Chapter Forty-Eight #2
In our hooded temple robes, we walk at a measured pace, trying not to look desperate and afraid.
“No—wait, it’s this way,” he says with a curse. “Sorry, I think I had it upside down.”
I look over his shoulder at the scroll, searching for the landmarks as we walk through the city streets. I try to compare the crude charcoal lines to the actual streets of stone and brick.
“I think that’s it,” he says, stopping across from a building.
The safe house is an unassuming, cramped three-story structure, squeezed between two larger ones on either side. Dietan makes us circle the block once to make sure no one’s following us before we walk up to the door.
He knocks, and the heavy door gives just a little.
“It’s unlocked,” he whispers. Perhaps, like the temple, the safe house is open to all who need sanctuary.
He pushes harder, and the door groans on its hinges as it swings open.
We slip into a dark and windowless hallway, and once inside, without warning, someone slams the door shut behind us.
Before Dietan can reach into his robes for his knife, there’s a flash of silver.
Dietan launches himself toward the hooded man and slams him against the door.
The stranger grunts at the impact, and the pair jostle for control of the knife, each gripping the pommel, but Dietan has the upper hand, forcing the blade slowly toward the man’s throat.
The sharp edge nicks the stranger’s skin. “Move a fucking inch, and I’ll slice your throat,” Dietan growls, and I’ve no doubt he means it.
I wrap my fingers around the handle of the skillet in my satchel.
“Please don’t kill me…Your Highness,” the stranger says.
Dietan hesitates.
I know that voice. Dietan knows it, too, and lowers his knife as I slowly put the satchel down. The stranger pulls down his hood.
“Marcus!” Dietan cries.
They wrap their arms around each other, clapping backs like long-lost brothers. After, Marcus holds him at arm’s length, as if unable to believe his eyes. “Thank the gods you’re alive!”
“Shouldn’t you be in Loegria?” Dietan exclaims at the same time.
“You didn’t really think I’d turn around and go home without you, did you? Can you imagine if I showed up in Lundenwic and told the king I’d lost you in the Waste?”
“He would not be pleased.”
“He’d have my head. But it took longer than expected to sneak into Engel. And now I hear you’ve run into some trouble? No one could have foreseen that,” he says sarcastically.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Dietan demurs.
“Oh, that much is obvious, Your Highness. This is just a social call. We just trekked all the way through a fucking desert to say hello.” Marcus laughs.
“We?” Dietan asks as footsteps descend the stairs. Jared peers down at him from halfway up, his expression morphing from confusion into joy. He’s limping from a recent injury, but he doesn’t let it slow him. He nearly slides down the stairs and collides with Dietan.
“Good gods, man!” Jared says. “What happened to you? You look like shit.”
I haven’t seen Dietan smile like this in a long time. “It’s a long story…” he says.
It’s then that Jared spots me. “Aren! You’re still alive! Ophelia won’t put me in an early grave after all!”
“I wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t,” says Dietan.
Jared hugs me next and lifts me off my feet. “It’s so good to see you!”
“You too,” I say, my heart lightening at the sight of friendly faces. How did they— When did they— I have a thousand questions and can’t decide which to ask first.
“Come, quickly, move away from the door,” says Marcus, sliding a chair under the handle and ushering us deeper into the house. “I assume you’re here for the uprising.”
“Uprising?” asks Dietan, echoing my own confusion. “What uprising?”
Jared leads us up the stairs, leaning on the banister as he goes, grinning delightedly despite the effort.
“This uprising,” says Marcus, beaming as he opens the door to a room off the landing. Because there they are—my people.
Arnfried, Lambert, and Tess are crowding around the map laid out on a small table. They look up in shock when we enter.
“Aren,” exclaims Lambert, leaping up to hug me. “You all right?”
“Been better,” I say as I greet Arnfried and Tess with hugs as well.
I can’t help but notice that Rosamond, Nelson, and Bing are not among them.
And why are these three not gone from this wretched city by now, safe and free? Arnfried was supposed to be back with his mothers by now.
But they’re here, and they deserve to meet the man they sacrificed so much to save. I step aside, revealing Dietan. “This is Prince Dietan of Loegria. He was dead, but he’s feeling much better now—right?”
“Right,” says Dietan, drawing himself up with a measure of his usual, regal charm. “Hello, everyone. Thank you for your part in my escape.”
Lambert gives him an elaborate bow, while Tess nods and greets him with a more subdued and respectful, “Your Highness.” I’m reminded of how easy I feel with him now, after everything we’ve been through together.
“Have you eaten, Your Highness?” asks Tess. “Aren?”
“Just breakfast,” I say. “And not much of it.”
“Not much at all,” Dietan laments. “We were about to enjoy a wonderful meal at Sirona’s temple when it was rudely interrupted by guards intent on my death.”
“Very rude,” Marcus agrees.
Tess leaves the room, clucking to herself. I cross my arms and look at Dietan. “Didn’t you eat both of the date cakes Siena gave us?”
“They were small.”
Tess returns with a laden tray. “It’s only bread, cheese, and tea, but it’s filling. Please sit, Your Highness. Eat.”
Arnfried and Lambert carefully pull the map and the figurines on top of it off to one side of the table. Marcus finds some plates and hands them to us. Jared pours tea.
“I understand this is a safehouse that the sisters of Sirona’s temple have used of late. Who else knows of this place?” I ask, breaking off a heel of bread and looking around.
“One of the ladies of the court, a favorite of King Osian’s, Senora DuVal. A devout and very rich lady who also just happens to want his head on a pike,” says Tess. “He killed her husband and took her as a mistress.”
I shudder and take a too-hot sip of tea.
“Yeah, he’s one classy guy, that’s for sure,” Lambert says mirthlessly.
Dietan reaches for my hand underneath the table. I smile at him before turning back to my friends. “Tell me what we’re working with. What happened the night we escaped? What was that alarm?”
“The king urgently wanted to see the prince and his possessions one more time before putting his body in the fire. They opened the sack and—well, you know. That wasn’t no prince in that sack,” Lambert says.
I shiver, imagining Namreth’s fury at finding that Dietan—and the Rings—had slipped out of his hands.
“All hell broke loose. Osian realized he’d been tricked and the prince had escaped.
The guards sounded the alarm, and then he rampaged the kitchens personally, looking for you.
Bing tried to stall him and did a pretty good job of it… but…” He shakes his head.
My heart clenches in my chest. I knew Bing was going to do something like this, but it still hurts to hear about it.
“Osian snapped his fingers, and Bing died before he could fall,” says Lambert. “I went back to look for him…” His voice wavers at the loss of his friend. “Anyway, Arnfried, Tess, and I barely got away and made it here.”
“What about Nelson? Rosamond?”
“We think they made it out before the city went into lockdown,” says Tess. “At least, that’s what we hope, but… On Osian’s orders, they were killing anyone who tried to leave the city.” She shrugs helplessly. “It was a risk we all took.”
Bing is dead. Nelson and Rosamond are likely lost as well. I swallow the lump in my throat. It isn’t right. They had lives. Friends and family who’ll miss them. Dietan is here right now because of their sacrifice.
Dietan clears his throat. He nods to the former servants who helped him escape, looking each of them in the eye, one after the other.
“I’m in your debt. As Prince of Loegria, I promise you, if we live through all of this, I’ll see that you are well compensated.
You have my gratitude for the rest of my life. ”
“Appreciate that, Your Highness,” says Lambert. Tess murmurs her thanks as well.
Arnfried extends his hand toward Dietan. “Thank you, cousin.”
Dietan takes a closer look at Arnfried. He grips his hand, a smile blooming across his face. “You’re Katharine’s son,” he says and pulls Arnfried into an embrace. “Your mothers will be so relieved to know you’re alive.”
There is a solemn silence, and then Dietan lets Arnfried go and turns to his friends, who’ve been quiet during the reunion. “And how’d you two jokers link up with this crew?”
Marcus laughs, leaning against the doorframe, while Jared throws himself down on a stool, his leg extended awkwardly as he reaches for a mug of tea.
“This fellow,” he says, pointing to Marcus, “sent a messenger to Evandale, and I met up with him at the Sarindale Outpost. We weren’t there a day before we were attacked.
Raiders—likely backed by the Usurper, again.
They no longer fear the kingsguard. I took a spear in the leg”—he gestures to the wounded limb—“and it hurt like a bastard. Good thing we found a healer in town, or I might have lost it at the knee. Marcus feared I’d need a month to mend and threatened to leave me there while he went searching for the two of you.
I refused. A bum leg wasn’t going to slow me down. ”
“Still, it took us ages to get here,” says Marcus. “Sorry. I had to leave soldiers in Evandale and at court in Loegria, where your family are now,” he says to me. “Jared escorted them there before meeting me.”
“Ophelia didn’t want me to leave, I’ll tell you that,” says Jared.
“But I wasn’t going to stay at court while you were lost in the Waste.
” He turns to Dietan. “What the hell were you thinking, man?” He shakes his head.
“Anyway, nearly as soon as we crossed into this wretched kingdom—which, by the way, totally deserves its name—we were met by Princess Katharine’s people, who were expecting us. ”
Arnfried stands a little straighter at that. “Your mother is a formidable woman,” says Jared. “A handful of her warriors saw us most of the way here, before we did the rest on foot. The princess didn’t think much of your mission, either,” he adds, glancing meaningfully at Dietan.
“It wasn’t much of a success,” Dietan admits nonchalantly. He turns to Marcus. “I can’t believe you let Jared walk the rest of the way to Engel on that leg.”
Marcus snorts. “Once we got close enough, we hitched a ride with a wagon train bringing supplies to Engel. We assumed they were merchants, but in truth, they worked for this Osian fellow—apparently everyone here does. Got us into the city, at least. We were delayed a few days, since they had the unfortunate idea to take us captive once we arrived.”
“They like to do that,” I chime in.
“Should I ask how you escaped?” Dietan drawls.
“Let’s just say they shouldn’t have bound Marcus’s hands so loosely.”
Marcus grins.
“After we escaped, we asked around near Castle Engel if anyone knew what happened to the Loegrian prince and his bride, and we were lucky enough to run into Lambert here not two days ago,” says Jared. “He brought us to this house.”
“We were waiting for you,” Lambert says to me. “We went to Sirona’s temple looking for a place to hide because we knew Siena would be there, and a priest in a fancy robe like the ones you and Aren are wearing told us we could stay here,” Lambert said.
“The temple didn’t tell us they were hiding you, and I don’t blame them,” Marcus adds.
“They didn’t tell us they were hiding you, either! We thought the safe house would be empty,” says Dietan.
“Seems like it’s not their first time smuggling important refugees,” Jared remarks. “We were just about to scour the city when you arrived.”
“They’ve sealed the whole place. Doubled the guards at every gate, patrols half a day’s ride in all directions. No one goes in or out,” Marcus continues.
“Fine with me,” says Dietan. “Nowhere else I need to be.”
Jared sighs. “There’s a time for humor, my friend, and now is not the time.
Princess Katharine’s people won’t be able to get close enough to retrieve us, which was the original plan.
They’ve never had the numbers to take on Osian, and certainly don’t now, with Estyrion arming for war.
We’re well and truly fucked. Your father’s actually going to have our heads for this—that is, if we get out alive. ”
But Dietan is unmoved. “I came to Estyrion for a reason,” he says.
“That reason, ultimately, was to win a war. The original plan may have been a bust, but now that we’re here and we know that Osian—Namreth—is in league with the Usurper, and the best way we can help my father and grandfather defeat Penrith is to remove this false king from his tacky golden throne. ”
“And how exactly do you plan to do that?” asks Jared.
“I’m going to do what my grandfather should have done all along. Destroy him.”