None of us answer and he thumps the side of the cart in approval.
I can’t see the route we take as the cart lurches forward, dragged by the slow clip-clop of Clift’s mule, but we’ve gone over the plan in such detail by now that I can visualize the scene.
The perimeter of the city is heavily guarded, so Clift heads for the eastern wall. There, only one gate bars the city from the expanse of desert created by the Shakers’ terrain manipulation. Not like the northern wall, where traffic into the city is consolidated by multiple entrances. But only one gate means fewer guards—one guard, actually.
Only fools would travel out into the Leeched Desert, after all. Desperate fools.
“The guard’s an Elemental all right,” Clift told us when we’d started to finalize this plan. He’d finally been able to get over to the eastern wall to see for himself. “Unless they give those daft black robes to anyone who wants to swish around importantly these days.”
Tregle’s knuckles had been pale from how tightly he clenched them. “They don’t.”
Under the canvas now, our breaths are heavy and hot in the darkness. The ground goes from rough stone so jarring that I clench my jaw to keep my teeth from breaking to a dirt road. Someone’s foot gets wedged beneath my backside, and I wince at the unmistakable sound of a head crashing into the wooden side of the cart as we go over a particularly rough bump.
Finally, we stop.
“What’s your business?” a bored voice asks.
“Trade.” Clift sounds upbeat. “Got some grains and ale I’m taking to Orlan to trade for a Clavish liquor.”
“Clavish?” The soldier snorts. There’s a whuff of air, and his feet slap against the ground as he swings himself down. He steps closer. Makers, I can hear him breathing. I feel like I might faint. “They like that clear stuff for the drink, don’t they? It any good?”
“Come by The Soused Turkey in a month’s time and see.” Clift’s boisterous laugh breaks up the tension remaining between him and the guard, who joins him in laughter. I breathe a little easier.
“I might do, I might do. Though seeing as I’m not s’posed to let anyone pass, I’m not sure how you’ll trade…”
“Might be more than just a drink in it for you,” Clift says, encouragement in his tone. The cart leans forward as he climbs down, and I hear the tinkle of coins exchanging hands.
There’s a pause as the guard weighs the coin purse, and I hang my breath in it.
“Soused Turkey, you said?”
Another pause. I presume Clift nods.
“Go on through, mate.” Clicking fills the air as the guard flips a few latches and the door wallops open against the wall.
My instinct is to cast the tarp off the instant the gate thunks closed behind us, but Clift warned us against that very inclination. “The wall’s high, and a lone merchant when the guard’s not meant to let anyone through will pull enough suspicion. Don’t need to worry about an archer standing watch above and seeing the cart unload with people.”
We wait, tense and silent. It could have been an hour by the time we stop. Or perhaps it’s been fifteen minutes. Time weighs more when it holds heavy matters.
Finally, Clift stops and Meddie pushes the tarp aside with a scowl dimly lit by the silvery moon.
“You’re sure you want me to go with them?” is the first thing she says—a question she’s asking for the umpteenth time.
Clift’s reply is one we’ve heard before as well. “You keep telling me how you want to help the Underground effort. ‘Really help, Clift.’” He delivers these lines in a bad falsetto with air quotes around them. He drops his hands and looks at her solemnly. “You want to help, this is how you do it. Think about that—what a boon royals allied with the Underground would be.”
They already have royals allied with the Underground. Caden.
I’ve tried not to think of him in these past few days, but now I wonder. I turn back to the city wall, dark and ominous, and bite my lip.
“Besides,” Clift continues. “You think losing the heir to the Nereid throne won’t be a loss for our bastard king? Keep them safe. Get them to Nereidium—especially the girl.”
I shift uneasily.
“And remember to avoid Egrian ships,” he reminds us. “They’ll drown an Egrian ship before it can make landfall on the island, but one from another country might stand a chance.”
“I wonder if we’d be better off heading south or north,” Tregle muses.
Clift holds up a hand. “Discuss it later. I hope to avoid any questions, but if they somehow link you to me, it’ll be better for all of us if I don’t have answers to give when he sets his Shakers to crushing my bone between stone or Torchers from dangling me over a fire pit.”
This sobers all of us.
“We can look after ourselves, Master Clift,” Aleta reminds him after a beat.
“Humor him,” I say. We’ve made the plan to include Meddie. It seems foolish to revoke those plans now, and it can’t hurt to have someone who can help us navigate the Underground in other areas. I don’t know that the token Da gave me will truly be much help, nor would we know where to start looking.
“A ship.” Aleta sighs at the reminder. “I would be the heir to an island kingdom when I can scarcely stand aboard without getting sick.”
Clift pulls Meddie aside for some last instructions and then rejoins the group, somberly shaking Tregle’s hand. He bows to me and Aleta, sending a chill skittering down my back. Meddie, he crushes in a hug so tightly that her feet leave the ground for a moment.
Before I can stop myself, my hand darts out and snatches the edge of Clift’s sleeve. “I need a favor,” I say. “I need you to check in on Rick.”
His brow furrows. “Risky move, that. Could be I’ll bring unwanted attention down on him.”
“We might have already done that,” I say.
“Wha—”
“He’s the prince,” I blurt out to Aleta’s shocked exhalation of “Bree.” Heedlessly, I plunge on. “Rick is really Prince Caden and he got us out and his position with his da—the king may not be safe anymore.”
I’ve shocked Clift into speechlessness.
My throat coils around my words, and they come out tight. “So you have to check on him. Just make sure he’s all right. Please. You have to. You have to. You—”
His hand lands on my shoulder and cuts off my words. I break off, breathing uneasily. I wish that I’d dragged Caden along with us and not let whatever I felt about his father confuse my feelings for him. I hate this worry. I hate not knowing that he’s safe.
I hate thinking that maybe I’ve lost him, too.
Clift squeezes my shoulder. “All right, lass. I’ll check on Rick.” He shakes his head in wonder. “On the prince. If he’s in trouble, I’ll come up with something.”
“Thank you,” I say around the lump in my throat.
I can’t look at anyone else. I don’t want them to see how I teeter on the edge of breaking.
“Oh, Lady Breena. I haven’t done my job properly if you don’t feel broken.”
Makers, I am losing my mind. Not now. I shrug Kat’s phantom hand off and press back the tears that hover in my eyes.
Clift repeats his goodbyes like he’s wiping the slate clean of the last few moments. When we can’t delay the inevitable any longer, he heads back for the capital and we’re left to look at each other.
“Shall we make camp here?” Aleta asks. For once, her self-assuredness is missing and the words come out uncertain.
Meddie stares at her, hefting a pack onto her back and starting forward. “I see your lips moving, but the words coming out don’t make sense.”
Aleta bristles. She may not have been certain of the direction we should take, but that will never mean she appreciates anyone questioning her judgment. “Our entire party could use some rest, Mistress Medalyn. There’s no one for miles.”
“Tell me, Your Highness, have you ever heard of highwaymen?”
Alet
a, striding angrily in Meddie’s wake, pulls up short, visibly caught off-guard.
“No?” Meddie feigns surprise and purses her lips. “How about bandits?”
Aleta stays silent, though her expression shifts to a disgruntled one.
“Thought so.” Meddie turns, crosses her arms, and smirks, satisfied. “Look, if you want to get robbed blind, that’s your business. But if you want to keep whatever valuables you’ve got on you, we walk.”
I remember very well what my last journey through the king’s Leeched Desert was like. My throat felt unbearably dry. The sun beat down on every inch of my skin. The sooner we make it to where the natural terrain reasserts itself, the better.
Aleta’s face contorts in a snarl at Meddie’s back as she and Tregle take the lead, and I sigh.
It’s going to be a long journey.
A page from Tutor Larsden’s experiment log, leather-bound and well-worn:
Subject: His Highness, Prince Caden of House Capin
Hypothesis: Subject believed to know whereabouts of Duke Ardin and Lady Breena of Secan, as well as Princess Aleta of Nereidium, individuals who fall under the purview of the Elemental Adept conscription are crucial to the war effort are wanted for questioning by His Majesty, King Langdon
Proposed action: Implement experiment to determine if subject still claims a dearth of knowledge while under duress
“Son.”
I blink into the expanse. My cell blurs behind the slurry of sweat and tears that drips into my eyes, blending gray walls with dark bars.
My father—the version of my father that I wish for, that I dream of—isn’t here. I’m alone.
I twist, wincing at the pain in my side. “Guard.” My voice emerges as the faint scratch of fingernails on pockmarked stone. I try again. “Guard! Water.” My head turns to the side and I cough at the effort expended.
The door swings open and I shift my gaze back toward it. “No,” I moan when Larsden’s form comes into focus. “Not you.”
He holds his latest instrument of torture in hand and bends to the ground. Breath shuddering already, I stare ahead as he rolls up my pant leg to expose my calf.
“Ah, Highness,” he says. “It’s time for another chat.”
Makers. Trying not to scream as Larsden descends upon me, I pray that darkness closes in on me again soon.
I drift in and out of consciousness. In and out of memories. To a time when I sat at my father’s knee and he indulged me with simple, well-made toys. When he smiled proudly as I fumbled his crown onto my own brow and, too big, it slipped over my eye.
I relive my first court hearing with my father. The first time I slipped a prisoner from his dungeons. I watch my father’s eyes shift. His gaze goes from proud to wary. From formidable to unhinged.
I go from his ally to his enemy.
Once, I’d been a trusted student in Father’s war chamber, listening to him confer with the tutors—his advisors. My own thoughts were once welcomed, but as time passed, I’d felt stifled in that room. Sitting in my seat felt like dangling my feet over the edge of a cliff.
“We’ll storm them,” my father said furiously. He jabbed at the map on the table for emphasis.
“I don’t know that ‘storming’ them is wise,” the advisor next to me mumbled in a voice below a whisper. “Or even feasible considering we haven’t managed to reach Nereid shores in years.”
Either ignoring her or not hearing her, Father moved a small ship across the paper waters. “If we deviate from the old trade route that we’ve been using all of this time, perhaps we’ll meet with success. They won’t see us coming that way.”
I frowned. I couldn’t have been the only one there who’d read A History of Egrian Trade. “They may not see us coming, but it would never work, Father.”
He skewered me with a glance, but I did not shrink back.
“Well, it wouldn’t,” I insisted, though no one argued with me. “The trade routes were established for a reason. The air and sea currents along those routes cooperate more often, to see ships’ passengers safely to land. Outside of those routes? The rocks take some ships. Storms take the others. And the rest? History doesn’t even know what happened to them.”
“I will go.” Lady Katerine, resplendent in her black robe with a ruby at her throat, drew herself up. “I can sway the wind in our favor.”
“As powerful as you are, Lady Katerine, you are but one woman.” I shook my head. “It may be within your abilities to get a single ship to shore, but an entire fleet?” For that’s what we’d need to take Nereidium. “Could you honestly split your attentions between a hundred ships at once to battle the tides?”
She rolled her eyes, petulant, but seeing sense. “I suppose you’re right,” she said grudgingly.
“It’s been years, though, since the routes were established,” Father said. He squinted at the map as I tried not to close my eyes in frustration. Putting off his war attempts would be much easier if my father was unintelligent. But it was not a stupid man who’d secured dominion over Clavins and Aridan years ago.
He turned to Tutor Junsho, the closest thing the court had to an environmental advisor. “Might the winds have shifted? Or the currents have changed?”
Junsho hesitated, then admitted, stammering, that it was possible.
“Then we shall try again,” Father said. His lips curled, triumphant, and he and Katerine shared a cunning smile of preemptive victory. “And we will keep trying until we succeed.”
I’d held my tongue for the rest of that council meeting, then, using a passageway, slipped from the castle and went into the city alone for the first time, furious with everyone. With my father, for making those decisions. With his advisors, for only telling him how to accomplish his goals, never advising against pursuing them or voicing a concern over the loss of human life.
I was furious with Lady Katerine for being the power behind his threats. Furious with our people for not rising up against my father, regardless of where that meant my fate would lie.
And most of all, I was furious with myself for having anything to do with it at all.
Before that night, I’d rarely gone into the city but for state occasions and processionals. My people and I saw each other only through the gauzy purple curtain of the royal sedan that I was hoisted inside. They were a thin, dirty people who stared at me with empty, bland eyes.
They didn’t know me. They stared at the processional, unseeing. I could pass them on the streets, and in the proper clothes, they’d be none the wiser that a prince walked among them.
But after that night? That seed of a thought—that here I could be unknown—spurred me into the city more than once, driven by a burning need to learn about the people I was pledged to. My people didn’t know me—but I wanted to know them. I donned civilian clothing and slipped through passageways and through the castle gates themselves when I could.
The people were different than how I’d seen them during ceremonial marches throughout the city. With vacant expressions hovering on the edge of resentment, they’d looked like vengeful corpses, but by pretending I was one of them, I found that they were gloriously, wondrously alive.
And, when I was in the city, so was I.
I ate good food and bad food. I danced a quick, ragged step that I had to fumble my way through the first few times. I played dice and cards, and I drank until my belly was full and my vision twirled nicely.
And I fought my first fight where fists were flung before swords were drawn.
The Soused Turkey was a new pub for me. I had been making my way steadily through all of the venues in the city. It was a tiny little place, but the prices were good and if the people spilling outside were anything to judge it by, it was quite popular—though it wasn’t hard to make a place as small as it was look crowded.
I squeezed my way through the bodies that pressed around the bar and thumped my hand on the counter to catch the barkeep’s attention.
By the ether. I blinked when I spotted
the man. How had I missed him? I should have noticed him the moment I walked in. The barkeep barely fit behind the bar. He barely fit under the roof.
Perhaps that was a bit of an embellishment. But he was…quite large. I’m not a short man. I wouldn’t say that I’m a tall man either, but I am not used to having to crane my neck to look up at someone.
This man required craning.
It wasn’t just that he was tall. It was that he was so…much. Two of me would have fit in the space between his shoulders. Even his low tones as he spoke to customers across the bar from me carried. His timbre was a soft boom.
“What can I do you for?” he asked. Deftly, he swiped at a spill on his bar. “We’ve got a special on Starter Cider.”
I shook my head, not meaning a refusal. I just wasn’t certain what Starter Cider was exactly.
“Starter’s what they call Torchers in some traveling circles,” he explained. “It’s a hell of a drink. Damn near lights a fire in your gut.”
I was astonished. “And people enjoy this?”
He cocked a grin, and like the rest of him, it was a lot. A lot of gum, a lot of lip, a lot of teeth bared. “They must. They pay out the ass for it,” he said conspiratorially.
Well. I had come to learn how the people live, after all. “I suppose I’ll try it,” I said.
We exchanged coin (a silver; he hadn’t been lying about the exorbitant charge) for drink. Peering into my cup, I saw a dark, amber-colored liquid. It didn’t appear dangerous.
I peered up at him, suspecting I’d been had. Despite the crowd vying for his attention, he waited for me to try it.
“Meddie!” He snagged the attention of a girl hurrying past. “Help me with the bar, will you?”
The short-haired teen shot him a disgruntled look, but ducked under the counter to snatch outstretched coins and shove drinks into hands.
He looked back at me. “The girl helps out here on busy nights. Her ma’s a nice lady, but that lout she married…” He shook his head. “Look at me, goin’ on about that. Not what you came here for.” He nodded at the cider. “Go on, then. Try it.”
Riot of Storm and Smoke Page 5