Chapter Twenty-Six #2
At the sound of rumbling to my left, I glanced back.
A man drove a horse-drawn cart filled with enormous jars that were probably empty of sweetwine and headed to vineyards for refilling.
Two guards walked in front of him, shepherding him from the kitchens to the guardhouse to ensure he didn’t make trouble along the way.
Maybe my luck was turning around.
The cart passed, the merchant regaling his escorts with talk of grapes and sunshine and vine rot.
The moment the sun dipped below the palace wall, I snuck into the back of the cart, slinking between the jars and beneath a hemp cloth rumpled behind them.
The horse whinnied at the shifting weight, and I imagined the driver looked back.
But he said nothing, and the cart kept moving.
We rumbled over the stone path until we reached the guardhouse, and new voices moved around us to check the cart’s contents and ensure the merchant wasn’t sneaking out palace treasures.
“I’d toss you a jar,” the merchant said lightly, “but the partygoers cleaned me out.”
“No need,” one of the soldiers said. “Have a good night.”
“Aye,” the merchant said, and clucked his teeth as he urged the horse on.
I waited until the sound of the road changed from palace stone to cobblestone, then peeked out. The guardhouse was behind us, growing ever smaller. When we passed beneath the overhanging limbs of an oak tree, I hopped down, moved into the shadows, and readjusted my cloak.
I’d made it out of the palace, and no one was the wiser.
I sprinted from corner to corner down the narrow, house-lined roads between the manor and the ring road, using shadows as a protective cloak, and only had to dodge around patrolling soldiers once.
I didn’t see or hear anyone following me, and I was good enough to recognize a tail.
When I reached the manor, I snuck along the wall and found her sitting in the pangan tree, one leg dangling down, her arms around her other knee.
“You’re nearly as loud as Galen,” she whispered. She stepped to the wall, then dropped to the road.
“He’s still pouting.”
“Good. What are you doing here?”
“Jonas is dead.”
“I heard. I’m sorry, Fox.”
“We weren’t friends, but…”
“But,” she said, and squeezed my arm. “Still awful.”
“I need a break and a drink.” I gestured toward the manor, my old room. My future room. “Do you have any wine in there?”
“No,” she said after a moment of consideration. “But the garrison lifted curfew for the night to celebrate Catalaya’s arrival.”
I held up a coin. “Then the drinks are on the Lys’Careths.”
It wasn’t Springmarket; there were no performers or decorations, no sense of celebration.
But strongholders weren’t going to miss an opportunity to drink themselves into Oblivion, so there were plenty of people on the streets.
None of them paid any mind to me. If the Aetheric practitioner was looking for me, I didn’t feel it.
I wasn’t interesting enough, or rich enough, or Aetherically gifted enough to matter.
And no one’s safety was guaranteed, anyway.
We went to the inn at the northern market, which was nearly full and buzzing with noise and servants delivering pitchers of ale. The mild chaos made me feel better. As did slipping a gold coin from the purse of a woman who yelled at a servant for not moving quickly enough.
“Sweetwine,” I said, passing the same coin to the same servant when she asked what we wanted.
“And sweet justice,” I added with a sigh, sitting back in the wooden chair.
I closed my eyes for a moment, letting noise and people and scents—sweat, old beer, candles, yeasty bread—surround me like soothing water.
It wasn’t a bath in the palace, but it was comforting all the same.
“Are you going to yell at me for leaving the palace?”
“No. I don’t like a cage, either. How’d you get out?”
“Back of a wine cart.”
“A classic for a reason.”
I nodded. “The guards are worried about people sneaking into the palace; it apparently didn’t occur to them I’d try to sneak out.”
“It wasn’t just Jonas,” she said. “The reason you’re here.”
“Catalaya gave me a lecture.”
“About the prince?”
I nodded. “I’m just a horse in his stable, and he can only marry a noblewoman, and she knows how to run the palace, blah blah blah.” I didn’t have the energy to get into the details. Also, sweetwine.
She frowned in consideration. “Royals don’t always have choices.” When she lifted her gaze to me, there was worry in it. “Same goes for nobles and thieves. He’s decent to you, to me, to his servants. I think—and gods know I hate to say this—I think I respect him.”
I drank. “Right? If he was more awful I could continue to stew in self-righteous fury about the Lys’Careths. Fucking royals.”
“Fucking royals. Even if you figure out a way to be together, would you want that kind of life?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we could find a different way.”
She sat back again. “Maybe you could. Maybe you could fight the system. If the bet was yours, where would you put the coin?”
“I wouldn’t,” I said. “I’d just punch her in the face.”
“Hurts worse than you’d think,” she said, and flexed her fingers like she was reliving a memory.
“Do you ever wonder what it might have been like to be an aristocrat?”
“Just another kind of cage. Clothes. Manners. Schooling. How to smile and who to smile at. Then who to marry. Then you have kids so they can marry more nobles, and the cycle starts over.” She took a sip. “No, thank you. At least we have the hope of freedom. I don’t think they ever do.”
I didn’t like that that made me pity a woman who had more coin than I’d see in a hundred lifetimes. But Wren had a point.
She leaned forward, eyes eager. “Do you want to hurt her?”
My gaze snapped up to hers. “No. And don’t even suggest it. She must have contacts in the palace. She knew about the attempt on the prince.”
“We could go with a childhood favorite—harmless, but irritating. Itchwort in her shoes. Pink nettle in her rouge. Or belly wort.”
“The one you learned about in the library?”
She nodded. “Just a little, and it soothes the belly. Too much, and you’re in for a very noisy night.”
“We could call her Lady Windy,” I said with a snort. “And I’m much too sober to talk about royal flatulence.” I held up an empty jug. “More sweetwine!”
But the servant didn’t have time to deliver it. The pinch gripped my heart like a fist, and I clutched my chest in one hand, reached out to Wren with the other. The ember flared, and heat and agony warred with each other, with me as the proving ground. One would win, or they’d both kill me.
I cursed, and people around us began to look, to notice that something was amiss. Wren jumped to her feet, threw coins on the table, and helped me outside.
“It’s been a little better since Luna did what she did,” I said as she escorted me through the crowd that gathered outside the inn, and down the road to a quieter spot. “Less sharp.”
“But still bad?”
“Bad,” I said as a second wave hit me and tears threatened to fall. “I don’t want this anymore.”
She took my fingers. “Squeeze hard. Hard as you need to.”
I did.
“Are you squeezing? I don’t even feel anything.”
“You’re hilarious.”
“Tell me what you see, Fox.” Her voice was more serious now. Not just trying to ease me through the pain, but to assess the threat.
I lifted my head and looked around. “No. Nothing.”
But a scream echoed through the alley beside us. We moved toward it, looked into the opening, and I watched a faint trail of Aether shimmer to life.
“There,” I said quietly, and pointed.
Together we crept down the alley, squeezing ourselves back against the wall as someone ran through. “Another possession!” they screamed, nearly tripping over a pile of crates to get farther away.
“Luna,” I whispered. “If you’re out there, this would be a good time to appear.” If she was able to hear me, she made no response.
We reached the other end of the alley, dodging the stampede of people who were hurrying to get away from something.
The ember burned.
The pain clenched.
The crowd melted away behind us as the Aetheric practitioner strode toward us, his golden mask gleaming in torchlight, his stride long and confident. Behind him, half a dozen human assassins.
Beside him, four humans—a woman and three men—eyes green and shining with Aether, and swords in hand.