So I left it there. I even arranged the carcass of the roast fowl, with the bones sucked clean by Kral’s voracious appetite, radiating out from the ring. The flawless gem sparkled amid the grease and rejected gristle. The only goodbye letter I was capable of leaving, but it said everything.
Who knew—maybe a servant would find it and keep the thing. Or accidentally throw it in the refuse. I didn’t care. I’d said what I wanted to.
Really, though, I hoped Harlan would see it and smile, knowing that I was okay. That it was a goodbye.
Tying the few things I planned to take with me around my waist with extra scarves, I donned the dark, plain cloak, then scattered the logs and coals to dim the room again. Checking that the guards were still occupied—they were—I climbed out the window barefoot. I trusted the practiced grip of my toes better than the clunky boots, which I’d tied to my waist also.
I wondered what my mother would think to know that all the hours I’d practiced on my dances, the exquisite control I’d refined for the ducerse to make sure I could move without making any of the bells I wore jingle in the slightest, would allow me to climb silently out the second floor window of an inn, then glide across the pitched roof to the building next door.
I’m not sure I even felt afraid—I don’t remember it. It’s possible I’d grown so accustomed to fear that I didn’t notice it anymore, like a foul smell that fades into the background. Mostly I felt exhilaration. I walked over several more roofs than I needed to, delighted that I could, that my feet found a grip on the corrugated tiles, and I moved without fluttering my cloak, making no sound.
In this, at least, I’d been well educated.
A cat passed me, going the other direction, also silently picking her way along the roofline. Her eyes flashed at me and I felt we nodded at each other, shadows passing in the night. I found an outside staircase and padded down it, keeping to the back alley where people set the things they didn’t care for anyone to see.
Feeling like the only person awake in the entire world, I made my way down to the harbor, where the ships sat creaking at the docks. A brisk wind blew off the water, smelling of brine, distant storms, and my future.
Here there were people awake, sailors keeping watch or working on rigging. I stopped to pull on my boots. I could make noise again, and no man walked about barefoot. So many ships lined up—all along the extensive, curving harbor. Which had Harlan booked us passage on? Not that I’d board that ship, but if I could, I wanted his coin back.
And maybe to leave a message.
He’d told me the name of the ship, but I couldn’t read the scrolling letters painted or carved into the wood of the proud vessels. Finally, I took the risk of asking a passing man if he knew which ship it was. I kept my voice low, making it a little hoarse, as if I suffered a sore throat.
The man squinted up one way, then the other. Pointing he told me the tenth ship down, with the red lanterns hanging off the sides. I didn’t know ten, but I could find red, so I nodded and went that way. He went the other, a simple interaction for him, a momentous one for me. The first time I’d ever spoken to a strange man without an escort.
And nothing bad had happened to me. Still, I clutched the little eating knife under my cloak. I might not be able to do much damage with it—too small even to cut my own throat with, unless I sawed at it, and I doubted I could make myself do that, no matter my desperation—but Harlan had shown me how to grip a knife in my fist and go for the eye. That’s what I’d do. I’d plunge it in, then jump off the dock and let myself drown.
I talked myself through it. The dense wool of the cloak would weigh me down, and I wouldn’t fight for air. I’d sink, knowing I’d died free, if it came to that.
Thus, I realized, I’d already found freedom. I’d made my own choices, and nothing could send me back. No matter when I perished from the world, it would be as me, Jenna the free woman.
At the ship, sailors bustled about, clearly making ready to sail away. Though the sky remained as dark as before, it seemed dawn must be coming. More lanterns lit in windows. Some sounds came from town. Wheels on stone. A horse whinnying.
I walked up the sloping plank from the dock to the ship, letting my boots clomp. A sailor noticed me. “Passenger?”
“Yeh,” I said, imitating the man I’d talked to. “The captain?”
“There.” He pointed to a heavy man leaning over a table, pondering something on a scroll, a lantern beside him.
I clomped over. “Captain?”
“Yeh,” he replied, not looking up.
“My brother booked passage with you to the port city of Halabahna,” I said.
“Cabins are that way. Got your names written in chalk on the door. Point out your trunks to my man there and we’ll haul ’em up for you.”
I shook my head, though he still hadn’t looked up. “We can’t go. I’m here to get our coin back.”
“No refunds.”
That hadn’t occurred to me. I had no idea what to do. “Why not?”
Now he glanced at me, face crunched with irritation. “Could’ve sold your passage to someone else, couldn’t I? We sail in two hours and who’s going to show up at the last minute? I’m out money because you and your brother changed your minds.” His voice went mocking on that last. “Fancy folk with your flighty ways. Sail with us or don’t, but I’m keeping your coin.” He returned his attention to the scroll on the table.
I had my pearls. If he didn’t give me the coin, I’d have to use the pearl as passage on another ship. All he could do was say no again.
So I pulled the biggest one out of my pocket, holding it between him and the scroll, so it gleamed in the lantern light. I kept it pinched in my fingers, curled up to hide their feminine slimness. My nails were cracked and ragged from peeling off the glued-on shells and gems, so revealed little about my true origins.
It got his attention. Slowly straightening, he reached for it, but I pulled my hand back under my cloak.
“Who are you?” he asked, not demanding, like a guard might be, but curious.
“A man who wants his coin back.”
“Is that so? If that pearl you showed me is real, it’s worth ten times the coin ye paid.”
Stupid me. Oh well. “But a pearl isn’t as easy to spend.”
“True. Let me see it then.”
“So you can steal it from me? No.”
He cracked a grin. “Look now, I’m a more or less honest man. If the pearl is real I’ll give you your coin and then some, though I know that’s not yours either, as we both know you’re no man.”
Abruptly fear hammered at me, my heart meeting it with furious harmony. And here I thought I’d done so well. The captain had me, and we both knew that, too. He held out a gnarled hand and I dropped the pearl in his palm.
He fingered it, then drew back his thick lips and ran it across his teeth, then grunted. Pocketing it, he reached under his coat, pulled out a leather bag and handed me the whole thing. “Still not what it’s worth, but a sight more than the passage your ‘brother’ paid me. You’ll need it.”
I clutched it to my heart, willing the weight of coin to slow the frantic beating. “Thank you,” I said.
“A piece of advice—don’t let anyone see your hands. And no one else has pearls like that, Your Imperial Highness.”
My voice choked. I could jump overboard. That was still an option.
“I won’t tell your secret. I figure if you ran, you did it for good reason. But there’s been Imperial Guard and one of your brothers come by the last several days asking if you booked passage.”
Of course. Kral would have looked for ships going to Halabahna. Unforgivably stupid to have come here. But I did have coin now.
“If you’re looking for another ship,” the captain said, not unkindly now, “that one two slips over is heading out this morning to the Remus Isles.
A lass can lose herself in those islands. And a queen runs the place. You might do well there.”
“Thank you,” I managed. I dug out another pearl, and offered it.
He folded a hand over mine, squeezing gently. “Keep it. The one could buy me a whole new ship and I just might do that, once we get to Halabahna. But keep those out of sight. I take it I shouldn’t expect the fellow who booked the passage. I’m guessing his name isn’t really Brian.”
I laughed a little. Harlan had picked a name I might have guessed, had I been thinking clearly. “If he does come, and you can speak to him alone, tell him where I went. But don’t tell anyone else.”
He nodded, looking at his scroll again. “I’m not interested in giving up my newfound treasure and I don’t kid myself that the high and mighty Imperial Prince wouldn’t take it from me. I’ve never seen you and you’d think I’d recognize an Imperial Princess if one waltzed onto my ship, wouldn’t I? Now get gone, lest you linger and get us both in trouble.”
“Thank you,” I said, one more time. Wishing I could say more.
He glanced at me and winked. “That’s three times, which makes it magic. Good luck, Princess. Dasnaria will mourn losing you. Maybe you can come back someday.”
Remembering my promise to Inga and Helva, I nodded.
“I will. I will come back. Someday.”
~ Epigraph ~
I stood at the rail of the Valeria, watching the sun break over the ocean before us. Some other passengers stood at the rear of the ship, though many had dispersed, having waved goodbye to friends and family that had assembled on the docks and now diminished with distance. I wouldn’t be so careless to be spotted there, but I couldn’t make myself hide below.
The ship’s sails billowed, creaking as the sailors cranked ropes to unfurl them, and with each new sail catching the wind, more water widened the distance between me and land.
A few slips down, Imperial carriages and armor glittered in the morning light. Crowds gathered round them, too, people pointing and sending up occasional cheers. I thought I spotted Kral’s tall figure pacing the deck of the ship we’d been booked on, but I moved to the other side of the Valeria, just in case. I sorely wanted to see if I could spot Harlan, but I couldn’t afford being sighted in return.
We were one among many ships heading out—a serendipity I hadn’t thought to hope for. The one we’d been booked on—I’d never know the captain’s name, and I wished I’d thought to ask—didn’t look to be leaving any time soon. Imperial guards had spilled out, boarding other ships, hailing others to stand down, but the Valeria had already moved out. I’d heard the captain commenting acidly to his companion that the fucking Dasnarians weren’t going to delay his schedule. We had a long, hard crossing ahead in winter as it was, and he wasn’t losing a day to it.
The fucking Dasnarians. I rolled the phrase over in my mind, unsure of the meaning of the curse, but it sounded foul and I enjoyed it for that. One day I’d speak it aloud.
Taking one last look at the land of my birth, and of my imprisonment, I turned my back on it, facing resolutely forward. I gazed into the bright sun as long as I could, then dropped my eyes to the surging water. I even liked the shining gold red bubbles the scorching sun left in my vision after I looked away.
Through those blazing circles, animals leaped. Blue and gray like the water, one with the waves. Not elephants, of course, but kind of like them. Elephants of the water. I’d have to find out what they were really called.
A good omen. I smiled at them and lifted my face to the warming light.
And sailed away into the sunrise.
The Lost Princess Chronicles continue in
Exile of Dasnaria
by
Jeffe Kennedy
In
Fall 2018.
Available at your favorite e-retailer!
About the Author
Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author whose works include novels, non-fiction, poetry, and short fiction. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award.
Her award-winning fantasy romance trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms hit the shelves starting in May 2014. Book 1, The Mark of the Tala, received a starred Library Journal review and was nominated for the RT Book of the Year while the sequel, The Tears of the Rose received a Top Pick Gold and was nominated for the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2014. The third book, The Talon of the Hawk, won the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2015. Two more books followed in this world, beginning the spin-off series The Uncharted Realms. Book one in that series, The Pages of the Mind, has also been nominated for the RT Reviewer’s Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2016 and won RWA’s 2017 RITA® Award. The second book, The Edge of the Blade, released December 27, 2016, and is a PRISM finalist, along with The Pages of the Mind. The next in the series, The Shift of the Tide, came out in August, 2017. A high fantasy trilogy taking place in The Twelve Kingdoms world is forthcoming from Rebel Base books in 2018.
She also introduced a new fantasy romance series, Sorcerous Moons, which includes Lonen’s War, Oria’s Gambit, The Tides of Bàra, and The Forests of Dru. She’s begun releasing a new contemporary erotic romance series, Missed Connections, which started with Last Dance and continues in With a Prince and Since Last Christmas.
In 2019, St. Martins Press will release the first book, The Orchid Throne, in a new fantasy romance series, The Forgotten Empires.
Her other works include a number of fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns; the contemporary BDSM novellas of the Facets of Passion; an erotic contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera; and the erotic romance trilogy, Falling Under, which includes Going Under, Under His Touch and Under Contract.
She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine.
Jeffe can be found online at her website: JeffeKennedy.com, every Sunday at the popular SFF Seven blog, on Facebook, on Goodreads and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy. She is represented by Sarah Younger of Nancy Yost Literary Agency.
http://jeffekennedy.com
https://www.facebook.com/Author.Jeffe.Kennedy
https://twitter.com/jeffekennedy
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1014374.Jeffe_Kennedy
Prisoner of the Crown Page 19