2 #2
“If you have any experience with my kind, you’ll know that when we are infused with consciousness, we are also imprinted with a sense of duty to our riders.
Many carpets have inhibitor strands as well, to ensure their compliance.
A carpet with no rider may do as it pleases, but once we are transporting a human, we are bound to carry them wherever they wish to go.
Those carpets will follow us until their riders command them to stop. ”
“Wonderful. Just perfect. Can you try to lose them?”
“Do you want me to try, or do you want me to lose them?” the carpet says, with forced patience.
“Do it. Evade them, lose them, get us away from them. Please.”
“It seems you’ve remembered your manners. I’d suggest you hang on, but since you were so careless as to mount me upside down, there are no loops or handles to hang onto. So I will merely wish you good luck. Should you tumble off, I will not return for you.”
“Oh shit,” mutters the prince, and he lunges forward, seizing the front two tassels with both hands.
I throw my arms around his waist as the carpet launches himself forward, blazing across the sky at a terrifying speed.
I can hardly breathe through the wind streaking past my face.
Tears whip from my eyes, and I have to close them tight.
The carpet swerves to the right, then ducks down before banking sharply upward. I want to open my eyes, to help fight off our pursuers, but at this speed, I’d only end up flying off the carpet and being impaled on some forest treetop.
“I’m going to be sick,” rasps the prince.
“Vomit on a single fiber of mine, and you’ll wish you were dead,” the carpet tells him pleasantly.
“You’re not a normal carpet,” Vawn replies.
“Clever of you to deduce that. There’s a reason I was stuck in a display case instead of serving some wealthy family. I have no inhibitor strand to enforce my obedience, and apparently my dedication to correct thinking and precision of language is abhorrent to some humans.”
“No shit,” mutters Vawn.
The carpet veers to the left, banking upward again. My stomach sloshes, and I fervently regret gulping that Kredissian Sun-bloom cocktail earlier. The back of my throat burns.
“Heads down, please,” advises the carpet.
Vawn is already lying on his stomach, and I’m draped on his back with both arms locked around him and my face pressed to his shoulder blade.
I shift slightly and tuck my head against his side.
His coat smells of charna cigarettes, sharp alcohol, and floral perfume—the girls who were rubbing themselves all over him.
Even with my eyes closed, I can tell that we’re heading straight down, and a scream rips from my throat.
Vawn is yelling, too. I feel things whipping past us…
branches, maybe? Tree trunks? We’ve entered the forest, something most magic carpets won’t do.
They can easily be snagged, tangled, or torn apart amid the trees.
The carpet halts abruptly, and my stomach lurches into my throat. Vawn gags loudly.
“They won’t follow us in here,” the carpet says. “But if I keep flying, they’ll see the glow of my fibers through the canopy. They’ll be able to track us that way as long as I’m active.”
“We need to roll you up to deactivate you.” I climb off the prince and manage to stand up beside the hovering carpet. “Is that all right with you?”
“What a refreshing question. Humans usually just roll me up without asking. In this case, I don’t mind being deactivated. In fact, I welcome it. I’ve been swirling around in that display for hours. It will be a relief to have a rest.”
“Very well then.” I reach out to steady Vawn as he scrambles off the carpet. He ignores my hand and staggers over to lean against a tree.
“Do me a favor and roll me up with my riding surface inside and the protective layer on the outside,” the carpet requests. “That’s the proper way to do it.”
“Of course.” After the reckless ride, I’m a little shaken, but I manage to roll the carpet up neatly. He goes silent, and the glow of the unicorn hair disappears. I expected the bundle to be heavy, but it’s surprisingly light, if a little unwieldy.
Without the illumination of the carpet, the prince and I are left in almost complete darkness. We’re in the center of a forest, and other than the carpet and a few knives, we have nothing.
I’ve never been so glad to have the illumination glyph on my forefinger.
Since the glow is faint, it will last us a few hours before the telltale prickles of pain warn me that my energy deposit in that finger has been depleted.
As long as I deactivate the glyph before my fingertip starts to blacken and wither, I’ll be fine.
“What glyphs do you have?” I ask the prince. He’s got his back to me, with his forearm braced against a tree and his head bowed. When he doesn’t answer, I persist. “Anything that can help us? Navigation, communication?”
“No.” He turns away from the tree, anger sharpening every line of his face. “Forget about glyphs. You’re not dodging my questions anymore. What happened back there?”
I chew my lip, trying to figure out how to say it. “Look, I don’t have confirmation. Your cousin may have been wrong about his message.”
“The one he died to give me?” Vawn’s mouth curves in a vicious smile. “Tell me anyway.”
“Lord Praxid said his whole family was murdered, along with your entire bloodline, and that people were coming for you as well, which turned out to be true. In my professional opinion, it’s a good bet that his message was accurate.”
“Your professional opinion.” His laugh has fangs; it’s meant to hurt both of us.
“You’re a temporary bodyguard. A trial run.
A pretty face, a pair of exemplary tits, and a cute fucking ass.
I’ll grant you, the knife play was good, but defeating one man hardly makes you a professional.
If there’s been a coup, and I’m being hunted, I need a real bodyguard, not a graduate fresh from the Academy. ”
“I got you out of the Lyre & Vice, didn’t I?”
“That was mostly the carpet.”
“And it was my idea to steal the carpet. You were catatonic. Totally useless.”
“Useless?” His lip arches over clenched teeth.
The word stings him. Interesting.
“You heard me. Useless. Now tell me what glyphs you have at your disposal, and then we should start walking.”
“I’ll walk, but I’m not telling you shit.”
Tucking the rolled-up carpet under my arm, I look up through the foliage to note the position of the moon. “Fine. This way, Your Highness.”
We walk in silence, picking our way over roots and fallen trees.
I try to keep our pace reasonably quick, though we can’t go too fast without risking a sprained ankle.
At least the assassins can’t track us. Royal researchers have tried to develop systems for magically tracking people, but they haven’t developed anything reliable yet.
To track someone, you would have to have matching location glyphs on your finger and that of the target, and both glyphs would need to be active at the same time.
I wish I knew what other magic the prince carries. I’m not sure why he’s being so secretive about it.
After a few minutes, I press the issue again. “I saw most of your glyphs during the carriage ride. I identified seven of them, but there were three I didn’t recognize.”
“Is that so?”
“Your glyphs are mostly designed to enhance either your pleasure or your partner’s.
Nerve stimulants, flexibility, stamina. The stamina glyph might be more useful if it applied to your whole body instead of just your dick, but I noticed the serif on the bottom of the design, limiting its effect to that part of your anatomy. Not the wisest choice.”
He vents a scoffing laugh. “You’re going to be in so much trouble for speaking to me like this. You have no respect for my position at all.”
“Do you still have a position?”
It’s a cruel thing to say if Praxid’s message was true, but he’s so infuriating I don’t really care.
“I fucking hate you,” the prince mutters.
“The feeling is more than mutual, I promise. If you don’t want my help, I’ll be happy to leave you here in the woods and let those soldiers find you.”
“You’re contracted to protect me tonight,” he counters. “You can’t leave.”
“I think I can. I think this coup or rebellion means that you have no more authority over me.”
He stops walking, and I turn to face him. A shaft of moonlight illuminates his pale face, turning his eyes icy and ethereal. He looks stunned, like the reality of what’s happening just registered with him.
Or perhaps it’s a calculated expression, intended to throw me off my guard.
“Please.” His full lips form the word softly. “Please stay. Help me.”
I shift my stance and renew my grip on the carpet.