Chapter 28
By sunrise, I was grateful. The morning was awkward enough as it was.
Durlain was entirely his court-bred self again, tall and graceful as he strode around the house, exchanged easy quips with his aunt, and packed the piles of food Nanna prepared for us.
But he only threw me fleeting glances in passing, and he seemed so painfully determined not to be caught alone in a room with me that I almost wondered if he’d ask Errik to chaperone us all the way to Mount Garnot; the only words to leave his lips in my direction were “good morning”, and even that felt forced.
Errik, bless his jaded heart, did not make any reference to our midnight conversation. If he had the faintest clue I’d found myself pinned beneath a naked fireborn prince mere minutes later, he was kind enough not to show it.
The trouble was it didn’t make the memory any less vivid.
The trouble was, I was forced to admit to myself when Durlain once again found something to do in the kitchen just as I stepped into the living room, that a part of me still craved more of that heady, reckless freedom.
But the view of his silk-clad back was a clearer no than any barbed remark he could fling at me, and awkwardness or no, we still needed to travel together.
So I plastered on my blandest, most uncaring expression in return.
I ate my breakfast, I packed my bags, and I tried not to think about just how much I’d ruined by holding on to a soft, scarred hand for a minute too long.
Our goodbyes were quick yet surprisingly heartfelt.
Estegonde caught me in an elegant half-embrace on my way to the door, kissing me on the top of my head and telling me to keep myself safe.
Nanna’s invisible hands tucked a bag of honey sweets into my pocket.
Garm licked my face with ice-cold eagerness and had to be pulled off me before we went to get the horses; not even Smudge, who’d spent plenty of time at the Dawn House, was terribly fond of hellhounds.
Pain behaved awfully well as I saddled her. Perhaps she felt guilty about nearly killing me in the frigid waters of the Svala.
Just past midday, we were mounted and ready to go, and Durlain still hadn’t spoken more than the occasional monosyllable to me.
We rode in uncomfortable silence for the first half mile or so, past the warding runes, through the unwelcoming pine forest, until we reached the first fork in the road and talking became rather a necessity.
‘Left?’ I said, because by the position of the pale white sun, that was turning east.
He didn’t look my way. ‘Left.’
That was, for another fifteen minutes, the entirety of the conversation.
I considered asking him if he had Lark’s blood with him and decided against it.
I checked my knives instead, then couldn’t stop checking my knives once I’d started – the sensation of something slowly slipping from my grip too vivid to trust they would remain in their sheaths the moment after my fingers had pulled away from their familiar hilts.
If Durlain noticed the small but frantic motions of my hands, he didn’t comment on it.
Only when we emerged from the thick of the forest and found ourselves on the desolate obsidian plains that dominated the area around the Estien-Garnot border did he clear his throat, a small, strained sound, and say, ‘Any thoughts on our itinerary?’
He sounded as though he hoped I wouldn’t have too many of them.
‘I don’t know this part of the world very well,’ I said, and then, realising he’d heard me say that before, added, ‘Really don’t know it well. Aranc didn’t send us across the borders.’
‘I see.’ His gaze remained stubbornly aimed at the road ahead as the horses began picking their way across the stretch of jagged black glass.
‘The main thing to keep in mind is that everyone you encounter might be reporting to Lesceron. He keeps a far closer watch on his own population than my father or Aranc do. My suggestion would be to travel through inhabited areas for the first couple of days – the wilderness is inhospitable here, and I know a number of inns I’m reasonably sure aren’t spying for the crown.
Once we get closer to Mount Garnot, Lesceron’s people are everywhere, so we might want to travel along the coast by ourselves the last few days and approach the palace from the south. ’
I was glad that sounded reasonable. I really wasn’t in a mood to argue.
‘Sounds reasonable,’ I said.
He exhaled audibly. ‘Excellent.’
And that was the last we said until night began to fall and we reached a nameless hamlet of longhouses tucked between the lava plains and a low ridge, the hillslopes covered in cabbage fields and the occasional goat pasture.
There was a single small inn at the edge of the village, which turned out to be little more than a family residence with a couple of extra rooms available.
Durlain turned into a curt, crabby fellow named Morin Garnot the moment we entered, and so we ate our goat stew and grilled cabbage in an uncompanionable silence, ogled by the innkeeper and his family of wide-eyed children as they had their dinner on the other side of the living room.
I was so glad for my own, Durlain-less bedroom that I didn’t even mind having to check the lock twelve times before I dared to go to sleep.
The next morning was more of the same: evasive glances and a conversation so short it was as though we paid for every spoken syllable, followed by hours of riding through the bleak, austere landscape of western Garnot.
Three days ago, I’d have asked about the geography of this region – the endless stretches of black plains alternating with stony hills covered in wine-red mosses, so different from Estien’s rugged, green-grey highlands that we might as well have travelled to the other side of the world during my days of fever.
This version of Durlain gave the impression he wouldn’t even return one of his usual biting witticisms, though. He looked like he’d just ignore me.
As ridiculous as it was, that prospect hurt more than the prolonged silence did. In the silence, at least I could pretend we would have a conversation if only I made the effort of starting it.
So I didn’t speak, and neither did he, and we reached our next destination with nothing but a few words on navigation exchanged between us.
I watched him glower at his dinner as we ate, his slim shoulders stiff, that smart mouth of his set in a grim, joyless line, and found to my own bewilderment that I missed the sarcastic arsehole I’d dealt with in the first days of our journey.
‘Are you alright?’ I ventured as we reached our separate bedrooms for the night, on the off chance that he was as busy waiting for me to speak as I was waiting for him.
‘Perfectly fine.’ He had already opened his door, black-clad back towards me. ‘Goodnight.’
I’d been right. That did hurt more than the painful silence had.
That stupid touch. My stupid, hungry fingers.
I lay in bed, half-dressed, ears ridiculously straining for any sound from the other side of the wall, and cursed myself and my desperate neediness with every word of profanity I knew.
There turned out to be quite a lot of them, and I hated, hated that my first instinct was to inform Durlain of it – to read him a list and watch the corner of his mouth curl, tremble by minuscule tremble, into a smile he would be so very vexed to show.
Foul-mouthed little fighter.
Wicked.
Riveting.
He’d meant those words, and then all at once I was angry – because what was I doing, blaming myself and my ill-advised desires again, when he had been holding my hand just as much?
When he had answered that tentative touch with a confirmation of his own?
When his shallow breath had faltered in the silence, too?
Perhaps he was not blaming me at all. Perhaps this was no different than those smiles he didn’t want to show me – the prince of many faces, so very frightened of his own truth.
‘Fucker,’ I said out loud into the night.
And I could have sworn a small creak of sound echoed back to me from the next room.
We reached the first settlement worthy of the term city two days later – Dorraven, formerly known as Silver Springs, which was famous for its paper mills and the great massacre of the year 134, in which no fewer than eighty-three suspected witches had died.
Confirmation of the accusations had been impossible; the provost leading the executions had burned all the corpses before anyone could check whether they did in fact have rune marks.
Only one naked body hung from the poles on the town square now, a boy no older then twelve summers. His fingers and hair were gone. On his bloodstained hip, his mark was a stark blemish – sowilo, vision.
I carefully shaped wunjo in my lap as we passed, my fingers hidden between my thighs, and wondered if his mother had been allowed to cry for him.
Durlain led us to an inn on the far side of town, as far away as possible from the springs and the constant pounding of the paper mills grinding fibres to pulp.
His name was Osmont Estien at this establishment, and that meant that for the first time, I witnessed him imitate someone I’d met before – Aranc’s third cousin, brother to the provost of Ingriec, and stingy weasel of the first order.
I watched the one-eyed, purple-haired fireborn prince I knew complain about the stable fees and the price of the wine, bottom lip twitching into a mean little pout, voice descending into an entitled whine, and found myself expecting with every blink to find stout, balding Osmont in his place instead.
It was a thoroughly disorienting experience, and worst of all was that I wouldn’t even be able to tell Durlain so.