Ally of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  Fiona unclenched her jaw, which was painfully rigid. “And what about the rest? Am I supposed to be grateful that a prince deigned to give me his attention? How far were you going to take this, Sebastian? Did you want me to fall into your bed, or were you going to be satisfied with a few stolen kisses?”

  Sebastian closed his eyes briefly and visibly controlled himself. “Fiona,” he said, looking at her, “I never lied to you about that. You’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met and it thrills me to be near you. I was serious when I told you I wanted the chance to see if that feeling could grow into something more. As far as I’m concerned, we’re just a man and a woman learning to fall in love. My being a prince has nothing to do with that.”

  Fiona’s hands trembled, and she clamped down on Mittens’ reins more tightly, as if she might bleed off her anger and confusion into the leather. “Maybe to you it doesn’t matter,” she said tightly. “It’s not exactly fair to me.”

  “If I don’t care, why should you?”

  His intent expression, his utter surety that he was right, struck her an almost palpable blow. “I’m not part of your world, your Highness,” she said. “I’m a divorced tradeswoman who’s never been closer to high society than watching the Queen open the Midsummer festivities at the Zedechen Bethel, and that was from so great a distance she was the size of an ant. I wouldn’t have the first idea how to act at a palace reception, I don’t know how to dance, and I’d probably insult any Count or Baron I was introduced to because I have no idea how to behave to nobility. You and I have no future. We never have. The only difference between us is you seem not to believe this.”

  Sebastian’s hands closed tightly on his reins. “You can be anyone you want to be, Fiona. It’s part of what I love about you. Are you telling me you’d let such petty concerns as your birth and upbringing stand between what we might have together?”

  “Petty?”

  He winced. “That was the wrong word.”

  “It certainly was.” Fiona flicked the reins, and Mittens stepped out after Holt, who’d gone just far enough ahead to be out of earshot and stood waiting for them to finish. “We need to keep moving. I don’t want to be caught by the Veriboldans.”

  “Fiona—”

  “I don’t think there’s any point in arguing more. Let’s just ride.”

  She prodded Mittens gently into a faster gait, the fastest she could manage without falling off. Sebastian didn’t come up even with her. At least he had the decency to obey her wishes. Her heart was too angry for tears. She should have followed her instincts and spurned him. Her judgment when it came to men was truly abysmal.

  They rode on eastward into dawn, the sun pinking the horizon, then flooding the hills with golden light. The skies had cleared, and it was going to be a pleasant day, warmer and drier than the day before. Fiona remembered being soaked to the bone and shivered. They were heading back to the uplands and a Tremontanan winter. Too bad they were wanted fugitives, because staying in Veribold’s warm climate had some appeal.

  Holt fell back to the rear of their procession around noon, watching behind them for pursuers, but the road remained clear of all but a few travelers, heading west. They passed Fiona and Sebastian without so much as a nod of acknowledgement. Fiona superstitiously kept her eyes on Mittens’ ears, as if anyone might read her guilt on her face. What did Hien think of her now? The truth, probably, that she’d been at the Irantzen Festival solely for the purpose of stealing from the Jaixante. If the guard had told Hien about the mystery tokens, she no doubt believed Fiona had succeeded.

  Put in such bald terms, it made her look like a criminal. Which she was—and for the sake of a murderer and…was it rape if Douglas North was capable of gaining consent by making women believe they wanted what he did? Of course it was, if a roundabout sort of rape. It was still evil.

  As the hours lengthened toward evening, she became more incensed with herself. She’d deceived an honorable woman, and for what? She glanced ahead to where Sebastian rode, hunched in on himself as if the cool breeze were an arctic wind, and her heart softened. How much worse it must be for him, tricked by his mother the Queen into helping his brother escape justice. Fiona might be angry with him, but she couldn’t help feeling sorry on his behalf. He lied to you, a tiny voice inside her head told her, but she ignored it. She’d seen how he looked when the blackmail was revealed, and he’d been devastated.

  Hooves pounding the hard road heralded Holt’s return. “There is movement on the road to the west at the limits of my vision,” he said. “Many travelers moving rapidly.”

  “You think they’re pursuing us?” Sebastian said.

  “I think we cannot take the chance that they are not.” Holt looked at Fiona. “Can you ride faster?”

  “Maybe a little,” Fiona said, gripping Mittens’ reins more tightly.

  “Even a little helps,” Sebastian said. He urged his horse onward, and the other two followed.

  Fiona started glancing over her shoulder every half hour or so, straining to see signs of pursuit. Holt’s eyes must be better than hers. All she could see was Holt, still riding at the rear, backlit by the setting sun. Sebastian rode even more hunched over than before. They came to a town straddling the road and passed through it; nobody suggested stopping for the night. Exhaustion settled over Fiona like an iron blanket, her legs and bottom were sore, and she couldn’t remember a time when Mittens’ ears weren’t her whole world. “I can’t go on much longer,” she called out. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to fall off.”

  “We cannot ride through the night,” Holt said. “But we also cannot stay near the road.”

  “We’ll have to cut across country,” Sebastian said. “There’s another border crossing south of here, nearer where the Snow River crosses the Eskandelic border. It will add half a day’s travel to our journey, but if it keeps us from being captured…anyway, we’ll be sleeping rough for a couple of nights.” He carefully didn’t look at Fiona.

  “I don’t mind,” Fiona said. “But let’s hurry. We need to get away from the road before they’re close enough to see where we’ve gone.”

  Sebastian immediately turned off the road into the short, rough grass of the verge. Fiona and Holt followed. They had left the hills behind just after noon and had traveled steadily upward since then, into the desert plains so unlike the green richness of the Kepa Valley. The uneven terrain jolted Fiona back and forth in the saddle, making it even more difficult for her to hold on. On the other hand, it kept her awake, so there was something good to come of it. She prayed none of the horses would fall lame, and prayed even more fervently that whoever was following them wouldn’t see they’d left the road.

  The sun set, and the moon rose like heaven’s half-lidded eye watching over them. Fiona’s body ached, and despite the rough terrain she found herself nodding off and jerking back awake, over and over again. She didn’t realize at first that Sebastian had stopped, and rode a few paces past him before he jogged ahead of her horse and grabbed hold of her reins. “We’re stopping here,” he said quietly, as if afraid someone might overhear, though there was no one but the three of them for miles around.

  Fiona nodded, blinked tiredness from her eyes, and slid off Mittens awkwardly. When her feet touched ground, her legs wouldn’t support her, and she landed in a graceless heap beside Mittens’ feet. Sebastian cursed and dropped to the ground beside her. “You’re exhausted,” he said, putting his arms around her and helping her stand. “You should have said something.”

  She clung to him for support, not caring what message that might send. “I didn’t realize,” she said, her voice coming out as a croak. She cleared her throat and went on, “We probably shouldn’t light a fire.”

  “No, that would be as good as a beacon to draw attention to us,” Holt said. He offered Fiona her heavy cloak, which he’d removed from her saddlebag. “This is the only bedding I can offer you.”

  “It’s fine. Thanks.” Fiona let go of Sebastian, who removed
his arms from around her a moment later. She tried not to think about how comforting it had been to be held by him. Wrapping her cloak around her, she dug through her other saddlebag for something to rub Mittens down with and came up with her ruined temple clothes.

  A hand reached over her shoulder. “Let me do that,” Sebastian said. “You need to sit before you fall over.”

  She thought about pressing the issue and realized he was weaving in her vision. A moment’s reflection told her she was the one moving, swaying with weariness. “All right,” she said, and retreated a few paces to sit where Holt had unloaded his horse’s burden and was rubbing him with a spare shirt.

  “There’s a river—more of a stream, I suppose—somewhere around here,” Sebastian told Holt. “We’ll come across it if we keep going southeast. Until then, we’ll have to go thirsty, unless you have waterskins tucked away somewhere?”

  “I do, but the water should go to the horses,” Holt said. He finished his task and rooted around in the food sack, coming up with a handful of crooked carrots, and handed some to Fiona. “Eat, then try to sleep.”

  Fiona took his offering and began gnawing on a carrot. It was dry and hard, but better than nothing. She watched Sebastian care for Mittens, then for his own horse, before settling on the ground some distance from her. She was grateful that he didn’t seem inclined to renew his attempts to reason with her. She still didn’t know how she felt.

  She lay back with her head pillowed on the hood of her cloak. The night air was cold, and she pulled her cloak more tightly around herself and stared up at the stars, brilliantly white against the black sky. Roderick had claimed to be able to find his direction by the stars, but she’d never believed him. Now she wished she’d paid more attention to all his talk of constellations, because it would give her something to think about now that wasn’t dwelling on Sebastian and his lies of omission.

  She was just drifting off to sleep despite her aches when she heard Holt say, “This is an impossible situation.”

  “I know,” Sebastian said, his voice pitched low, and Fiona realized he thought she was asleep. “Mother had to know what information Gizane had on Doug. She knows what he’s done. Sweet heaven, Holt, what have we lent ourselves to?”

  “We could hardly have done otherwise,” Holt said. “There are too many innocents who would suffer if this were to be made public knowledge. Think of Princess Emily.”

  “I am. And my Great-Uncle Sebastian. Damn it, Holt, I still feel used.”

  “The Queen is intelligent enough to know you would not have agreed to this had you known the truth.”

  “And we dragged Fiona into this. I can’t forgive myself for that.”

  There was a pause. Holt said, “Is that all you cannot forgive?”

  Sebastian laughed once, a low, bitter hah. “I couldn’t have screwed that up worse if that had been my plan to begin with.”

  “You think she will not forgive you?”

  “I don’t think it matters. She’s convinced we could never have a future together. I don’t know what to say, Holt. I finally…” He let out a long, pained sigh. “Willow North was a common thief before becoming Queen. It’s not like there’s no precedent.”

  “I do not believe anyone could call Queen Willow a common anything. But I understand your point.”

  There was a pause. “I think I’m in love with her, Holt. How big a fool does that make me?”

  “She is worthy of being loved. I do not believe that makes you a fool, to recognize that.”

  Fiona realized she was holding her breath and let it out in a long, thin stream that steamed in the cold night air.

  “But I think pursuing her aggressively, trying to change her mind, would be a mistake,” Holt went on. “A mistake, and an insult to her free will.”

  “I know,” Sebastian said. “I just don’t want to give up entirely.”

  “Give it time, and perhaps things will look different.”

  “They could hardly be worse.” Sebastian sighed. “It’s another day and a half to the border. Anything could happen.”

  Holt grunted in reply, and both men fell silent. The stars above were blurry, and Fiona blinked away the beginnings of tears. It didn’t matter what Sebastian felt. What they both felt, she had to admit to herself. They were too different to make a life together. How would Sebastian feel about giving up his world of wealth and privilege to be a commoner like her? He wouldn’t be so cavalier about their different worlds then. She would be a fool to let her heart override her head. She would travel with him long enough to get her four thousand guilders, and then she never had to see him again.

  20

  Filthy slush filled Aurilien’s gutters, making the golden city dingy and tarnished. Winter in Aurilien was something Fiona hadn’t missed, though her years with Roderick in Kingsport had never acclimated her to the wild storms that blew in off the ocean between Wintersmeet and the spring equinox. Still, the relief of finally having reached their destination made Aurilien beautiful in her eyes.

  The familiar buildings of Lower Town, their dark beams crisscrossing white and pale blue plaster, gave way to the stone of the great mansions casting smaller buildings into shadow. Men and women bundled up against the chill in the air didn’t even look up at them as they rode past. So familiar, and so heart-wrenchingly forbidding. This hadn’t been her home in more than a decade.

  Nobody paid much attention to them, just another party of anonymous travelers visiting the great city. Beside her, Sebastian rode with his hood up. She wasn’t sure if he was cold, or if he just wanted to avoid being recognized. Probably here in the capital, the latter was more likely. She certainly hadn’t recognized him. How different things would have been if she had.

  She caught the eye of a beautiful young woman with shining black hair who gaped at her from a street corner. The girl was waif-thin and looked hungry. On an impulse, Fiona nudged Mittens to the side and handed her a coin. “Get something to eat,” she said. The girl clutched the coin, her mouth hanging slack with astonishment, but said nothing.

  “You don’t know that girl was a beggar,” Sebastian said when she returned to his side.

  “She looked starving. I couldn’t not help.” But she half-turned in the saddle. The girl was gone. “And she didn’t turn it down.”

  “Even so, suppose she was just an ordinary person? You might have embarrassed both of you.”

  “I know. It just…felt right.”

  It was the longest conversation they’d had all day. They hadn’t spoken much on the week-long journey back to Aurilien. Sebastian had treated her with quiet if distant courtesy, nothing of the easy familiarity she’d grown accustomed to in his manner, and Holt was his usual taciturn self. They had crossed the border with no incident—getting out of Veribold was far easier than entering it—and no one had challenged them on the Tremontanan side. Fiona had recalled their first crossing and it made her heart ache. It had been the first time Sebastian had looked at her not as a curiosity or an eccentric stranger, but as a woman who intrigued him. If she’d known then what would happen, would she have continued? It disturbed her that she didn’t know the answer.

  Even when they were safely back in Tremontane, and had confirmed no one had followed them, they had stayed away from the big cities and taken shelter in tiny roadside inns. Sebastian and Fiona had continued to take meals together, but their evenings had been strained. Fiona found herself constantly aware of little things about him, of the way he held his knife and fork, of how he never met her eyes if he could help it. At night she lay wakeful in whatever narrow bed the inn had provided and cursed her weakness. He was a prince, she was a commoner and possessor of illicit magic. She was such a fool to even consider falling in love with him.

  Now she said, “What happens next?”

  “We’ll go to the palace and turn this mess over to my mother,” Sebastian said, his voice muffled by the folds of his hood. “I sent a message ahead so she knows we’re coming. Then we’ll go to the
Bank of Aurilien and I’ll get your money. I suppose you’ll want cash, and not a banker’s draft?”

  “That would be more convenient.”

  “Where will you go after this? Dineh-Karit, still?”

  “I suppose.”

  They fell back into silence. “Fiona,” Sebastian said after a moment. She hadn’t heard her name from him in a week. “If I’d told you immediately who I was, if you hadn’t found out that way…would it have made a difference?”

  She turned to look at him. He had his attention fixed on the road. “I understand why you couldn’t tell me. I’m not angry about that anymore.”

  “Thank you. But that’s not what I meant.”

  “I know what you meant. Sebastian, we—”

  “State your business,” a harsh voice demanded. Fiona brought Mittens to a halt before a pair of guards liveried in Tremontanan brown and green. The one who’d spoken brought his pike, clearly not ceremonial, into a guard position in front of the ornamental iron gates that would bar the way to the palace grounds when they were closed. She hadn’t even noticed they’d reached the end of the road.

  Sebastian pushed back his hood. “Prince Sebastian North,” he said coldly. “Or have you forgotten my face?”

  The guard took a step back. “Your Highness,” he said, fear touching his voice. “I beg your pardon, I didn’t realize—of course you may pass.”

  “Thank you,” Sebastian said, edging past Mittens and proceeding up the long, curving drive, its cobbles clear of snow and shining dully in the mid-morning sunlight. Fiona followed him, Holt bringing up the rear.

  Patches of snow still lay here and there on the sweep of lawn covering the slopes of the hill the palace was built on. The shrubberies lining the drive, however, looked as green as they would at Midsummer, their thumbnail-sized dark green leaves impervious to such outside impositions as weather. Beyond them, oak and maple trees stretched bare branches to the blue sky as if imploring it to hold back the next storm. A gray squirrel darted past and spiraled up a fat trunk, scampering along a branch nearly parallel to the ground and leaping to the tree’s neighbor. Fiona thought about where it might be going, whether it had a family or was alone in the world. She resisted feeling sorry for herself.