She mouthed Go! And we obeyed, surging forward—making sure to keep our hands connected and the spell intact—and ducking beneath the portcullis mere seconds before it fell the final feet and its teeth sank into the ground with a resonant clang.
32
Once we were a safe distance from the gate, I let the spell fall. I wasn’t sure I had the strength to cast it again. Anyone who saw us out here would be able to identify us to possible pursuers with ease. And the campsites were especially populous tonight, full to the brim with city dwellers who must have gotten out before the entry and exit were barred and, confronted with the long roads and the endless Ebonwilde, chose to shelter on the outside of the wall for a while before facing it.
Conrad had not let go of my hand, and I did not dare let go of his, even to clean off the blood that was now half-dry and uncomfortably sticky. I didn’t know quite what we would do; we couldn’t just wander into the forest with no map, no guide, no plan. I didn’t have Falada to carry me anymore, and the last time I’d seen Aren, she almost destroyed me.
Conrad was clinging to my skirt. “I’m hungry,” he said. “And it smells bad here. And I miss Lisette. Is she coming soon?”
I knelt beside him. “No, little brother. I don’t think she is coming with us anymore. She did a very brave thing back there, helping us get across the wall before it closed. Can you be brave, just like her?”
“I am brave, Aurelia,” he said a little crossly, but he hugged me anyway. I closed my eyes and squeezed him back, as tight as I could. “I have a friend out here somewhere. If we can find him, he can help keep us safe. But until then, we have to blend in. Keep your head covered and your eyes down, and follow my directions to the letter. Understand?”
In response, he pulled his hood down over his hair.
We made our path by skirting the edges of the travelers’ camps, close enough to the firelight to scan the faces of the people huddled around them, far enough to keep our own obscured by shadow. No one gave us a second glance; they were displaced and scared, victims of circumstances they could not have predicted, that they could not have controlled. But these were the fortunate ones; how many more were stuck inside the city, unprepared for what might come?
There were shouts in the distance behind us—guards raiding the camps. From over my shoulder, I watched as one of them accosted a girl not far from my own age, forcing her to her knees and cuffing her when she cried. They ripped off her cloak and then spat on her when it was discerned that she was not the girl they were looking for. Me.
We hurried forward, but the awful smell intensified, and I looked up to see the spirit of Thackery’s old friend Gilroy still sitting glumly in his gibbet. Aha. I knew where we were, and I tugged Conrad with me toward Thackery’s old encampment, which was now occupied by a man with patchy whiskers and ruddy cheeks.
This time Darwyn didn’t see me coming. I had my knife pressed into his back before he could scramble up from the fire. “Take what you want, sir,” he mumbled, hurriedly emptying his pockets. A few copper coins, a half-eaten apple, a misshapen brass ring, and a hardened hunk of cheese scattered across the dirt as I forced him to his feet.
“I don’t want your scraps,” I said icily.
At the sound of my voice, he exclaimed, “Wait! I ain’t gonna be robbed by no girl—”
“Quiet,” I snarled, moving the knife to his neck. He stiffened, hands up. “Listen carefully. My brother and I are going to hide in Thackery’s stable. If men come looking for us, you will do everything in your power to steer them away.”
“Or what?” he asked, a bit too surly for a man with a knife to his neck.
Whip-fast, I nicked a finger and let the blood drop fall in front of his eyes. “Uro,” I said. Burn. And the blood turned into a streak of fire that burst into three-foot flames the instant it hit the ground. I closed my hand and the fire went out.
Darwyn was trembling. “There was two men what came through here a couple weeks ago, chattering about some blood witch . . . Their faces . . . cracked . . . scarred . . . unrecognizable.”
“Do as I command,” I said, moving the knife away from his neck now that I’d made my point clear. “Or it won’t be your face that I burn into something unrecognizable.”
“But what would be worse than—” Then it dawned on him. “Oh.”
The guards were only a few camps away now. Darwyn ushered us into the stable. “Ray has a little hidey-hole in there,” he said. “He didn’t think no one knew about it, but I did. After Ray was gone, Empyrea keep ’im, I moved all my good stuff into it. Just in time, too. When my ol’ lady Erdie left me, she took everything she could get ’er filthy scheming hands on. But I was one step ahead.” He grinned, pleased with himself, until he saw my flat expression and his smile disappeared. He moved aside a big pile of hay in the empty first stall, revealing a plank in the ground. He lifted it and motioned us over. “In here.”
Darwyn’s hidden “good stuff” was liquor in a surprising quantity; the hole was several feet deep and ran the length of the stable, but it was full to capacity with bottles of spirits. I climbed in the hole first, settling in between a jug of ale and some bottles of rum, then brought Conrad down to sit on my lap. The whole space left for us wasn’t more than four feet by four feet; it was a tight fit.
Conrad was trying to peer through the cracks to see what might be happening above, but I pulled him back, pressing a finger to my lips.
It was just a matter of moments before we heard the voices outside our hiding place. The words were muffled through the straw and the wood plank, but we could still make out the string of uncouth exclamations Darwyn was letting loose on the soldiers as they started throwing things around the camp. Then they opened the stall door.
Darwyn said, “There’s nothing in there but straw. See for yourself if you like.”
We jumped as the man began stabbing his sword into the hay, shaking dirt down into our eyes with each jab.
“See?” Darwyn said. “Nothin’. And I don’t suppose the lot of ye are planning to pay for all the damage you’ve done?”
A guard’s voice answered gruffly, “Out of our way, old man. Men! Next camp!”
We stayed down in that hole most of the night, long after it might have been safe to emerge.
When we finally swung the trapdoor open, the movement dislodged a bundle of documents that had been tucked between one of the boards: Thackery’s invitations for crossing the wall, written in Zan’s own hand. I gathered them up and stowed them inside my mostly empty satchel, next to the bloodcloth. From the corner of my eye, however, I saw something glint in the space behind where the invitations had been stashed. I pushed my fingers between the boards and came back with something incredible: the topaz gryphon I’d given to Thackery that first night in Achleva. I clutched it, thanking Thackery and the Empyrea for returning it to me.
Darwyn was pounding on the stable door. “Best be coming out now, girl. Someone’s here for you.”
I put Conrad behind me and readied my knife. If I couldn’t get close enough for a good shot at whoever it was waiting outside the stable, I’d use magic. I’d get us out of here, one way or another. I’d burn and pillage and destroy anything or anybody that stood in my way.
I kicked open the door. Then, stunned, I said, “Nathaniel?”
“Emilie, it is you! I heard the guards looking . . . I thought it might be, but I had to be sure . . .”
Darwyn’s hands were up; Nathaniel had his neck in the crook of his arm, poised to give it a quick twist if the man put up a fight. Grumpily, Darwyn said, “Of course you two would know each other.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked, putting my knife away. “Where’s Ella?”
Nathaniel nodded to a bundle of blankets close by, where Ella was staring wide-eyed up at the gibbet where Gilroy’s ghost seemed to be playing a game with her. He would peer out, wiggle his fingers until she gurgled at him, pull back for a moment, then peek out again. “I was at
another camp, procuring horses for us, when they got Zan. There are guards everywhere, watching everything, so I haven’t been able to get back into the city to find him. And then I heard some talk about a girl who appeared out of thin air outside the wall after the gates closed, and she matched your description, so I followed your tracks here . . .” He paused. “Is that Prince Conrad? Emilie, did you kidnap Prince Conrad?”
“No, of course not! He’s my—”
“I’m her brother,” Conrad supplied, peeking out from behind my skirt.
Nathaniel gaped.
“Too tight,” Darwyn said in a strangled voice. “Too tight!”
“Oh,” Nathaniel said, sheepishly releasing him from the headlock. “Sorry.”
“Bunch of stars-forsaken loons,” Darwyn muttered, rubbing his sore neck. “The whole lot of ye.”
* * *
Despite Darwyn’s fierce objections at being made to leave, Nathaniel secured a place for him in one of the refugee trains heading out. He carried as many bottles of his booze as he could fit into his bag and grumbled ferociously at having to leave the rest behind, but he went. Nathaniel gave him a coin for his trouble. He was kinder than I would have been; Darwyn did help us, true, but only because he feared for his extremities. In my opinion, keeping all his parts attached should have been payment enough.
Nathaniel knew of a good place to camp a couple of miles south of the wall, by the River Sentis. With the roads now overwhelmed by travelers, his options had dwindled. His plan was to bypass most of the slow caravans by cutting through the Ebonwilde and meeting the road again several leagues past the junctions from Achlev to Ingram, Castillion, and Achebe.
“Maybe by then,” he said, one hand on the reins, the other cradling Ella’s sling, “many will have split off to head toward Castillion and Achebe, or Aylward farther west, and the road will be clearer.” He looked at Conrad, sitting in the front of the saddle on the horse that had been meant for Zan, dozing against my chest. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to make sure Conrad is secure, and then I’m going back for Zan.” The sound of his name left my stomach in a twist. “I’m going to get him out. Once that’s done, I can worry about everything else.”
Nathaniel was staring a little. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I still can’t quite comprehend that you’re the Renaltan princess.”
“Believe me, you are far from alone.”
Nathaniel reined his horse in. “Stop. Do you hear that?”
“The river?” I asked, but he’d already dismounted and was leading his horse quietly through the undergrowth.
“Wake up, Conrad,” I whispered as I softly shook my brother from his doze.
He stirred, rubbing his eyes. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know,” I said. Ahead, Nathaniel put his finger to his lips. Shhhh. I dismounted but let Conrad stay in the saddle as I brought our roan up next to Nathaniel’s bay mare.
Nathaniel pointed. “Look, there. In the valley.”
The first things I saw were blue flags emblazoned with the silhouette of a white winged horse: the standard of Renalt. Beneath the pennants stood a cluster of tents and dozens of horses, all bearing the regalia of the Renaltan military.
“Are they friends or foes?” Nathaniel asked.
“In Renalt it’s always hard to know.” I squinted while I scanned the encampment, then gasped. “There.”
Beneath one of the blue flags waved a smaller white one, bearing the circular, spread-branched hawthorn seal of the Greythorne family.
I leaped back onto the horse behind Conrad and snapped the reins. With my heart pounding in time to his hoofbeats, we sailed down the embankment toward the camp. I had no backup plan, no strategy for escape if these soldiers had come at Toris’s behest. My only thoughts were of a white flag and a hawthorn tree.
The soldiers saw us coming. By the time we reached the encampment, the men in blue uniforms were lined up in a defensive formation, swords drawn.
“Halt!” one of them cried as we approached. “State your name and your business.”
Head high, I said, “I am Aurelia, princess of Renalt. I bring with me my brother, Conrad, high prince and future king of Renalt.” Nathaniel cantered in behind us. “And Nathaniel Gardner, our valued ally and friend.”
A murmur went up among the men as Conrad and I were scrutinized. We were dirty and disheveled, with bags under our eyes and little bits of straw stuck in our clothes. I didn’t blame them for doubting our claim.
“Can anyone here speak to the truth of her words?” the man asked.
Suddenly a voice rang out from behind the line. “She is who she says! I can testify on her behalf! I’ll vouch for her, and I’ll stand with her, and I’ll fight anyone who gets in my way.”
“Kellan?” I asked, hardly daring to breathe.
He pushed his way out of the crowd. “As I always have. And always will.”
* * *
In the largest tent, a makeshift table was made from a scavenged flat-topped stone. Not everyone could fit inside, so half the men stayed outside, on guard, and the other half lined the inside of the canvas.
Kellan’s explanations were hasty: after he’d fallen into the river, his memories were vague, little more than impressions of washing ashore, then being moved, and careful hands dressing his wounds. He was still in the haze of fever when his brother, Fredrick, found him delivered to the Greythorne estate’s front door with no sign of his benefactor. Just Kellan and, in the distance, a watchful yellow-eyed fox.
Wisely, Fredrick kept Kellan’s sudden appearance a secret. He ministered to his younger brother himself, keeping vigil by his bed for two days, until the fever finally broke. Finally lucid, Kellan was able to relay what had happened to us in the woods at Toris’s hands. In turn, Fredrick’s news of the queen in the capital was equally perplexing: it seemed that though my mother had been taken as a royal hostage in Syric, the Tribunal had then made no further moves to consolidate their power. But something was simmering; everyone knew it. The only question was: What was stopping them? What were they waiting for?
I provided that answer. The Tribunal was waiting for Toris to destroy Achlev’s Wall.
What they had planned after that, I hoped we wouldn’t have to find out.
Now, inside the tent, Fredrick Greythorne was standing behind Kellan, dressed in the livery of their family. He looked like Kellan in nearly every way except the hair; where Kellan had a wealth of tight, corkscrew curls, Fredrick kept his hair closely shorn, skimming his deep brown skin, but not so close that he could hide the hints of iron gray at his temples. He was fifteen years Kellan’s senior, and watching him made it easy to imagine how Kellan would look fifteen years from now: handsome, with a wide, well-cut jaw and fine, crinkly lines around his mouth and eyes.
It had been Kellan’s idea to infiltrate Syric and rescue the queen, and Fredrick’s plan that had made it happen.
“My mother is free?” I asked, jubilant for the first time in what felt like years. “Where is she? How was it done?”
Kellan was slowly pacing; it was clear from his movements that he was still feeling the effects of his injuries. “The castle was completely locked down. The Tribunal was in total control, and even though they maintained that the queen was in good health, Onal was the only person Simon allowed to go in and out of the room, to bring them food and the like.”
“And the Tribunal clerics let her?”
“She’s a harmless old woman. What was she going to do?”
I nodded. “So they were all scared of her.”
“Terrified.”
Fredrick said, “We went to Onal first, and used her to pass messages to your mother and Simon, make plans. Then I went secretly to my old comrades in the guard and recruited anyone still loyal to the queen. We didn’t have as much force as we would have liked, which made storming the castle impossible. So we had to be furtive and use our only real advantage: Simon. We drugged their night guards and dragged th
em into the room, where Simon created an illusion to make them look like himself and the queen.”
“And that worked?”
Kellan said, “It got us out. I’d hate to know what kind of punishments those two had to face when the rest of the Tribunal figured out they weren’t their actual prisoners.” His wide grin said otherwise. “We’d have been sunk without Simon. After we broke them from the room, he made himself and the queen virtually invisible until we were out of the city. It was the damnedest thing.”
“I can’t imagine,” I said dryly.
Fredrick picked the story up where Kellan left off. “The Tribunal didn’t realize she was missing until well into the next day. By then we were halfway to the port at Hallet.”
“But the Tribunal still holds Syric?”
“They do. We’ve gotten the queen to safety; she’s with a regiment of soldiers at the Silvis family’s holding halfway up the fjord. We wanted her to start making plans for our next move to regain the capital, but all she can think about is you and your brother.”
“And what about Simon?” I asked. “Is he all right?”
“You can ask him yourself,” Kellan replied. “He’s with Onal right now, two tents down. So is Conrad and your friend with the baby.”
I raced in the direction he’d pointed me, and when I located the right tent, I tossed the flap aside to find Conrad on a stool with a miserable look on his face. Onal stood behind him, tugging a comb through the knots in his curly locks. She didn’t even glance up before saying crossly to me, “Look at this mess. You couldn’t have wiped some of the smudges off his face before bringing him in front of an entire troop of soldiers? He’s supposed to lead them one day, Aurelia. He can’t command their respect when he looks like he rolled around in a trash heap all day.”
I threw my arms around her bony shoulders, and she patted my back in a rare display of fondness before saying, “I sure hope your stink doesn’t get into my clothing, young lady. I’d prefer not to smell like a cesspool.”
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