Twice a Prince

  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 nutbread, 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,” Damedran 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 dust 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 even realize 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.”

  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 we 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 t
o 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 stablehands 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.”

  “Well, 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.

  “I wanted to thank you for making things as easy as you could,” I said, not really sure what I was doing, just following instinct. It was that misery in his eyes. “Listen. I’ve been nabbed by Jehan. A couple of times. It won’t be so bad.”

  “Nabbed,” Damedran repeated, the anger fading from his expression.

  “You’re his hostage. And while I’m trying to sort out what’s what, this I will say. You won’t hear any death threats from him. Or, if you did, it would surprise me.”

  Damedran turned his head sharply, and I followed his look. Jehan was busy with the horses some twenty or thirty paces away, though he was watching us. But not in earshot, which I considered an honorable gesture. A gesture I knew Dannath Randart wouldn’t make. “I am a hostage, then?” he asked, his voice lifting at the end. “Us. We? Are hostages? Or prisoners of war? Or what?”

  I called out to Jehan, “Damedran has the same question I had earlier. Is he a hostage, prisoner or what?”

  Jehan took that as an invitation to join us. “You can define your exact status at your leisure. All I’m going to say is that Uncle Dannath is not going to get his hands on you unless certain demands are met, and then only with your permission. I can explain on the ride. We’re going to have to pick up our feet, if we want to stay outside of Randart’s search perimeter, which will be dispatched by sundown, if they aren’t riding already. So say your farewells to the princess, because she’s presumably going off in another direction.”

  Jehan held out his hand toward my mare. I saw a new feedbag hooked to the saddle gear. With the other hand, he held out a folded paper. “Here is a map I made last night, to help me orient on you all. Go ahead and take it. I know where I am now. You’ll see the major roads, cities, garrisons and towns marked. Castles as well. You should be able to find several routes out of the kingdom.” He gave me a bland smile.

  In silence I took it.

  I don’t know what I might have said or done if we’d been in private. Probably made things worse. But before all those watching guys—both sides in brown uniforms, which was kind of funny and kind of heartbreaking—there was only one thing to do.

  I swept as flourishing a bow as I could, turning at the last to include the entire company. Then I said in English, “Gents, it’s been teh bomb.”

  And leaving exceedingly puzzled faces behind me, I mounted up and rode away.

  Yeah, I managed what I thought a suave exit, but I swore when I first took up my pen I’d tell the truth in this thing, and so I have to admit that within about thirty seconds of choosing a random direction I was snuffling into my sleeve.

  Talk about confused. I was sad, scared, angry, mostly at myself for having kissed Jehan again when I knew, I knew, I’d feel terrible afterward. Because the kiss itself was so great. Despite everything. And oh yes, what was “everything”?

  I didn’t snivel too long. The sky was clouding. If I lost the sun, I’d lose my sense of direction, and the map would be worthless.

  Map.

  I unfolded it. There was Jehan’s handwriting, in even, slanted letters with slashing curls. It was a dashing handwriting, and I resisted the impulse to kiss the map. Yeah, I know.

  Focusing my blurred eyes (this is the last time I wipe away tears, I vowed) I saw he’d marked a place on the map below Ambais, where he wrote: Should find D. here. D of course had to mean Damedran.

  That meant I could use that point as my orientation.

  Tracing my finger straight north, I discovered that Ivory Mountain was not all that far away.

  “Papa, I sure hope you are ready to rock and roll,” I muttered, kneeing the mare. “Because the house is packed and the band is playing as hard as it can.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Almost directly to the west the rain had already begun, a soft plopping of cold drops, when the single sentry at the gate of Zheliga Castle burst into the buttery, where Hilna and Pirie Famid worked alongside their servants, the
sisters sharing the title of “baroness” for simplicity’s sake as they shared the baroness chores. In this case, pressing butter into the molds and seeing it carried down in neatly wrapped blocks to the cold room.

  “Gate,” the boy said, his voice cracking.

  “Army?” Hilna asked doubtfully, knowing that Orthan and his brother Dannath were somewhere on the other side of the hills to the east, busy with their big siege game. She hadn’t expected Orthan and Damedran until the siege was over, and it was time to settle in for winter. The sisters had been laying in extra stores for weeks.

  The boy shook his head. “Women,” he said succinctly.

  Pirie and Hilna exchanged puzzled looks. The sisters were not given to needless chatter. They untied their aprons, dropped them onto the table and left, one smoothing back her gray curls, the other brushing flour off her skirts left from the morning’s inspection of the threshing.

  Neither was prepared to see a couple hundred women either riding or walking over the bridge, which two generations ago had been a drawbridge, but had been left down for over fifty years. A couple of hundred? More than that, all strung out in a slow-moving line, as far as one could see.

  Hilna gasped when she recognized the tall, tough-looking woman walking beside a horse. “Plir Silvag?”

  Plir lifted a hand in greeting, and waved at the woman on the horse. Hilna blinked up at a pretty woman her own age, with pale hair done up elaborately on the top of her head. She looked vaguely familiar—

  “You remember Princess Atanial?” Plir asked.

  The sisters stared in mute surprise.

  Hilna gave a stiff curtsey, her expression changing from blank surprise to a wary question.

  Atanial looked down into those faces, seeing yet again the question, doubt, resentment that had been mirrored in variations during her long journey.

  They had passed along the old paths, far from the fine military roads and the waterlogged main roads. The worst of the journey had been at first, when Atanial’s conversation with Plir was repeated, sometimes with far more hostility than Plir had shown. But Atanial listened, and said the same thing over and over: We cannot permit an invasion. A few refused to join. Of those, half caught up later, like Plir herself. With her she brought a number of relatives and old contacts. Since then more were catching up day by day, women of all ages, from girls barely in their teens to women far older than Atanial and Plir.