Chapter 2
Two
Ivy
Asnort brings my gaze to a stallion I know well. I snatch at his reins. “You brought Toast!”
“He’s the one you like,” Rheave says, as if it’s self-evident that of course he’d know that. At a volley of shouts from the courtyard beyond the gate, he hefts himself onto a nearby mare.
Julita lets out a choked laugh. It seems the daimon is good for something.
The instant we’re all mounted, Stavros kicks his horse to a gallop. We take off down the laneway with a clatter of hooves against the cobblestones.
For the first several minutes, we simply hurtle through the streets, following Stavros’s lead. The citizens of the inner wards gape at our frantic passing. We’re certainly not maintaining a noble standard of propriety.
We have to slow to a canter to avoid crashing into any pedestrians, but when we approach the ring of the old city walls that now mark the division between inner wards and middle, Stavros nudges his stallion faster again. “Be ready to jump,” he hollers back at us.
A curse slips from Alek’s mouth. I’m not sure how avid an equestrian the scholar is.
I haven’t been in the habit of sending my mounts over obstacles rather than around them myself. I tighten my grip on the reins, leaning forward to murmur to Toast. “If I’m going to stay on you, you’ve got to work with me now. No messing around.”
The dark bay stallion is known as the terror of the college stables. He and I have come to a sort of understanding, but that doesn’t mean he never tests my patience.
My steed gives a short huff, although I can’t tell whether it’s in protest at our renewed gallop or a dismissal of my concerns.
We veer along a curving road, and I spot the reason for Stavros’s instructions up ahead.
Most people pass the old city walls through one of the many deteriorating gates. But the Crown’s Watch likes to monitor those spots to watch for suspicious persons venturing into the hub of Florian’s elite.
The former general must be hoping to avoid having any of the city’s royal police force observe our frantic dash. So instead, he’s aimed us at what’s meant to be a dead end.
The stones of the old wall ahead of us are particularly crumbled. Only the base of the wall remains in an uneven line. But it’s still about as high as my waist.
Oh, dear, Julita murmurs, and then seems to rally. You can handle this, Ivy. Give that beast a good prodding.
I sink lower into the saddle as if I can meld my ass and thighs with the leather.
To be honest, I’ve never jumped on a horse before. Hopefully Toast knows what he’s expected to do here—and doesn’t toss me right off his back in the process.
Stavros’s stallion launches over the uneven row of stone blocks first. The black animal he took from those Rheave grabbed isn’t his usual mount, but he still makes the leap look easy.
Casimir nudges the chestnut gelding he chose a little faster and soars over the stones with the same grace the courtesan seems to bring to everything he does. Then it’s my turn.
Toast makes a sound that might be skeptical, but he pushes himself forward a little faster. With a soft grunt, he heaves himself up and over the low wall.
For a second in the air, I lift slightly off the saddle despite my best efforts. The wind whips my cloak’s hood back from my hair. Then we’re both thumping back into place—Toast’s hooves on the road on the opposite side, my butt into its seat.
The breath jolts out of me alongside a shaky laugh. The rolling thunder of hooves behind me tells me Alek and Rheave have both managed to follow.
Stavros only races onward for another minute or two. He draws his stallion to a sudden halt in a small square where a few merchants peer at us from their shop windows.
We gather close together, my gaze darting over the buildings around us.
Alek swipes at the back of his neck and speaks before I can. “Where are we going?”
Stavros considers our surroundings, his expression tense. “We got a good lead, but we’ve made a lot of racket. It won’t be hard for the Crown’s Watch or the army themselves to track us.”
Casimir’s face has flushed from the ride, but his peachy skin pales again at those words. “You think King Konram will go that far in pursuing Ivy?”
“There are few things more important to him than stamping out the riven. He sees her existence as an affront to the gods—and sparing her as a betrayal of them.” The former general cuts his gaze toward me. “It wouldn’t have been a bad time for your divine guardian to throw in his sign of support.”
I grimace back at him. “Kosmel makes his own rules. For all I know, he’s enjoying this mess as long as I survive it.”
The godlen of luck and trickery isn’t exactly the predictable sort. All I’m absolutely sure of is that he’d like me to stay alive.
“Ivy knows how to hide in the city,” Alek suggests.
Julita’s tone perks up. Yes, you’re the expert on this part of Florian.
My stomach sinks despite her optimism. “I know how to hide myself. All of us will be a little harder, especially with horses in tow.”
I can’t quite picture my sophisticated men scrambling up the side of the cloth factory building into my secret attic hideout.
“Our situation is particularly precarious while we’re in the capital,” Stavros says. “We could leave the city, find a place to regroup where we won’t draw attention, and then work out how we’re going to convince the king Ivy can be trusted.”
He pauses, his head swiveling as he takes stock of our location, and points. “The nearest gate is that way. If we cut straight through the outer wards—”
A flash of light whips over the rooftops in the direction he indicated, and his voice dies in his throat.
Rheave tracks the same phenomenon from the edge of our group. “That was magic.”
Stavros’s voice darkens. “Yes. The palace is sending a message to the gates. No doubt ordering the guards to close them until we’ve been apprehended.”
My ghostly passenger goes still in my head. Curse it all.
I swallow thickly. “They can’t lock down the city for too long, can they?”
“For a threat as great as one of the riven?” Stavros shoots me an apologetic glance, his mouth slanted at a pained angle. We both remember all too well how badly he took the initial revelation of my magic, and he knew me far better than King Konram does.
Alek shifts in his saddle. “There’s no way we can leave, then. We’ll have to hide ourselves here.”
While the king sends every available soldier sweeping through the city in search—and the scourge sorcerers do gods know what else in the meantime? My skin crawls with the impression of the walls closing in on me.
I turn to Rheave. “Are the people who made you going to send more daimon after the king?”
The daimon-man frowns. “Everyone in the city was called to the palace. If you freed them all, they won’t cause any harm.”
Stavros studies him warily. “Everyone in the city, you say. What about outside the city?”
“There are many. I’m not sure of the exact number or what they might be doing at the moment on our creators’ orders.”
“Then the real threat is out there for now,” I say.
Alek studies Rheave with his piercing gaze. “If he knows what he’s talking about and he’s not leading us astray.”
The daimon-man cocks his head with a look of genuine puzzlement. “Why would I want to make trouble for you?”
Stavros lifts an eyebrow. “You were working on the scourge sorcerers’ behalf for weeks, weren’t you?”
“Because I was under their control. I’ve broken free from that magic—I want to stay as far away from them as I can.”
Because he’s afraid they’ll destroy the body they created for him, and for whatever strange reason, the daimon has decided he likes his prison of flesh. He told us that much when he came looking for me.
My throat tightens at the memory of his earnest appeal for my help.
He has acted in my favor before, keeping quiet when he noticed me in hiding. And his concern for the injured butterfly that landed on him days ago couldn’t have come from the conspirators—that was all him.
I glance around at my men. “King Konram would be dead if Rheave hadn’t warned us.
He isn’t our enemy. And it sounds like our actual enemy is beyond the city walls.
If we want to continue protecting the kingdom, prove to the king that we’re not villains, and save our necks from the gallows, our best chance is leaving. ”
Casimir reaches to give my wrist a gentle squeeze. “That makes sense, but how are we going to manage it?”
Stavros’s gaze settles on me with a tick to focus his damaged vision.
“We can’t count on your power to clear the way even if Kosmel would be willing to guide it this time.
Not without doing enough damage that we would be villains.
The guards at the gates and throughout the city will be alert to any sign of riven power—some of them have talents that allow them to detect magic. ”
Julita sighs. I suppose he has a point.
He does. And the trepidation in his voice reminds me of how much he distrusts the magic that flows through my broken soul in general.
Which is fair, because I hate my demanding, chaotic power too. As mercurial as Julita can be at times, she’s a much more considerate lodger than the magic I was born with.
I pause. The fringes of the city are my domain, and I’ve navigated them without a spark of magic for years. I have to take the lead here.
My men’s lives could rest in my hands as much as they held mine in theirs when they discovered my secret.
As I grope for the right answer, my gaze catches on a crow landing on a rooftop across the square. It looks like a perfectly ordinary bird, and it might not have anything to do with the godlen crows are associated with, but it lights a glimmer of inspiration in my head all the same.
I turn to the men. “I might be able to get us out of the city today, no sorcery required. But you’ll need to do everything exactly as I ask.”
Casimir nods. “Where do we start?”
The others wait for my answer without any sign of protest. I form a grim smile. “First we head to Tangleside.”