“I can see why Garameno didn’t want to be hauled up on someone’s back while the rest of us were running up and down the stairs, but I’m surprised Jiramondi didn’t come with us, if he’s so fond of the place,” Corene said.
“I think he doesn’t enjoy the experience when a lot of other people are around,” Liramelli replied. “Trust me, the white tower has an entirely different feel when you’re the only one at the top.”
Corene supposed that was true, but she couldn’t imagine that she would want to intensify the experience, so she didn’t intend to find out. “Well, I’m glad I got to see it, but once was enough. But I’d go back to the red tower any day.”
Liramelli smiled. “That’s because you’re a—What’s your word?—smeela girl.”
“Sweela. And yes.”
“Sometimes I think—”
Her thought went unspoken. Greggorio tore past them at a run, his voice raised to shout a single word.
“Alette!”
SIXTEEN
Corene spun around to see what was happening and loosed her own cry of horror. Two men had grabbed Alette—one gripped her by the shoulders, one by the knees—and they were awkwardly running toward a cart where two more men were waiting. Alette was writhing furiously in their hold, kicking and clawing, but it was clear she was overmatched. Corene saw her bright yellow shawl trampled on the ground outside the bakery.
“Alette!” Liramelli shrieked, and then they were all chasing after her, those on foot, those on horseback. Jiramondi and Garameno were the fastest, thundering by so recklessly Corene had to jerk Liramelli out of the way of the flying hooves. Foley was just seconds behind them, already mounted. Corene saw the gleam of something metallic in his hand, and it looked far deadlier than the tool he’d lent Steff to pry open the door to the storerooms.
Behind them came a flurry of royal soldiers, also armed, then Steff, and finally Melissande.
“What’s happening?” Liramelli shouted up at her, because someone on horseback had a much better view of the action than those on the ground. “Can you see?”
“Greggorio has reached her! He is punching one of the other men—Oh, he is so angry! And the second man, he has had to release Alette to fight back. She is on the ground— No! There is a third man with her, he is dragging her away—but Jiramondi is there, and, and—Foley! He has leapt from his saddle, he has a knife in his hands, I think, and he is—there is a lot of blood suddenly, I cannot tell who is bleeding—”
“Is it Alette?” Liramelli said anxiously.
Is it Foley? Corene wanted to ask. Her stomach was suddenly a twist of pain. It was even harder to breathe than it had been at the top of the tower.
Suddenly the mounted soldiers shifted positions, and Corene could see straight past them to the ongoing fight. It was true—both Foley and one of the attackers were covered with blood, and Corene thought both of them must be wounded. Foley’s injury didn’t seem to be slowing him down, though, since he moved and slashed with an easy grace that forced the other man to fall back two steps, three, five.
“They look like Dhonshon men—do you see?” Melissande demanded.
“Her father’s soldiers?” Liramelli asked.
“It would seem so. Awful creatures!”
Several of the royal guards also had leapt from their horses and waded into the fight, obscuring Corene’s view, but reassuring her, too: Surely with so many soldiers to take on a handful of men, Foley was not at risk. Jiramondi and Garameno remained on horseback, circling the fighters and shouting directives. “Don’t kill them! We want to take them alive!” Corene thought it might be too late for that.
“There’s Greggorio!” Liramelli gasped and started running.
Indeed, Greggorio had escaped from the churning mass of bodies and was stumbling back toward the tower, carrying a limp Alette in his arms. With a last glance toward the melee of the fight, Corene dashed after Liramelli, Melissande trotting beside her.
Greggorio didn’t stop until he’d slipped inside the tower—maybe a place of safety, maybe not—and laid Alette gently on the stone floor. In seconds, the three women were kneeling beside him, all of them frantically patting Alette’s hands, her knees, any part of her they could reach. Greggorio had planted himself right at her shoulder and was brushing the dirt and blood from her face. Her eyes were closed, leaving her face a dark, blank mask. She lay so still that Corene was not certain she was even breathing.
“Alette, can you talk to me? Are you hurt? Say something,” Greggorio begged.
Her eyelids fluttered, lifted, dropped, lifted again, to reveal those startlingly blue eyes. She took a deep shuddering breath. “Those men—” she whispered.
“They’re gone. They’re being taken care of,” Greggorio amended.
“They—” She didn’t seem able to complete the sentence. “They were—”
“Probably following us from the minute we left the palace,” Greggorio supplied.
Melissande, who was all the way down by Alette’s feet, leaned forward. “They were dark-skinned like Dhonshon men and each of them worse a hawk symbol on his sleeve. That’s your father’s crest, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Alette said on a sigh.
Corene squeezed Alette’s hand. “Tell us where you’re hurt. You seem to be having trouble breathing. Do you think you broke a rib?”
“I saw one man try to strangle her,” Liramelli said. “Maybe he bruised her throat.”
Alette was silent a moment, as if she was trying to marshal her thoughts. Then, “Help me sit up,” she said and tightened her grip on Corene’s fingers.
Greggorio moved behind her for support and they gently maneuvered her into an upright position. She blinked slowly a few times, then looked straight at Greggorio.
“Thank you,” she said somberly. “You saved my life.”
“I saw them take you,” he said. “I happened to be looking that way. They were so fast—another two minutes—”
“I was careless,” she said. “I should never have stepped away from the guards.”
“You sound better,” Liramelli said hopefully. “Are you all right? Is anything broken?”
Alette nodded. “I feel stronger. But my head hurts. My side hurts. I don’t know if I’m just bruised or—”
“We shall get you back to the palace and examine you,” Melissande said firmly. “At any rate, you do not appear to be bleeding, for which I am very grateful! Blood is scary but bones will heal.”
Corene came to her feet. “I hear horses outside. I’m going to see how the fight went.”
Indeed, the whole cavalcade of soldiers and royal heirs had made an untidy return to the open area at the base of the tower, and everyone was milling around, awaiting a decision on what to do next. Two quick glances told Corene what she most wanted to know: Foley was once more on horseback, looking battered but essentially whole, and the four attackers were dead. Their bodies had been slung across the backs of several rather skittish horses whose erstwhile riders held their reins and attempted to keep them calm.
Garameno spotted Corene and edged his horse over. “How is she?” he asked sharply.
“Bruised but otherwise unhurt, or so it seems,” Corene responded. She gestured to the corpses. “I thought you wanted to question them?”
“We did,” Garameno said. “But they made it impossible to take them alive.”
Jiramondi urged his horse closer so he could join the conversation. “We can guess at their motives even without an interrogation,” he said. “Alette’s father seems to have decided it is a liability to have her in the Malinquese court. We might need to restrict her to the palace from now on.”
“Or provide a better guard,” Garameno said grimly.
“I suppose you can let her decide which she would prefer,” Corene said. She wasn’t so sure that Alette would consider confinement to the pala
ce a better fate than death.
“Can she be moved? Can she travel?” Jiramondi asked. “Or should we send someone to fetch a carriage?”
“She can travel,” came Greggorio’s voice from behind them, and they all whirled around.
He was leading Alette out of the tower, one arm supportively around her waist; her head rested against his shoulder, but her eyes were open and alert. Her jacket had fallen open a little, and against her brown skin Corene could see darker bruises forming on her throat.
“I’ll carry her,” Greggorio added.
Garameno wheeled around. “Bring his horse!” he shouted.
The next few minutes were a flurry of activity as the remaining horses were fetched and most of the people currently on foot scrambled into their saddles. Once Greggorio was mounted, Foley handed Alette up to him, and she sat across his lap, leaning her cheek against his chest. Her eyes were closed again.
The soldiers had gathered around the royal party in a tight phalanx and they were starting to move slowly south when suddenly Alette stirred and sat up. “My scarf!” she cried. “My scarf—where is it?”
“What does that matter?” was Garameno’s irritable reply, but Corene and Melissande instantly pulled on their reins and guided their horses through the line of guards, back to the site where Alette had been snatched. Melissande was the one to swing down and pick up the crumpled length of yellow fabric.
“It is dirty and— Look at that, a muddy footprint, right in the middle! But I do not think it is actually torn,” was her assessment. “Such a fortunate thing!”
They rejoined the ranks and the whole group finally got under way, heading south, toward the walled city and the relative safety of the palace. Corene ignored Liramelli and Steff, who glanced around as if looking for her, and worked her way through the unwieldy mass of riders until she made it to Foley’s side.
“How badly are you hurt?” she demanded.
“Not very. Cut on my arm, cut on my shoulder, probably a bruise on my thigh.”
“You have to let me see when we get back to the palace.”
The look he gave her was full of amusement. “I don’t think I do.”
“What—you’re too modest to let me see you half undressed?”
“Partly. And partly I don’t think you have any experience binding a wound, so what’s the point?”
She was affronted. “You’d let Josetta tend your injuries.”
His amusement deepened—but behind it she saw some other reaction, harder to decipher. Surprise, maybe. “She never had to.”
“But you would have let her.”
“She had training in a sickroom.”
“It’s just that—when I saw you fighting him—when I saw the blood—I thought—well, I thought—”
“I’m not going to get myself killed and leave you undefended in a foreign land,” he said softly.
He had switched to Welchin, just in case anyone could hear them over the clatter of hooves and the low murmur of conversation. She did the same. “I wasn’t thinking about me,” she said, low-voiced but indignant. “I was afraid for you. You were suddenly in danger and there was nothing I could to do help you.”
He was smiling again. “Well, I’m grateful you realized that, at least,” he said. “I wouldn’t have put it past you to come running up with a rock to clout one of those fellows in the head.”
“If I’d seen a rock, I might have done it,” she agreed. “But don’t change the subject.”
Now he sighed. “What’s the subject?”
“I was terrified for you. And I’m so grateful you’re all right. And I hope I never have to see you put in danger again.”
He was silent a moment, his eyes apparently fixed on the road before them. Then he turned his head and gave her a straight, sober look. “In the future, I won’t risk myself for anyone else but you, if you like,” he said. “I rode to her aid today because I thought she was important to you. To spare you from the tragedy of her death. Was I wrong?”
Strange that such a quietly delivered speech could make her backbone prickle and her hands grow suddenly chilly on the reins. “No,” she said quickly. “That was exactly what I wanted. Please keep her safe anytime you can. Alette and Melissande and Liramelli and Steff. All of them.”
A glimmer of another smile. “And Filomara’s nephews?”
“They can take care of themselves. Well, unless it’s easy to help them. Unless all you have to do is punch someone in the nose.”
He laughed out loud and she laughed with him, but somehow she felt the conversation hadn’t gone exactly as she’d planned. But she didn’t know what else she would have wanted to say, what she would have hoped to hear.
All she knew was that when she’d seen him covered with blood, fighting for his life, her heart had almost stopped. She had had the clearest, starkest realization: I can’t live if something happens to Foley.
She didn’t know what to do with such a thought. It was too big, too unmanageable, to unfold and examine with calm attention. So she crumpled it up as small as it would go and crammed it into the back of her mind, and urged her horse forward so she could ride beside Melissande all the way back to the palace.
• • •
Their party made quite a stir as they rode into the courtyard and instantly began calling for aid. Steff slid off his horse, tossed the reins to a footman, and said, “I’ll tell my grandmother what happened,” before striding inside. Corene caught the resentful looks that Garameno and Jiramondi threw after him, but Greggorio was so focused on Alette that he didn’t seem to notice.
Melissande and Liramelli and Corene huddled in a disconsolate group in the courtyard and watched the rest of the party disperse. “I do not think I shall go on any more expeditions to Malinqua’s famous towers,” Melissande decreed. “There is always too much excitement, and always of a most unpleasant nature!”
“Always involving Alette, if you’ve noticed,” Corene said.
“Ah—so if we exclude her from her plans, we should have very quiet outings,” Melissande said with a nod.
“We can’t exclude her! We’ve just now become friends!” Liramelli exclaimed.
Corene patted her shoulder. “She was joking.”
“It is how I try to come to terms with the terrible events of the day,” Melissande explained.
“I want to talk to her and see if she’s all right, but I just know the physicians won’t allow us into her room,” Liramelli said.
“No, I am sure they will want her to be kept very quiet,” Melissande said. “So we must wait until after dinner and then we shall sneak in. And if they have left anyone behind to nurse her, we must get rid of those people so we can talk to her in private.”
“If she feels like talking,” Liramelli said.
“After a day like this? I’d want to talk,” Corene said. “Come on. Let’s all get changed for dinner.”
The meal was strained, since the prefect, the mayor, and other city officials were present and Filomara had forbidden anyone to speak of Alette’s adventure in the presence of others. So conversation was circumspect and meaningless, but at least it was brief. Filomara ate quickly then rose to her feet, signaling for Steff, her nephews, and the city administrators to join her for an extended conference. As the room emptied out, Corene and Liramelli and Melissande made good their escape.
“And now to check on Alette,” Melissande said.
A slender maid and a stout woman who might have been a nurse had been installed in Alette’s room, and they made a valiant effort to stop the visitors at the door, but there wasn’t really much hope of that. Liramelli spoke to them with quiet authority and Melissande with insistent charm, while Corene just brushed past them to step inside.
“We were told to keep everybody out,” the young maid said anxiously.
“You tried, but we have
been completely uncontainable,” said Melissande, who followed close on Corene’s heels. “We promise not to stay for long!”
They sailed through the main room and into the smaller space that served as Alette’s bedroom, closing the door on the protesting servants and throwing the lock for good measure.
They found Alette curled up in a window seat, gazing out at the city lights visible against the night sky. She was wearing some kind of diaphanous nightgown mostly covered up by a blanket that she appeared to have borrowed from the canopied bed. The room was in semidarkness, with only one faint wall sconce giving off any light, and it was difficult to see her expression as she turned toward them.
But her voice was unmistakeable. “My friends,” she said warmly. “I had hoped you might come.”
They crowded around her, bending down one at a time to hug her, casting around the room to find chairs to drag over to the window.
“How are you?” Liramelli demanded. “How badly are you hurt?”
Before she could answer, Corene threw a hand out and nodded meaningfully toward the door. “Speak softly,” she said, her own voice not much above a whisper. “And in Coziquela. They are undoubtedly listening at the door.”
“And they undoubtedly speak Coziquela,” Melissande retorted, but she, too, kept her voice low.
Liramelli leaned closer. “Where are you hurt?”
Alette’s right hand lifted to touch her throat, a spot on her chest, her left knee. “Bruises here and here and here, but the physician said nothing was broken.”
“Well, that is something we must be thankful for!” Melissande exclaimed.
“You must have been terrified,” Liramelli said.
“Yes. I thought I was going to die there.”
Corene frowned. “There was a cart. Maybe they were only going to kidnap you.”
Melissande threw her an incredulous look. “Only kidnap her?”