Vroom vroom, motherfuckers!

Iomedae's going to have a hard time holding on with no saddle at a car's full speed but she'll stab the roof with the knife to get a handhold!

Haley looks up at the loud thud sound of a fairly dull knife mildly denting the metal roof of the car, and sees the moonroof.

Well, that solves that problem! If she can just open it! She stabs several buttons frantically, turns the air conditioning on by accident, puts on her hazards, and - there it is! - opens the powered moonroof to let Iomedae in.

"Let's go!" 

Iomedae topples in. Her heart is pounding and everything feels terrible but she'd probably be dead without Haley so -"let's go!"

Haley floors it.

Flooring it, in a grass field full of bumps and mud, is not actually a particularly enjoyable experience. Particularly with neither of them wearing seatbelts. Haley starts making a rather high-pitched noise.

But she's swerving around the fence at the end of the field and driving past the shed and turning onto the little dirt road out of site and then, tyres screeching and heart in her mouth, she's swerving onto the actual paved road outside site and - holy shit she almost hit that tree - oh right, she should turn her headlights on - FLOORING IT!

The car's accelerator climbs steadily past sixty and Haley finds herself laughing so manically she's struggling to breathe. "Iomedae! We did it!" 

Iomedae is craning her neck to see if they are being immediately pursued. "Thank you God keep us alive. Now help us no hurt any other person, help us know what we should do, help me no be foster child again," she says very rapidly. "And fight Hell. Praise You."

"Fuck yeah! Fighting hell! Yes! Woot!" Haley cheers, which she feels is her own authentic version of whatever prayer Iomedae is doing. She hopes the god accepts it, if it's a real god.

"Praise you, sis! You did great!" 

No, everything about the escape was a complete disaster, but Iomedae's instincts are that Haley isn't ready to hear that yet. If she were one of Iomedae's father's men her father would let him spend the night celebrating surviving his idiocy, and then explain in the morning how badly they screwed up. Iomedae never quite understood that - if you screwed up, wouldn't you want to know that instantly so that you could fix it as fast as possible? - but she is pretty sure that there is wisdom in it, now that she's contemplating trying to explain to Haley as they drive away that that went very badly and they should both be being put horribly to death this very second.

"We need - go far, more far than they thinking we go, go to a place with a different Queen," she says instead. 

Haley calms her celebration just enough to focus on the road and not kill them both by crashing the car into a tree at eighty-five miles per hour, which is faster than she has ever driven before in her entire life. 

"You mean like.... drive to Aethelmearc, or Meridies, right, we don't have to drive to Mexico? Is it just Atlantia that's an evil conspiracy?"

"I do not know. I - the thing Katherine said to me. What was it?"

"I don't think I remember exactly. She said she was sorry for something she said, she believed you and she brought food? Then she asked if we were stealing her car. Oooh, check in the back seat, maybe there's the food!" 

" - sorry for what thing she said?" Iomedae has a horrible sinking feeling in her stomach.

Then she remembers that Katherine could have been lying to stall until the guards arrived. This doesn't fix the horrible sinking feeling, it just makes it a confused horrible sinking feeling.

"I don't know, did she say something to you earlier that she'd be - Oh, woah!" Haley whirls the steering wheel frantically to successfully turn around a tight corner. "Uhh, anything that she'd be sorry for?" 

"She was angry I serve Aroden. She said a thing I did not understand, and then she said she going tell the Baronness. I ...do not understand what she sorry for. Telling the Baronness? ...maybe she did not know Baronness evil?"

"You were going to check the back seat for food?" Haley prompts, because she still hasn't eaten and she thinks she needs more blood sugar than her current levels if she's going to be piloting a vehicle at ninety miles an hour in the middle of the night. "Did you not check Katherine to see if she was evil?" 

"She did." Iomedae looks in the back seat for food. She actually feels kind of upset at the idea of taking the food if it was a gift for her. Does that make any sense? Wouldn't it make more sense to be upset at the idea of taking the food if it wasn't a gift for her? ...no, because if it was a gift for her then Katherine was trying to - trying to what? It doesn't make any sense! Why would an evil noblewoman be trying to help an escaped slave she previously reported to the authorities for being a paladin of Aroden? 

There's quince tarts, cinnamon honeyed almonds and some chicken rolls in the back seat. The chicken is flavoured with a strongly spiced plum sauce. It's wrapped carefully in cloth napkins inside a wicker basket - no paper or plastic bags in sight - and there's a small glass bottle of sekanjabin on top, stopped with a cork.

Haley is far, far too hyped on adrenaline and focused on the road to notice Iomedae's distress. "So she's evil, right? We just have to worry about what to do next. Maybe we can get swords. I bet there's places in West Virginia to buy swords." 

Iomedae feels more sick. And more confused. You shouldn't break the law when you're this confused - you really shouldn't break the law at all, and if you absolutely must, you should only do it when you're entirely sure you fully understand everything you're risking. And she doesn't. 

But one of the things she is risking is now Haley, and she doesn't think Haley will go for 'actually we should surrender and be executed because we are too confused to have the right to do this'.

She hands Haley a tart. Her hand is trembling. It doesn't usually do that, even when she's been in great danger. When she stabbed Martin she didn't feel this sick. Probably because when she stabbed Martin she was not actually at all confused. 

"Phone now, I think," she says, very quietly. "Raoulin could have sworded us."

Haley inhales the food like a drowning person gasping for oxygen, keeping her left hand on the steering wheel while her right shoves tart into her mouth. She applies the brakes a little because she feels vaguely like she ought to do that for safety reasons if she's eating, but reducing speed down to eighty is probably having more of a reassuring placebo effect than it is actually making the turns come at her slower. "Oh god that's so good. I love SCAdian food, man. I hope there's more of those. Um - you want to phone now? We aren't gonna get to Aethelmearc first?" 

"Does phone help them find us? If no, can phone now I think, if it does not stop you driving." Haley is driving very fast and it's very reassuring.

"Uh, I don't have bluetooth linked in here because it's not my car but you can phone if you think it's safe?"

Haley offers the phone to Iomedae with one hand. The other stays on the wheel. "Trade you a tart for the phone." 

Iomedae passes her the tart. Takes the phone. "I do not know how to do ring ring."

Haley takes another several bites of tart very fast, and says with a mouthful of crumbs, "Right! Sorry! I forgot you can't read. Uh - who do you want to call exactly?" 

Her father. 

That is a childish thing; a warrior should not want it. 

"Katherine?"