I heard Grace cursing from above us, inside the wagon.
“She doesn’t sound happy.”
“It’s how she is. She worries. Worry makes her angry.”
In the wagon, I heard Grace say something like, “Bastards could have left some damn food!”
“How long have you been out here?” I asked.
Laya shrugged and nodded toward the wagon. “She was the first, then Mary. They’ve been out here two years, three maybe. I found them last fall.”
If I really was as oblivious as I acted sometimes, I might have asked why she stayed. But I knew why she stayed, why all of them stayed even though it was clear that they were going hungry in the depths of winter. I understood the choice they’d made. In their case, the choice was much starker because of their age and their sex, but it was still the same choice I had faced long ago when I’d chosen life as an outlaw.
Die free, or live as a slave.
For some people, a full belly can never compensate for being someone’s property.
“She’s a good leader?”
“She knows what to do.”
It was quiet, but I thought I heard a sob of frustration from the wagon. If Laya heard, she didn’t give any sign of it. A few moments later, Grace climbed out of the remains of the wagon. I saw the instant before she realized I saw her, and her expression was wrenching.
By the time she jumped down to the ground and faced us, the pain was gone, replaced by the half-bored sardonic look she’d been giving me ever since I’d given up my dagger. Only I now had a sense of how brittle that hardness was.
“So,” I said, “I guess you’re going to want me to find you transportation to Lendowyn?”
Her expression didn’t soften, but the way she narrowed her eyes slightly and cocked her head told me that she understood I was making an offer, and wasn’t quite sure what it meant.
“Yeah,” she said. “Something like that.”
• • •
We returned to the campsite, and they packed everything up in a matter of minutes. We spent the rest of the day following the mute girl, Rabbit, who tracked the assassins from the ambush. I had my own reservations about that, but it did take us in the right direction, south. It was a pretty good assumption that those guys had some form of transportation since they were pretty far afield themselves.
Apparently no one had any doubt that the great master thief Snake could easily liberate whatever he wanted from a bunch of professional assassins.
For what it was worth, I agreed.
I just wished he was here.
We caught up with them before nightfall. There were seven or eight tents, at least a dozen horses, a carriage, and a pair of large covered wagons, all more than up to the task of transporting Grace’s small band.
The campsite seemed larger and more opulent than I’d credit for a bunch of mercenary killers. I had a brief hope that we had come across a bunch of merchants who had coincidentally camped out in our path. I was able to believe that until I saw one of the sentries in the same elaborate patterned armor I’d seen on the Sanhom Assassins who had ambushed Weasel and company, down to the mask covering the lower half of his face.
We watched from the woods as the sun dropped and Grace whispered, “We can take care of the guard, you take a wagon.”
I shook my head.
“The master thief having second thoughts?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll take care of the sentry.”
“Just you?”
“Just me.”
It wasn’t bravado on my part. I just saw the size of that campsite, and I knew Grace was not the best at calculating the odds. The numbers favored the home team at least two to one without taking into account that on one side we had a bunch of young girls, and on the other we had trained professional assassins.
Also, if things went wrong I’d feel better if the bad guys had no idea that the girls were here. I at least had the advantage that these guys didn’t want to kill me. Even if I ended up where I’d started, tied up in a burlap sack, at some point this spell would wear off and I’d be back in Lendowyn Castle.
At least I hoped it would.
If that happened, I’d feel better if I didn’t leave a pile of dead teenage girls in my wake.
I watched the campsite for a few hours as the night deepened and the cook fires burned low. At some point Grace whispered, “You staring them into submission?”
“There are two types of thief, young lady.”
“Huh?”
“The first type is gone before you realize your purse is missing.” I placed my hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eyes. “The second clubs you with a rock and swipes the boots off your corpse. There’s probably twenty trained killers sleeping down there. Tell me which thief has the better chance of making it out alive?”
She sighed. “The first.”
“Good choice,” I said, holding up the dagger I’d lifted from her belt with my other hand. “Because that’s the kind of thief you’ve got.”
• • •
I wasn’t kidding. That was the type of thief I was. It didn’t matter if the camp was twenty people or two, the last thing I ever wanted was a physical confrontation. That kind of thing most likely ended in blood and humiliation even before I’d been princessified. Every fight I’d ever won had been through dumb luck.
Or cheating.
The sentry fell victim to the latter.
I studied his movements, and once the camp seemed mostly asleep, and the lone guard was deep in the middle of his watch, I waited in the shadows by a tree in the path of the circuit he walked around the camp. Just as he passed, I pulled a rope taut at ankle level. As he tumbled forward I took a large rock and helped his head into the forest floor.
While he was stunned, I tore his mask off and shoved it into his mouth. I used the rope to tie his ankles and wrists together behind his back, and to hold the makeshift gag in his mouth. By the time I was done, he was groaning and struggling ineffectively. After disarming him, I dragged him off into some brush so he was hidden from the camp.
Now I just had to swipe a wagon.
Sounds simple, right?
Strangely enough, these people didn’t leave their horses tacked and harnessed to their wagons overnight while they camped. I guess they wanted their animals to rest and graze for some reason. That meant I had to quietly fetch a team and hitch them up to one of the wagons without alerting the camp.
Yeah. Simple.
It was already pretty clear what I had to take. There were a couple of large wagons that seemed capable of carrying most of the men and gear, but either one would have taken a four-horse team to move. Trying to hitch up four horses quietly in the dark pushed way past the bounds of sanity. So I just took my dagger and started cutting reins, bridles, and straps. It wouldn’t permanently immobilize them, but after the damage I did it would probably be a good hour or two before they’d be able to hitch a team to either one again.
My target was a smaller, but much more opulent, vehicle. The carriage was all gilding and elaborate scrollwork, and bore a coat of arms that I couldn’t make out in the dark. The girls might be cramped inside, but it only needed a two-horse team, and could probably get by with one.
Once I sabotaged the main wagons, I crept to the carriage and made sure all the tack was in place, unbuckled and ready for a team.
Okay, now the hard part.
I crept over to the clearing where the horses were tied. I had a moment of panic when I realized that I’d have to guess which ones were riding horses and which ones were trained as a team. Fortunately for me, it was clear after a moment which horses went with the carriage. There were two gray horses a hand or two smaller than the other shaggy draft animals, and both had their mane and tail tightly braided.
Just to complicate any pursuit, I untied the other
animals and removed their halters, cutting a few critical straps with my dagger. If I was lucky, they’d also wander off.
After that, I took the first gray and coaxed him back toward the carriage. Lucky me, the horse was well trained and fairly docile. I managed to get him hitched up to the carriage without an incident or any undue noise.
I stepped back and briefly considered pushing my luck and fetching the other gray horse.
I wasn’t nearly as lucky as I thought I was.
“Hey!” Across the campsite from me stood a gentleman with his arm in a sling. I guessed he was the same man who had taken a quarrel in the shoulder while bequeathing me my current dagger. At least from the bridge of the nose upward it could have been him. He spent a split second staring at me in open-mouthed surprise.
I ran.
The man started yelling to raise the camp.
Men began emerging from tents across the campsite, and I aimed my sprint toward the largest and most luxuriously appointed of the tents, intent on my secondary escape plan. I was halfway there when my escape plan emerged from the tent complaining about the ungodly racket. He wore a nightcap and long robe trimmed with ermine. He had a pale, pudgy, slightly annoyed look of someone who found physical activity distasteful and had either the money or power to avoid it as much as possible.
I grabbed him before he’d had a chance to turn his attention from the man raising the alarm. I swung him between me and everyone else and held a dagger up to his throat as I backed him away from the big tent.
“I suggest everyone stay calm,” I yelled toward my acquaintance with the sling, “or our friend here gets a very brief lesson in how to breathe through a hole in his neck.”
“Cur,” Ermine boy said, “Do you know who I am?”
For an answer, I increased the pressure on the dagger and whispered at him, “Do you know who I am?” It was a lot easier to get an intimidating tone from my voice now that I wasn’t a princess. He was about to say something, but he glanced back in my direction and—surprisingly for the type—shut up.
And I had to struggle to not lose my grip on the dagger because I did know who he was.
Prince Oliver?
I had just taken the prince of Dermonica hostage.
CHAPTER 9
I had headed for the opulent tent intending to take a hostage. Given that assassins were generally working stiffs, someone was probably paying them to be out here. The presence of a too-luxurious carriage and tent were obvious signs that their employer was along for the ride. And really, the best way to stop an assassin from doing anything is to threaten the source of his pay.
The fact that a dozen men had emerged from the tents around the campsite and none made a move toward me was a pretty good sign that my theory was sound.
I’d just never given consideration to exactly who might have been paying these guys. I backed my hostage up toward the carriage, keeping him in front of me. I whispered into his ear, “Now, good prince, if we’re all calm and businesslike, we can all avoid a lot of pain. Understand?”
“Y-Yes.”
“You hold the purse strings, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re going to order all these men back into their tents to wait quietly for your return.”
“They will come after me,” he said, an almost admirable note of royal steel returning to his voice.
“That’s the point of a hostage, isn’t it? If they do, their paymaster ends with a slit throat. That wouldn’t be in their best interest, would it? Unless you hauled their gold with you all the way from Dermonica, and you don’t appear to be that stupid.”
“You won’t get away with this.”
“And you want to survive to see justice done, don’t you?”
I felt him tense under my grip and I prodded him with the dagger.
“Do it. Things are messy enough.”
For a moment I thought he was angry enough to risk his life just so his assassins would have a chance to take me out. But he shouted, “Everyone, back in your tents! Await my return. Do not interfere!”
They did as they were told, though they stared at me unnervingly as they did so. Each one of them was looking for some sort of opening. No way was I going to get that second horse. I kept from showing my back until everyone was back in their tents. Then I pushed Prince Oliver up into the carriage and followed him into the driver’s seat.
“Pick up the reins.”
He stared at me.
“Pick them up!” I prodded with the dagger.
He reached down and grabbed the reins for the one horse and held them up between us.
“Now drive us out of here!”
“How?”
We stared at each other. For a moment I was speechless.
After that moment I said, “You’re kidding, right?”
He wasn’t.
Of course the bloody prince has no idea how to drive a horse-drawn carriage.
Amazing how quickly a hostage can go from indispensable to completely useless. I reached up to his collar and yanked the robe down to his elbows, restraining his arms. Then I grabbed his nightcap and pulled it tightly over his eyes.
“Hey.”
“Shut up and don’t move.” I grabbed the reins from him and did my best to drive our lone steed out on the road without putting the dagger away.
• • •
The question arises at this point, why didn’t I just run?
I had safely disengaged myself from the group of feral teens, Weasel’s crew, and a score of Dermonica-employed assassins. My first priority was getting back to Lendowyn to sort out the mess caused by my drunken decision to use the Dark Lord Nâtlac’s jewel. I didn’t owe anything to Fearless Leader and crew.
Well, I owed them for the clothes, but I figured that was outweighed by them pointing a crossbow in my direction.
Really, any thief worth his fingers would have been long gone by now.
But I was never a particularly good thief.
I stopped the carriage on the road over the hill from the assassins’ campsite, and the girls emerged from the forest. Grace directed the other six silently to board the carriage and climbed up next to me. As the weight shifted below us, Fearless Leader paid me her first compliment, “That was impressive.”
“Who’s there?” Prince Oliver said.
“You don’t want to know, Your Highness,” I said.
I got the horse moving, but he strained against the weight.
“Your Highness?” Grace asked.
“Yes.” I bent down to talk into the carriage. “We’re overloaded, toss anything down there that isn’t nailed down.”
“Who is he?” Grace asked.
“Crown Prince Oliver of Dermonica.”
“Prince? What is he doing here?”
“Other than weighing us down? Good question.”
Below us the carriage doors opened and tapestries, cushions, and open chests sailed out into the road.
“What are you doing here?” she asked the prince.
“You know very well,” he whispered.
“Bringing yourself and a score of hired assassins across the border,” I said. “It looks like an act of war to me.”
“Harboring you is an act of war.”
The way Prince Oliver said that gave me a chill unrelated to the winter air. I knew I had a couple of thieves’ guilds after me, but the prince implied something a slight bit more significant than conning a group of provincial outlaws out of their own ill-gotten gains.
“What did he do to you?” Grace asked.
“Ask your friend.”
Way to put me on the spot, Your Highness.
I summoned up Snake’s most intimidating tone and said, “She was asking you.”
“Fine,” he muttered with something like resignation. �
�I can think of worse uses for my last words than to condemn this villain for his crimes.”
Grace snorted. “Don’t preach to me the evils of thievery. I know the way the world works. You men in pretty robes are as much the thief as us, no less so because you do so at the point of a sword and some king’s ‘law.’”
Prince Oliver laughed, and there was so little humor in it that it began to terrify me what he might say next. I didn’t want to hear.
I didn’t want Grace to hear.
“This man is no simple thief, and his crimes extend far beyond the simple taking of property. Dermonica is peaceful, our people were prosperous from trade, trade that came through Fellhaven, our one navigable ocean port. For decades we had an agreement with the pirates of Darkblood Reef.”
I knew where this was going, the use of the past tense was a big clue—as was the sudden diplomatic interest in trade routes through Lendowyn.
“Tribute,” I whispered.
“You are aptly named,” Prince Oliver said.
“What happened?” Grace asked.
“The legendary Snake won’t elaborate for you?” The prince waited me to fill the silence. When I didn’t, he continued. “For the safety of Fellhaven we paid the pirates a third of the gold from trade in a year. In return, we had safe passage, and our enemies did not. But this prior year, our diplomats left on a ship bearing gold, and arrived on a ship bearing lead.”
“A whole ship full of gold?” I heard a tone of awe in Grace’s voice. Enough so that I knew that she hadn’t yet thought through the consequences of such an act.
“Five days later, our ship returned to Fellhaven Bay. They had tied the crew to the masts, and once it reached the inner harbor, they set it aflame. As that ship crashed aground on the docks, the pirates came.”
“What did they—”
“Fellhaven was sacked, burned to the ground. Thousands dead.”
“You had no defenders?” I snapped.
“After five decades of peace, and no sign of the pirates breaking it? There was only the city watch, who massed to battle the fire on the docks. Every death there is on your hands.” He turned toward me, nightcap still pulled over his eyes. “Do the courtesy of at least having the courage to look me in the eyes when you kill me.”
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