The Heir and the Spare

by Kate Stradling

  “It was a wretched tradition,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’m well aware. But you only prolonged it. The sooner everyone was caught, the sooner it was over.”

  A breathy, bitter laugh escaped her. “No. The sooner everyone was caught, the sooner you got to stop hunting. But it wasn’t over. You kept the prey tied up in the stables while you celebrated your victory in the dining hall, sometimes for hours into the night, and then as penalty for losing we had to act as your personal slaves until the provost returned. The longer the hunting lasted, the less time remained for humiliation.”

  She pushed away from the earth then to check on the clothing they had wrung out and draped on rocks near the fire. Jaoven studied her as she rearranged the folds of her grey dress, but she pointedly ignored him.

  That final year, the year she had broken her arm, the Hunt had started later in the week. In the end, the hunters had been so desperate to find her because the provost was due back that very evening, and her continued evasion threatened their victory.

  “What absolute bastards we were,” Jaoven abruptly said, and he tossed his roasting stick on the fire. Iona, startled by this outburst, briefly met his gaze, but he averted his eyes, one corner of his mouth pulling downward.

  Chapter 14

  They passed the night slowly, one person sleeping while the other maintained the fire against an ever-encroaching chill. Beyond the edge of the ravine, the river continued its unrelenting course, a steady roar that muted the other nighttime sounds. Almost it would have been better to remain awake, for what little benefit sleep under such circumstances provided.

  When gray light crept across the forest floor, they smothered the last embers of their fire and picked a path through the bracken, roughly following the river’s flow.

  They made a ragged pair, their clothing stiff and wrinkled, and a day’s worth of scruff shadowing Jaoven’s face. They had discussed trekking back toward Sorrow’s Linn, with hope of discovering the road that led in and out of that site, but neither had strength for an uphill hike.

  “We’ll come to a town or village further downriver,” Iona said, “and then you can send word to your friends that you’re safe.”

  He scrutinized her. “We can send word, you mean.”

  She hummed a non-committal sound. After Lisenn’s attack, she would be a fool to return to the castle. It wouldn’t be safe until her sister was married and gone.

  As they walked, she slid a glance toward her future brother-in-law, guilt gnawing at her insides. He had saved her life at the risk of his own. He deserved a warning, at the very least, of Lisenn’s true character.

  But she also needed him to marry her awful sister and take her away to another land. And, from what he’d said last night, Lisenn had already poisoned him against any warning Iona might give.

  Thus, she swallowed her guilt and focused instead on placing one foot in front of another. Perhaps the treaty would fall through on its own. Perhaps the rest of the Caprian delegation had called it off when their crown prince vanished beneath the Awinrea’s flow. His successor was in their home country. They could negotiate a marriage without the new candidate present, but she doubted that Lisenn would agree.

  Ambitious though her sister might be, Jaoven’s handsome looks had elevated the impending political alliance from advantageous to enticing. To transfer such hopes upon a man unseen might be more than Lisenn could tolerate.

  Assuming it even was a man.

  “Who is your successor to the throne?” Iona asked.

  Beside her, the prince started from his own train of thought, a frown wrinkling his brows. “My cousin, Perrick. But if you’re worried he’ll have his hopes dashed when I turn up alive, you needn’t. He’s only seven.”

  There went the chance of an alternate marriage candidate. The treaty may have fallen apart already, if news of this mishap had reached the capital.

  What would Lisenn have done in the aftermath of her intended’s disappearance? Iona could only imagine her in a vicious wrath, but that wouldn’t suit with the Caprian delegation as an audience. Had they searched along the river? Were they searching even now?

  “Do you think anyone is looking for us?” she asked, her voice small.

  “I thought you said they’d drag the basin at the bottom of the mountains.”

  She spared him a sidelong glance. “They will. But will your people stop at that, or will they look for you separately? Will they expect you to survive?”

  “I certainly hope so. I’ve survived worse than this.”

  She stopped short and stared. He waded three paces more through the bracken and then turned, solemn and seeming almost resentful. “There was a war, Iona. Did you think I sat high in a marble tower and looked down upon the fighting?”

  Her expression flattened and her voice pitched to a neutral tone. “No. I’m sure you went hunting.”

  He tipped his head skyward on a bitter laugh. “You don’t get it. The nobles weren’t the hunters in this war. We were the prey. I spent three years skulking through woods and wastelands, on constant alert of who I could trust and who might be sneaking up to stab me in the back. You want to hold a grudge about one measly week at a time? Fine. But I lived in your shoes, and with much more violent stakes. Did you know that more than half the people we went to school with are dead? Did you? But you probably don’t even care. Your parents smuggled you out of the country at the first sign of conflict, without any clue of how terrible it would become. Those of us who were stuck there had to either fight or die.

  “And too many died, on both sides.” Fists clenched, he stared toward the river, the specters of a thousand lost countrymen hovering around him.

  Iona, ashamed of her petty animosity, asked, “How did it come about? The war itself, and then the resolution?”

  His eyes flitted to her, narrow in their examination. “You know how it started. Everyone knows. Our crown prince was murdered, along with his wife and children.”

  “But I never heard who was responsible,” Iona said. “It’s all been muddy how it devolved into civil war.”

  For a long moment, he looked as though he would not answer. A muscle rippled along his jaw, and she expected him to continue on through the underbrush, careless of whether she followed. But she stood her ground, waiting.

  At last, “His uncle and his younger brother conspired together,” said Jaoven. “And once the crown prince was dead, the uncle killed the second prince to clear the path to the throne for himself and his son.”

  Her jaw dropped. She snapped it shut, trying to contain her shock.

  “As you can imagine,” he continued, grimness in the set of his mouth, “the king retaliated against his brother, and when he executed him, the son and those nobles who had conspired with his father against the crown declared war. They pulled mercenaries from Tuzhan and conscripted the tenants on their land. Then they started hunting anyone within a dozen degrees of the succession.”

  “Which made you and your father targets from the very beginning,” Iona concluded.

  His teeth clenched. Curtly he nodded.

  She started walking again, ferns and hawthorns brushing against the skirt of her charcoal-gray dress. “That’s horrible,” she said as she passed him.

  “You have no idea,” he replied.

  She contained an instinctive snort, certain that reaction would only stoke his ire. Her personal battle against a malicious elder sister might not compare to the magnitude of the Caprian civil war, but she knew firsthand what it felt like to live in constant fear.

  He would only brush her experiences aside, though, so she agreed. “You’re right. We don’t have any succession issues in Wessett.”

  “That you know of,” Jaoven said, falling in step beside her.

  She looked askance at him. “Not within the royal family, at least. The second-born is only bred to ensure the bloodline, not to carry the crown. That’s why I study music and art instead of politics and history. My Uncle Orran, my father’s youn
ger brother, was the same, trained in the arts rather than the sciences.”

  “I didn’t know you had an uncle,” Jaoven said.

  She hummed. “He died of pleurisy when I was a year old, but my father said he was sickly his whole life. My grandfather was the second-born. He came into line after his older brother died during a stag-hunting accident. Which, incidentally, is the reason that the royal family of Wessett never participates in stag hunts anymore.”

  He slipped easily into this new thread of conversation. “So your grandfather was trained in the arts, then? How did that work out when he received the crown?”

  “Fine. His father was still alive when his older brother died, and my grandfather was still young, seventeen or eighteen, so he was able to switch his studies in preparation. He had a keen mind, my father says.”

  “So do you.”

  Iona paused, frowning. Jaoven frankly met her gaze.

  “I won’t say that your efforts have been wasted, because you certainly have talent in both art and music, but you’re clever, and it’s a shame you were bound to those disciplines when you might excel in so many others if given the chance.”

  “Thank you,” she said mildly, because every other response escaped her. A faint blush tinged her cheeks as she resumed walking.

  If Lisenn ever overheard such praise, she’d have Iona’s head. The younger princess sincerely hoped that Jaoven never spoke of her in such glowing terms again, lest a report make its way into her spiteful sister’s ears.

  And guilt assaulted her anew. She really should warn him.

  But even as she opened her mouth, she shut it again. He’d told her himself that Capria needed this marriage alliance. Wessett’s long-established royal family would stabilize King Armel’s position, but it would also prevent any upheaval among their freshly reorganized nobility. If Jaoven were to marry a woman of his own country, it might trigger a new round of unrest.

  If he had spent three or more years evading trained assassins and mercenaries, surely one fiend in a tiara didn’t pose a true threat.

  Somehow, that conclusion did nothing to lessen her guilt.

  “Does it still hurt you?” Jaoven abruptly asked.

  She jolted, but then followed his gaze downward to her left wrist. At some point, lost in her thoughts, she had started rubbing the old break. “No,” she said, sweeping her hands behind her back instead. “It’s just a habit.”

  He snapped a spindly branch from a tree in passing and swatted at the grass. “This is probably worthless so long after the fact, but I am sorry. That broken arm has haunted me for the past four years.” To her arch look, he elaborated. “I knew from how you fell that it must have caused some damage, but then you popped right up and tried to run.”

  “And you caught me by the armpit and hauled me back again.”

  He huffed. “I was so angry that I shoved my concerns aside. We paid one of the other prey to follow you that year, you know, for a whole month before the Hunt began.”

  “I know,” Iona said. “She wasn’t difficult to evade when the signal rang.”

  A bitter laugh escaped him. He shook his head, but whether from disbelief or grudging admiration she could not tell.

  The land sloped into woodland meadows. At a point where the Awinrea spilled over a wide, flat ridge, they had to scale down a steep pitch, with haphazard footholds in the fractured slate. Fat clouds collected above, the deep gray of their bellies threatening a downpour. The thicker they accumulated, the more Iona’s heart sank.

  The first drops fell as they neared another stretch of woods. Jaoven cursed under his breath and snatched her hand, pulling her with him in a run for the forest line. They crossed beneath broadleaf trees as the full onslaught of the storm broke, but the canopy gave them scant cover. Iona pulled the hood of her cloak over her head. Jaoven had no such luxury.

  “We should look for shelter,” she said. “A cave or a hollow or something.”

  “Just keep walking.”

  They were both exhausted and starving. Ere long, her breath rattled in her throat, and her footsteps lagged. The hand yet clasped around hers seemed the only point of strength she could focus on.

  It was a far cry from the last time she had walked rain-drenched with him through the woods, and yet so similar.

  At least this time she didn’t have a broken arm.

  The storm ebbed and renewed for the better part of an hour. Her cloak and his coat both soaked through at the shoulders, but their feet were still dry in their boots—a small blessing that seemed enormous. A gap in the trees loomed ahead, and they slowed, reluctant to leave the meager shelter of the forest.

  But as they approached, another faint scent mingled with the earth and rain.

  “I smell smoke,” Iona said, heart quickening.

  Jaoven paused to sniff the air. His whole posture shifted when he caught the whiff. He looked sharply to her, and they both surged forward.

  The ground dropped away just beyond the tree line, descending into a small valley. Far off, almost like a mirage, a mill perched on the river’s edge, the turbulent water propelling its wheel. Beyond that point, amid a patchwork of freshly plowed and planted fields, dozens of houses clustered together, with smudges of road running between them and smoke threading from their chimneys.

  Iona’s knees gave out at the sheer relief that possessed her.

  “Not yet,” Jaoven said, yanking her up by her arm before she could fully hit the ground. “You can rest when we’re safe inside and warm again.”

  They slid down the steep hillside, careless of the water they collected from the sodden grass. She wanted nothing more than to run, to bolt for the nearest cottage and its promise of a refuge from the storm. She had already pushed beyond her normal strength, though, and stumbled along instead. Jaoven, no less tired, plodded toward the village. Even so, he soon outpaced her. Iona’s walk became a trudge, darkness and light flashing in her sight and a steady throb growing in her skull, just behind her brow.

  Jaoven, realizing at last that she wasn’t alongside him, paused and looked back. He glanced from her to the collection of houses, as though trying to determine which was the better goal.

  Her toe clipped a rock hidden in the grass and she pitched forward, barely catching herself on her hands and knees. A roar like the rushing of the river filled her ears and her vision blurred.

  She fought against the encroaching darkness. Not like this. Not when we’re so close.

  A shadow dropped beside her, and Jaoven’s face swam in her fading vision. His hands closed around her waist, as though he would help her rise, but he shifted his attention back the way he had come, and suddenly his voice rang out.

  “Over here! Please, help us over here!”

  Iona mustered the strength to lift her head. She registered movement in the grasslands that separated them from their goal: there were people, barely discernible in her clouded sight, but people nonetheless, and they were running toward her.

  She didn’t have to reach the village on her own power after all. With a swell of relief, she succumbed to the painful darkness.

  Chapter 15

  Woodsmoke and savory cooking hung upon the air. She breathed deep the scents, registering blissful warmth and an uncomfortable burning in her throat. Voices murmured, but their words were unintelligible.

  Iona coughed and fluttered open her eyes.

  A dim point of light to her left illuminated a space barely large enough for the bed on which she lay. The voices carried from beyond an open door, where she could glimpse a broader room as dimly lit as this one.

  She struggled to sit up, tucked tight beneath a homespun quilt. A warm brick beneath the covers with her invited her to give up the fight, but her mind had sparked awake and alert. There would be no rest until she knew where she was and to whom she owed this hospitality.

  Her wrestle against the quilt brought a figure into the doorway. An unfamiliar woman, too far in shadows for her to discern much more than an angular
silhouette, said, “Are you awake? Poor duck, your brother’s been worried sick about you.”

  For the barest instant she thought of Aedan, but that was nonsensical. He was snug in the capital, wooing his pretty Besseta.

  A second figure joined the woman. Iona blinked and focused bleary eyes on Prince Jaoven. The scruff on his face was fuller, almost a beard, and it made him seem so much older. In two steps he crossed to her bedside and perched on the edge, gently pressing her shoulders to relax back into the mattress.

  “You need to rest, Yanna,” he said.

  The old name in the unfamiliar surroundings disoriented her all the more. Was this a dream, fusing past and present with the unknown? Jaoven of Deraval had never treated her with such care.

  A creek of the floorboards signaled the woman’s retreat from the door. Nevertheless, surreptitiously he leaned close to Iona’s ear and whispered, “I told them we were brother and sister. There’s been no word here of our disappearance, and I thought it better to play safe, for the sake of your reputation and mine.”

  She blinked, and the world shifted into focus. They had survived the river and the forest both.

  “Where?” she croaked, managing only the single word.

  “The village is called Straithmill. We’re in the foothills of the Morreinn, about twelve miles from Sorrow’s Linn.”

  Behind him their hostess filled the doorway again, this time bearing food. Jaoven scooted out of the way, deferring to her ministrations. The woman set the plate and bowl on the tiny side table. The light of a low-burning oil lamp cast the lines on her face into deep relief. She was old but not ancient, her limbs still strong and supple. She helped Iona sit up and then fluffed the pillow behind her. Jaoven brought a chair from the other room, and the woman sat to help her eat.

  Iona, conscious of her own weakness, allowed the nurturing.

  It was simple fare, hot broth and coarse bread, but her starving tastebuds had never encountered flavors so delicious. She drained the contents of the bowl.