That wasn't the stroke of luck it had seemed at first, she decided on reflection, brushing the snow from a fallen log so she could take a seat on it to catch her breath and rest her weary legs. The Cabal made it their business to place Scard spies as close as possible to the immortals to keep an eye on them.
In all likelihood, Chikita's placement at Jaxyn's side had nothing to do with Arkady. The little feline was merely helping where she could, and only because at that moment in time, during the turmoil of battle, it wasn't likely to get her into trouble. She'd shown no inclination to help Arkady before the chaos of the invasion. In fact, nothing about the Scard's demeanour, right up until she let Arkady escape, gave any hint that she wasn't a perfectly well-behaved Crash, as subject to immortal whim as any other feline.
Whatever motives drove Chikita, Arkady wasn't going to pass up the only opportunity she had to escape. She was quite sure that as soon as Jaxyn was
no longer distracted by the battle, he would come looking for her. How she was going to stay out of his grasp when he did, was something she had no idea about just yet.
She tried hard not to think about leaving her father behind. She'd already grieved him as lost once, many years ago. The memory was just another invisible scar on a soul scored with more scars than she cared to count these days. Their abortive attempt to escape that had resulted in Clyden's death seemed to sap the last of his remaining spirit. By staying behind, she was free to do what she had to do in order to save herself. He'd known that. It was the reason he'd refused to escape.
One way or another Bary Morel was determined to sacrifice himself to save his daughter. Arkady had realised that when she found him in his room with a noose around his neck. Her attempts to prevent him from doing anything foolish hadn't stopped him, only made him more creative.
Of course, Papa, your grand plan to nobly sacrifice your own life to cover my escape will all turn out to be moot, because I'll probably freeze to death before sun- up, she decided, looking around to see where she was.
With the daylight fading, the temperature was dropping rapidly. The sun was already sinking behind the mountaintops in the west. Arkady was exhausted, hungry and chilled to the bone, despite the fur coat she was wearing. Her feet were frozen, her shoes soaked; she could no longer feel her toes and she was sure she wouldn't survive a night in the open without the means to make a fire.
Arkady didn't have long before her situation moved from dire to critical. Without shelter or a fire, for sure she would evade capture by going to the one place Jaxyn couldn't follow: into death.
She had been able to assuage her thirst with snow, but had nothing else to sustain her, nor did she know enough bush-craft to find her own food. The woods
made her nervous. She'd grown up in the slums of Lebec and then spent the rest of her life in a palace. City streets held no surprises for Arkady Desean. Declan had taught her how to look out for herself as a child, which had stood her in good stead for her turn as a duchess. Negotiating the pitfalls of Glaeban high society proved surprisingly similar to facing the perils of the slums. But even as a slave in Senestra or in the stark deserts of Torlenia, she'd not been alone like she was now, in an unfamiliar environment where she didn't have the tools to survive.
Arkady knew there was a way to start a fire by rubbing sticks together, but making fire was not a skill she'd ever needed before. There was always someone around with a flint, or another fire from which one could borrow a hot coal. She wasn't so worried about eating. A person could go days without food if need be; she was prepared to sacrifice a full belly for freedom.
But freedom wasn't freedom if she was dead and with nightfall, that fate was a real possibility.
The overcast sky concealed the setting sun, leaving Arkady with no accurate notion of where she was, other than somewhere north of Cycrane. She'd only been out of the Caelish capital once before, and that was years ago, on her honeymoon, when Stellan's role as the king's personal envoy had brought them to Cycrane on official business. Nyah's father, the late Prince Consort of Caelum, had taken them to visit some ruins north of the city to see if Arkady knew anything of their origins. They'd made quite a day of it, with a picnic lunch and much laughter, interesting conversation and overtures of friendship. It was hard to believe that in such a short time, the two countries were now at war.
Although she wasn't sure of their exact location, she figured she must be close to the ruins by now. They were a short way inland from the lake, she recalled,
and probably the closest thing to shelter out here. Arkady glanced up at the sky, wondering how much daylight she had left. And what the chances were of finding shelter. She could see the rocky bluff that she recalled as being near the ruins, jutting out from the hillside just ahead of her. Perhaps, if she made her way toward it, she might have some hope of locating shelter. She didn't have long. In the short time since she'd stopped, it was already noticeably colder and she was no longer shivering, which she knew to be a bad sign.
Arkady forced herself to her feet and then froze at an unfamiliar noise. She strained to listen, certain she could hear a mewling cry that sounded nothing like the other forest noises she'd grown accustomed to this past day. She waited, wondering if she'd imagined it. For a time, she heard nothing. And then, just as she was on the brink of deciding she really had imagined the noise, she heard it again.
Curious, Arkady followed the noise. She moved inland a little way in pursuit of what sounded very much like the crying of a Crasii pup, although Arkady couldn't imagine what such a young creature would be doing out here alone. She pushed through the undergrowth as the crying grew louder, finding the source of the cries hiding between the roots of a gnarled and ancient tree in a small clearing. It wasn't a newborn, Arkady realised as she approached. It was probably a couple of months old. Certainly old enough to move under its own power, even if only at a crawl. The pup was covered in fine brown fur, its large brown eyes were fully open and alert — albeit filled with tears — and it was dressed in a loose smock, which meant it wasn't feral. Somebody owned this puppy.
'There, there, sweetie,' Arkady said softly as she approached the pup. 'Where did you come from?'
It looked up at the sound of her voice. The crying faltered for a moment, and then the pup began to wail
even louder in that odd way Crasii pups had of mimicking both human babies and dogs simultaneously.
'Hey ... it's all right,' she said soothingly, crouching down to get a closer look at the puppy. 'I'm not going to hurt you.'
As Arkady reached out to the pup, she heard a low growl. She looked up in time to see a brown blur leaping at her. Before she had time to register what she was seeing, she was bowled over sideways, the wind knocked out of her. Bruising her ribs on another fallen branch, the weight of a full-grown adult canine on her, she struggled to free herself, fighting off the growling mother with all her strength. Exhausted as she was, she fought like a demon, aware there was nothing more savage than a canine bitch protecting her pups and this one seemed determined to tear out her throat. Finally, after it clawed her face and bit her arm a couple of times, Arkady managed to push the creature away long enough for her to plead her innocence.
'I wasn't going to hurt him! I was only trying to help!' she cried, speaking Glaeban without thinking about the consequences. Panicked, under attack, and trying to avoid having her throat ripped open, it never occurred to Arkady to speak in anything other than her native tongue.
Her plea gave the creature pause. Suddenly the Crasii broke off the attack and she sat back on her heels. Still astride Arkady, she looked down at her in surprise. 'Your grace?'
Being addressed as 'your grace' was almost more surprising than being attacked out of nowhere by a vicious Crasii dam, protecting her pup. She studied the creature in the fading light. 'Do I know you?'
'It me, your grace. Boots.'
Arkady stared at the canine in confusion, trying to remember who Boots might be. And then it came to her. It's the you
ng female canine who ran away from
Lebec the night Declan came to the palace and asked me to interview Cayal.
'Boots? Tides, girl, what are you doing here? And with pups?'
'I should be asking what you're doing here, your grace,' Boots said, climbing off her. The canine held out her hand to help Arkady up. She staggered to her feet and looked down at the puppy who had stopped crying when its mother had attacked this strange interloper. In fact, it was smiling. Apparently, the puppy found the prospect of its mother tearing a human into little pieces rather entertaining.
'It's a long story, Boots, and one I'm not sure you'd believe.'
Boots reached down and picked up the pup. 'My tale's pretty much the same, your grace. Are you out here alone?'
Arkady hesitated, wondering if she could trust this Crasii. For all she knew, Boots was part of a larger party belonging to an immortal waiting for them over the next ridge. And then she remembered the reason Boots had fled her home in Lebec. She had defied Jaxyn.
Only a Scard was capable of doing that.
'Alone, and on the run, I fear,' she admitted. At this point Arkady couldn't see that telling the truth would make much difference. She would die out here in the open tonight if she didn't get help. 'What about you?'
'Well, I'm not alone,' Boots said, hefting the pup on to her hip. 'This is Missy, by the way. She's always running off and finding trouble the moment my back is turned. And I'm not really on the run. Sort of waiting out the winter before I can run anywhere. Especially with three pups to feed.'
Arkady's eyes widened in surprise. 'You have three pups?'
Boots nodded. 'And we'd best get back to the other two before they decide to wander off as well.' She
sighed with exasperation. 'Tides, it was so much easier before they learned to crawl.'
'You have a camp around here?'
'In some ruins back that way a bit,' Boots told her, heading back the way she'd come, apparently assuming Arkady would follow. 'You'd know them, probably. Lord Stellan said you've been here before.'
'Stellan?' Arkady hurried after the canine. 'You've spoken to Stellan?'
'He helped me get away from the suzerain,' Boots told her, glancing over her shoulder. 'He said he'd be back with some more supplies if he could, but I doubt that's going to happen. Not considering what happened on the lake today.'
'You saw the battle?'
'Heard it mostly,' Boots said, pushing through the branches to emerge into the clearing Arkady thought she remembered. Not that she could tell much in this light. 'At least, I heard the screams. You can't really see much from here. We're too far north.' She looked over her shoulder and smiled faintly. 'Which is actually a good thing.'
Wrapping her arms around her body against the cold, Arkady followed Boots for a short way through some more bushes on the other side of the clearing until they broke out of the undergrowth and came upon the ruins Arkady remembered from her honeymoon. Looking around with interest, she stepped over the rubble at the entrance, which seemed relatively undisturbed, and then followed the canine and her pup through the main hall and down a narrow stairwell at the back into the lower levels.
Here, not only was it much warmer, but Boots had built a cosy little nest for herself and her babies. There were furs on the floor, and a goodly stash of supplies in the corner. A small fire was burning in a fire-pit which was barricaded against curious little paws with a wall of stones that had obviously been retrieved from
around the ruins. A door at the other end of the room, with presumably another dangerous staircase leading down to the levels even lower than this one, was blocked off in a similar fashion.
'It's not much,' Boots said, when Arkady hesitated on the threshold. 'But it's home.'
Boots put Missy down on the floor, who immediately scampered on all fours over to the pile of furs where another two pups appeared to be sleeping peacefully — at least until their sister arrived and jumped on them. She dropped a wide strip of battered leather tied over the door lintel, cutting them off from the outside world, and the chill that had fallen with the darkness.
'I ... it's wonderful,' Arkady said, as she felt the cosy warmth of the room envelope her. Never had a place looked so warm or inviting. 'I think it's the first time I've been warm in days.'
And safe, she thought, afraid that if she voiced such an opinion aloud, she would jinx herself. Tides, I don't believe it. I think — for the moment at least — I'm out of harm's way.
CHAPTER 27
'Are you hungry, your grace?'
'I'm sorry; did you say something, Boots?'
'I only have dried meat,' the canine told her. 'But you're welcome to share it.' She walked to the fireplace to stoke up the fire. The pups were all whimpering now that the little one had disturbed them. 'Missy, leave your brothers alone and let them sleep!' The female pup sat on her haunches and stared at her mother with huge liquid eyes that seemed to shine in the firelight. 'And there's no point giving me that look, either, young lady,' Boots added in a stern voice, without even glancing at the pup. 'I'm not falling for it.'
Arkady smiled. 'She really is quite gorgeous, Boots.'
'You say that because you've only just met her, your grace. Give it a day or two, then you'll change your mind.' Boots finished with the fire and walked to the furs. After a few moments, she had the other pups settled. She sat down beside them and allowed Missy to suckle, which the pup did with noisy enthusiasm.
Arkady glanced around the chamber, but there seemed no sign of any other adults. 'Is their sire not here to help you?'
Boots frowned. 'He's off being a hero. Tides, but I hate heroes.'
'A hero wouldn't abandon his family.'
'We'd have been a damn sight better off if this particular hero had done exactly that,' Boots said,
clearly unwilling to talk about who had fathered her litter. 'It was a stroke of good fortune that we ran into Duke Stellan, your grace. And that he didn't hold killing one of his wretched felines against me.'
Typical Stellan — even in the midst of all this, he was still looking after his Crasii, she thought. A pity he wasn't so fond of caring for the human charges in his care. How can a man so thoughtful be so ruthless at the same time? 'Is he well?'
Boots nodded. 'He seems well. He's certainly got the suzerain marching to the beat of his drum, and that's no mean feat.' The Crasii turned to look at Arkady. 'Do you know what a suzerain is, my lady?'
'All too well, Boots,' Arkady said with a sigh, moving closer to the fire. 'All too well.'
'Then you know this war is about the suzerain and not really about whether or not somebody kidnapped poor little Princess Nyah?'
Arkady nodded and sat down, deciding she needed to remove her shoes before they dropped off with her feet inside them. 'I know you're a Scard, too, Boots. And what that means. I've met quite a few immortals in the past year. I'm becoming quite expert on the subject.'
Boots looked more than a little concerned by her admission. 'Is that what you were doing wandering around the forest? Running from the immortals?'
'Running from the immortals and hoping to find Stellan,' Arkady said. 'I never thought it would be this easy.'
'It's not,' Boots said. 'I don't want to give you false hope, your grace. I may never see the duke again. And I certainly don't plan to wait for him to come back. Soon as that lake thaws out, I'm finding a boat, taking my pups and heading home to Glaeba.'
Arkady didn't blame Boots for her determination to be gone from here. She tugged off her soaking shoes and stockings and began to massage her frozen toes, a
little surprised to find there was no sign of frostbite. 'At least I know Stellan lives. Is there any way to get him a message?'
Boots shook her head. 'Short of walking into Cycrane to deliver it yourself, none I can think of.'
Arkady examined her pale, icy and blistered feet, frowning. 'I'll not be walking anywhere for a day or two, I suspect.' She looked up at Boots then, and smiled apologetically.
'I'm so sorry, Boots. I'm assuming you'll allow me to stay without even asking. I'll move on tomorrow if you want. I have no wish to endanger you or your pups, and to be honest, that may happen if Jaxyn comes looking for me.'
'You can stay until you're ready to travel again, your grace,' Boots said, moving Missy to the other breast. The pup had started to fuss a little. 'But if you've suzerain hunting you, I'd appreciate you not leading them here.'
Arkady nodded, but before she could assure the Scard she would not willingly endanger her or her family, the ground shook so hard that some of Boots's carefully constructed barricade around the entrance to the lower levels, tumbled down the darkened stairwell. All the pups reacted to the tremor in terror, the two sleeping pups waking abruptly, before bursting into tears of fear and distress.
And then, after a moment or two, the tremor stopped as unexpectedly as it had started.
'Tides! What was that?' Arkady asked. 'Do you think it had something to do with the battle?'
'That wasn't a part of the battle,' Boots said, gathering her babies to her fearfully. 'I think it was someone using the Tide.'
'To do what?'
'I dunno,' the Crasii said, nuzzling her puppies gently to soothe them. 'But it was something big.' Arkady wasn't satisfied with such a vague answer. Til go out and check if we can see anything from
here.' She reached for her soaking shoes, but the canine looked up and shook her head.
'Stay, my lady,' she said. 'Eat something first and be sure it's fully dark before you go back outside. Anyway, you'll never get those shoes back on until they dry a little.
Arkady couldn't fault the Crasii's logic. 'Later then,' she agreed. 'When it's fully dark.'
Once Missy settled in with the other pups and the two adults had eaten, Arkady had another go at putting on her shoes. The water bucket needed filling and she was still worried about the earlier tremor, wondering if there was any damage close by.
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