Amarande sucked in a deep breath. She would accept Taillefer’s help. At the moment, he was her only chance of escape. She had yet to press him on his plan—how he intended to fight for his birthright, and how he thought she could help him—but it didn’t matter. With him or without him, she would push into the Torrent to reunite with Luca. Then she would reevaluate.
Luca first, everything else later.
In one smooth motion, Amarande brought Taillefer’s sword down upon the manacle of her opposite arm. Once, twice, three times. The metal cracked in a hairline pattern. She shrugged out of the shackles and repeated the attack on the other side.
Free of the manacles, she faced Taillefer.
“The weapons stay with me. I lead—here and outside of this castle. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 18
THE very first steps Amarande and Taillefer took were in opposite directions. She moved toward the window through which he’d come. He pivoted to the locked door of her cell.
“Princess,” Taillefer called over his shoulder, “while I can assure you that the top of this tower has a delightful view, we would break our necks on the way down. Let’s make this more simple and less painful.”
Amarande didn’t budge. “If you’re looking to unlock it, the dagger won’t work. I’ve tried.”
“I don’t need a dagger.” The prince slipped a gloved hand into the pocket of his stolen uniform. “I have more tincture.”
Amarande inspected the bars at the window, misshapen and melted as they were, then gaped at the vial in his hand. “What is that?”
“Impressive, what it can do, isn’t it?” He held up the bottle, oh so carefully. “A concentration of the sap of giant hogweed. I call it ‘fire swamp.’” His eyes flickered to her face for a reaction. He didn’t get one. “Stand back, would you? It is extremely potent.”
She stepped back.
“A drop or two should do it.” Taillefer angled the tip of the bottle toward the lock. The liquid was a bright mossy green, like a meadow shot through with spring sun. Or a fire swamp, whatever that was—Amarande had never heard the term before. Perhaps it was for the marshy color and its ability to melt metal. Either way, Taillefer, as usual, clearly thought he was being clever. A single fat drop rolled off the rim of the bottle and into the keyhole. Immediately, the metal began to smoke, the keyhole expanding.
Impressive, yes. But also completely terrifying—Amarande had never seen anything like it. “Does it only react to metal? Or will it dissolve stone and the like?”
“Oh, I suppose if we had enough of it, we could burn our way through the floor, but that would be quite the waste. I’d rather use it a drop at a time to unlock cell doors and disarm guards.” Carefully, he replaced the cork snugly back in the neck of the bottle. “I can’t let you have all the fun.”
Amarande felt sick. “You would purposefully use that on a human?”
Taillefer’s lips quirked as he regarded her aghast face. “You clearly did not discuss your stableboy’s near death with him in great detail, did you?”
Bile licked at her throat and her hands clenched. “He didn’t want to discuss it.”
And now Amarande knew why. She hadn’t pushed Luca to share the details of his encounter with Taillefer in the dungeons of the Bellringe, thrilled as she was that he was alive and hers and they were together. But if Taillefer was telling the truth and had used that fire swamp on Luca, if he wasn’t lying just to throw her off balance … she would follow her father’s tenet—If not an eye for an eye, a lash for a lash—in Luca’s honor. No matter how long she was with the prince, whether it be five minutes or five days, she would disarm him of this fire swamp.
Taillefer might anticipate her vengeance. But anticipation wouldn’t help him survive it.
For now, Amarande pushed down her rage and watched the tincture at work.
A hiss and a pop, sulfurous smoke, and the hardware of the lock melted away. Taillefer sighed in satisfaction, watching as his concoction faded in strength, but not before eating through a door thicker than two praying hands smashed together. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
“I was thinking of another word.”
“Impressive? Efficient? Groundbreaking?”
“Vile.”
The thick hardwood door sagged open. Through it, Amarande could see a similarly heavy door at the far end of the antechamber that led to her cell. The guard would be on the other side.
Amarande strode to the outer door, sword at the ready, and peeked through the keyhole. A few yards away, she could make out Second Captain Pualo greeting the sentry who’d been standing guard. Low murmurs, then a moment later, the guard saluted the captain and disappeared—a shift change. Amarande sucked in a steadying breath.
“How many?” Taillefer whispered.
“One. Stay here. This will not take long.”
Shooing him away from the door, Amarande tried the handle—unlocked—and counted silently. One, two, three.
The princess charged through the anteroom door and sprinted straight at the second captain. Pualo only seemed to register Amarande in the split second before the hilt of her sword crashed down upon the guardswoman’s temple.
Pualo dropped like a stone into a crumpled heap on the floor.
Amarande checked the girl’s pulse, confirmed she was still breathing, and said, “My apologies, Second Captain. Sleep well.”
“You weren’t kidding, Princess. That didn’t take long at all—you’re much quicker than my fire swamp—but not as decisive.” His eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you kill her? Or all the other poor saps you encountered during your last thrilling adventure?”
“Not every battle should end in death.”
Taillefer cocked a brow. “What about weddings? I daresay, I’ve heard they are supposed to end in a kiss and the union of families, but the last one I attended was far more deadly than expected.”
If this was how Taillefer managed the speck of guilt he might have had over the whole sordid wedding affair, she wanted no part. “You expected every murderous second. Now shut up and come on.”
“Gladly. Where are we exactly?”
Taillefer didn’t know the castle as well as she did, but based on his ability to figure out where she’d been held from what little he did know from infrequent visits to the Itspi for state occasions, she thought he was bluffing. He was too clever to know so little. And this, like his most recent attempt at humor, would slow them down. She wheeled on the prince. “Taillefer, before we go any further, I need you to promise me you won’t continue to pretend to be dense, because it really does not suit you.”
The fox smile flashed. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You do. It does not make me feel brilliant or trust you more for you to rely on my intelligence. It makes me feel quite concerned about our very tenuous partnership and we’ve barely made it twenty feet from the cell. If this continues, I’ll have your tongue before we see daylight because I just cannot with you—the jokes are bad enough. Stop. That.”
“As you wish.” Taillefer stooped over Pualo’s body. “I should arm myself—since you require my weapons.”
He reached for the second captain’s dagger but Amarande slapped his hand away. “And have you stab me in the back on the way out? No.”
As long as they were in close quarters, she would not allow him any weapons—his fire swamp tincture and whatever other potions he had in that pouch were dangerous enough.
“My having a weapon does not diminish your possession.”
“It does if your knife enters my back. Take Pualo’s dagger and I will stab you with it and leave you here to bleed out.”
To her surprise, he relented. “Fine. But only because dying in an Ardenian uniform would make for a highly embarrassing afterlife, given I am the current crown prince of Pyrenee.”
The princess stood. “Follow me. And keep quiet. I’d rather not die escaping my ancestral home, no matter what I’m wearing.”
* * *
&nbs
p; THE Itspi was crawling with castle guards. The normal contingent was doubled, possibly tripled. This was new—very new, along with the locked castle gate. Koldo—or possibly Geneva—was being very cautious.
The guards patrolled the hallways in pairs, nearly coming upon Amarande and Taillefer numerous times. Still, they managed to avoid being caught as they moved cautiously into the main body of the castle, slinking through the shadows, coordinating their movements with the patrols’ repetitive ones. As four guards on early-morning rounds of the north side of the castle passed their hiding place in a small alcove near the throne room, Amarande grabbed Taillefer’s wrist and yanked him across the hall and into the library.
The double doors whispered closed, heavy wall and floor coverings absorbing the sound. Hundreds of shelves lined the double-height walls, stuffed full of military texts, histories, folktales, poetry, and other tales from across the continent and beyond—King Sendoa was many things and one of them was well-read. The oft-repeated tenets that ran through Amarande’s mind were a mishmash of wisdom from the books on these shelves blended with his real-life experience.
“I spent quite a bit of time in your library during the funeral visit, and though your father’s collection is impressive,” Taillefer whispered, “I would highly doubt there’s a book here that can solve our current dilemma—unless there’s a hidden passageway out of the castle. Stars, tell me one of these bookcases leads to a hidden passageway.” He paused, pointedly grabbing at the nearest fat-spined tome, then another and another. “Is this the trigger? What about this one? Or this one.”
Annoyed, Amarande forcefully yanked him onward and again confronted his willful, pretend denseness. “If you knew the general location of where I was being kept, why on earth did you scale the tower rather than use your stolen guard’s uniform to walk through the castle to get to me? I would be recognized, of course, but you wouldn’t have been.”
Taillefer blinked. “Had I known I would be breaking into the Itspi so soon after your father’s funeral, I wouldn’t have been so eager to leave my room and roam the grounds during my visit. I came across enough people in my reconnaissance of your location to know that eventually I would have the misfortune of running into someone who could put a face with my true name. I am not as forgettable as you assume I am. The second son of a king is still a prince.”
They passed a long, ornate table stacked with leaning scrolls of parchment. Figurines—Bear, Mountain Lion, Tiger, Shark—dotted the open patches of tabletop. Items used in strategy sessions. Amarande’s eyes snagged on a handful of black wolves mingled in with the current sigils. Each had a recently scratched W on its chest—old Torrence figures co-opted and reused for the Warlord. The prince paused as something caught his eye. He reached for one of the scrolls. “Hmm … what’s this?”
“We don’t need a map,” she snapped. “I know where I’m going. It’s up to you to follow.”
To Luca. Always to Luca.
Taillefer sighed. “To your stableboy, yes. But where is he? Will you tell me that?”
Not until they were on the way. “Share with the defenseless boy who would sell me out at the first flash of Basilican steel before we are beyond the Itspi’s grounds? No.”
“Your trust is truly staggering.”
“Until you’ve earned more than a modicum of it, I will not supply you with ammunition.”
“I rescued you and I have only received a modicum? How very stingy of you.”
Amarande wheeled on him. “You broke in, but I rescued myself. And even with your modicum you are still very much in the negative, trust-wise. I shall never forgive you for what you did to Luca with that abomination.” She gestured to his pocket and the outline of the pouch that contained the fire swamp and whatever else he might be carrying.
A smirk unfurled on his face as the prince nodded. “Then I shall require a map. It’s simply good practice when one doesn’t know where he is going.”
Taillefer’s fingers, still gloved, combed through the scrolls as he squinted in the dim predawn light. Not finding what he wanted, the prince moved to the flattened pages littering the table with the figurines. Within a moment, the parchments rustled as he crowed with success. “This will do.”
Amarande did not venture to see which map he picked. Instead, she was already moving in the direction she’d planned, to the center of the southern wall. There, a large banquette, upholstered in rich golden silk, was built into the wall beneath a large tapestry featuring the five sigils of the historic Sand and Sky.
The princess’s eyes paused on the black wolf.
Taillefer caught up, adjusting the buttons of his guard’s tunic, the pointed edges of the folded map sticking through the fabric. Amarande did not comment on the map, rather she simply pushed aside the tapestry to reveal a small square door cut into the wall approximately four feet from the floor. She released the latching mechanism that kept the door closed, revealing a chute and cart on a rope pulley.
Taillefer’s lips quirked. “A dumbwaiter?”
“Yes. My father always went into battle with as much reference material, histories, and hand-drawn plans as he could reasonably carry.” Amarande knew very little of King Louis-David’s military exploits but highly doubted the man ever got close enough to the front to yearn for strategy tomes in his royal tent.
The prince leaned into the dumbwaiter, gleefully pulling on the rope mechanism and watching as the cart moved up and down. Amarande relieved him of the rope and yanked it hard enough to pull the cart up so that it revealed an unblocked shaft. All they would have to do was slide down two stories to the courtyard. “Get in.”
Taillefer bowed in a way that made Amarande look away, reminded of his older brother’s practiced politeness at her father’s funeral. “Ladies first.”
“Not on your life.” She drew her dagger and gestured. “In.”
“Okay, okay.”
Amarande drove the dagger through the rope, pinning it in place. Then she held the door open. Taillefer positioned himself on the banquette so that he could sweep one leg over and then another. “I would recommend bracing yourself against the sides as much as you can so you don’t break your ankles on your landing.”
Legs in, he twisted to brace his boots against the shaft, which was barely much wider than his shoulders. One hand gripping hard against the doorframe, Taillefer arched a brow at her. “Have you done this before?”
“Yes. Many times.”
Taillefer hesitated. “Will they know? If they trace us to the library, will it be a dead end or will they know exactly what you’ve done and race to the yard?”
“The only person who knows I’ve done it is not here.”
“Ah, yes. Of course.” Taillefer’s brows pulled together. “You must have been much younger. There’s no way that he would fit in here now, what with those shoulders, and biceps, and—”
“Just go, would you?”
For once, Taillefer did as he was told without trying to get the last word. Amarande counted to twenty—enough time that she felt confident from her previous experiences with Luca that she wouldn’t land on him—and followed him into the darkness.
CHAPTER 19
AMARANDE thudded through the chute after Taillefer and landed in the treeless training yard. Immediately, the prince started up again with his teasing questions.
“Now tell me, what particular mischief were you two up to when you decided that would be the best way to leave the—”
Amarande cut him off with a palm thrust over his mouth. The princess gestured to the military housing across the grass—many of the windows were open and gaping with newly washed uniforms hung out to dry in the breeze. “Ears and eyes are everywhere here, not just within. Come on, to the stable.”
Under her direction, they stuck to the shadows under the eaves of the Itspi, walking quickly, not running. At the sharp angle of yet another meandering curve, Amarande paused abruptly. Taillefer bumped into her with an audible OOF, nearly knocking her down. Sh
e steadied herself at his expense with a tight grip on his shoulder, yet again covering his mouth with a bruising palm. Then, when they were both settled and silent, she pointed—across the field that lay between their current location and the stable—upward to the ramparts of the main gate.
It was crawling with guards. Not simply a four-man crew like the night she arrived, but more than a dozen. And that was just what was visible.
Amarande hadn’t counted on this—another protective addition, like the guards within the castle. For a few quiet moments she read the shadows, judging how long they would be exposed as they made for the stable. Tried to come up with a plan better than luck. But before she got there, Taillefer tapped her on the shoulder, then pointed behind them.
The North Tower of the Itspi was ablaze with torchlight.
The princess inhaled sharply.
“Our window of escape is about to slam on our fingers,” Taillefer whispered. “What is the plan?”
Amarande’s mind raced with the best possible strategy other than speed and stealth.
“If you don’t have one,” he announced quietly, “I’m going double or nothing on my modicum of trust.”
“You will do no such thing.”
But Taillefer was already unfolding from his crouch. “It will be my neck on the line, not yours. Wait here. You’ll know when to move.”
Before she could object further, he was strolling straight for the gatehouse at the main entrance to Itspi. Uncovered and unbothered, his chin held high, his royal face revealed and possibly recognizable from yards away.
Amarande’s first impulse was to tackle him, but she checked herself. Her fingers itched, ready to pluck her dagger from its sheath and bury it into his back before he sold them out, but that would be the end of a perfectly good blade—
“Ho, up there!” Taillefer called up to the second story of the gatehouse. Two faces peered out over the parapet. Amarande sank to the ground in the shadows, attempting to cover her exposed skin, which was so pale it seemed to catch the moonlight. “Word from the north tower—the prisoner is missing.”
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