by Nicole Field
So, dressed in a billowy blue gown with her pale hair knotted under a floral clip, Pidge tried to walk as the court ladies did. Chin up. Shoulders back. Act as though she hadn't just been sweating like a pig around a half-dozen equally sweaty men. It felt rather like she was making a face.
How was it so easy when Trina did it?
Pidge nodded to the two footmen standing guard at the door. But, when she reached for the handle, a gloved hand was already there. For a moment, she thought he might open the door for her. Until he didn't.
Pidge stiffened.
"I need to get in there," she said as patiently as she could muster. "Her eminence is waiting for me."
"Apologies, miss," the other footman said. "Our instructions are to ensure her eminence has complete privacy for the duration of the courtship."
Pidge blinked and turned slowly to face him.
"Princess Trina is my betrothed," she said levelly. "By extension, so is Prince Aram. I am as engaged as they are."
"I beg your pardon, miss," the first one said, and for what it was worth, he did have the faintest tremor in his voice. "But you are not royal, and your courtship ended long ago. Your engagement is secure. You are not necessary at this time. Our instructions come from the king."
The words were a slap to the face. The king. Trina's uncle. The man who had taken her in.
Even him.
Pidge's fingers curled into fists.
"Very well," she bit out.
With her chin up, her shoulders back and her eyes half-lidded, Pidge turned back the way she'd come.
For just a moment, she wasn't sure where to go. She could always return to Trina's chambers… to do what, though? Wait around all day every day until Aram's courtship was over? There was no knowing how long that would be. What was Pidge even supposed to do until that time? Where in this whole wretched palace did she belong if the king himself thought her unnecessary?
Pidge was fooling herself, and so was Trina, if they wanted to pretend someone like her could ever be a royal. She was an asset. A hero when the kingdom needed money and intrigue, a nuisance when it was all over.
*~*~*
Back in Trina's chambers, Pidge couldn't rip the damned dress off fast enough, scrambling back into her breeches and road-stained shirt. She was a mercenary. It was time she took a holiday from pretending to be anything else.
The sword strapped around her waist felt like coming home, and oh how she'd have loved to bring the pommel down onto that footman's head. Then he'd know the worth of a common stray like her.
Halfway out the door, Pidge's steps faltered. Trina would be back in her chambers soon enough. This wasn't her trying to make nice with Aram or fit into her role.
But Pidge just couldn't stay here knowing she was barred even from seeing Trina right now.
With her heart in her throat, Pidge grabbed for a fresh roll of parchment.
My dearest Trina,
I am sorry for this. I know how you feel about my adventuring, but I was never any good at sitting still or being idle. It would seem I am once again called upon to prove my worth to this kingdom, so I will do so again. In my own way.
I wish you well in this courtship and look forward to its completion so I can hold you in my arms yet again.
With the greatest love,
Your Pidge
*~*~*
Pidge preferred not to travel with a horse. For all the use that one could bring, it also meant having to look after the creature and, in a fight, defend it. Better to travel light and on foot.
A cool breeze whipped at her heavy traveling cloak, as though the wind itself was angry with her long absence from the road. Pidge pulled the hood over her face, protecting her cheeks from the harsh slap of the wind. Thunder rumbled across the slate-colored sky. Typical. Her first night back on the road in months and this was how nature received her.
Somehow, it felt right.
The town was maybe another hour out by foot. From there, she could find a bounty or a rumor of treasure. Really, it didn't matter. Anything, at this point, to keep busy. This was who and what she was, at the end of the day.
Clop… clop… clop…
Hoofbeats thudded against the ground like hammer blows all their own. Pidge's hand flew to her sword as she turned to find a handsome man in a brocade coat with a practical yet fashionable cap, trotting down the road atop a magnificent dappled stallion.
Seven hells!
"What are you doing here?" she hissed. She'd gone to get away from him.
Prince Aram tugged on the reins and the horse came to a perfect stop right next to Pidge. He inclined his head, touching the brim of his hat, as was the custom in Ithsveld.
"I'd heard you'd gone on an adventure," he said breathlessly, leaning so far over in his saddle he looked for a moment as though he might topple off. "Trina said this is how you got the gold to win her engagement."
Pidge clenched her jaw. For the life of her, she couldn't seem to let go of the hilt of her sword. "I'm sure she also told you she's furious at me for leaving right now."
"Oh, positively livid. But I told her that surely adventure is in your nature. You're perhaps the most famous sellsword in both our kingdoms, and not in the least because you're the only one with a conscience. Well. And a woman."
Pidge clenched her jaw. Less than a minute speaking and he'd already stepped into dangerous territory.
"And a foreign foundling from the north and engaged to a princess, yes, I'm aware of my own reputation." Pidge took a deep breath. "I… appreciate the flattery, highness, but it isn't necessary for you to defend me to Trina. Nor is it necessary for you to bring me back. I'll return when you've finished the formal courtship."
Thunder rumbled again across the sky as the air thickened with the promise of rain. Aram's mouth opened, then closed again as he stared down at her.
"I don't think I care to be called highness," he remarked. "At least, not by you. We're both to marry Trina. Doesn't that put us more or less on even terms?"
Be nice. Trina wants you to be nice.
"You're right… Aram. But the king has dictated that, right now, you should court Trina and I should leave you both to that. The servants seem perfectly happy to enforce it. So, I am out here, pursuing my own devices. I'll return in a week's time. Please, go back to the palace."
Aram pursed his lips then, with the fluid motion of a man who'd spent half his life on horseback, he swung off the horse.
"You misunderstand me. I have not come to bring you back. I'm to accompany you on your quest."
"You- what?" Pidge blinked and couldn't help looking him up and down. A brocade coat with silver buttons. A fashionable cap with goose feathers. The faint smell of expensive perfume. Even his boots were freshly polished. "Aram, you should go back. This is no business for a royal. I don't even have a quest yet. I intend only to visit the town to hear what's about. "
"And should I not know as well? If I am to be king-consort of Tamren, I think perhaps I should learn more about the country. Don't you?"
"But you're courting Trina right now. That's why you've come to Tamren. That's what royals do."
Aram took a deep breath and planted one hand on his hip. "Trina warned me you'd be obstinate," he mused. "And I do quite wish to continue admiring that quality, but I must say it's far more difficult to do so when you turn your ire upon me in this way."
It was like arguing with Trina. Pidge scrubbed a hand over her face and made herself count to ten. Stubborn or not, Aram was still a royal, and one who had the ability to make her life heaven or hell based upon his impression of her here.
"This is how I make my money," she explained stiffly. "This is how I have always made my money. I don't get an allowance, I earn my own fortune and pay as much as I can to the place that brought me up. It's the only true use I have to the crown. I need to do this. You are a prince. You do not."
"I see." Aram arched a brow. "And how much wealth do you think a fourth son is afforded?"
"I… Isn't that why you were chosen for Trina?" After all, even if Trina didn't choose her husband for fortune, the king would likely choose a selection of sufficiently wealthy suitors for her.
Aram snorted. "Hardly. If I had a greater fortune, I wouldn't be married off to be a king-consort. I suspect Trina chose me because I was in no position to be her equal. All she really wants of a husband is a child and some degree of political gain. Which I am more than happy to offer."
A brocade coat with silver buttons… and yet no fortune of his own. Somehow, Prince Aram didn't seem real.
"And the fact that you have to share your bride to be with another… with a mercenary is of no consequence to you?"
Aram grinned. "Not when that mercenary has made herself the stuff of legend. Now then." He slipped one foot into the stirrup and hauled himself back up into the saddle, straight-backed and still far too elegant for the terrain. "Would you like to lead me to the town or join me in the saddle? I'd rather not get caught up in the rain if we can help it."
*~*~*
The weather seemed to take Aram's words as a personal challenge. Pidge pulled her hood over her face, more than familiar with Tamren's routine rainstorms. Behind her, Aram hunched like a wet bird of paradise in his saddle.
It was hardly the triumphant arrival into the town that this might have been.
Gurd was a smallish town by the standards of a city, but a booming hub to any village. The reek of filth and smoke signaled the close quarters of too many industrious humans, still awake fighting and laughing and yelling even in the early hours of the evening. An early rainstorm flooded it all into a sodden mess of humanity. Pidge and Aram were no more than two half-drowned travelers, slogging through the muddy streets.
"Come on," she called over the rain as they neared the Hound and Hare Inn. "There's a stable around back. They'll tend to your horse while we get you warmed up."
"I t-thought we w-w-were going a-adventuring," Aram stammered, his willowy form trembling violently in the downpour.
"Places like this are where adventures start."
Even after they entered the warm, dry stable, the prince was so stiff that Pidge had to practically drag Aram down from the saddle after she slipped the stable boy an extra copper. The boy returned a moment later with a heavy wool blanket that smelled of sweet hay.
"Take off your jacket," Pidge instructed.
"S-so soon?" Aram stammered. "W-what about waiting f-for the w-wedding?" It took a moment for Pidge to realize he was making a joke.
By that time, he'd fumbled with the silver buttons and nearly dropped the luxurious, sodden garment onto the dirty floorboards. Pidge wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, draping the jacket on the side of his horse's stall.
"Don't get too excited, now," she warned dryly. "Gossip at a place like this is a good way to pick up unexpected jobs. The sort of thing nobody else knows about yet. But it isn't reliable. We may not find anything this whole venture."
Aram sniffled and wiped his nose on the corner of the blanket. "Then why bother? Why not find a wanted poster and hunt down some nasty highwayman?"
"Because, and I say this with the utmost sincerity," Pidge said, pushing back her hood, "I don't feel like that today."
Aram pulled a face. "I thought this was supposed to be an adventure."
"No, this is me buggering out of the palace for a while so you can court Trina," Pidge sniped pointedly. He didn't seem bothered by the fact that he was here with her when she was ostensibly trying to leave him behind. She sighed. "More likely than not, we'll eat, we'll drink, we'll sleep, and we'll go back in the morning when you've had enough so-called adventure."
"I suspect you underestimate me, then," Aram groused, but he tugged the blanket tighter around his shoulders as he shuffled beside her, toward the inn.
A dull roar of conversation rolled onto Pidge as she made her way toward a quiet table near the back. The room stank of pipe smoke and stale beer, lit by the dim, greasy lanterns. The table was more or less an upturned barrel with a wide board set across the top. Hardly a royal experience.
Aram stared dubiously down at the stiff, wooden chairs before easing himself down with a frown.
Pidge bit back a smile as she sat next to him. "For someone so interested in adventuring, it seems you've spent little time in establishments like these."
"Guards made it rather… difficult to explore certain parts of the world," he said uneasily. "I had to satisfy myself with reading about them."
A bookish dreamer. How unlike so many of Trina's prospects. Pidge had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from smiling. If she smiled, she'd only encourage him.
"Well then. Time to learn. Listen to conversation. Anything that's caught the interest of the populace could be worth looking into."
She slapped a few coppers down and, in seconds, a busty woman in a frilly dress swept the coins up and returned down two heavy tankards of beer and a plate of hearth bread and cheese.
Aram nibbled at the bread, wrinkling his nose at the doughy texture, and moved on to the cheese. Meanwhile, a hairy man with a fiddle wandered up to the ramshackle, wooden stage, tottering ever so slightly.
He set the bow to the fiddle, and the long, thin strain filled the whole of the inn. Immediately, the crowd quieted as the man boomed out an old song.
"They buried Conal Doney nine feet below the ground
"It's said that three days later, a creature came to town
"Its eyes had rotted from its skull, it was an awful sight
"Gods save us all from this foul curse of Conal Doney's wight"
Pidge frowned. Did this town want to tempt the gods? Particularly with the excitement of an imminent royal wedding afoot. For the full month before the event, they should only sing songs inviting good tidings, just as songs of sorrow and grief followed the death of a noble.
All across the inn, the conversation softened. Eyes darted up to the little stage and the man fiddling there. There was a ghost on their minds, far greater than the fate of their princess.
"Said we to he "Oh Conal go ye back unto your grave"
"But Conal Doney raised his hand and said "I'll not behave
""For I was buried far too young, so show me to the cur
""That hateful wretch the mayor, yes, I'll see my murderer!"
"Quite the dreary sort of song," Aram remarked, leaning against the ramshackle table. "Do you think the rain's brought it on?"
Pidge's fist clenched. This wasn't what she'd come out to do… but then her adventures didn't seem to go the way she planned anymore. On her last one, she'd brought home a dragon. Of all the terrifying and unnatural creatures that filled this kingdom, why not a ghost this time?
"Rain?" A rough-looking farmhand by the look of him whirled on Aram. "Are you out of your head? Don't you know what's been going on around these parts?"
"I don't—"
"We just got in tonight," Pidge explained, leaning over Aram to look the man in the eye. The best way she could teach him, apparently, was to have him simply watch her and be quiet. "Tell me. Why's an inn so keen on a story of woe when good tidings are soon to befall our kingdom?"
"Good tidings," the man snorted. "You mean our princess being whored out like a common breeding bitch?"
Ice ran down Pidge's spine. Never, in all her years, had she heard so much as an ill word uttered about Trina. Not by the people. If she had even an ounce less restraint, her sword would already be out of its sheath.
"What precisely is that meant to mean?" Aram asked stiffly.
"Exactly what I say it means." The farmhand pressed his fist against the table and leaned forward. "Listen here, foreign man. I don't take kindly to one of our own being handed off like nothing to one of yours. She's a good and sweet lady."
"Oh, come off it, Hob," a wiry man snapped. "You're only angry because those merchants what stiffed you yestermoon came from Ithsveld. They're fine people sure enough. I trust the princess's judgment."
"A
nd you trust one of them in our court?"
"More'n I trust that sellsword she's taken in. Bewitchment, I'd conjure. A princess with a bride and a groom, and one of 'em ain't even got a drop of royal blood!"
Pidge's fingers curled into fists, but she did not strike the man.
Aram did.
He moved before she could react because she hadn't expected it, but she wasn't sure she would have stopped him even so. His form was terrible as he slammed his knuckles into the man's cheek, skin splitting on both of them, but it was enough to send the other man crashing to the ground.
Pidge leapt over the table, spilling bread and cheese and beer behind her.
Sching!
Her sword flew out in a flash, gleaming in the dull lantern light as Hob grabbed an empty tankard to swing at the prince. Metal clanged against metal as she disarmed him.
The ghost song jerked to a halt as cries erupted throughout the inn.
"Hob, you old pisser!"
"What're you doing?"
"Get out of my inn!"
Pidge sheathed her sword and grabbed the back of Aram's shirt as the first fist flew in Hob's direction. The wiry man dragged himself up off the floor, wiping frantically at his bloody lip.
"Come on!" Pidge shouted, half-leading, half-hauling Aram out of there as the dishes began to fly.
Outside, the rain had slowed to a fine mist. Pidge pulled Aram into an alley, hiding under an overhanging, hopefully safe from refuse if the winds were favorable. Aram pressed himself against the stone, still clutching the blanket, panting heavily.
"I-I'm sorry," he gasped. "I don't know what came over me. I've never done that before."
"You did well," Pidge laughed, clapping him on the shoulder. "How's your hand."
Aram frowned, flexing his hand. Blood no longer oozed from his torn knuckles, but it was no longer the hand of a sheltered prince.
"Well, I suppose it rather hurts-"
A chill stole over the alley, like all the heat had been sucked out. White fog rolled across the ground, mingling with the mist.
Instinctively, Pidge pressed herself against Aram, pinning him to the wall. Aram froze beneath her.
Something dragged across the filthy cobblestones, moaning as it shuddered past. Pidge's breath caught in her throat. A half-rotted man shambled past, his glossy eyes fixed on something in the distance. After only a moment, the man flickered, then disappeared like smoke into the air.