Jehan bowed, low, and left.
He ran back up to his rooms and changed out of his embroidered velvet, pulling on his sturdiest riding gear. He paused and stared down at the gold case in his hand, knowing the next communication in it would be from his father. The temptation to leave it behind was severe. But his road had been laid down as well, the first time he put on a disguise and attacked one of Randart’s strongholds.
He opened the case, took out his last transfer token, tossed it up in the air, and caught it with his fingers. Looked across the room at Kazdi, who stood with his shoulders against the closed door.
“Ride out as fast as you can to the resistance mages. Tell Magister Wesec it’s time to move her mages into place. There’s no more hiding. And if Nadathan and Devli Eban want to help, they’re in.”
Kazdi bowed, his scrawny neck-knuckle bobbing as he swallowed. His bony teenage face was the last thing Jehan saw before the transfer magic wrenched him out of time and space.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The sudden jingle of gear and clatter of many boot steps caused Mirnic Kender to straighten up from the row of buckets she was checking for diminishment of the cleaning spell.
From the siege-camp command tent an arrow shot away, and a stampede of aides and cadets hustled through the opening, dispersing in all directions. She watched them shrug, make gestures of helplessness, and shake heads at the flood of questions. She waited.
Then the cadet on mess duty to the command tent showed up, whistling softly. Mirnic bent over her buckets, making motions with her hands as the boy was met by one of his friends, also on cook detail for the day.
“What was that all about?” the cadet next to her asked the other boy.
“War Commander got one of those magical messages. Told us to wait, opened it, read it, then sent us out on the double. Said something about the king, and he had to answer at once, and he’d be out in a moment, but he did not want distractions.”
“Huh. Was he angry?”
“No. Here’s what’s weird. Most were standing around the map, see, chattering about the siege, and I was collecting the coffee cups. So really I was the only one watching him—couldn’t decide if I should touch his cup or not. I mean, if he was done. You know how he gets—”
“Never mind his coffee!”
“Well, so I was watching, see? He grinned. Like this.”
Mirnic forced herself not to look. Sure enough the other boy let out his breath in a long whoosh. “I’ve only seen that grin once. Pret-ty nasty.”
“Yeah. If you want to know what I think . . .”
No, Mirnic thought. I don’t.
She slipped away without either boy paying her the least attention, and sped to the tent she shared with the single other mage student permitted on the run. Her tent mate was asleep—they traded day and night duty—so Mirnic made sure she made no sound as she knelt at her bunk and wrote:
R. received note, said from king. Sent everyone out of tent right after.
She folded it, put it into her case, and sent it to Magister Zhavic, and then sped back to her duty at the cook tent. As she’d expected, no one noticed she’d been gone.
And far away at the harbor, Magister Zhavic read the note, and checked the log of message reports from Vadnais. No messages had been logged either way between the king and the war commander at all that morning. Unless there was an emergency, they always communicated at night, messages duly reported by the journeymages on duty at the royal castle.
Zhavic smiled his own nasty smile.
Time for a talk with the king.
o0o
So there I was, no breakfast in me, riding on my mare with my hands tied behind me, surrounded by a bunch of teenage boys who either rode in sulky, nervous or gloomy silence, or else clumped together, arguing in fierce whispers.
At least three times I heard Damedran growl versions of “His orders are to take her there and meet him. Shut up! Just shut up! Or if he doesn’t kill you, I will!”
Red shifted his bad mood from Damedran to their lack of food. He got into a short argument with one of the other boys, which made it clear that he’d expected better planning from the others while he and Ban nipped those tunics off someone’s clothesline and scouted around my former place of employment.
I think they might have started another fight had not one of the servants spoken up to say that he had a loaf of journey bread that he’d bought the morning before, just in case.
When we reached a chuckling stream with a fall rushing over a grass-covered rocky hillock, Ban said, “If we don’t stop here for at least some water, you’ll have to shoot me for mutiny. Your bow is right there at your saddle. Here’s my back,” he added, quite unfairly.
Damedran jerked the reins of his horse, who tossed his head up and almost sat down on his haunches. Damedran flung himself out of the saddle, and the horse stood shivering.
My head panged from hunger and thirst, my shoulders and arms ached, and the sight of that frightened horse snapped my temper. “Someone”—I swung my leg over and jumped from my horse—“has anger-management issues.”
“Huh?” Red exclaimed.
Ban mouthed the words anger management?
I glanced meaningfully at Damedran’s horse, and my irritation faded when I saw him soothing the animal, stroking its nose and murmuring, his forehead leaning against the long, sweaty neck.
He wasn’t a complete stinker. But there was the matter of my growling stomach and my aching arms and oh yes. His uncle.
I said kind of generally, to the air, “Every world is different. And places on a single world are different. Where I have been living there are what we call people skills.”
Damedran leaned against his horse, but from the stiffness of his shoulders I sensed he was listening. Red made no pretense. He stared at me, mouth open.
I went on as genially as possible, “For example, death threats whenever someone asks a question. That would constitute bad people skills. Telling people why something is being done, well, that would rank as good people skills.”
Six pairs of eyes swung from me to Damedran and back again. Red snickered, then looked up at the sky as though seeking the Winged Victory of Samothrace.
Ban’s face had gone ruddy from his effort not to laugh. He mumbled, “Garik, I’ll help with the journey bread.”
A couple of the boys led the horses in two strings to the stream while avoiding looking my way.
Damedran and Red stalked ten or twelve paces in the other direction, facing away and arguing in fierce undertones. Behind some flowering shrubs, Ban and the boy named Garik alternated between growls and whispers.
Ban: “I thought princesses were supposed to act toff. Wear silk. Scream orders so they don’t have to get their slippers dusty.”
Garik: “I thought they were supposed to be delicate. She’s nearly as big as Red. Makes Lesi Valleg look scrawny, and wee-yoo, can she fight!”
“Sh. Sh!”
Whisper, whisper.
Ban: “. . . if we don’t follow orders?”
Garik: “I don’t even want to think about it. Here. That’s her share. You take it over there.”
“Coward.”
“Yep. And?” Garik retorted promptly and cheerfully.
While all this was going on, I’d spotted a broad rock near the base of the hillock and sat down, since I couldn’t run with my hands tied behind my back. Ban rounded the shrubs and came toward me, carrying in both hands what looked like nut-bread, each serving put on a broad, slightly waxy leaf—natural dishes, plucked from the shrub nearby.
He bent and set my share next to me.
“Do I get a feedbag?” I asked.
He had avoided my eyes, but the question startled him, and when he glanced up, I shrugged my shoulders and wiggled my fingers behind me. His face reddened, and he turned Damedran’s way.
The Randart heir and Red were still arguing fiercely. “—when we get to Castle Ambais, where my uncle is supposed to meet us,” D
amedran snarled. “I’ll ask him right out.”
Ban whistled sharply, and they whirled around, hands going to their weapons. They relaxed their hands, but their faces stayed tense.
“How’s she going to eat?”
“Will it make you feel better if I promise not to try to make a bolt during lunch?” I asked. “Which is also my breakfast, I might add. And probably my last meal as well. I’d really like to enjoy it.”
“Stop. Saying that,” Damedran muttered, pulling his knife out with a faint ringing zing.
“Don’t cut that kerchief,” Red warned. “We don’t have another.”
“The knots are all pulled hard,” Damedran snapped over his shoulder.
“That’s because my fingers were going numb.” I shrugged. “Had to try to loosen the fabric, though it meant the knots tightened.”
A couple of slices and my hands were free, and full of pins and needles. I wrung and flexed them, rubbing them up and down my thighs. When I could grasp again, I wolfed down my share of the journey bread. It was dense, made with about six different kinds of nuts, raisins, and a hint of spices.
When I was done (and had thumb-pressed every crumb off the leaf and nibbled it up) I rose to get some water. All of the guys closed in around me, faces tense and determined.
I washed, drank, then silently held out my dripping hands.
Red offered an old sash. “Found it in my gear. Crumpled but clean.”
Damedran sighed, but took it.
This time he did a better job of checking to make sure the bonds were not too tight. He helped me mount up, Ban took the reins of my horse, and in silence the boys mounted. They rode around me downstream a ways, Damedran squinting up at the sun to check direction, until a distant screeching of birds caught his attention.
Everyone’s head turned. I looked as well, not comprehending what they could find interesting about a flock of birds rising above the trees, screeling and squawking, until I heard the faint rumble of horse hooves.
Damedran’s face blanched. “Ride out!” he shouted, waving at Ban and me. “Ride out. You know where to go!”
Ban used the reins to whack my horse, kneed his own mount, and suddenly there I was, galloping unsteadily—gripping with my legs as best as I could.
Damedran whirled his horse round, pulling his weapons, to face the oncoming threat now raising a great dust cloud. I dared a single glance back. He sat squarely in the path of that billowing grit in which vague silhouettes of mounted warriors could be made out. The five other cadets spread out behind Damedran.
My horse jerked to a stop, and Ban flung the reins back over my leg. “Go,” he muttered, not looking at me. “Just—go.” Without waiting for me to speak, he whacked my mare on her hindquarter, and she took off downstream.
Ban rode back to face the danger with his mates.
Just as, behind me, Jehan and Owl led their force at a gallop straight toward the boys. The dust thinned, revealing in the lead a tall, slender rider with long white hair.
Damedran raised his sword, then lowered it. “What?” he cried. “Prince Jehan?”
Jehan did not halt his sweating, foam-flecked horse. In answer he rode straight at the string of remounts, and as the boys gaped, he leaped from a galloping horse onto the bare back of a fresh remount, who sprang into a gallop. White hair flying, he shot downstream after me, the boys so amazed they didn’t comprehend they were efficiently surrounded until it was too late.
“You’ll note there are twelve of us.” Owl waved a hand. “You might go ahead and sheathe the weapons, boys.”
o0o
I was galloping about as gracefully as a teapot on a rocking horse alongside a rocky stream, hoping that when I fell off, which I was sure was inevitable, I would manage to hit the water and not a giant boulder.
A galloping horse thundered up behind me.
All I could think of was War Commander Randart. He doesn’t trust Damedran to bring me in. He’s here to skewer me personally. I bent down, as if that would help my poor mare increase her speed.
A hand reached out to grip the mare’s reins near her head. Both horses slowed, and I braced myself, angry, fearful—
And stared up into Jehan’s face. His pale, grim face. Searching my features to see if I was all right.
“Huh?” I said intelligently.
He leaped off his horse—which had no saddle, I noticed distractedly—and held up his arms. Instinctively I leaned forward, and though I’m not exactly a sylph, he lifted me down as if I were one, and set me gently on my feet. He tightened one arm around me, and laid his other hand along my cheek so I looked up, and there were his lips brushing over my nose, and my eyes, and well, despite the dust, and the pair of us being considerably sweaty and disheveled, the instinct that flared brighter than logic or even laughter locked us together in a long, lingering kiss.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Eventually we had to breathe.
“No—” I began, standing in the circle of his arms. “Wait. You can’t.”
“Don’t,” he murmured into my filthy tangle of hair. “Say anything. Just—don’t.”
I drew in a very unsteady breath, and when I felt the sudden loosening of the sash round my wrists, I fought the urge to hug him back, but neither did I push him away.
I gripped his wrists instead. “Jehan, I don’t know how you managed to get here. Or why. In fact I’m almost afraid to ask. But you should know that those boys are scared Dannath Randart will kill them if they don’t show up with me at something called Castle Ambais.”
“I guessed as much.” Jehan whistled softly. “Ambais is a garrison full of handpicked Randart warriors. It’s located at this end of the valley, tucked up against the border mountains. If the boys had managed to get you there, it would have been impossible to get you out. At least, without bloodshed that Randart is quite willing to spill.”
“Ugh.”
Jehan wiped his hair back off his damp forehead and squinted up at the sun’s position. “It’s one of his staging points for his and my father’s war. As near as I can tell, it’s also a secret stash for the weapons that are going to conveniently appear for next spring’s surprise invasion of Locan Jora.”
I saw in his dust-printed face a tension to match my own. I was so full of questions I did not know where to begin, or how to handle any answers I heard. He’d lied before. And so had I. The situation was already impossibly tangled before those kisses made emotional reaction about ten times worse.
“Randart has to know approximately where you and the boys are, which is about half a day’s hard ride from Castle Ambais. I figure we have until sunset.” Jehan walked away to catch the reins of my mare. “Then Randart will send out rings of trackers to find Damedran. And you.”
“And so?”
“And so the days of disguises are past.” He handed me the reins and whistled to the other horse, who stood on the other side of the stream a ways away, cropping unconcernedly. It tossed its head and swung round our way. “My first act is to rescue you.”
“Here I thought I was going for a Guinness Book of Records for abductions,” I cracked. “You being my fourth. Except, does it count when the same fellow—”
Jehan laughed, flinging up a hand. “My second act is going to be to take Damedran hostage.” Jehan whistled again, the whistle the stable hands use at the academy. “I think it’s the only way to save his life.” The horse trotted obediently back toward us.
“And then what?”
Jehan indicated the entire world. “You go wherever you like.” He thrust a hand into a pocket in his tunic and brought out a richly gleaming flat gold box about the size of those beautiful cigarette cases that you see gangsters and snobs carrying in old movies. “While I wait to find out what my father says.”
I was amazed and relieved almost beyond thought. “You’re going to let me go?”
“Did I not say so?” he responded, not without humor.
“Just like that.”
“Wel
l, it does seem to me my time is going to be taken up with such small matters as Randart coming after me, with or without my father’s orders. As for what he will say—” He opened his hand.
We began walking the horses back toward the others.
I said above that I was almost beyond thought. Actually I wasn’t quite there yet.
I turned to face him. “How did you find me? I take it you are not suddenly in Randart’s confidence. Damedran made it pretty clear that no one knows about his orders. Except you?”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that. But the truth is, I had Owl follow you,” Jehan admitted. “Not that he was all that successful. He lost track of you early on and didn’t catch up until Damedran appeared on your trail. He showed up at some inn or other. Where you took a letter.”
I sighed. “I should be mad. But if he hadn’t . . .” I shuddered. “I’d be going straight into Dannath Randart’s waiting . . . noose? Sword? Prison cell? Not waiting arms, unless you mean the pointy steel ones. I don’t think I’m his type. He sure isn’t mine.”
Jehan laughed. We rounded the hill where the others were gathered, Jehan’s people sitting on horseback, hands resting on sword hilts, chatting back and forth as Damedran’s group hunched disconsolately on or around the mossy rock bench where I’d so recently sat to eat my share of the food. Damedran stood a few paces away, head bent, staring at the little waterfall. Even from a distance his profile was strained.
“Busted,” I breathed.
Jehan flicked a questioning glance my way.
I didn’t answer, but jumped off my mount and ran up to Damedran. Jehan did not stop me, nor did he join us.
“Damedran.”
The Randart boy looked my way, his face tight with misery. Then his cheeks reddened with anger, but before he could speak, I flung up a hand in the palm-out sign for peace that I’d seen people use. Peace here, and on Earth, Stop Right There.