Chapter 21
Arla was almost to the door of the tavern she had seen across the street when she heard the telltale sound of booted feet behind her. She had lived inside Castle Grey for too many years not to recognise the sound of Cyrus’s soldiers. But for them to follow her to Vorstrum…
She disappeared down a dark alley, waited a moment, and then slammed the body of the soldier against the wall as he rounded the corner.
He didn’t wear his usual uniform – clever man – but she had recognised his footfalls all the same.
He’d been guarding the royal suite for as long as she had been at the castle.
‘Explain. Now.’
He had the good sense to look petrified, his blue eyes widening as his fingers shook around a rolled-up scroll of parchment.
Arla tore it from his hands, unrolling it and scanning the familiar handwriting.
Return home.
Change of plan.
C.
She screwed up the parchment in her fist, tightening the grip on the soldier’s tunic.
There was no way in fucking hells she was returning to Hadalyn, not now.
She wouldn’t let herself dwell on the question of whether Cyrus knew about the slaves – he simply couldn’t – but she’d be damned if she returned to Castle Grey to demand he summon an army without knowing everything there was to know.
Tomorrow she might think on it. But today, Cyrus wanting to change her orders so late into the job made her suspicious. She could only imagine that Orson, the fucking rat, had lied to Cyrus about her behaviour in Larkire and she was being summoned home as punishment.
‘Tell the King I’ll return the day after you. Our horses are weary and need rest,’ she said, releasing the soldier. The lie had come easily and he bought it, nodding once before retreating back the way he had come.
She didn’t know when exactly she would return home. Nearly two weeks had passed already, so what was a few more days? For now she was content to let the palace think she was on the way.
* * *
Not one person glanced at her as she made her way inside the tavern, and for a moment it felt as though she was still in Hadalyn, moving amongst thieves and fighting in the pits with men twice her size. She very rarely came out with more than a bruise.
But the memory of what she had seen at the border dragged her into the present, bringing forth that unwavering, furious anger she had been caging in all evening.
She didn’t know what the true purpose of this evening’s expedition into town was anymore: to gather information on what had been going on behind Kastonia’s doors, or to blow off steam in a bar brawl – or something a little more dangerous? All, she hoped.
She entered the first tavern she found. She was immediately hit with the stench of sweat and ale, and a familiar comfort wrapped its arms around her.
She would enjoy tonight’s quest because it was all too natural to become someone else and eavesdrop on conversations between patrons at the bar.
Even the subtlest of men had a hard time keeping secrets from her when she batted her eyelashes and promised an hour of her time for the price of a secret.
She had yet to deliver on any of those promises.
It took all of two minutes to charm a flabby, red-faced man into buying her a drink, and even less time for her to dissolve into the wave of people and find a seat in the back where he could not find her.
Spying in taverns was becoming a pattern, apparently, but this bar was proving to be void of anything of interest. Everybody here was too drunk or didn’t care enough about the state of the world to bother discussing it.
The lack of information was frustrating her and she wondered why she had not just gone to sleep like Hark had.
She gritted her teeth at the thought of him. Or rather, at the smile that was trying to break through her carefully held restraint.
Ugh. Hark Stappen.
She could never, ever be friends with him, and she certainly shouldn’t be trying to hide a smile at the thought of him.
He had been kind though. No, not kind. It was more like—
Enough!
He hadn’t been kind. He had been keeping her on side by promising to help free the slaves. Gods, what was he thinking? If Elrod found out that his ambassador was actively planning to steal his shipments out from under him…
She didn’t dare entertain the thought that Cyrus might know; that he might have sent her here to see if she would betray him.
No. Cyrus couldn’t know. He was a kind man and he would be utterly livid when he found out what Elrod had been up to. What his shipments had really been.
There would be no aiding Kastonia, then. Cyrus would send an army and make them pay for ever going against that treaty.
Sighing, and with a slight sway to her walk that hadn’t been there before the ale she’d swallowed, she made her way to the back door of the tavern.
The alley behind the building wasn’t much clearer, but as her disgust at the vomiting drunken patrons had her storming through the lingering crowd, one sentence caught her attention and caused her feet to halt abruptly against the cobbles.
‘They moved another lot last night. Wagon full of ’em.’
She turned slowly, careful not to catch eyes with the group whose conversation she had been waiting for all night.
They were huddled against the wall – two men holding pints of ale and a woman smoking something that made Arla’s chest ache.
She caught sight of that gods-damned dragonhart symbol tattooed on the inside of the woman’s wrist and groaned internally.
‘Terrible business. I doubt half of them make it to the border alive.’
‘King’s not ’appy. I ’eard, another lot went missing this week.’
‘Yeah, well he won’t be, will he, all that power escaping his greedy hands.’
What?
‘The bastard can burn for all I care.’
His people weren’t happy, then. It wasn’t at all surprising, judging by the wealth he liked to flaunt in his scarlet palace.
‘It’s only going to get worse for him. I heard the boy is back with his crew.’
What in the gods’ names was going on?
‘I ’eard more than that. I ’eard he brought that ’ore with ’im.’
‘That whore could cut your throat right now and you wouldn’t even know she was here. You don’t get to where she is through bluffing.’
Surely not…?
‘You’re telling me a woman was appointed to be the King’s Assassin without him bedding her? The position didn’t even exist before she whored herself to the king.’
They were talking about her, then.
But that meant…
She was going to carve the bastard’s heart out and feed it to him.
She wrenched open the door of the tavern and slammed it behind her with such force that it could have rattled the stars, unable to escape the rage swelling in her body.
She didn’t care who, or how, or what, but somebody was going to be on the receiving end of her wrath and likely send it back to her in the form of a fist.
* * *
Later, Arla stormed the streets back to the inn with the fury of the gods beneath her feet, twisting her blade over and over in her hand. She didn’t know who she was angrier with – Hark for lying to her, or herself for not realising what was going on.
She’d promised not to harm the ambassador, but after what she’d learnt tonight, gods help Hark Stappen when she found him.