In the night, Amarande had kept her hold of his hand but tossed herself from her back to her side, her cheek pressed into the mostly flat crook of one arm. She was left facing him, knees pulled up toward her stomach, boots crossed just so.
The sun illuminated the cut of her jaw, the sunburn atop her cheeks, her nose, the crest of her forehead. The fine hairs running to her hairline, auburn blazing along with the new light. Her eyelashes were as dark as her coloring would allow, and a fine spray of freckles had been raised by the Torrent’s sun, something one could only see so close.
Before Amarande woke, her breathing shifted and she tossed herself back onto her spine, her knees staying twisted toward him, their twined hands dragging through the dirt as she shook herself from sleep.
Luca had closed his eyes then, embarrassed by the utter amount of time he’d watched her. This person he knew so well but had never seen like that.
On the pirate ship, she’d slept next to the bed in the captain’s quarters, holding his hand from her spot on the floorboards. He would’ve lain there, too, if the pain weren’t so great. Her stubbornness won out yet again.
When this was all over, he wanted nothing more but to fall asleep with her hand in his and wake with the horses, pausing just long enough to watch the light cross her face.
Always, Princess.
Rustling came from Ula’s side, and the swordswoman sat up—braid abandoned and hair everywhere, kerchief slipping, the sword flung across her lap. “Urtzi? Did you—”
She blinked at Luca and immediately swiped at the canvas, unfastening it as much as she dared to get a good look at their surroundings. Then she cleared her throat. “We need to start a breakfast fire soon. We must look like them. If we hide in here, they will become suspicious.”
Luca had meant what he said to Tala—he did not come on this journey to sit in relative safety. To hide. Yet he hesitated. He did not come on this journey to fail either.
This was reconnaissance, not the actual mission. That would come the next night. What if … it went wrong?
Luca had lived his life with his destiny literally written on his skin and had been safe. Now somehow, even with the wolf tattoo nestled under layers of gauze and two tunics, it seemed as if the moment he stepped out of the carriage everyone would know.
Even with the disguise, the fictitious name, the cover of hundreds of boys around the same age, some with similar coloring and height, the fear he’d been driving down deep since the night before ran roughshod under his skin. “We’re one carriage of thousands.”
Ula stood. “Yes, and if every single other carriage and tent has a cook fire, we will be noticed. Come. Let us try out our disguises before full light.”
CHAPTER 37
DESPITE the exhaustion, Amarande’s blood and breath sang with her plan as she and Taillefer edged into the boundary of the Warlord’s camp.
Cloak. Food. Horses. Head straight for the plateau where she’d been taken captive by the man with the black wolf. Find him, find the resistance, find Luca.
Then all would be right—together, they could survive anything.
But first she had to survive with Taillefer.
Their agreed-upon approach was this: If an easy target for clothing and supplies made itself known on the way to the horses, they would confer before taking action. They needed horses more than anything else and getting to the corral—on the extreme northeastern side of the camp, at least a mile from their starting edge—was priority number one.
And above everything: Don’t get caught.
Walking as quickly as they dared, the pair wound along the outer ring of tents. Past dying fires, hushed conversations, babies crying with the new morning.
The princess made a hard right, down an offshoot that barreled closer to the center of the camp—her instincts told her it would be quieter. Fewer babies and families, tents of a smaller, more singular size. Bachelor row. Still, a few clothing lines were strung up on poles or between consenting tents, clothing being aired out after a day’s travel. Taillefer’s stride slowed a half step. “Cloak, north-by-northeast.”
Amarande’s eyes caught on the item, hanging heavily on a line—this garment wouldn’t perfectly mask his tattered Itspi guard’s uniform, but it was definitely an improvement. She gave him a wordless go-ahead.
Taillefer diverted toward the clothing line, plucking off the cloak without a single hesitation or a pause in his stride. He made another right, Amarande on his heels, and shrugged it on. The garment was a rugged brown, thick with the mingled odor of campfire and leather oil. It was a little short but did the job—hiding the golden thread and ripped shoulders where Taillefer’s sewn-on cloak had previously been. It also had a hood, which would come in handy.
They hooked left, realigning their path with the horse pen, which was now straight ahead, about a half mile from where they’d veered.
“Perhaps we save the food and waterskins for closer to the horses,” Amarande whispered, glancing over her shoulder at some sort of commotion—two men with raised voices near where they’d nabbed the cloak.
Taillefer saw it, too. “Step faster.”
No titles or names until they were past all this—that was something they’d discussed, too. With a thousand sets of ears, there were too many wrong people around to hear a clue.
“We cannot appear to be running,” she whispered.
Taillefer responded by cuffing her wrist to pull her along. He was basically jogging now, his knees picking up, obscured a little by the flow of the cloak. She wrenched her arm away as they turned another corner, trying to put tent peaks between themselves and the two men. “I am with you; you don’t need to—”
“OOF.”
Taillefer was sprawled flat on his back before Amarande’s head jerked up. A man the size of the ogre she and Osana had met at the Warlord’s Inn stood there, coffee splattered down the front of his tunic and dripping down the sides of a tin mug in one of his massive hands.
Surprise wound the meaty swoops of his features. “Where’s the hurry, man?” he spat, rolling his shoulder as if it’d been knocked out of its socket with the blow that had landed Taillefer on the ground. A bruise was already blooming on the prince’s cheek as he blinked up at the lightening sky, trying to make sense of what had just occurred.
“We’re sorry; it won’t happen again,” Amarande answered for Taillefer, quickly and quietly, extending a hand to him so that he might stand and they could get out of the way.
“Little Queen, is that you?”
Amarande’s breath caught, as her eyes shot toward the ancient voice and a campfire a horse length away. And, there, raising herself from a stoop, was Naiara, the healer who saved Luca’s life in the Isilean Caravan. As if in confirmation, her apprentice Señe appeared at the old woman’s shoulder, coffee carafe held tight. Commotion came from behind them as someone tripped and fell, almost as if they’d walked right off the edge of the precipice where the princess was very carefully standing.
Before Amarande could answer, Naiara took a step forward, angling to get a proper look at the hooded boy on the ground. “Kidege? Luca?”
In that moment, time seemed to stop—the giant suddenly aggressively rigid; Amarande wishing the stars would steal those two syllables back; Taillefer pushed up on one knee, not yet to standing.
Then it all crashed into motion.
“Luca?” The giant’s voice was louder than anything Amarande had heard since the wedding that wasn’t. His meaty gaze drilled into Taillefer. “This is the boy who would unseat our Warlord?”
Stars, no.
Naiara audibly gasped. For all her talents and knowledge, it appeared the wisewoman did not understand the power of Luca’s name.
Taillefer got to his feet and purposely shrugged off his hood to prove he had no Torrentian blood. “No, no, this is a misunderstanding. My name is not that. I—”
The giant grabbed Taillefer by the front of his tunic and hoisted him into the air.
Amara
nde’s sword was out front in a flash. “Put him down. We mean no harm.”
“Your sword says otherwise, girl.”
The sound of more unsheathed steel rang out. Two female guards stood at the conjunction of a pair of tent rows. Amarande didn’t dare glance at Naiara or Señe—the healers would be in trouble enough for harboring knowledge of Luca. A pang of regret hit as she wished she hadn’t turned her head at the first sound of the healer’s voice.
“Have your friend put him down, and I shall stow my sword,” Amarande said to the guards—both carried swords like Ula’s, curved and deadly.
“Release him, Kerbasi.”
The large man smiled wide at Taillefer, who gasped and kicked. “Gladly.”
The word was barely out of his mouth when the giant flung Taillefer into the air. Sword still raised, Amarande shuffled backward, aiming to get out of the way.
But the movement she’d anticipated didn’t come—the prince’s body was tossed vertically, not horizontally. And, as he plummeted back toward the cracked earth, the man’s leg shot out and his boot connected with Taillefer’s gut.
The crunch of a shattered rib reverberated in the air, a cry escaping into the new dawn with it. Taillefer landed in a heap, blood rolling out of his mouth.
“Tai—” Amarande started only to be cut off with a warning.
“Little Queen!”
Naiara’s fevered shout brought Amarande’s attention from Taillefer’s fresh blood to a blur of motion—the two guards, barreling in from either side.
“Stars,” she cursed under her breath.
The guard on the left was the faster of the two, sword arcing down against the princess’s weak side. Amarande met her in a cross-body strike. The broad side of the princess’s sword caught the thin edge of the guard’s blade—with enough power and torque to flip the momentum of her slashing movement.
It was enough to put that guard off-balance. The princess struck the girl’s knee with the sole of her boot as the guard rotated away, shoving her out of the picture and onto the ground.
Amarande’s sword was up again and slashing on the offense as the second guard approached. This one drove her blade in toward the body in such a way that the fattest part of the curve connected with Amarande’s weapon.
As steel met steel, Taillefer found his voice over her shoulder. “I could really use a blade here. Any blade!” he bellowed in her direction.
The giant drew a weapon of his own, a sword made just for him—longer than a traditional one and broader, too. Taillefer danced away from it, running out of room in the narrow confines of the tent city.
“Steal his! Mine is busy!” Amarande called back, the edge of her blade colliding with the curve of her own assailant’s weapon in a high guard, her arms gaining strength from adrenaline alone, hunger still clouding her energy.
How had this gone so badly so quickly?
Taillefer huffed out a sigh, dodged a swing, and darted into the giant’s body, rolling against the man’s belly and driving off his heels to send an elbow straight into his nose.
Blood sprayed the sandy dirt not far from where Taillefer had marked it, a much louder, madder shout wrenching into the morning light. The giant stumbled and Taillefer caught the man’s dagger from his belt. In a flash of salmon light and movement, the raised blade slashed down and into the soft curve of the man’s exposed side body.
The giant’s liver, spleen, stomach—one or all of them punctured.
“You are an immeasurably helpful presence in my time of need,” Taillefer chided, collecting the dagger from the man’s side as he thrashed. The giant nearly rolled right onto Taillefer’s boots, which would’ve pinned him, but somehow he eluded the man’s weight.
“I knew you could do it!” Amarande shouted. It was a call back to the night of the wedding—not one she’d meant.
For one blinding moment, Renard’s lifeless body scraped across her eyelids as she blinked after yet another clash of steel.
Eyes open, the princess hesitated.
A mistake.
The guard managed to use the momentum of their swords crashing together to pull herself into Amarande’s body. The girl’s knee connected with the top of her thigh. It was enough that the princess stumbled backward, and the guard gained purchase enough to shove her to the ground, their swords caught in a cross that was slowly lowering toward the crown of Amarande’s head.
The princess tried to shove back, but her injured hand was on top and the pressure of the hilt upon her wound was making it difficult to hold, even if her trained muscles could do it. Amarande locked eyes with the guard and gritted her teeth. She’d push back until she was standing again; she would—
Suddenly Amarande was blind, grains of cinnamon sand cast straight into her face.
All the torque between their two swords evaporated as the princess tried in vain to see, falling to the dirt and blinking hard. A boot heel crunched onto her injured hand—the bandage marking it as a weak spot. She yelped, the sword wedged between her grip and the earth.
“Drop it.” The other guard. Her voice was full of blood and hard. She pressed all her weight onto the princess’s hand.
Amarande’s fingers splayed open.
Someone grabbed the sword. Someone else hauled her up to her knees.
Amarande’s vision still failed her. She blinked rapidly, tears working in vain to eliminate the scratchy grains of sand from her eyes. Yet the princess had her wits about her, keeping her chin down, hoping against hope she wasn’t as recognizable as Taillefer had suggested. Hoping Naiara wouldn’t be questioned about the two instances in which she called this assailant Little Queen. She’d had her frustrations with the healer, but she’d saved Luca’s life and Amarande would forever be in her debt.
“I have her sword and her wrists; check her boots.” That was the first guard.
The princess tried to kick her legs from kneeling—she caught someone in the jaw, but the other guard used her outstretched position as she made contact to bear-hug her boot. Her weight effectively clipped Amarande’s momentum—she was too heavy to shake off.
“There’s a knife in here,” the guard announced, her face pressed tightly against the inner line of that boot. Amarande expected her to release one hand and slip it against the outside of the ankle to snatch the dagger, but instead she simply used all that weight of hers to haul it off the princess’s wriggling foot. The girl peeled off Amarande’s body with the boot, and the knife skittered across the ground.
“The knife! Grab it!” she screamed toward where Taillefer should have been, using the distraction and falling momentum to wrench herself out of the other guard’s grasp.
Amarande’s order received no answer as she twisted to face the guard, hands at the ready to grab her sword, the guard’s sword, her long hair—anything.
But just as soon as she turned to the girl, something thunked hard against Amarande’s temple, tossing her off-balance. Her opponent used that split second to roll onto the princess, driving Amarande’s face into the sandy earth as she sat atop the princess’s back, pinning her in a way that left all of Amarande’s fight useless.
From the corner of her eye, the princess watched through blurred vision as her own boot rolled to a stop—the heel the blunt object the guard had found to use against her.
Beyond the boot, she saw Taillefer, also splayed on the ground, two other female guards taking lengths of rope to his wrists, which, like hers, were wrenched behind his back. As her own guards gathered rope for her wrists, his captors moved on to his legs, binding them above the knees so that he could walk but not run. They followed the same procedure with Amarande. The injured giant looked on, unblinking, hand pressed hard to his bleeding side. His nose was no longer straight.
When both sets of guards were finished, they wrenched their captives to standing.
The princess was suddenly aware of how large the crowd was—what had started at a half dozen was now at least a hundred people. Men, women, children, all star
tled awake by the fight and blinking into the rising sun. Naiara and Señe were nowhere to be seen. Good.
Amarande wondered if the guard she’d attacked when chained up was present and watching.
If he would tell them who she’d said she was. Little Queen, indeed.
If the new Warlord would hear of it and believe it.
Or if perhaps this Warlord had already received word of Amarande’s escape into the Torrent straight from her mother. Just as Luca’s very name was a flash point to the giant and the crowd.
In the end Amarande never learned how they knew. Only that they did.
“The Warlord demands your presence, Princess Amarande.”
CHAPTER 38
LUCA’S heart sat in his throat as he lay with his chin to the ground, Ula covering him, their cook fire and its smoke all that shielded the pair of them from the guards as they marched Amarande and Taillefer to the Warlord’s tent.
The questions in his mind were grains of sand, swirling together in a never-ending swell and spiral.
Ula’s weight shifted as she disentangled herself from how she’d tackled and smothered him at the sudden close mention of his name. There was no “fitting in” with the way she’d yanked him down—no way to explain her actions other than to call it a protective measure—but all eyes had been on the princess.
Kidege? Luca?
He’d known they were sheltering in Naiara’s caravan. But hearing his name on her lips? After believing she may have seen him? Or, more accurately, seeing and recognizing Amarande and hoping her hooded companion at a distance was him?
That was about as much as to be expected as seeing Amarande herself. Here. Feet from the fire they’d lit for assimilation’s sake, so that Ula could burn coffee beans and toast day-old bread. So close that even before Ula tackled him he recognized Amarande was wearing his tunic—sleeves rolled up but obvious.
Fierce and beautiful and fighting alongside Taillefer.
Taillefer.
“Stay down,” Ula whispered.
The Queen Will Betray You Page 23