by Sharon Green
The girls followed after me down the stairs, trying not to step on my skirts in their hurry, even more upset that I was still taking my time. At the bottom of the stairs the redhead, who was carrying my cape, squeezed past me and got to the door to the outer room first, then held it open. I knew she was telling the men I'd finally gotten there, and when I reached the doorway I found two sets of eyes on me.
Grigon stood in the same conservative dark trousers and white shirt he had worn the day before, stoop-shouldered and narrow-faced, his faint air of disapproval covered by the small bow he performed. As far as being the center of attention, though, he could have been jumping up and down and waving his arms and he still wouldn't have made it.
The second man dominated the room completely, despite the fact that he was doing nothing but standing there. He was taller and broader than Grigon, brown-haired and brown-eyed, square-faced and almost handsome in his ugliness. His pants and knee-length boots were black, but his shirt was a bright, blazing red, telling everyone who looked at him that he was a mercenary. The long neck-scarf he wore was a light blue, showing that he was employed by Prince Havro, whose main color was light blue.
My information told me his neck scarf was black when he was unemployed, and also that the length of it proclaimed him captain of his group. His left hand rested on the hilt of a plain, workmanlike sword, which was sheathed in a well-worn brown leather scabbard belted around his waist; his eyes, piercingly direct and without any trace of backwardness, rested only on me.
Bellna fluttered in my mind at the impact of those eyes, impressed in spite of herself, sharing the sense of excitement that crackled among the four girls behind me like static electricity. Fallan was the sort of man whose attention most females tried to attract; it seemed only fair to let him know where he stood with me.
"I hope, Lieutenant, that you and your men are prepared to depart," I told his stare as I moved briskly into the center of the room. "The journey before us is lengthy, and there is little sense in standing about here."
"In standing about here," he echoed in a deep voice, watching without expression as I approached him. "You are concerned as to whether or not we are prepared to depart?"
"My Princess, allow me to present the leader of your escort," Grigon hastily interposed as Fallan began to draw himself up to the explosion point. "This is Captain Fallan, leader of twenty, engaged by your father the prince to protect you from his enemies at all costs. Where your safety is concerned, the captain has been authorized to speak with your father's voice. I feel quite sure, Captain, that my Princess will afford you full cooperation."
"I will be pleased to give the - captain, did you say, Grigon? - the captain's planned itinerary my personal attention," I answered as I adjusted the sleeves and skirt of my dress, not looking directly at either of the men. "The itinerary will undoubtedly be acceptable with only the most minor corrections."
Grigon looked as if he wanted to close his eyes in pain, and the four girls behind me gasped in shock. Fallan, surprisingly, showed amusement rather than anger.
"My … itinerary has already received the approval of your father, Princess," he said with the smallest bow it's possible for the human body to perform. "It is therefore unnecessary for you to concern yourself with the matter, save in compliance. As sufficient time has already been wasted in awaiting your appearance, you may now take yourself to the coach which stands without. My men and I seek to complete our commission before we have attained too great an age to attempt others after it."
"How dare you!" I gasped, using only a small part of Bellna's shocked indignation at the way he'd spoken to me. "Perhaps it has escaped your notice that you address someone other than a peasant, Captain! I assure you my father will hear of your impertinence!"
"Your father has already heard of my impertinence," Fallan said with a grin, moving a step closer to me. "It is undoubtedly the reason I was given this commission. You may inform His Highness that all proceeds apace, Lord Grigon."
"It will be my pleasure to do so, Captain," Grigon agreed with the ghost of a smile on his narrow face. "Now, if I may have a moment alone with the princess before your departure - "
"You may not," Fallan said, a finality in his voice as his big hand wrapped around my arm. "The Princess has expended more moments than her share; yours must unfortunately replace one of them. This moment is the one we depart."
Grigon's mouth opened in protest, his faint amusement gone, but he wasn't given a chance to get any words out. Fallan was already hustling me toward the door, his pace and effort easy enough to pretend to be assistance, his grip solid enough to really give me no choice. Bellna was having a screaming fit in my head, furious over the way Fallan was treating me, but I glanced back at Grigon feeling disturbed. My fellow agent had clearly wanted to tell me something, and was just as clearly not going to get the chance.
I sputtered indignantly at Fallan just to stay in character, but inwardly I cursed at him in a way that probably would have shocked him if I'd done it aloud. Missing inside information was hazardous to the health in my line of work, and I was missing it because of Fallan.
Apparently the information Grigon had wasn't important enough to cause him to make a fuss over Fallan's decision. I heard him trailing along behind with the four girls as I was taken through the door into the early dawn. At the foot of the porch steps was a large, ornate carriage, light blue trimmed with gold, Prince Havro's sigil on the door facing us, six brown vair harnessed to the front of it.
Vair are tall, doe-eyed draft animals, four-legged and soft-coated, maned and tailed and usually even-tempered. Fallan's twenty were also mounted on vair, though not at the time we left the lodge. At the moment they were standing around looking bored, but when they saw us they immediately perked up.
"Your four wenches must accompany you in the coach," Fallan told me as I hastily lifted my skirts to keep from tripping down the steps. "I lack sufficient vair to mount them among my men, and would not wish the distraction even had I the vair. The wenches will therefore ride with you."
"They are not mine, therefore may they be left behind!" I snapped, annoyed at the way he was treating me, but even more frustrated by his suggestion. When Clero's men caught up with that coach, I wanted to be the only one in it. If attackers become confused about who the target is, they tend to wipe out everyone in sight just to be on the safe side.
"The wenches will not be left behind," Fallan answered, more interested in reaching for the handle of the coach door than in arguing with me. "It is necessary that they accompany you, and they shall do so. Allow me to assist you into the coach."
His hand on my arm forced me up the narrow steps and into the coach, letting me go only when I made the obvious choice between standing up all bent over and sitting down on the right-hand seat. The seething Bellna was doing bubbled through my mind and body, involving me more than a little. Fallan was making an occasional, casual attempt to treat me with the respect a princess was supposed to be given, but only if the attempt didn't put him out any.
I pulled angrily at my skirt to straighten it under me, fighting off the urge to tell Fallan exactly what I thought of him - in terms guaranteed to make him come after me. A boot in the face would teach him to watch his mouth when he spoke to me, not to mention how personally pleasant I would find -
I shook my head hard, making sure that line of thought was cut off cold. Bellna's frothing was beginning to affect my annoyance, and I couldn't let that happen. I needed Fallen to help me spring Clero's trap, and even if I didn't, beating up on him would be somewhat out of character. I could sit here and scowl at the back of his head, but that was all I had better do.
At Fallan's gesture the four girls hurried to the coach, then climbed inside wearing harried expressions. They weren't about to disobey Fallan and not enter the coach, but my very obvious displeasure was making them uneasy. The first three to scramble inside made sure to take the opposite seat, as far from me as possible, but that left the fourth
one, the redhead, out in the cold - or, at least, out of a seat. There just wasn't any more room on the other side, and I was sitting in the middle of my seat.
Another man had come up to join Fallan at the coach door, this one wearing a light blue neck scarf of lieutenant's length, and when the redhead hesitated, half in and half out of the coach, he decided to take advantage of the situation.
"Should there be no room for this one, Captain, I will gladly take her with me," he said with a grin, then slid his hand up under her cheap print skirt. "Her presence will pass the time quite pleasantly."
The girl gasped and reddened when the mercenary's hand reached its target, but she still had nowhere to go. Her left arm clutched my cape to her body as both mercenaries laughed, and then her widened eyes closed in misery. She couldn't climb in and she couldn't climb out, and Bellna was smugly pleased to see her like that. What happened to peasants was of no concern to a princess, the two men were enjoying the girl's discomfort, and even the other three peasant girls were snickering to themselves. No one felt the least amount of pity for the victim caught in the middle, but I've never been bright about things like that. I reached out and took the girl's right arm, hauled her past me to the seat to my right, then turned my head toward Fallan.
"I had thought grown men would be more difficult to divert from their duty," I observed in Bellna's sleekest, nastiest tone. "Apparently my father's enemies will need do no more than dangle some pleasant wench before you, and you will be theirs. I now see the necessity for the presence of these peasants: to allow you to retain memory of your commission."
The second man was as pretty-handsome as Fallan was ugly, and he hadn't liked the way I'd taken his toy away. My speech turned his frown into a scowl, but before he could vocalize his displeasure, Fallan's big hand was on his shoulder.
"It is long past time to depart, Ralnor," Fallan said in a strangely even tone, his eyes unmoving from my face. "Have the men mount up." He waited for Ralnor to move away with a curt nod, then closed the coach door with a slam. "As for you, Missy," he continued in a lower tone, looking up at me through the window, "Princess or no, injured sensibilities or no, you had best learn to curb your tongue. Should I find it necessary to remonstrate with you for impertinence as your father has given me leave to do, you will find the occasion less than pleasant."
With that he turned and walked behind the coach, undoubtedly to get his vair, leaving me to cope with the painful resonance of Bellna's shock. My uninvited guest was finding it impossible to believe that her father would have given Fallan permission to keep her in line, and was scandalized at the mere suggestion that he had. For my own part I was fairly certain Fallan was exaggerating if not lying outright, a possibility supported by the uncertain look on Grigon's face. The Absari agent was still standing on the lodge porch, watching the goings-on but not joining them; when he saw me looking at him his expression turned determined and he started down the steps, but he was too late. Fallan shouted an order, another voice echoed it, and the coach lurched briskly away from the lodge.
"I cannot fathom the reason you have placed yourself in jeopardy for me," a faint voice said from my right. "You are a Princess and I am no one."
I turned my head to see the red-haired girl, backed as far away from me on the seat as she could get, still clutching my cape, vast confusion in her big blue eyes. At the same time I became aware of the fact that the other three girls were also staring at me, all of them practically shouting that I'd stepped out of character. They weren't far wrong, but I didn't want them to go on believing it.
"I, placed in jeopardy?" I asked with brows high, pulling my skirt away from the redhead as though she might contaminate it. "You speak foolishly, girl, for you know not what you say. Think you that lout toyed with you? As you say, you are less than nothing and I am a princess. To put hands upon the servant of a princess is to offer insult to the princess herself, and that I shall not allow. That fool of a captain is now aware of it."
"And yet he promised you punishment," the girl whispered, still hugging my cape. "You cannot know what punishment is at the hands of one such as he."
"Nor shall I know." I smirked, waving the point away with one hand. "He attempts to frighten me with child's tales which I shall not, of course, believe. Have no fear, girl. You stand beneath my protection."
I turned my attention to the forest we rode through, pretending I didn't see the looks exchanged among the three girls opposite me. They were now probably considering me no more than a pompous brat, which was just the way I wanted it. When the attack came their first thought would be to put as much distance between me and them as possible - which just might keep them alive.
* * *
It didn't take long before our party reached a wide road through the woods, and shortly thereafter the real boredom began. Although the day was beginning to be pretty, there's just so much you can get out of forests and fields and more forests. My mercenary escort rode all around the coach, their neck scarves streaming out behind them, their eyes constantly in motion in all directions. The four girls in the coach untied their shawls from around their waists and retied them around their shoulders against the early morning chill, then began discussing in low tones the various mercenaries they could see from the coach, possibly to take their minds off how cold they still were.
In all the layers of clothes I'd been stuffed into, cold was the least of my worries; once the sun came up for real, I'd be sweating like a metal bucket filled with ice. I moved in discomfort, silently cursing the way my layered underwear made it feel as if I were sitting on something lumpy. Only chains could have tied me tighter than these clothes, and I didn't like the feeling.
I stared out of the window on my left morosely, trying to block out the giggling of the peasant girls, and suddenly a beautiful red bird flashed out of the trees, pacing us with lazy wingbeats for a moment before turning away back to the forest. I watched the bird until it disappeared, delighting in its beauty and freedom, not realizing that I was being watched just as closely until I noticed Fallan. The mercenary captain rode his vair not five feet from the coach, and when he saw my eyes on him he urged his mount closer.
"I had not known you had a smile of such beauty, Princess," he said, looking at me in a way that made Bellna shiver in my mind. "A pity the smile is so often displaced by a pout."
He grinned then and sent his vair on ahead and out of sight, leaving behind a deep silence in the coach. All four of the girls were staring at me wide-eyed, their faces reflecting the thrilled excitement Bellna was sending racing through my bloodstream. Fallan had actually shown a faint interest in me, and Bellna was almost ready to consider it a promise of undying love. All of the girls, Bellna included, were beginning to have a crush on the big mercenary, and I felt like groaning.
I hadn't had a crush on a man since I'd seen Starman Courageous without his chest pads and girdle and wasn't about to be caught up in the nonsense. As far as I was concerned Fallan was nothing more than a pain in the rump, and on that point I would make the decision stick. I turned back to stare out the window again, ignoring an urge to lean out and look ahead that wasn't mine, and worked at sticking to my resolve.
The motion of the coach put me to sleep for a while, but I was awake again when we reached the inn. We'd only been on the road for a few hours, and at first I didn't understand why we were stopping. It took a minute before I realized that Tildorani ate four meals a day rather than three, and it was time for the second meal. I wasn't particularly hungry, but I was too bored not to be looking forward to the stop.
The inn was a large, three-story yellow and white house with a high wall and gate, a stable not far from the house, and a wide entrance court. Stable boys hurried over to help with the mercenaries' mounts, and Fallan himself came to hand me out of the coach. His touch on my arm was deferential rather than demanding, and combined with the same look he had given me earlier it was enough to turn Bellna shy with fluster. I, however, hadn't forgotten how pushy he'
d been at the lodge; when I climbed out of the coach I made sure to come down right on his foot. The instep is a high pain target, which took care of the half-amused, half-interested look he'd been wearing.
"Oh, how clumsy of me!" I exclaimed immediately, as he closed his eyes and flinched. "I do hope you will forgive me, Captain."
"Certainly, Princess," he got out through his teeth, then looked at me with a lot less friendliness. "Had the misstep not been an accident, it would certainly have been punished. As it was an accident, it will certainly be forgiven."
"How fortunate, then, that it was an accident," I said with a pleasant smile, ignoring the fact that he had told me he suspected it wasn't. "Shall we enter the inn now?"
"As soon as I am able to walk again," he muttered, turning back to the coach to gesture the four girls out. They came out one at a time, making sure to touch the ground nowhere near Fallan's feet, and the way they loosened their shawls reminded me how uncomfortable I was. It wasn't Fallan's fault that I'd been closed into layer after layer of straitjacket, but having gotten some of my own back from him even raised my spirits about that.
"This way, Princess," Fallan directed, and led off all alone toward the inn. I followed after him, the girls followed after me, and the rest of Fallan's men completed the parade.
The only one to hurry was Fallan's lieutenant, Ralnor, who hustled a little to catch up to Fallan before the mercenary captain reached the inn. The two of them paused in the doorway, blocking the parade, and I realized they were checking out the interior before letting me walk in. It seemed like a sensible idea, even though Clero's men shouldn't have had the time to get there yet. But then, Fallan and his men didn't know about the timetable we'd established, and I wasn't about to tell them.
The appearance of the inn turned out to be acceptable. Fallan and Ralnor moved farther inside and then stepped apart, making an aisle for me to walk through. I used the aisle casually, showing nothing of the upset the Bellna presence felt over what I'd done to Fallan. It was almost like looking out at the world through two sets of eyes, one mine and the other -well, mine also but strangely different. One way Fallan looked big and roughly attractive and annoyingly in the way, the other he was an overpoweringly attractive man of violence and sex appeal. It wasn't too difficult keeping the two views separated, but it still felt strange.