Nill ate enough for three. Geric picked at his food, then retired, never having spoken a word. Nill remained with us, the firelight reflecting in his wide eyes. He loved staying at an inn, loved being responsible—loved everything, asking a stream of questions until it was clear that he would stay up all night talking if we let him.
Since Geric had plenty of money, and the inn charged winter prices, that is, cheap, we each got our own room. Once everyone was settled Hlanan came to mine, tired and smiling. I too was tired—but that vanished when I opened my door and found him there. After all this time pretending we were barely acquainted it was so good to be finally alone with him!
I don’t know which of us grabbed the other first, but ah, even though we were grimy from the day’s travel, mud-splashed and disheveled, our kisses burned as sweetly and as brightly as our very first.
But he didn’t stay long. “We need our rest,” he said presently. “We ought to start early.”
“Stay,” was my response. “It’s been ages since we’ve been just the two of us. Prince Geric is a courtier. ‘Early’ for him is no doubt mid-afternoon. And that’s when he’s well.”
Hlanan laughed against my neck, and I swirled my hair around him to keep him there. “You traveled with him down the mountain from Maita Boniree’s castle. He knows what early means, and in spite of his wounds he is anxious to get back to Thann. We need to stay alert on the road.”
That was true. Who knew what Dhes-Andes would throw at us next? “All right,” I grumped, freeing him.
“We’ll meet tomorrow night, soon as everyone is settled,” Hlanan said. He grabbed my shoulders and kissed me hard, then quietly slipped out.
I opened my window wide, and that night I dreamed of the Blue Lady, but she remained in the distance, wavering as if seen through water, the way she had when I dreamed about her as a youngster. I woke with the old sense of loss, grumpy at the sound of urgent knocking on the door.
“There looks like weather on the way,” Hlanan said. “Let us get as far as we can before it arrives.”
Since I had no gear beyond my thief tools, which I slept with, I simply stepped through the cleaning frame and followed him out to the parlor where porridge, cream, honey, and hot biscuits awaited us.
I found Geric and Nill already there. The prince never even looked up at our entrance.
Nill inhaled his meal in a way that reminded me of my days among a group of young thieves, and departed, a biscuit in hand, to see to the horses.
We left soon after, with Tir circling overhead.
And so the next few days went. I helped clear the road, which Hlanan expressed frequent appreciation for. He watched continuously: Geric’s ability to stay on the horse, the horizon, the road behind us. A couple of times I caught him pressing his hand absently against his side, where his inner pocket was sewn, but of course there was no magical notecase there. Maita had stolen his as well as Hlanan’s.
That gesture and his quiet determination to get us as far and fast as possible began to raise questions in my mind. I had no interest in Thann, armies, or empires. But Hlanan clearly did.
I’d expected Geric to be the one to urge speed. Oh, not at first. Those days we traveled down the mountain he could scarcely sit on the horse, though he was proud enough to try to hide how much it hurt him. It was no surprise that he was always the first to retire and the last to waken.
But as the days stretched into a week and he clearly regained a modicum of strength, he remained silent, and Nill began riding with me. This was nice, as I enjoyed Nill, but that effectively ended private talk with Hlanan.
“This is so wonderful,” Nill exclaimed, looking with obvious delight at the uniformly white landscape sculpted into softness over hills and valleys. Dull brown and gray barren trees broke the ubiquitous white, and in the distance far to the south—glimpsed when we topped hills—lay the winding ice-glinting ribbon of the river.
“What do you find wonderful about it?” I asked.
“My own mission! Travel, every day different. Kee’s had a dozen missions and didn’t she gloat, the first time! It’s finally my turn.”
“Every day has been pretty much the same,” I said, laughing.
“But we meet new people every day! And these trees here, did you notice how the hickories and all those oaks only grow on the sun-facing slopes, but the shaded slopes grow the evergreens? On the heights, we don’t see a lot of these.” He swept a hand at a hedgerow. His enthusiasm was fun to see.
“So you don’t mind tending Prince Scowl?”
Nill’s grin twisted into a rueful grimace. “I guess I’d be the same if I had a bunch of holes in me. And all the rest of it. At least he doesn’t throw things at my head, the way Gran says the old king did.” He shrugged. “Most nobles, she says, are stinkers. You learn to live around them, unless they’re like our prince.”
I had no interest in talking about Rajanas. “What’s it like, having a sister?”
Another grimace, a shrug, then a reluctant, “Oh, Kee’s all right. She’s not like some I could mention. But they always used to say, Why don’t you keep your bedding neat like Kee does, or Kee is always at the practice targets. You’re old enough to have her good habits. If she ever did anything wrong, it would be easier.” He shrugged again. “I can’t help being lazy.” He waved a hand, dismissing the topic. “Gran said I was not to bother you, but we’re days away from the rest. So what’s it like being a thief? Is it fun?”
It was my turn to grimace. “It’s only fun when you rob someone you really hate.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder at Geric, and Nill snickered. “But I can’t tell you how much trouble that has got me into. As for the rest, well, it’s exciting, because you don’t want to get caught. Everybody hates you, and you have to keep moving.”
Nill said, “I hadn’t thought of that. Of course if you have friends, like Gran did under the bad old king, it doesn’t sound so bad. Though she hates questions about that time, and if you ask, you get a lecture about how terrible thieving is. Even when you’re starving.”
“I guess if you have the forest to hide in you are all right,” I said. “But I can tell you this, if you have friends and get comfortable in a city you get caught sooner.”
He grimaced again. “I think I’d rather run stealth raids on the others in training. At least if you get caught you just get laughed at.”
“Tell me about your training,” I said, and Nill happily whiled away the afternoon with stories about his life as a ranger. Naturally he bragged at first—trying to impress me—but then he told stories about his grandmother’s life when she and Rajanas recovered the principality.
And so it went for a few days as we rode steadily lower from mountains to hills to hillocks, and finally reached the river. Here inns would be easy to find, but Tir remained with us, appearing now and again high overhead.
The aidlar did not speak to me again.
o0o
One morning I woke to the sound of sleet. When I opened the door of the tiny attic room at the inn we’d stopped at, I found Hlanan halfway down the stairs on the landing, peering out the window with an intensity that he seldom revealed.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He started, and flushed as he turned to face me. “We’re grounded.” He turned out his hands. “I don’t think Prince Geric would do well out in this weather.”
I sat on the stairs, my chin on my knees. “About Geric,” I said, pinching my nose. “Who at the moment is lurking at the other end of this inn so he can’t possibly hear us. Hlanan, why are we even here?”
His eyebrows shot upward. “You heard that discussion. You were there.”
“I heard all these reasons why he wants to go, and you said you’d take him because you were going to get him to talk. He hasn’t said anything, and it’s you who frets at our slowness. Why you? Why not send Nill alone to help him? Much as I loathe Geric, I don’t think he’s going to attack Nill.”
Instead of answering immediatel
y, Hlanan ran up the stairs, and gestured for me to follow into my closet of a room. There was scarcely enough space for two and it was cold in there—I’d asked for a room with no fireplace, and ended up with a servants’ chamber.
We stood less than an arm’s length apart, close enough that I could hear his breathing and see his heartbeat tic in a vein at his temple, partially obscured by the soft fall of an errant lock of brown hair.
We were alone. Why does meeting someone’s eyes have such a strong physical effect? It’s not like anything touches, but there it was, that blossom of warmth in my middle. I ached to pull him to me, but I sensed a tension in him that put an invisible barrier between us.
He sighed sharply, and dropped his gaze to his hands. “You know I had to report everything that had occurred. It is my duty.”
“Of course,” I said, wondering why he’d state the obvious. I’d seen him march off with Rajanas’s notecase, paper, pen, and ink, before we left.
“And so . . . I want to get to Thann first. To resolve the conflict. If I can.”
“You can’t think Geric will help you! And even if he could, isn’t that army commanded by Dhes-Andis from afar? I mean, through whoever his sub-commanders are?”
“I am counting on Geric telling me about Thann. He’s been there more recently than I. The more I know the better chance I have of coming up with something by the time the army commanders reach it.”
Muffled voices sounded faintly through the age-warped door.
He lifted his head, then opened the door and ran lightly downstairs. I sat where I was, mulling the quick words, that tension he had tried to mask. Something was still missing.
Later—we left the moment the sky began to clear—I watched Geric narrowly. Surely he had to be part of whatever Hlanan had not told me.
I was—as usual—completely wrong.
But I didn’t begin to figure that out until a week later, after an almost headlong journey along the river road, when we passed a crossroads and found ourselves surrounded by armed warriors.
TWELVE
They wore the gray and purple of imperial warriors. Or they were disguised as imperial warriors. Considering how many disguised people with pointy weapons I’d run into of late I didn’t trust anything I saw.
They surrounded us with the seemingly effortless skill that comes of very long training, separating off Geric from the rest of us. Geric paled, but straightened his shoulders and head with a semblance of his old arrogance.
“My greetings, Scribe Vosaga. We are here to escort His Highness safely to Erev-li-Erval,” shouted a helmed man whose gold twined laurels at one shoulder indicated a captain. He seemed familiar, though I was certain I’d never spoken to him, and he certainly knew Hlanan, having greeted him by name. He appeared to be about thirty-five, with the splendid build of the lifetime warrior, and sat tall in the saddle.
He spoke with the accent heard all over the noble levels of the capital. He couldn’t possibly be a disguised mercenary. Could he? I turned to Hlanan—to encounter his Heir Face.
Geric said, “There is no necessity. I am returning to my holding.”
“On the contrary,” returned this captain with the ease of one noble to another. “I can see from here that the reports are true, Your Highness. You are far from well.”
Hlanan spoke up. “There are three of us to see to His Highness’s needs, Captain Dalcasta. We require no escort.”
Captain Dalcasta’s smile widened, his genial voice carrying easily across the churned-up snow. “Come along, Scribe Vosaga, we can discuss these affairs more comfortably elsewhere. Your Highness, will you do us the honor of accompanying us?” The words were spoken as a request, but it was plainly an order.
Hlanan’s mouth tightened, but he said nothing more as the warriors fell in on either side of us, and away we rode.
At the nearest crossroads we turned inland from the frozen river, skirting a market town. A square, four-towered castle dominated the town from a hilltop. The tallest tower, overlooking the river, sported a flagpole. Limp in the cold breeze flew Rajanas’s blue and black banner, with the imperial purple and gold flag hanging above it. So we’d reached the border of Alezand.
And there were Blues on duty. The way they deferred to Captain Dalcasta and his company made it clear who was the biggest bowwow in the kennel. As we drew up in the courtyard, the captain dismounted while calling out a string of orders that sent everyone, his own people and the Blues, scurrying every which way.
“. . . And lock up the Hrethan thief wherever convenient. Scribe, wait upon me in the commander’s office.” He lifted a casual hand toward the tallest tower.
I glared at this casual dismissal, instantly hating him, but he never so much as glanced at me. I obediently followed the four armed guards who surrounded me, doing my best to look meek and small. Sure enough, they gave me only the most cursory search outside the door to the first room that locked. It was not a prison cell—no bars—so two heartbeats after the door closed and a key rattled in the lock I sprang to the window, eased it open, and once again murmured my illusion spell as I spidered up the rough wall to the sentry walk.
The pair of guards walking the walls passed by, talking in low voices about how much their chow would be lessened thanks to the newcomers. As soon as they passed, I eased over the crenellation and ghost-footed with painful care to the tower with the flag pole where again I finger-toed my way up the side of the wall, grateful for ancient stones not quite fitted flush.
When I heard the captain’s amused, tolerant voice, I halted below a window. It was shut against the cold but the glass only muffled sound.
I nearly fell off the wall from shock when Hlanan said, “And I am glad to see you, too, Justeon, but I don’t understand why Mother sent you.”
Mother? So this Captain Dalcasta had to be the military half-brother! In public he’d only be known by the rank he had earned.
“Hlanan. Get your head out of the clouds. Because the army that you reported marches eastward across Keprima! Nice work, by the way. The diplomats are busy wielding innuendo and veiled threat between here and Keprima’s capital. As of last night, we still don’t know what type of bribe could get Keprima to turn a blind eye to an army tromping through the countryside, or if the motivation is fear. But this army has to be getting their supplies from somewhere, eh?”
Hlanan said, “Justeon, I told Mother that I would handle this situation on my own. Will you lend me your notecase so I can write to her?”
Justeon uttered a comfortable, indulgent laugh. “Hlanan, you never cease to amaze me! Look at you here with no vestige of support. You didn’t even manage to hold onto your notecase.”
“That is because of the traitor mage Maita Boniree.”
“I know. Very nice work, that, by the way. The mages are humming all around her former hive. Though I overheard some sharp words about the idiot who managed to burn up all the evidence. Lost control of a magical fire, very distinctive spell. I trust that wasn’t you. It sounds more like something your wretched thief would try. I heard plenty about her, ha ha!”
“There should be something else to present as evidence of Magister Boniree’s betrayal of her oath.”
“Yes. As it happens the grisly remains of her failed experiments. Good thing you didn’t set the entire castle afire, eh? Anyroad, they are quite pleased with you. Go home and bask in your earned glory. Leave the military situation to me. You do recognize that this is a military situation, little brother?” His tone was so kindly that I ground my teeth, longing to pitch him into the nearest pig pen head first.
“That’s just it. I want to resolve this situation if I can, without bloodshed,” Hlanan said.
Justeon gave a short bark of laughter, but whatever he was going to say he abandoned at a rap on the door. “Enter!”
“His Highness insisted upon an interview,” said an equerry, before Geric pushed past.
“Prince Geric.” Justeon rose to his feet and bowed. “You will not mind s
peaking before the scribe here? I gather you’ve been traveling in his company.”
Geric ignored the question. “I desire to return to Thann, which is now my holding.”
“Your Highness, you have my profound respect for your dedication, but permit me to observe that you are in no case for such travel. I will send you to Erev-li-Erval via transfer where you may have your wounds seen to in royal comfort.”
“I intend to return to Thann,” Geric stated in his suavest drawl. “May I remind you that though the Golden Circle is soon to cease, thanks to the decree of Aranu Crown, it does still exist, with all privileges of rank appertaining?”
My fingers slipped and I clutched the rock in a death grip. There was no flying here—I could feel the weight of the lowlands pressing on me. If I fell, landing on that stone courtyard would probably hurt a whole lot.
Carefully, slowly, I retraced my motions, renewing the illusion and pausing when sentries walked by. I didn’t relax until I reached that room again.
And just in time. I’d scarcely rubbed the ache out of my fingers and toes before keys clattered in the lock. I sprang to sit at the table nearby, slouching in what I hoped was a posture that looked as if I’d never moved. But my fine acting was wasted on the equerry who barely glanced at me before setting a bowl and a stoneware jug on the side table then locking the door again.
I gulped down the water. The bowl contained good Keprima long-grained rice boiled with vegetables and topped with crumbled cheese. I inhaled that, too.
Scarcely had I finished when the door unlocked again—and here was Hlanan. “Oh, good,” he said, relieved. “I hoped you hadn’t done a flit.”
“I did,” I said. “That is, I got out, and climbed up to your tower to ear in. ‘Wretched thief.’ That brother of yours is—”
“Later,” he murmured. “Geric wants to leave. I told him we’d meet at the stable.”
“Shall I sneak over the wall?”