat injury, like a dying bird.
"You're not an ambassador from the west come on now."
"How do you know that?" Night was settling in, and the marked one as his friends had called him seemingly was looking for a place to rest.
"Your clothing, your manor of speech, that you have no marks anywhere on your body, and your hair."
"My hair?"
"Yeah its not uncommmon for people here to have shaved heads, but our ambassadors don't, because people in your lands tend to have hair and we try and make them fit in more than stand out." It seemed logical, all the more reason to really hate the guys who kidnapped me if they couldn't figure out something like hair.
"Well now that you know I'm not supposed to be here, lets talk about me getting home." He laughed again.
"Yeah sure a criminal looking to escape his crime, I'm sure we can put you on the first boat out of here."
"Criminal? I was kidnapped!"
"And prior to that you were lying about being our ambassador, thats a death sentence, and you are in the country illegally, also a death sentence."
"Seems uneccessarily harsh for simple deception."
"We have no jails, none of the three powers do, you either get marked, or you get killed." And I thought the Red Hand were dicks when it came to their justice system.
"Who enforces those laws so I know who to avoid."
"I do." He pulled the cart off the road and set about making a camp, and what I hoped was not an execution (because against my better wishes I kind of liked him and would have hated to murder him).
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