Chapter Twelve Out of Banelyn
They made it to the stables easily, as no one had thought to guard them, and then quickly through the hidden door, which Tomaz simply threw a shoulder into and it crumpled inward.
From there they made it to the top of the Black Wall, and then began to descend the other side.
The Prince was so tired, though, and the places on his wrists where he had fought his bonds so chaffed and sore, that when he was still a good ten yards above the rooftop, his hands gave out.
Luckily, Tomaz had gone down first, and the big man caught him before he tumbled to his death.
Once they made it to ground level, things became easier. The guards inside the walls had been alerted, but the Outer City was still mostly silent. As the Prince had predicted, everyone had gone to the main gates, and the Seeker’s Path had remained unguarded.
As they passed through the city, they picked out a few pairs of clean Commons clothing drying on tightly stretched bits of thin rope the Exiles called clotheslines.
The Prince, very gratefully, shed his filthy clothing, even his undergarments, and changed them all for fresh cotton replicas.
To his surprise, he was quite excited to pull on the new Commons pants and shirt.
They certainly weren’t his Prince robes, but they were comfortable and provided good mobility, which would help with the escape.
“Princeling,” Tomaz rumbled.
He turned and saw that the big man was holding up a hammer he’d found in an equipment rack.
The big man motioned for him to approach, and the Prince did.
Tomaz held the Prince’s hands over a low stone wall, and then deftly swung the hammer once, twice, thrice.
There was a loud clatter of metal, and then the shackles fell away, and the Prince was free.
For a long moment they all stood, frozen, waiting to see if anyone had heard the noise.
But when no alarm was raised, a hand tapped the Prince on the shoulder, and he turned to see the girl holding up the smaller of the waterskins and a tiny cake of Tomaz’s soap.
“Wash those cuts.”
“No, I’m fine,” he said.
“Do it,” the girl insisted.
“We can do it when we’re safe away from here,” he insisted back, feeling that she was being unreasonable.
“We can do it now,” she said, eyeing him dangerously, “when we don’t have Imperials right on top of us. I’m not saving you just so you die in a week from infection.”
“We’ll have time later.”
“Just wash the cuts.”
“Make me,” the Prince retorted.
“Make you? Are you seven? Just wash them!”
“No!”
The girl seized the waterskin, but the Prince refused to let go, and the result was that they ended up nose-to-nose glaring at each other again.
“Save the bickering for later,” Tomaz rumbled. “We’re escaping right now.”
A beat passed, and then both of them dropped the skin, which the big man caught and tied to his waist. Tomaz turned and vaulted over the wall that surrounded the garden. The Prince and the Exile girl followed close behind, very pointedly not looking at each other.
They made their way through the Outer City and circled around to the Roarke road, heading south.
The haphazard, rundown backstreets of the Outer City turned once more to wide, smooth paving stones, and their pace picked up.
Soon they were past the last houses and shops and crossing the large grassy area that surrounded the city.
A wind sprang up behind them and brought sounds of pursuit, but they were far away now, and the cries were fading as they left the city.
The road began to twist and turn, making its way through a series of small hills.
They were all panting for breath now, and the Prince felt as though his heart might give out from sheer exhaustion.
But somehow he found the energy to carry on until they’d gotten far enough away and left the road altogether.
Tomaz and the Exile girl slowed, and the Prince gratefully followed suit.
They headed toward a series of larger hills covered in trees.
Pine trees. The smell cast the Prince’s mind back to their journey through the Elmist Mountains.
That journey had been defined by his need to escape from the same Exiles who were now his one chance of survival.
If he had been more rested, he might have better appreciated the irony.
They stopped on a grassy hillside at the tree line of a forest from which they could just see Banelyn.
They stood there for a moment, catching their breath, the Prince barely able to stand.
Tomaz disappeared off into the forest, and the Prince took one step to follow but almost fell to the ground.
He wished they still had the pack horse, even if he had to be tied onto it again.
As if in answer to his prayers, Tomaz emerged from the wooded glen leading the very same packhorse the Prince had stolen and taken into the city.
“How… how?” he asked weakly.
“While she was following you, I followed the horse,” Tomaz said. “Trudger’s a good horse. Wouldn’t want to lose him.”
“Trudger,” the Prince said. “I didn’t know it had a name.”
Tomaz smiled slightly. “He does.”
The Prince thought about what the giant had said for a moment—about the girl following him. Abruptly, he turned to her, and saw her staring out at the distant city.
“I don’t know your name,” he said bluntly. The fact that he was still trying to catch his breath made him more curt than he’d intended.
The girl turned to him and raised an eyebrow. He looked at her for a long moment, then swallowed, took a deep breath, and spoke again.
“Would you please tell me your name? I would like to know it.”
“I’ve heard that question before somewhere,” she said dryly, “though I vaguely remember being the one to ask it.”
The Prince nodded. And then, on sudden impulse, he took a step forward, drawing the dagger she’d lent him.
She tensed, but he ignored that. She had every right to be wary of him—for that matter, she had every right to hit him upside the head and leave him unconscious to meet his fate, the way he’d done to her.
But he didn’t strike her with the dagger, as she must have feared; instead, he offered it to her.
“I… apologize. For the way I acted.”
Part of him was watching what he was doing in disbelief, but the larger part of him felt that this was right.
She had saved his life, even though he had given her no reason to.
There was honor in this, and justice, in a way that was separate from the laws of the Empire.
This was something between the two of them.
This was a debt he had to repay. And this was the least he could do to fulfill that obligation.
“Thank you for lending this to me,” he continued, holding the dagger out in both hands. “And thank you for coming for me of your own free will.”
He turned and nodded to Tomaz.
“Both of you, of course.”
Tomaz nodded and smiled. The Prince turned back to the girl and watched her, wondering what her reaction would be. She stared at the dagger, and then looked up into his face.
“I don’t either,” she said.
Given that this response didn’t seem to make sense, the Prince suddenly wondered if she had been hit on the head during their escape.
“Don’t… what?” he asked.
“Don’t kill people unless I have to,” she said quietly, piercing him with her green eyes.
The Prince drew a sharp breath as he remembered her reaction to him when he had said that.
He opened his mouth to respond, but then shut it.
He didn’t know what to say, and so, as Tomaz had recommended on the day they’d met, he would say nothing at all.
“We need to move,” Tomaz rumbled. The girl broke her gaze away from his and nodded to Tomaz. She paused, then spoke again to the Prince.
“Keep the dagger. You might still need it. We aren’t out of this yet.”
She walked away, and the Prince realized that she wouldn’t answer his original question and tell him her name. He didn’t know why, but that realization hurt, and it made his heart sink.
It was understandable, though. He was probably the last person she wanted in her debt. And why would she trust him with her name? He had betrayed her. He slid the dagger into the belt of his borrowed clothing and looked out at the city again, trying to hide his disappointment.
“Leah,” she said.
He froze, then quickly turned back around. She was still facing away from him, her back tensed in a way that told him the answer had slipped out on its own through clenched teeth.
“My name… is Leah Goldwyn.”
He swallowed to work moisture into his mouth.
“Thank you, Leah Goldwyn, for saving my life. I am in your debt.”
When he fell silent, she walked away, over to the horse.
The Prince turned to Tomaz. “And I thank you, too, Tomaz. I am in your debt as well. Thrice over, it would appear.”
Tomaz inclined his head solemnly, accepting the Prince’s thanks. The big man’s eyes followed him as he turned once more to look at the city.
“You were telling the truth,” the Prince said blankly. “And this time there can be no doubt. The Seeker told me, before he locked me away. Told me everything about the assassination, about what my….”
He fell silent, but what he had meant to say hung in the air, whole and complete even though he hadn’t finished it: about what my Mother had commanded. He felt more than saw the Exiles exchange a glance. After a moment of tension, Leah cleared her throat noisily.