Chapter Sixteen Choices
Morning dawned with the Prince still holding watch, his mind whirling with thoughts. He hadn’t been able to sleep, and, in any case, he felt he owed a full night’s rest to Tomaz and Leah for carrying him all this way.
Leah was the first to stir, waking with a luxurious stretch like a cat. She opened her eyes and rolled over, taking in the banked fire and the sleeping form of Tomaz, and then the Prince.
“Have you been on watch all night?” she asked, sleep coloring her voice. The Prince couldn’t help but smile at the unfeigned surprise in her tone.
“Yes,” he said. “It felt fair. I’ve been sleeping for a while, after all.”
“Huh. All right,” she said. Then in one fluid motion, she rose to her feet, the blanket dropping off of her, and she walked over to wake Tomaz. The Prince went to the saddlebags and pulled out more cheese and bread for breakfast. He was pleased that his hands weren’t shaking.
They ate their meal in silence, enjoying the food and the brisk morning air.
“What’s our plan for moving on?” the Prince asked, bracing himself.
“We’re going to make for the Pass of Roarke,” Tomaz said.
“There’re a few passes through the mountains that we can use to cross—they’re usually patrolled by rotating squads of men from Roarke, but if we’re quick we’ll be able to make it across the border before they even know we’re there. Then we head to Vale–”
“No,” the Prince said.
Leah and Tomaz stopped eating.
“What do you mean no?” Leah asked, eyes flashing.
“I mean you were right, Leah, I’m not one of you,” he said quietly. “I can’t let my personal injustices at the hands of the Empire make me believe rebellion is the right course of action. So, I won’t be going with you through the Pass. I won’t be going to Vale.”
They sat staring at him with incredulity.
“The Empire is good,” he said emphatically.
“It’s good for the people who live under its rule, it’s good for the development of the land, it’s good for the majority.
And while you’ve saved me on multiple occasions, I will never rebel against the lawful rule of the Diamond Throne.
I—I am… grateful,” the word caught in his throat, but he forced it out, “and you have given me much to think about. But my place is in the Empire. I am a Prince of the Realm as long as I bear the Raven Talisman, and I cannot turn my back on my responsibility.”
A long silence followed this pronouncement. Finally, the girl stood up, staring at him, and the Prince knew that she felt vindicated. Here he was making all of the arguments that she had made last night.
“And what about the slave auction you saw in Banelyn?”
He flinched back, as if she’d physically hit him. The memory came back to him, unbidden, and he was once more nauseated.
“Yes, I know you saw it, I know you were there,” she said.
“You’ve seen the kind of men the Empire employs, scum like the Defenders.
You saw that they were going to take me to Formaux and would have held me and tortured me until I was dead, simply because it would hurt my father and give them leverage.
You’ve seen now what your Empire does to people! ”
“Yes!” the Prince snapped back, “and that is why I am needed here! I can’t just run away from all of that, I can’t just give up and leave the Empire to run off and become a rebel.
Do you know how many of the Most High ever leave Lucien to see the Empire?
How many ever leave their own Province to visit a neighboring one if they do not need to?
If I can make them see the world they’ve unknowingly created, then I can make the Empire better! ”
“And when you return and they kill you, what then?”
“What does it matter to you, anyway? I thought it was too risky to bring me back to your precious Vale in the first place!”
The shout came out of him before he could stop it, and Leah took a step back, apparently surprised by the hurt and reproach she heard in his voice. He took a deep breath. This arguing was getting him nowhere.
“In any case, you’ve gotten your wish. I’m not going with you.”
“Your intentions are good, princeling,” Tomaz rumbled, a look of near panic on his face, as if things were quickly getting out of hand.
“But you had never left the capital city yourself until a very short while ago. You do not know how this world works. As soon as your name was taken from you, you were made into an outcast, and even if you wish to return to change things for the better, there are men and armies after you as we speak. You’ve killed Defenders.
You’ve destroyed Death Watchmen. The life of a Bloodmage is on your hands.
You’ve defied your Mother’s orders to return to the capital, ignored the commands of a Seeker, and saved the lives of two Exiled Kindred. ”
The Prince shook his head. This was wrong. It was all wrong.
“I can’t just run away. I can’t turn my back on my people, on the Empire.”
“It has turned its back on you, princeling.”
“I won’t run away!”
“You’ll just go back and get yourself killed,” Leah muttered. “I should have known. Stupid men, why couldn’t we have kidnapped one of his sisters?”
“You wouldn’t want to meet my sisters,” the Prince said, shaking his head ruefully at the thought of Leah and Symanta in the same room.
“They can’t be worse than you!”
“Enough, both of you,” Tomaz said. A silence fell, as both Leah and the Prince turned away and pretended to be very interested in examining the trees surrounding the clearing.
“If you wish to go, then we cannot stop you.”
The Prince looked quickly at the big man. Tomaz was quite clearly disappointed by this turn of events, but just as clearly resigned to it. There was a deep sadness in his eyes, and the Prince looked away again, feeling as though he were betraying the man in some way.
“Yes, we can keep him! We did it once, we can do it again!” Leah cried.
“No, we cannot, eshendai,” Tomaz said. “We are being pursued by the Empire in force now. Things were different when we had a reasonable chance of passing through the Empire by stealth, but how can we tie up the Prince of Ravens and take him not only through the Pass of Roarke, but past the personal seat of the Prince of Oxen, who will have gotten the message days if not weeks ago that his brother is heading straight toward him? It’s common sense, and if you used your head, you’d know it better than I do.
Calm yourself and consider the situation. ”
For a long moment it looked as though Leah would just ignore Tomaz. But as the Prince watched, the anger seemed to drain out of her, and her face grew calm and still. Her hands continued to clench and unclench by her sides, but eventually those too relaxed, and the Prince breathed more easily.
“You’re right,” she said finally. “The benefits we could receive from his information do not outweigh the danger of not returning. The Elders need our report. We can’t take the risk of being caught by a border patrol.”
She turned to the Prince.
“We can’t let you go now,” she said, and he tensed, “but once we reach the road again near Roarke, we can part there.”
“How long?” the Prince asked.
“A few days at most,” she responded, her eyes now focused past him as if seeing something in her memory. “It’s far enough from Roarke that you won’t be detected by the Prince of Oxen’s forces, and it is close enough to the Pass that we can continue on without any added inconvenience.”
She caught his gaze.
“And then you can go get yourself killed in whatever way you want,” she said, the anger coming back to the surface.
She turned away and began to pack her bedroll.
The Prince looked over at Tomaz, but the big man had begun making his way to the river to fill the waterskins one last time before they left.
The three of them climbed onto their horses in silence soon after, the sun rising quickly in the sky, and set off toward Roarke.
The next few days passed in almost total silence.
The Prince did not feel much like talking, so he kept silent unless a question was asked of him, and that was seldom enough as it appeared Leah and Tomaz were just as reluctant to speak.
The Prince made a habit of reaching through the Talisman every night and every morning, searching for any sign of people following them, but time and again he found only the three of them in the middle of the giant forested mountain range.
The mountains began to become more noticeable as well, the ground dipping less and less often back toward sea level and instead continuing to climb.
The Prince knew from lessons in geography that the Roarke mountain range was easily twice the size of the Elmists, and that passage straight over the top of them was next to impossible.
He wondered how the Exiles were going to get around the Pass of Roarke.
None of my business now, he reminded himself firmly.
One night as they began to make camp while the sun was still in the sky, the Prince broached a subject that had been on his mind. Leah had disappeared into the trees, muttering something to Tomaz but not even acknowledging the Prince’s presence.
“Do you think we’re being followed?” the Prince asked Tomaz.
The big man looked up from starting a fire and raised an eyebrow at him. The Prince quickly continued.
“It’s not that I doubt your word,” the Prince said, “it’s just that it seems like we’re the only ones for miles. As a matter of fact, we are, I can tell you that much for certain. I haven’t caught the slightest hint of the odd hunter or shepherd for days now.”
Tomaz looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, before letting out a long sigh. “I’ve been wondering that as well, truth be told. It’s something of a curiosity that we haven’t caught a hint of trouble sooner. I can only assume that they’re unsure exactly where we are.”