“Good. Bring yourself to this place in the morning, and we’ll begin our journey.”
His own amusement tugged at him, though he didn’t allow it expression. She sounded so imperious…and he couldn’t say why he found that so alluring. “Yes, my princess.”
Chapter Two
Thalia’s horse undulated beneath her, picking over uneven ground with a heavy step. The King’s Road had been well-maintained, but no road was completely smooth, and it seemed her horse was determined to find every single divot. This route would take them straight to Dyerston and from there on to Queenstor—they’d made good time in the hours they’d been on the road.
Thalia shifted, reminded again it had been over a year since she’d last ridden for longer than an hour. She would be sore when they made camp tonight, but she’d become used to discomfort. She supposed that was the reason she had been forced to this life, to learn what privilege and an accident of birth had granted her. The majority of her people lived the way she had the last few years, and the time away from the palace had given her an appreciation of what they faced—not that she’d understood that at the time.
When her father had decided she would observe the tradition of the Trip, she’d been eight and ten and absolutely furious with him for forcing her from her pretty gowns, her elegant friends, and the gaiety of the capital. She’d understood, vaguely, she would one day rule, but that had seemed so far into her future, and there had been parties to attend and boys to kiss and shopping and sailing and a hundred other pleasures. She’d been…unaware of how the majority of her people lived.
It had taken less than a month on the Trip before she’d become aware.
A horse snuffed next to her. Her guards flanked her, their gazes scouring the landscape. Bharia held the reins loosely, her dark hair a thick braid down her back, a long-healed scar snaking from just below her left ear to disappear beneath her leather jerkin. Stahg rode slightly behind them, his white-blond, baby-fine hair slicked down with some kind of oil that smelled of lemon and cloves, his hand hooked around the leather harness holding the scabbard of the massive broadsword strapped to his back—a broadsword he wielded with a grace Thalia had not thought possible.
As predicted, Bharia had not been pleased the tailor had managed to enter Thalia’s workshop without her and Stahg’s knowledge. She’d not said anything before Thalia, but her ire had been obvious, especially to someone who had spent the last seven years in her presence. Stahg had said nothing, but then he often said nothing. His expression had hardened, though, and there’d been a certain edge to his movements as he’d sharpened his sword.
No matter how he’d chosen to present himself, the tailor had found her, had enacted his rescue, and she was to return to Queenstor.
It was such a ridiculous tradition. The heir to the crown was to tour the provinces, stay amongst the people and learn their troubles and their joys. She was to undertake the industry of each—farmer in Parason, weaver in Spindleswood, and both had been illuminating, but in Clothsend she’d found a calling in gear work. She loved tinkering with gears and cogs, assembling them to form machines that made other lives easier, and she’d pursued her love, seeking employment in gear shops in each new town and borough. A year had stretched to two, and then more, and when none had come to fetch her home, she’d continued on, going where her feet took her and enjoying a life unencumbered by scrutiny.
But that was done, and she was to be princess once more.
It had taken less time than she’d thought to pack up her life in Dornse Keep. The city had been her home for just under a year, and yet she’d gathered her tools and the objects she couldn’t part with into four saddlebags while the rest she’d given to a charity house. The owner of the gear house had taken the news of her moving on with barely a shrug, his focus on the cogs and gears he’d been repairing, and so, with little fanfare, her life in Dornse Keep was done.
Exhaling, she looked ahead. The tailor rode before them, his shoulders hunched and his seat awkward. Clearly, he was as unused to riding as she was.
He was odd, this tailor, and so different to her experience. The only tailor she’d known, Tailor Clothilde, had been a kindly woman who’d always had a boiled lolly and a smile for her. As Thalia had grown, she’d learned the tailor was as ruthless as she was sweet, ruling the Cloth Houses with a fist that brooked no disobedience. Her father had chafed at the tailor’s advice, calling her heavy-handed and wont to overreaction in his private chambers, but before the court, he’d heeded her words, even if he’d gritted his teeth to do so.
It grieved her she had not known of Tailor Clothilde’s passing. She’d no notion of how she’d missed the news as the death of a tailor would have filled all the newssheets for days, and if she hadn’t seen it, surely Bharia or Stahg would have. However, somehow she had, and this Trip had brought yet another change in her life.
She shook herself. No use thinking on such. Instead, think on this new, so very different tailor.
For one, he was young, far younger than any other tailor she could recall. He looked to be similar in age to her, and she would ascend the throne on her twenty-fifth birthday in barely four months. For another, he was too handsome. Oh, the tailors were always well put together—how could they not be as head of all the Fashion Houses of Dormiraa?—but this man had a pretty face to go with his pretty garb.
He’d arrived at her lodgings this morning, his clothing just as impeccable and outlandish as the day previous. He wore a waistcoat of peacock blue, the same deep-purple greatcoat, and brown leather riding boots polished to ruthless perfection. His cosmetics were again subtle, not more than a darkening of lashes and the slightest hint of color on his lips, and his wig was a black so dark, the straight, clubbed back strands were almost blue.
She was unused to the sight of such finery, when once it had been the norm. In the beginning, she’d wept from the loss of her pretty clothes as much as the sudden loneliness she’d endured, but now she could look upon such brilliance and note the cost of each garment and how it would have fed her and her guardians for over a month.
She smiled ruefully. It seemed the Trip had done its work well.
That morning, the tailor had sketched an elaborate bow and offered a charming grin, one that seemed too practiced. Perhaps others thought it genuine, but it seemed to her there was an edge to the expression and a kind of calculation. He’d led them to the horses he’d hired, and there had been no carriage, no attendants. He carried no more luggage than she did, and yet he had the garments of an exquisite along with the wigs and cosmetics she remembered from court. But, unlike those courtiers, he was broad of shoulder, long of leg, and trim of waist. It could be his form was clever tailoring, but he couldn’t fake his height. He wore no lifts, and he was almost as tall as Stahg, who was a half plus six feet. In fact, his clothing seemed designed to make him appear smaller than he actually was, as if he were trying to disguise the strength of his form.
Hands laced over the pommel of her saddle, she stared at his well-formed back, the wide shoulders and narrow waist. She watched the play of muscles beneath his coat, the trail of the wig between his shoulder blades, the way his buttocks flexed as he shifted with the movement of the horse…. Heat started low in her belly, a steady ache in her flesh. She wet her lips.
Suddenly, he swiped wildly around him. Snapped out of her reverie, she couldn’t help a smile. The good tailor must have been assaulted by a bug.
Bharia pulled up beside her. “We should stop here, Thalia.”
She turned her contemplation from the tailor to her guardian. “Here?”
“It’s as good as place as any, and you are becoming tired.”
“I can continue.”
Bharia shrugged. “But you would fall from your saddle, and neither Stahg nor I would pluck you from the ground.”
A smile tugged at the truth of her guard’s words. It had happened before. Amusement faded, though, as she glanced at their guide. “Do you think he would stop?”<
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Bharia snorted. “That one would keep going until we all fell if it meant he could reach his feather bed that much quicker.”
He would at that. “Do you find him somewhat odd?”
“I find all court members odd, Thalia.”
Absently, she nodded. Her guardians called her by name rather than title and, at first, she’d chafed against it, having been referred to so informally by her father and no other. In time, though, she’d learned to accept it and then even appreciate it. Besides, it made no sense to announce who she was to all and sundry when the whole point of the Trip was her anonymity. She frowned as she watched the tailor roll his shoulders. “Isn’t there something particularly odd about him? More so than other members of court?”
“All that is odd about him is how he managed to get past Stahg and me. Don’t think I’ll be trusting him, Thalia. He’s a craft, that one, and we’re best off making certain we don’t take our eyes from him.”
A craft. A man of deviousness and deception. Thalia ran her gaze over him, over the clothes designed to conceal. Bharia was not wrong.
Gathering her horse’s reins in her hands, she said, “Tell Stahg we are making camp.”
Bharia nodded at the tailor. “And that one?”
Thalia squared her shoulders. “I’ll tell him.”
As she approached, the tailor turned, and his annoyed frown cleared to the genial expression he’d worn the day before. “Princess, how fare you?”
“I am well.” She reined her horse in. “We will be stopping here.”
His expression slipped. “Why?” he demanded, and then, as if realizing to whom he spoke, he added, “Princess.”
“Because my guard has said we should stop, and when they say that, we stop.”
He lost any pretense of geniality and scowled. “Why should we heed what they say?”
She felt her brow rising. A terrible habit, but an effective one. “Because they have kept me alive on more occasions than one. I tend to heed people who have done that.”
His scowl grew worse. “We should push on, Princess.”
“Well, you may continue, if you so choose, but my guardians and I are making camp for the night. You can join us or not.” She lifted her chin. “Further, do not call me Princess. We do not need the notice such a title will bring.” Ignoring his spluttering protest, she turned her horse.
Bharia watched her approach, her arms crossed on the pommel of her saddle. “What did he say?”
Thalia lifted a shoulder. “We stop here, Bharia.”
Bharia grinned. “Yes, my princess.”
Thalia threw her an annoyed look as she dismounted. As soon as she stood on her own legs, she almost buckled.
Ignoring Bharia’s smirk, she wobbled through a walk until her legs corrected themselves. Mother, she really did dislike it when her guardian was so completely correct.
Chapter Three
The fire stank of the too-wet wood, which was the only fuel they could find, his skin itched from the hundreds of bugs that thought it a sport to devour his blood from the moment they left the hellhole that was Dornse Keep, and his stomach rebelled at the thin gruel and stale bread that had been his supper this eve.
Miserable, Sebastian shifted his weight on the devilishly hard ground for the umpteenth time and pulled his cloak tighter about him. For too long, he’d sat there, staring at the stench-creating fire, bored out of his mind and cataloging all the annoyances he currently endured. He’d attempted distraction by sketching, but it had soon grown too dark, and he’d discarded his sketchbook in a fit of pique.
By the gods, there were at least another three weeks of this. Three more weeks of travel by horse, of sleeping on dirt, of bad drink and worse food. Exhaling, he pulled his cloak tighter. Three more bloody weeks.
The princess sat on the other side of the fire, her brow creased as she stared into its flame. Her guardian, the giant blond one, sat a good four feet from her, whittling a piece of wood into a misshapen lump as his gaze scanned their surrounds. Her other guardian, the grinning woman with the scar snaking her neck and hair almost as black as the princess’s, was somewhere out there in the woods and wilderness that surrounded them.
The princess didn’t seem fazed by this wretched travel. She sat with one leg bent and the other threaded beneath, her expression pensive as she ripped absently at a piece of grass. She seemed comfortable with her own company, with silence and contemplation. Her guardians hadn’t engaged her in conversation, the black-haired one with the wicked scar disappearing into the woods with a terse patrol as if they should all know what that meant. The blond giant had stationed himself at the edge of their campsite, his eyes on the forest while his hand hooked around the leather harness of the scabbard of the enormous sword strapped to his back.
The princess sighed. She had discarded the grass she had shredded to nothing and started on a new piece. The flames threw strange shadows onto the trees behind her, the towering branches dwarfing her form. She appeared, of all things, alone.
The errant thought surprised him. Why should he think such a thing, and, of more import, why did he care? It mattered not to him if she were alone. His purpose was to bring her back to Queenstor and get back to work shoring up his support amongst the Houses. His position was precarious enough without this forced absence.
His gaze strayed to her again. She had finished the second piece of grass and was picking up the third.
Damnation. Shaking his head, he got to his feet and made his way to her side. “Princess?”
She exhaled in exasperation. “Don’t call me that,” she said, and then she looked him direct.
His breath strangled in his throat. The firelight caressed her face with shadows and light, licking her cheekbones, adoring her lips. His fingers itched for a pencil, and then they itched to trace where it was light. Where it was shadow. Everywhere else.
Pull yourself together, man. “May I sit?”
She looked at him a long time before returning her attention to the flames. “If you wish.”
Well, that was encouraging. Gingerly, he lowered himself beside her. The ground here was uneven and hard as stone. How did people do this, regularly and of their own volition? Some even preferred this mode of travel to horse and coach. He would call those people insane and right to their face, too.
Silence fell between them. Now that he’d done this asinine thing, he had no notion of how to proceed. It seemed stupid to begin with his regular conversation, all of flattery and cloth and the latest styles from his and other Houses. Here, in the middle of nowhere with his skin cold and itching, his arse numb, and his stomach roiling, such things seemed beyond frivolous. Besides, what would she know of fashion? She’d been away from the capital for years, living in hovels like the one he’d found her in. She could—
“Tell me of this season’s trends, Tailor. It seems to me the leg is slimming.”
He jerked his attention to her. Gaze still on the fire, her hands still stripping grass, she could not have surprised him more.
Clearing his throat, he recovered his voice. “You are correct, princess. A slimmer all-around silhouette is coming in, one more closely fit to the body. Of course, this causes its own issues.”
She nodded. “Perhaps a new industry, also.”
Again, he was surprised. “Yes. Without frills and puffs to disguise forms, padding and structured undergarments will become more prevalent. We have already planned accordingly.”
The grass fell from her fingers. “How much employment will be created?”
“If the trend lasts for a few years, which we believe it will, the industry created will support twenty thousand, with another forty in secondary industries.”
She rubbed the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. He watched in silence. Her father had only just asked these same questions. It seemed the princess knew more than he thought. “We should reach Queenstor in three weeks, Princess. You can see for yourself the truth of my words.”
She lo
oked at him sharply. “I don’t doubt your word, Tailor. You are in the position to know.”
Again, she surprised him. Her father questioned every word out of his mouth and made it clear he thought Sebastian too young to be tailor. Mayhap he was too young, but he had been appointed as any other tailor had. Surely that should afford him a little respect?
“And what of unrest?”
“Princess?”
She shot him a look. “Thalia.”
“Apologies, Prin—” He stopped himself. Clearing his throat, he said, “You speak of unrest?”
“There is much talk of the spinner’s group, the ones who seek a republic. What’s their mantra? Fairer taxes and freedom for all?”
“You seem to know them well.” He couldn’t bring himself to call her by her name, to sever the distance her title gave. Not when he wanted her naked and beneath him.
“I know a little. There were occasional demonstrations and...other things.” A shadow crossed her face, but it could have been the flames.
He nodded. “You are correct. The Spindles seek to dethrone your father and place one of their number in his stead. They talk of a republic, but it is talk only. They are not organized enough to form an effective coup.”
“However, there is talk and discontent. These things should be addressed and grievances aired before damage is done.”
Amusement tugged. “You sound like your father. Any moment, I expect to be brought to report.”
A smile playing about her mouth, she raised a brow. “Report, Tailor, and unburden yourself.”
The words, the traditional exchange between the tailor and the throne uttered at the beginning of every parliamentary session, startled a laugh from him. “So you have kept abreast of events?”
“It is my duty and my privilege to do so. I was not to be gone forever.” She grimaced. “Even if, somehow, I missed the death of the tailor.” With a sigh, she threw the grass she held into the fire. “And you, sir? You have been tailor since Clothilde passed?”
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