Chapter Twelve Out of Banelyn #2
“Come on,” she said, the barest hint of softness creeping into her voice.
She cleared her throat again, roughly this time, and the softness was gone.
“We won’t be alone for long. Word will go out soon and we’ll be followed.
No doubt they’re still investigating the Inner City, assuming we couldn’t get past the gates.
But eventually they’ll realize we escaped, or that Seeker will wake up and put the pieces together.
I think we can anticipate scouting parties within the hour, though I don’t think they’ll range very far from the city initially.
We need to get far away from Banelyn, get around the western side of Lake Chartain, and disappear into the wilderness for a bit.
They never patrol alone, there’s always three groups that… .”
It was Tomaz who cleared his throat this time, and she broke off, pink spots of emotion appearing on her cheeks as she realized she’d been rambling. The Prince understood, though. She was uneasy and coping with it by talking too much about things that didn’t need to be discussed.
“We’ll leave once we’ve caught our breath,” the big man said.
Leah began to move off, but suddenly went down on one knee with a low moan of pain.
The Prince moved toward her in alarm, but it was Tomaz who reached her first. He calmly picked her up and brought her back into the center of the tangled den of trees with a look of fond concern.
“What happened?” the Prince asked.
“Concerned for me, princeling?”
The Prince, despite the teasing tone of her voice, reached out through the Raven Talisman and felt for her life.
—swirls of green and silver light—the sound of steel cutting silk—the silent second after a symphony ends—the smell of honey and newly trodden dust—new pain, but manageable—grim laughter, quiet wonder—
He pulled back; she was whole… wounded, but whole. She was strong and would recover. There was a small patch of blood on the side of her Commons shirt. The big man noticed it at the same time the Prince did.
“Ribs?” Tomaz asked.
“Just a slice,” she said. “Probably good to do a stitch or two, though.”
“Then we’ll do it now,” he said, in a voice that brooked no argument. “We are far enough away to spend the next few hours here. They need to finish searching the city and the surrounding towns before they come for us. And if we’re lucky, Trudy will send them north for a time.”
“Trudy?” the Prince asked.
“The Seekers aren’t the only ones with spies,” Tomaz said.
“Fine. But only if the princeling washes those cuts on his wrists. And binds them, too—tightly. And checks the older wounds, make sure they’re healing.”
“Fine, fine,” the Prince said. “I agree.”
Mollified, Leah allowed Tomaz to lead them further into the woods.
Soon they came upon a woven thicket created out of a large grove of trees and bushes that had grown together, creating a kind of living cave.
The three of them managed to prod the horse, Trudger, through the briars, where they found the second horse, Tomaz’s charger, already tied to a tree and cropping the grass.
Tomaz quickly backtracked to cover their trail, and then they unrolled some blankets and collapsed on the hard ground. Tomaz went to his pack, moving quickly but with a calm assurance. He threw a second blanket to the Prince as he pulled out a needle and thread and began a small fire to heat water.
“Wash those cuts quickly and then try to get some sleep,” he said. “I’ll wake you when it’s time to move.”
The Prince took the small cake of soap and the waterskin and scrubbed his wrists before wrapping them in strips of cloth.
He pulled up his shirt to check the wounds he’d received fighting the Death Watchmen and saw they were healing into fine, puckered lines.
There was nothing he could do for his ankle; though, the extra week of forced rest in the Seeker’s dungeon had actually left it feeling almost as good as new.
He dropped the soap and skin next to the saddlebags and curled up in the blanket at the base of a gnarled oak tree, just intending to sit and rest. Before he knew it, he fell into a dark, dreamless sleep.
When he woke, he felt warm and comfortable, and there was a glowing heat pressing against the side of his body. Slowly, very slowly, he opened his eyes.
Above him, firelight played off the webbed canopy of branches that made up their living cave. On his right was Tomaz, stoking a small, smokeless fire.
He tried to rise, but his body ached, and he sat back down again.
“Rest while you can, princeling,” Tomaz said. “You’ve been asleep for barely an hour. We have time yet before we have to move, and we have a long journey ahead of us. Best to rest as much as possible.”
“Aren’t we being pursued?” he asked. “Why did you light a fire? Won’t they be able to track us by the smoke?”
Tomaz grinned and shook his head, and then held a finger to his lips. The Prince fell silent and listened… and heard soft rain falling outside their small living cave. The canopy of trees above them was so tightly woven that none of the water made it through to them, but ran off to either side.
“Clouds rolled in while you slept, and the wind is blowing south. Besides, soon we will be followed in earnest no matter what we do, and it might be several more days before we can risk a fire. I thought it best to have a small one while we could.”
The Prince sat for a moment, wrapped in his blanket, and then with a sudden deliberateness managed to stand. Tomaz looked at him quizzically. Determinedly, the Prince walked forward and sat down at the fire across from the big man. He heard Tomaz sigh.
“So much hardness,” he rumbled sadly. “So much effort to cover up your pain instead of letting it flow as it is meant to.”
“I’m not in pain,” the Prince said firmly. He was proud his voice didn’t shake.
“You are in pain,” Tomaz contradicted with the same indescribable sadness in his voice, “and that makes me frightened for you.”
“You do not need to be frightened for me,” the Prince said, his voice formal and stiff. “But your concern is noted, and I thank you.”
Tomaz stood and rounded the fire. The Prince watched him out of his peripheral vision as he was trained to do.
Watch without giving the impression of watching, his sister Dysuna had always told him.
The big man stopped next to the Prince and lowered himself to the ground to sit next to him.
The Prince tensed as if expecting a blow, and the move did not go unnoticed.
“Too much hardness can kill you, princeling,” the Exile said.
“Hardness does not kill you,” the Prince responded, reciting by rote what he had been told since birth.
“Weakness is death, feeling is death. Life happens to you, and you cannot change what has happened. You harden yourself, and eventually you feel nothing—and then you cannot be challenged. You cannot be defeated. You cannot—”
His throat seized up and he broke off.
“You don’t think it is hard to be weak?” Tomaz asked quietly.
The Prince opened his mouth to respond but shut it again with a snap.
“You do not agree that it is difficult to be weak? It was difficult for me to learn to be weak, that much I can tell you.”
The man was a small mountain. He—weak? The idea was laughable.
“You are not weak,” the Prince scoffed, “don’t think that I can be caught off guard by simple lies.”
He recognized that he was being surly and curt for no reason, that his good humor of barely an hour ago had disappeared. Why was he acting this way?
“What need have I to lie to you?” Tomaz asked.
“Because you’re an Exile,” the Prince snapped back, rising to his feet. “You’ve rebelled against your true rulers, you’ve sworn to overthrow the very Empire that provides safety and stability to the common man. You’re a criminal! Criminals lie.”
The Prince moved swiftly to the opposite side of the fire, and looked out into the thicket of trees, not wanting to see the Exile.
“A criminal who has saved your life,” Tomaz said.
A chill ran up the Prince’s back. What was he trying to say?
Was he trying to blackmail the Prince? With a surge of adrenaline, he spun and looked down at the big man, still seated by the fire, and drew himself up to his full height, expecting Tomaz to be sitting there with a sinister smile, waiting to capitalize on his debt.
But what the Prince saw was a bluff, honest, kind man, and it completely deflated his anger and righteousness. Suddenly, his vision was hazy, and he had to look down at the ground.
His siblings would never have come to his rescue even once. Tomaz had saved him three times now, once even nursed him back to health in the middle of the Empire where he was a wanted man.
Help is a sign of weakness, weakness a sign of unworthiness. Mother would never have….
His mind blanked out before he could finish the treasonous thought. He began to count the leaves under his feet and narrowed his hearing in on the cracking and popping sounds of the fire, unable to face his thoughts and so seeking mercy in the simplicity of sensation.
“You are not weak because you need help. You are not weak because you are grateful,” Tomaz said. The Prince shrugged as if he could throw off the voice like it were an irritating fly.
“I know I am not weak,” he said.
“You are not listening to me,” the big voice said. “You are not weak because you need help. You are not weak because you are grateful.”
“You already said that. I know this. I’ve already acknowledged my debt.”
But the Prince couldn’t look Tomaz in the face. He continued to stare at the ground, trying to count leaves, trying to calm his mind, trying to stop himself from thinking. Thinking and feeling.
“Of course,” Tomaz said. “But you are not weak because you need help. You are not weak because you are grateful.”
The Prince coughed to clear his throat.
An arm wrapped around his shoulders.
“There you go,” the big man said. “There you go.”