As the trucks came to a stop, Kingsley watched the Kark climb off the back before slinking himself out from underneath the canvas and around to the coach. He tugged the door open, and pulled down the ladder tucked inside. Slowly, a man with a thick moustache poked his head out of the coach. He tossed Kingsley a large bag then leaped from the cab, landing with a crooked wince, then straightening up, fists on his hips.
He peered around for a few moments, hands raised to his eyes as though shielding them from the sun. "This camp doesn't look like much, Kingsley. I expected there to be, I don't know, fewer trees. More people. More equipment! I didn't know I was being hired to some..." He trailed off into gestures and meaningful eyebrow spasms, then finally settled on glaring down at a small field surrounded by trees and inhabited by a single tent, a herd of alpacas, and a sleepy-looking sheperd dressed in a chullo and woolen cloak.
Kingsley nodded in what he imagined to be a stoic fashion as he struggled to heft the bag onto his frail shoulder. The truck pulled away and he followed it for a moment with his gaze, still struggling with the rucksack.
Tents came into view past the departing truck. Then shanties with multicolored standards. Then, rising out of the side of the mountain a huge and decrepit mansion loomed, posed like a roosting vulture above what Kingsley slowly began to recognize as the camp of his employ. Linen-wrapped coolies hustled away from parked caravan trucks laden with supplies. Smartly dressed academics crowded with roughshod laborers to collect their supplies, dismantling crates here, piling sm
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