18. Eighteen
eighteen
The sun had barely crested the horizon when Neira was roused by a polite knocking at her door. Her night had been fitful, with only shreds of sleep snatched here and there, most of it spent worrying in the dark. The disturbance woke her from a doze that left her more exhausted than she had been drifting into it.
For a moment, she kept her eyes firmly closed, the blanket over her head, and imagined Safir's sweet voice accompanied by the dragging of the curtains. The familiar sounds of the castle as it awoke around her. The promise of breakfast, of Ramin begging her for a new strings trick, of a day full of tiny, needling inconveniences that she could lose herself in. Perhaps even the solace of the library, where she'd delve into a story that wasn’t hers.
But the voice that called for her was not Safir's. Erqis had once again sent his huntsman to deal with her, and all Neira wanted was to pretend she wasn't here so Qavor would go away. Perhaps, if she pretended well enough, the Grey King's forces would leave without her.
"Your Highness, we are almost ready to leave."
She had no such luck.
"I have brought you some food from the kitchens." Another pause when she didn't answer. "I'll return for you in half an hour."
She listened to his heavy steps fading before rolling onto her back and staring at the ceiling above her bed. Such a mundane view, something she had taken for granted.
They weren't dragging her away, but she had to leave all the same. But still, the thought remained… maybe she could slip away on the road, in a quiet moment, perhaps at night. Find shelter in one of the settlements that surely had to exist somewhere in her realm, no matter what Erqis had said. She'd appeal to the people, move them into her court. Continue her life as planned.
Or sail away and begin a new one. Now there was an idea. Those new connections, the unfamiliar scenarios she had feared before – they suddenly seemed much more appealing.
Neira rolled out of bed, taking time to right the pillows and blankets, and kept her window open wide while she ate what Qavor had brought – weak tea, hastily brewed, some slices of bread, porridge topped with apple – and dressed in clothes suitable for travel. Warm leggings, thick boots, a tunic and vest that had belonged to Safir, although she had never seen her maid wear them.
She stood in the doorway when she was finished. Neira fit the sight of it all into her heart, then closed the door on all she had ever known.
There was no one she recognised when she stepped into the courtyard. It was filled with people, soldiers young and older alike, all in the same uniform with slight variation. She lingered by the broad stairs. Ahead lay the village with its inhabitants returned to the dust they had been raised from, and beyond the high walls, somewhere, was the place her father had fallen.
She wondered if Erqis would lead them through the battlefield, if he'd point it out to her just to be cruel.
Some of the soldiers were watching her as they checked their packs for a last time; some openly, some trying to be subtle. Neira knew how she must look, standing at the bottom of the stairs, awkward and lost, like a young girl keen to catch a last glance of the man she hoped would be her lover upon his return.
It was ridiculous.
They were taking her hostage, stealing her from her home with force, and she was feeling like she didn't belong when she was the only one who did.
Neira huffed quietly to herself, turning around to march back inside until the Grey King bothered to remember her. Maybe he wouldn't notice she wasn't with them until they were long gone.
She ran nose-first into a broad chest, hard enough that Erqis had to catch her by the arms so she wouldn't reel backwards down the stairs.
"And where are you off to?"
"Coming to find you," Neira told him, sweet poison in her voice. "I was hoping you had died in the night, and I had plans for your stiff corpse."
Erqis grinned, utterly unaffected by her hostility. "A good plan, but I don't have to be dead to offer you something stiff."
"I'd prefer it, though."
"I'm sure you would, pet." He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, affable as if he hadn't enraged her the day before, and led her back down towards the group.
"Princess Neira is joining us on our journey home," Erqis stated, his voice raised to reach every corner of the courtyard. "She shall be my treasured guest and we will treat her as such. That means a security detail at all hours until we reach Duskport."
Bastard . A wrinkle in her plan, but they'd have to look away from her at some point.
"Where are the horses?" she asked.
"Hopefully where we left them, outside of Brightmere."
Neira dug her heels into the ground. "I am not walking to Duskport!"
"You're not. Just to the border with Vellia, where the rest of my forces are, and then we ride to Breakshore so we can take the Coastway home. Like civilised people."
She glowered at him. "A road does not make one civilised."
"You'll find that it absolutely does." Erqis dragged her closer, that insufferable grin playing around his lips again. "It’s just a short walk, your Highness. Unless you want me to carry you?"
"You would carry me?" Neira turned to him, with large, pleading eyes, and rested a hand on his chest. It worked like a charm – Erqis bent his head to be closer to her, something eager flitting over his expression, something that gave her an edge.
She dropped her pack on his foot.
"Then you won't mind carrying my pack,” Neira said over his yelp of pain, then strode ahead to join Qavor just as amusement began to colour the Farn’s face.
The trip was miserable.
Erqis carried her pack easily enough alongside his own, both slung over one brawny shoulder, but even so he had complained about the weight of it for the first few miles, becoming increasingly more obnoxious with his guesses of what she might have packed. Although his mouth was regrettably free his hands were not, which left Qavor to assist her whenever Neira got stuck in the boggy moors.
Which she did. A lot.
Her leggings were soaked through to mid-thigh by the time they made camp, after not as much ground covered as they surely could have without her. Slowing them down wasn't nearly as satisfying as Neira had imagined it could be; not when she was wet, and cold. Her body ached from exertion she wasn’t used to. Every mile they trudged sapped her of all strength.
She was at least given a little vindication by the fact that they were at least just as bad as she was at avoiding the deeper parts of the moors where the ground looked solid but wasn't; they were all exhausted and filthy in equal measures.
The sun went down and took its filmy light with it. The rations were dry and cold. And the night itself? Erqis kept close to her in the most annoying fashion. When she had to relieve herself, he sent two female soldiers with her. When he slept, Qavor would watch over her, and vice-versa.
Escape would have been impossible, but she would not have tried to here. To Neira, every direction looked the same, especially once they had entered the treeline.
The second day of marching was even worse – her muscles were aching badly, not used to such demanding exercise, especially not without proper rest. Especially not without a hot cup of tea at breakfast. There was a rage simmering in her, but Neira was too exhausted to make use of it.
And still, the battalion was quiet. Every now and then, a pair or group would murmur amongst themselves, and one of the female soldiers – a woman not much older than her, with shorn hair and a nose that had at one point healed crookedly – stuck close throughout the first half of the day to try and engage her in light conversation.
Neira answered her as cordially as she could. None of this was her fault, after all. But her short answers didn’t make for thrilling conversation and the soldier soon gave up, exhausted silence falling over them again.
Despite her exhaustion, Neira did have to admit it was interesting to see her realm up close for the first time. All she had ever known was the castle and the view over the moors from her window, but this… this was something entirely different. More uncomfortable, certainly, but strangely beautiful as well. The forest was full of pale, almost barren trees that looked like bony arms jutting from the soft ground – especially at night, when eerily glowing bugs bobbed around them, making the shadows between the trees even deeper.
And she had yet to see anything but uninhabitable, unstable soil; no settlements, certainly no farms.
"How much farther?"
Her companion, Emra, gave her a sympathetic wince, the thick scar across her eye pulling with the motion. "It took us almost five days to reach your home, Highness."
What she didn't say rang loud and obvious – they would need more than that to get out.
Neira was certain they had lost their way, and she had certainly lost track of if this was the third day, or the fifth, or longer still.
The scenery was more of the same, grey trees and brown muck and black water, occasionally blackened trees and brown water. She'd come to long for the moment that Erqis would call a stop for the night, even the brief break they took around midday – if it even was midday, as no one could see the sun well enough to tell.
Everyone else seemed to match her exhaustion. Not only was Neira darkly pleased that everyone else was also suffering, their exhaustion also meant that meant an opportunity would likely soon present itself.
It came when the soldiers began making camp, and only Emra followed Neira for her ablutions. A very tired Emra, who had picked up two watch shifts the night before so her king could sleep, and who was now dozing off as she leaned against one of the spindly trees.
Neira slipped away. On the way, she had slowly learned which part of the ground was solid and which parts only pretended to be; useful knowledge, because the less noise she made stumbling around, the easier it would be to get away.
In all truth, this was likely a very, very bad idea. She had left her pack back at camp, because she had realised that taking it would have been suspicious. This, in turn, meant she didn't have clothes except for what she was currently wearing, nor did she have rations, or the jewels she had packed to sell for passage.
It was also becoming increasingly obvious that she would very likely lose her way, especially with night so close – who knew what creatures lived here? And what if she stumbled into the large, brackish lake they had passed on the way? It had been silent and still, but that meant nothing. Untold numbers of murk-dwellers could be lurking in there, waiting for her to lose her way and fall in.
Neira's steps faltered. Perhaps it would be more beneficial to run once they had crossed into Vellia...
Through the trees, in the middle distance, she spotted a wall. It was so surprising a sight after days of nothing but hostile nature that Neira gaped, trailing to a complete stop. A settlement. That was a settlement, it had to be; the wall was connected to another, and another, and she could just spot another stone hut behind that one.
She glanced back, over her shoulder, and nearly cried out in surprise, biting the inside of her cheek to silence herself.
"Where are you off to?" Erqis was leaning back against a tree, that infuriating grin on his face despite how exhausted he looked – as exhausted as she felt, with bruised shadows under his eyes and a drawn mien to his expression, his boots and trousers just as filthy as hers. What had been stubble when they left had since thickened along his jaw again.
Either he had appeared out of thin air, or he was capable of being quiet when it suited him.
"I'm scouting," she told him, drawing a bark of laughter from him that grated on every single nerve she possessed.
"Scouting. Alone? Are you sure you're not trying to run away?" He sauntered towards her. "Because that would be stupid, Neira."
Before he could reach her, Neira turned back towards the village and began to march.
"Neira."
She yanked her arm away from his reaching hand before he could touch her.
"Neira, there's nothing in that direction."
"There's very clearly a village. Are you blind, or just stupid?" She had to sidestep Erqis every time he put himself into her path. "Get out of my way!"
"There is nothing there." He cupped her shoulders with both hands, dipping his head to peer into her eyes. His voice held a gentleness that tightened her throat for all the wrong reasons. "Nothing at all, Neira. Trust me."
"You have proven yourself untrustworthy. Let go of me." Neira lifted her chin defiantly, staring at him, unwavering, until Erqis sighed and finally released her.
"Fine. Go on, then."
He trailed a few steps behind her, following her to the settlement – or what was left of it. The buildings were all at least half-crumbled, an unnatural stillness smothering over the place.
"Gods below..." So many bones, scattered, many of them charred, even more half-trodden into the mud. She turned to look back at Erqis, who was staring at the lake just visible through the trees, a pensive look on his face. "What happened here?"
"There was a battle." She had never heard his voice like this. Raw, low, none of its usual levity to be found. "But these people – they've been gone for a long, long time, Neira."
Your realm is a graveyard . It hadn't been a glib comment about his war prowess, or his slaughter of civilians.
Erqis had been nothing but truthful.
"There is really no one left? No one at all?" Gods, she was cold. Not just from the damp of her clothes, but from the inside, a chill that no fire would be able to thaw.
"I don't think so, no."
This time, Neira didn’t struggle against the heavy arm Erqis draped around her shoulders, and merely let him steer her back towards camp. She sent a brief, silent prayer for the souls slain behind her, however long ago their original deaths had been. A fortnight ago, she would have been appalled. Today, she only felt mildly horrified, too tired for anything else – she had to focus on herself if no one else was left.
She'd have to adjust the plan.