Chapter 5
When I cautiously slipped into the inn’s hall the next morning, woken well before sunrise by the sound of clanging pans and loud voices, no one turned to stare at me.
Either last night’s guests had already left, or they had lost interest in my unexpected arrival over the course of the hours in between.
In any case, I had no complaints. I felt vulnerable enough already, my knives hidden and hard to reach beneath the coat I’d pulled from Durlain’s bags.
The prince himself was nowhere to be seen around the smoky, dimly-lit room.
The only familiar face was Hedda, who gestured at a corner table the moment she caught sight of me – a resolute air to the unspoken command that reminded me of Aranc’s dog trainer.
I wasn’t a dog, but I didn’t have any better ideas either; I therefore slunk towards the table in question and tried not to look like a girl who should be standing on the scaffold right now.
I couldn’t help rubbing my throat at the thought.
No noose. Just the leather string with the little glass vial on it. I still felt the warm, sticky, gag-inducing sensation of blood on my fingers whenever I lingered on the thought.
A wooden bowl slammed onto the table, and the memories went scattering. Hedda appeared by my side, her broad presence towering over me in a way that felt oddly comforting. ‘Slept well?’
Most people I knew would have had something witty to say back to that, some small joke to lighten the mood. I was bad at wittiness. Even worse at lightening anything.
‘Slept fine,’ I said.
‘Good.’ Hedda nodded at the bowl as she leaned over and casually tugged my sleeves farther over my wrists – an unspoken warning, as motherly as the gesture might seem. ‘Go eat your breakfast. Ancelet will be here in a moment.’
She swept off before I could ask where my travel companion had gone, swatting at a fur-covered merchant in passing as a response to whatever request he’d made. People roared with laughter around her, and still no one looked at me.
I stuck a spoonful of oatmeal into my mouth and tried not to melt on the spot.
The food was hot and creamy, sweetened with honey and dried juniper berries, and at once it didn’t matter that I’d scarfed down a meal fit for kings a mere few hours ago.
Hunger, like cold, seemed to have settled into the marrow of my bones over the course of the last two weeks.
I ate and ate and ate, blind to the world around me until my bowl was empty and my stomach was bursting …
and it was then that Durlain Averre landed in the chair opposite me, hands gloved, horns uncovered, and black coat sparkling with dew.
He wore that unnervingly affable expression again. A dimple in his cheeks, a glint of good humour in his eye – the look that belonged to his borrowed name rather than his own.
Prince of many faces.
I might only just be scratching the surface of that moniker, and that thought turned the clump of oatmeal in my stomach to stone.
‘We should be ready to leave,’ Durlain informed me without a greeting, leaning back in his seat as he crossed his long legs.
We, without a question. My own readiness was an assumed fact, and even his cheery Ancelet voice couldn’t hide the blunt demand.
‘Found you a few more clean clothes and had a good word with the fellows who saw you coming in last night. I’m quite sure they won’t be talking. ’
I swallowed. ‘If you mean you threatened them …’
His eyebrow jumped up, and even that gesture looked too energetic to belong to the man who’d sneered at me over our midnight dinner table. ‘I don’t threaten my friends.’
‘Friends?’
‘Or so they believe.’ There was a flicker of something knifelike in his smile, and for the shortest of moments, he looked entirely familiar again.
‘If you object to my methods, you’re most welcome to resort to your own, of course.
I can’t wait to see how well our hostess takes the news that you’ve been butchering her guests. ’
I flinched.
Shouldn’t have. Wouldn’t have, if I had thought for half a minute … but the implied accusation cut too deep, the memories it dredged up.
Durlain cocked his head before I could recover, gaze piercing like a dagger. ‘Ah. The witch executions, again?’
‘You know what would really improve our conversations?’ I said hoarsely, cursing my own unthinking reflexes and the dangerous secrets they might reveal. ‘If you were to lose another eye.’
His dimpling Ancelet smile stiffened. ‘Alternatively, if you were to lose your tongue.’
I shouldn’t fight back.
I never fought back, and he was the worst possible opponent to start with – the very man whose help I needed to get Lark back in my arms. But he was the bastard who’d poisoned Pol, too.
The vicious prince who’d be yet another witch-hunting king one day.
It had felt much, much too good to take that smile off his face for even the blink of an eye …
and whatever I said or did, the rotten bastard still needed me, didn’t he?
‘I thought you wanted me to talk?’ I shot back in a sharp whisper, the reckless stupidity of it as glorious as the tightening of his face. ‘You seemed to insist I open my mouth, last night. Let me know if I should consider that order rescinded.’
‘I don’t recall giving any orders.’ His voice remained soft, laced with that unnerving undertone of Ancelet’s sympathy.
The quiet fury sparking in his eye told an entirely different story.
‘I merely made the suggestion that you ceased behaving like a recalcitrant child. You seem to be ignoring the advice with truly impressive flair.’
‘So then what?’ My hands tensed. Uruz was heavy and reassuring against my thigh, a twitch away from my fingers. ‘Will you be adjusting your approach, as promised?’
I expected some sharp retort, or perhaps the blast of scalding fire I deserved … but for a single, motionless moment, Durlain did nothing but look at me.
It was that same look he’d given me in the Svein’s Creek storeroom.
Part irritation, part blank incredulity, and most unnerving of all, part narrow-eyed interest – pinning me in place like a beetle to be studied and dissected.
Behind his back, the clamour never ceased.
Voices, laughter, the thudding and clinking of tableware …
as if a fireborn prince and a fugitive witch weren’t sitting in the darkest corner of the room, sizing each other up, digging themselves deeper and deeper into some ill-advised pissing contest.
I could only ever lose that fight, I knew.
I didn’t look away.
‘No,’ Durlain finally said, as if coming to a conclusion, and although his voice was still soft, it was a different softness now.
Not warm. Not friendly. Rather, full of thorns and thistles like the half-whisper that had sounded in the darkness of our cell.
‘It would help me little to change anything. You’re as much of a danger to yourself as you are to the rest of the world, and you appear to be equally clueless about both. Stay here. I’ll be back with the bags.’
In a sweep of black, he was gone.
I stayed behind, blinking at the empty chair opposite me – unsure whether that had been a concession or another attack, but unnervingly certain I’d just made the journey to Mount Garnot a lot more unpleasant for myself.
The true Durlain Averre, cold and crowlike, would no doubt be capable of marching out of an inn with debts unpaid.
His good-natured mask of Ancelet, on the other hand, wouldn’t dream of such a thing, no matter how many little sisters were waiting for him in Lesceron’s dungeons – and so I was forced to wait by the door for ten more minutes as the bastard joked around with fellow guests, talked loudly of his plans to return to Mount Averre, and shoved more and more gold into the innkeeper’s hands despite the man’s mortified objections.
The generosity might have been endearing, if I hadn’t been so keenly aware it was nothing but a calculated bribe.
But at long last, he was done taking his leave.
I didn’t wait for him to pick up his bags and catch up with me, but instead turned to the door without further ado.
Outside this stuffy room with its tiny windows, the sky was its usual shade of flint grey, the air crisp and cool; I stepped onto the stamped earth road, drew a smoke-less gulp of breath deep into my lungs—
And stood face to face with a prison guard.
I froze.
So did he.
We blinked, both of us, simultaneously.
Close by, the Silver Horn falls continued to roar down the highland cliffs.
Behind me, Hedda’s voice rose over the clamour, informing Durlain that she pitied the innkeepers he’d meet on his way home.
And two feet before me, rumpled and bleary-eyed, stood the man who’d brought me what should have been my last meal in this world twelve hours ago – alone now, and peering at me with obvious recognition in his gaze.
I should have killed him.
It wouldn’t have taken more than a single flick of my fingers.
But Lark wasn’t here to watch my back, to tell me it was safe, and I faltered. I fucking faltered, and the guard stumbled two steps away from me, grabbed for his sword, and hollered at the top of his lungs, ‘Witch!’
The inn fell silent behind me.
That sudden, deadly silence.
I had to run. I knew I had to run, the fact clear even through the rush of the water and the roar of panic in my ears – I had to take him down with eihwaz, because it no longer mattered who’d see the runes, and then I had to get the hell out of this place and never look back.
But the man’s eyes were on me, seeing me, and my fingers wouldn’t move.
His eyes were on me, and I saw Kjell’s body again – his strong hands nothing but bloodied stumps, his dark skin smeared with grime and blood and—
‘Is anything the matter?’ a cool voice enquired behind me.
The guard’s gaze shot past my shoulder.