Chapter 9 The Heroic Prince that I Am
Lem
Lady Agatha leads the way down the winding mountain road. I sense she’s not interested in conversation by a whole host of subtle symbols: the stiff set of her shoulders, the tight clench of her fists, the precise crunch of her angry footfalls.
Also, the way she growls every time I say anything. That’s a decent indication.
I almost hope she’ll stumble over a root in the darkness so I can catch her heroically.
I’ll grab her—gently and courteously—right before she twists her ankle—or wait, perhaps she will twist her ankle, and then I’ll lend her a shoulder, and she’ll say, why thank you, Lem, you are not so pathetic after all.
Of course, since she doesn’t know I’m the prince she insulted, she won’t know to take the insult back.
This heartens me. Sure, she’s growling, and something about the expression she gave me while her father was marrying us seemed to indicate extreme displeasure, but she has not yet called me pathetic.
It is during this enjoyable rumination that I nearly fulfill my own prophecy by stumbling over a root in the darkness.
Only Lady Agatha does not catch me, heroically or otherwise.
She does not even seem to notice I have fallen.
I scramble to my feet, grateful I did not twist my ankle, because she’s very unlikely to offer me a shoulder.
“I’m fine, thank you for asking,” I mutter. If Henry were here, he’d call me grumpy.
Well, I’d like to see how he’d handle being turned into a beggar and then married off against his will to an acerbic—
I trip again.
Lady Agatha sighs with more drama than necessary. It was just a small stumble, and it’s dark, and really, why hasn’t she fallen yet? She stomps delicately back to me and holds out a reluctant hand to help me up.
“I don’t need help.” I push myself back up and dust off my trousers.
“Then stop tripping, you—” She cuts herself off with a hiss.
“Little late to hold back on the insults,” I say. “Seems you had plenty of them to bandy about before.” Bitterness laces my words.
She doesn’t reply, just spins away to resume her march down the mountain.
“Perhaps we should, er, call it a night,” I suggest.
No answer.
“Well, you might be energized by bitterness and disappointment, but I’ll confess that the unwelcome events of the evening have wearied me.
” I stress the word unwelcome. She’s not the only one inconvenienced by her father’s drunken decisions.
I squint into the dark woods looming on either side of the road.
“Perhaps we can find a nice little tree to rest beside?”
“Father said he’d have us shot if we were found on his lands.”
I snort. “He’s not the first lord to make a stupid threat while drunk. I daresay he’ll wake up with a splitting headache and a very great desire to grovel his apologies.”
“You think he’ll grovel to you?” Scorn drips from her tone.
I have a small moment of brilliance. “He’ll probably beg me not to speak of this ever again,” I say.
In fact—why, I think I’ve just solved it.
Lord Montberger will probably send a man after us, who will take Lady Agatha back home and give me a nice little sum of hush money.
Henry will come along after, and he’ll tell me how to fix this, er, minstrel issue, and then I can go home to Rhylorria and never think of Lady Agatha again.
Or at least not more than once or twice a day.
Lady Agatha is scoffing. “I’m not going to risk it. I’ve never seen him like—” She snaps her mouth shut so hard I hear the click of her teeth.
“Collapse of exhaustion, then, if you want!” I pick my way through the long grass of the ditch between the road and the woods.
I wish I would have done a bit more research into the dangers of the Candori forests.
Snakes are sleeping at this time of night, yes?
But bats—do they have bats? “Er, I say, do you have bats?”
“Do I have what?”
Upon consideration, Lady Agatha has probably been so spoiled that she’s hardly set foot outside her shabby manor. She won’t know the first thing about bats, or snakes, or wolves, or whatever it is I should be afraid of right now.
I shrug. “I’m going to rest.”
Lady Agatha is silent for a moment, then swishes through the grass behind me. She might also mutter an imprecation on all minstrels in general and me in particular, but as I’m not really a minstrel, I’ll pretend I didn’t hear. Generous of me, really.
I pause before stepping into the gloomy underbrush. Lady Agatha pushes past me without a trace of either hesitation or common sense. I grab her sleeve.
“You can’t just walk in! What if there’s a—lion, or something?”
Lady Agatha turns her head toward me. I don’t think the expression on her face qualifies as a look of admiration, but it’s dark enough that I could be mistaken.
“You think,” she says slowly, scorn oozing from each word, “there might be a lion nearby?”
“Well, not necessarily a lion.” I wipe my hands on my trousers. “There could be any number of … things … hiding in there.”
“Things?” She steps close enough to scrutinize me.
Which, since it’s quite dark, is uncomfortably close. I shift backward. “I wouldn’t want you getting hurt or cursed, my lady.”
“Coward.” The word drips out of her mouth like sour wine. She spins away and glides into the cover of the trees.
I’m not a coward. I just don’t want to meet another godmother. Or the same one I met before, for that matter. I’ve had more than enough of fairies.
However, being the heroic prince I am, I plunge bravely after her.
Agatha
I’m glad I’m so exhausted. It makes it hard to think.
I force my feet to keep moving, one after another, glad to have something to focus on. Once I stop, I’ll have to acknowledge my … companion.
Ugh.
He probably has fleas, and he’s apparently a big baby, scared of the dark, but at least he’s not coughing so much anymore.
I wonder where he’s from, and why he had the great misfortune of turning up tonight of all nights, and why Father would discard me like that, and if he’s really that angry, and if he never really loved—
Wait, no, none of that. I’m not thinking. I’m just walking. Step by step. No thoughts.
Keep moving—keep my eyes open …
I jerk forward when my foot hits an unexpected tree root, sending me to the ground. Normally, the Gift of Grace would help—it’s primarily for dancing, but gives me a quite smooth way of walking as well—but even Grace can’t make trees disappear out of my path.
“This is why we need to stop,” the beggar grumbles as he grabs me and hoists me back up. “You’re barely staying upright.”
“I’m barely staying upright? You nearly broke your neck back on the road!”
“One small stumble is hardly a broken neck!”
I twitch his hand off me and brush at the spot he touched. Hopefully I’ll find a place to wash it off.
“Aren’t we far enough from the road yet?” he continues.
I don’t answer. I don’t know if Father would really make good on his threat, and I don’t want to find out. Best if nobody finds us.
Us. What a horrid thought. I shudder.
Behind me, the beggar makes a ruckus of yawning.
“I’m stopping here,” he says. Leaves rustle as he sets his guitar on the ground and lowers himself down to lean against the trunk of a birch tree.
I hope it’s home to an ant colony. “You can keep going if you want, but I won’t be there to catch you next time you fall. ”
I don’t need you to catch me, I want to say. But I don’t try, because I’m not sure if it’s true. That acknowledgment, even mentally, causes me to grit my teeth. I do not want to need this nasty man.
Besides, why should I care if I fall? Or walk into a ravine and break my neck? No one will mourn me now.
Would it be so bad if I keep walking and just disappear?
I take two more steps. The darkness calls me.
I’ve been cast out, cut off, shunned. I shuffle forward another step, ducking beneath a low-hanging branch.
I’m useless now. Discarded.
Alone.
“Oh, for mercy’s sake,” the beggar grumbles.
More rustling sounds behind me, then the noise of a clumsy man tromping my way.
He takes me by the elbow and tugs me, more gently than I would have imagined.
“I realize this is no great evening for either of us, but getting lost in the woods is not the way to end it, my lady.”
I amend my last thought.
No, I’m not quite alone. More’s the pity.
This man is, undoubtedly, the last person I would have chosen to be my partner in exile. Nevertheless, I submit to his touch and allow him to guide me back to the tree he’d chosen for a resting place.
“It’s not as bad as it seems,” he says, gruffly. “I’ll explain”—a cough—“as much as I can in the morning.”
I sink to the ground and draw my knees to my chest.
“I’m sorry I have no blanket for you,” the beggar says. He sounds reluctant, as if he’s no happier about this than I am. I’m annoyed by that. Just a day ago, I would have been a prize.
Now? Even a wandering minstrel doesn’t want me.
“If you’re cold,” he continues, more reluctant than ever, “you can sit next to me.”
I wrap my arms around my knees, clinging to my teapot and the remains of my dignity, tattered as they are. “I would rather,” I say slowly and clearly, “freeze.”
“Ah.”
I don’t suppose I’ll get any sleep. And yet, as soon as I think that, my eyelids droop and I slip into terrified dreams of what the morrow will bring.
Too soon, I wake. My neck feels like it will never straighten again, dew has soaked into my stockings, and my still-weary eyes are crusted over with unshed tears.
I moan as I try to move my stiff neck and flex my frozen fingers. A cool, earthy scent mingles with the too-cheerful twitter of a songbird to remind me I’m very far from home; metaphorically, at least, if not in miles.
“Sleep well, my lady?”
The raspy sound of the beggar’s voice startles my spine into motion at last, and I jerk my head up to find his stupid feathery cap far closer than I realized.
“Ugh.”