They warn you not to cheat the Ilari bondsmen.
Of course, no one likes to lose money on a faithless stranger, but the bondsmen take it more personally than most. They send a Reclaimer to find you and bring you back. One might think it reassuring that they take a major oath to reclaim you alive, but this would be a miscalculation.
Olen Ubran Mneer is a Reclaimer with a perfect retrieval record. He is relentless. He sleeps occasionally, and never for long. He is the paragon of the endurance hunter, eroding his quarry's will, running him to ground. Justice demands that a claim be in the proper frame of mind when he is apprehended. Therefore, Mneer favors the long game, to give imagination and anxiety time to gnaw at his target’s confidence. But he can move quickly when he wishes to.
Mneer tracked his claim to the deep south and hired some locals with shaggy, surefooted mountain ponies bred to the icy scrabble of The Last Ascent. They pursued him east along the foothills where the stones were razors and any step could precipitate a fatal slide.
When every look over your shoulder frames the plume of dust from M'neer's posse, where does your mind go? Maybe just give up, let him take you back. Even if they hang you, better a quick death than a misstep on the shale.
When the moment comes, though, instinct takes over. Terror and desperation fuel one last, panicked dash. Multiple murders, two of nobility: they wouldn't grant an easy death. Better to flee, better to die out here.
Mneer decided the time to move quickly had come. His claim was making for the midnight treeline, dark indigo conifers with low-hanging boughs draped in wild grapevine. He laid low over his pony's neck, urging it on with heels and baton. His deputized comrades merged in behind, eyes on the prize, making for a trail carpeted with golden needles that led between the mighty boles.
His claim plunged under the eaves ten lengths ahead of the hunters, and Mneer reined up so sharply his pony nearly went down, twisting its neck to relieve the pain of the bit. M'neer's confused hirelings overshot him, struggling to regain control of their mounts. The whole troupe was in turmoil. M'neer just stared into the trees, trying to ascertain where his quarry had gone by the still swinging branches, the dark purple ferns, and the dangling crimson vines.
"Hunter! Why do we stop? He hides in the forest!"
M'neer was taken aback by their confusion. Why wouldn't he stop? Should he, too, carelessly plunge into the deadly trees and join the fate of his desperate claim? He looked into the towering tops, searching for birds, squirrels, insects. But nothing moved in this cold, and the shadows were already deep this far south, this close to The Last Ascent.
"The trees," he murmured, gesturing slightly. He could see the wheels turning in the deputy's mind: disbelief, second-guesses.
"Yes, trees…" he repeated slowly, making as if to go in.
"You do not fear them?" M'neer said boldly at last.
Two of the deputies snickered.
"No, Hunter. Perhaps we will find a bear or wolves, but we are many and the season is young, they will not be hungry yet."
Mneer gestured for him to lead on, then followed slowly, eyes in constant surveillance. But the trees remained motionless and they heard no animal calls.
Perhaps they mocked him with their loaded glances, assuming that someone who grew up in the desert had an irrational fear of close spaces. Fools. He had been to the Khapijanin Wall, saw men snatched over by ruby vines so quickly they seemed to fly. The broad, indigo leaves of the catalpa trees shake suddenly, releasing a thousand diving insects. There are screams, briefly, then only the chittering of marmosets and the lazy buzz of sip dragons. The jungle, they say, is closed. Mneer took no chances with trees.
