“Yeah, about that?” I said. “Not going to happen.”
I pushed him, and he tumbled off the bench into a snowdrift by the side of the road. We rode off to the sounds of him cursing Snake’s name.
Grace stared at me with wide eyes, “Why did you do that?”
“He was weighing us down,” I said. “And I can’t kill him. Against the rules, right?”
CHAPTER 10
We rode the carriage into the dawn. Fearless Leader spent the time in uncharacteristic silence. While that wasn’t unwelcome, she seemed to be spending her time digesting the confirmation of my identity by a credible witness.
I had some idea how she might have felt.
The more I heard about this Snake character, the less I liked him. It wasn’t the thievery, I’m no hypocrite. Not about that at least. I held about the same opinion of the state of the world as Grace had elaborated to the prince. If the lords were entitled to tax the people, I felt entitled to tax particular lords back. And, at one point in my outlaw career, I would have literally given my right arm to have been able to pull off something of the brazen magnitude of what this Snake guy had managed. Maybe I still would.
But . . .
There was a deep ugliness about it. I’d always said, as I had to Fearless Leader, that there were two types of thieves. Thug and pickpocket, brawn or stealth.
Snake was something else. Yes, he seemed to slip in and out unseen, rather than beating people upside the head to swipe their purse. But when he left, chaos swirled in his wake. There was nothing subtle or low profile about his thefts, and they had deadly repercussions.
Beyond the skill, beyond the riches, Snake had a talent for leaving behind something more than a rich dullard with a lighter purse or some arrogant priest short one golden icon. The thieves’ guilds he had conned had been left in a state just short of open war, and I couldn’t help but think that Prince Oliver’s thirst for blood, and his fear, were justified.
I know that if I had contemplated some of the jobs Snake had done, the potential consequences would have given me pause.
Even the snippets of other stories I heard about him from the feral girls’ club had a similar unpleasant feel to them. His callousness was worthy of some of the most arrogant nobles I’d heard of.
It also raised the same question that Fearless Leader had raised to me when we had met: Snake had stolen a kingdom’s worth of treasure a few times over.
Where was it?
Why did he continue to leave wreckage in his wake? This wasn’t a line of work that encouraged longevity. If someone kept up the outlaw life after the kind of heists Snake had pulled, they’d have to be a special kind of insane.
Or the proceeds were going somewhere else.
I took a fork in the road and Grace quietly said, “Lendowyn is due south of here.”
“I know, but so is Dermonica.”
My dialogue with Prince Oliver had helped to determine the direction we needed to go. We were north and inland, while Lendowyn was south and on the coast. However, a straight-line course due south would cut right through the Kingdom of Dermonica, which didn’t seem the greatest idea if I was ostensibly responsible for an act of war against them.
“So where are you going?”
The next worst option. “The other kingdom between us and Lendowyn.”
Grünwald.
It was the last place I personally wanted to go, but I couldn’t really explain my history with Grünwald without revealing the fact I wasn’t quite the infamous Snake they thought I was. It didn’t seem politic to dissuade Grace and company from the impression Prince Oliver had made. Besides, while the current King Dudley of Grünwald might have a grudge against the Princess Frank Blackthorne—since I was directly responsible for the death of his mother the Evil Queen Fiona—as far as I knew he had nothing against Snake and no way to connect Snake with Frank. It was probably more concerning that it was a hotbed for worship of the Dark Lord Nâtlac, but we were probably okay if we avoided running into the royal family.
So unless we wanted to go hundreds of miles out of the way, weaving our way to the coast, Grünwald it was.
Like most other consequential mistakes in my life, it made sense at the time.
• • •
We stripped the Dermonica coat of arms from the carriage and kept to the wilderness, avoiding towns, sleeping under the stars. I would have preferred an inn. But even if Snake wasn’t a wanted man in Grünwald—and I had the sense not to just assume that—my traveling companions stood out for their salvaged armor and choice of jewelry, if nothing else. I was hoping to make it back within the borders of Lendowyn before I had to explain them to anyone.
Of course, I had no idea what to do about them once we crossed into Lendowyn. I barely had a coherent idea of what I was going to do about myself. I had no idea how to reverse what had happened, or even if it could be reversed. And while I was still feeling oddly disassociated with the body I wore, a feeling that got worse the more I learned about the prior occupant, what bothered me more was the idea of Snake running around in the princess’s body.
It was wrong in a fundamental way that gave me a sour feeling in a stomach that didn’t really belong to me.
That was my real mistake, unleashing this guy on the Lendowyn court. I had to do something to correct it, even if I didn’t know right now what that was.
Fortunately, after the episode with Prince Oliver, the girls were a lot less aggressive about questioning me. I was able to sit down at the edge of the campsite and allow my mind to spin around in nonproductive circles without any interruption.
If anything, it made my mood worse.
The second night the girls had caught something and were cooking it over the campfire. Sometime after the sun went down, Mary, the tall redhead, came over to me and said, “You should eat something.”
I grunted. I’d been begrudging the signals from Snake’s body. Hunger, pain, fatigue—it wasn’t really me that was feeling these things. It was some other guy. Someone I didn’t particularly like.
Mary looked at me for a few moments, then sighed and turned around. There is something deeply unfair about someone twelve years your junior making you feel stupid.
“You’re right,” I said.
She turned around and said, “So you still talk. Thought you been struck mute.”
“I’ve been preoccupied.”
“With what?”
With the fact that I’m lying to you and there’s nothing in Lendowyn other than a bunch more awkward questions . . .
“What are you cooking?” I asked.
“Half a rabbit.”
I involuntarily glanced at the mute girl.
Mary laughed. “Not Rabbit, rabbit.”
“Glad you find that funny.”
She walked up until she was uncomfortably close to me. She placed a hand on my arm and studied my face, and I remembered what Grace had said, “sold to the White Rock Thieves’ Guild when she was twelve.” That generally meant only one thing, and that knowledge made her proximity even worse.
Seeing this kid here, and knowing her history, made me start regretting the time I’d spent with a working girl back in Westmark. That regret meant that my time as “Snake” was a complete failure in every measure I could think of.
“Why you here?” she whispered.
“What?”
She leaned forward until her lips were nearly brushing my cheek. I froze out of fear that any movement might bring us into more inappropriate contact. “I asked, ‘Why you here?’”
I stared past her, into the campfire. “Your Fearless Leader is holding me hostage, remember?”
She raised a hand to my cheek and turned my face toward her. “No.”
“What do you—”
She placed her finger on my lips and continued. “You pretend she is. She pretends
she is. She’s acting because she doesn’t know what else to do. You’re acting because . . .”
“I’m not acting.”
She cradled my chin and shook her own head. “I’m not stupid.”
Something about her proximity and body language became threatening for a whole host of other reasons.
“I don’t know what game you’re playing. But I know a man who let a whole city burn for the sake of some gold ain’t going to help us wayward girls out of the goodness of his heart. What I hear, you don’t have one.”
“Maybe the stories are a bit overblown.”
“And maybe there’s some other reasons you have us along.” She let go of my chin. “You were right, what you told Grace. Two types of people. When White Rock held me, I got to know both. The brutes, they were rough, violent—but they had no secrets, and you knew if you gave what they wanted you only hurt a little. But the smooth-talking ones, the ones with secrets, those were dangerous. I think you have too many secrets.”
She made me wonder if Grace was the real one in charge here.
“You’re overthinking this.” I tried to sound disarming. “I just want to get to Lendowyn in one piece.”
“I owe Grace my life.”
“I gathered that.”
“We all do.”
“Yes?”
“And we—our group—is her life. All she has, her only family.” She placed her hands on my shoulders and leaned forward to whisper in my ear. “You do anything to take that away from her I will rip off your man-tackle with my bare hands and fry it up in a skillet with butter and onions.”
She stepped away from me.
“What about the rules?”
“I say anything about killing you?” She smiled and her voice resumed a normal tone. “So you want any of that rabbit?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I’m that hungry.”
She walked back to the campfire.
At least the short confrontation managed to snap me out of the diminishing spiral of obsessive self-pity before I disappeared up my own backside. Ever since I’d thrown the prince of Dermonica into the roadside slush, I’d been half ignoring the girls. Now that I started paying attention again, I could see that any hero worship had evaporated. Even the youngest, Thea, seemed to peer from under her tightly wrapped curls with suspicion.
And I couldn’t really blame them.
I considered telling them the truth, but I couldn’t quite decide if that would make things worse or not.
• • •
We rode into Grünwald, avoiding towns and any concentrations of people. I sat above, and the girls took turns sharing a seat with me as I drove our horse over the ill-used back roads. The first day passed with Grace, then Mary, neither saying much to me. The second day, Laya sat next to me, crossbow riding across her knees.
For close to an hour, she said nothing, watching the road ahead. Unlike her elder companions the prior day, she didn’t seem to be avoiding conversation. The silence didn’t weigh so heavily.
“It is true, isn’t it?”
“What?” I snapped upright. I had relaxed to the point that, when she finally spoke, it startled the hell out of me.
“What the man said about you?”
“Prince Oliver?”
“Yes.”
To be honest, I didn’t have a clue. “I’m not going to take issue with it.”
“I see.”
What I said earlier about the silence not being oppressive with Laya ceased to be applicable at this point.
“All those people . . . How?” she asked.
“How what?”
“How do you stop feeling that?”
I glanced at her, and she wasn’t even facing my direction. Her eyes were unfocused as she stared ahead at something other than the road. I didn’t think I wanted to know what she saw right then.
“You don’t want to know that.”
“Why not?” She sucked in a breath and I could hear her trying not to sob. “Why not?” she whispered again.
“Because it costs too much.”
“It costs too much to feel. I want to be like you. I don’t want to care any—”
“Stop it!” I snapped.
She faced me, cowering, eyes wide and shiny.
“You want to stop feeling for anyone but yourself, is that what you want? You want to be able to murder a man and sleep at night? You want to dispose of the few shreds of humanity you’ve been able to hold on to? Is that what you want? To become a heartless, merciless bastard like the legendary Snake?”
Her lower lip quivered, but she couldn’t help but nod.
I leaned over and quietly said, “And if a man holds up a bag of gold and says, ‘give me Thea,’ you want to be able to say yes?”
“What? No—”
“And when the wolves are chasing you down, you want to be able to trip the mute girl to distract them while you escape?”
“Rabbit? That’s not—”
“And if I held a knife to your throat and said, ‘you or Grace,’ you want to be able to say—”
“Stop it!” She was crying now and making no effort to hide it. “Stop!”
I sat upright and faced the road again. Laya quietly sobbed next to me. After making the poor abused kid cry, I felt as close to Snake as I was likely to get. “Being a heartless bastard is not as fun as it looks.”
CHAPTER 11
“We should stop at the next town.”
“What?” Grace’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “We’re avoiding towns.”
“Because you don’t exactly blend in.” I gestured at the girls surrounding the campfire, all busily eating pieces of some small game animal Laya had skewered with her crossbow. Between the mishmash armor and the grisly trophies they looked like a troop of slightly stunted goblins. “If we don’t get you some more mundane clothing, there’s no way we’ll get close to Lendowyn Castle without attracting the wrong kind of attention.”
The girl with the close-cropped hair objected. “You not getting me in no dress.” After a moment I remembered her name.
“Krys—” I started.
“No! I’m not!”
“Listen to the man,” Grace said. She gave me a sidelong glance, “He seems to have some clue what he’s talking about.”
“He’s a man,” Krys said. “Since when do we take orders from some man?”
“No one’s giving any orders but me,” Grace snapped.
“Don’t look like it,” Krys said. “What’s the point of all this, if some guy comes in to make us all pretty little girls.”
“This guy is taking us to a hoard that will mean we—”
Krys stood up. “Ogre crap!”
Grace stood up. “What?”
I noticed that Krys had her hand on the pommel of a dagger in her belt. I saw, across the campfire, Laya reaching for her crossbow.
“I said Snake isn’t leading you anywhere he don’t want to go.”
“We’re going where I want us to go.”
I stood up myself and said, “Why don’t we all calm down?”
Grace spun to glare at me with a look that was comprised entirely of the thought, “You’re not helping.”
Krys pulled her dagger and Mary scrambled to interpose herself between the two girls. But Mary had misjudged where Krys was headed. Krys moved around her and Grace to face me. “To the hells with you, master thief. I lost what I lost, suffered what I suffered, and all I won was a chance to be who I am. You ain’t taking that. One of us dies first.”
Grace yelled at her, “Put that down! We have rules!”
Krys kept moving toward me, and I took a couple of steps back to remove myself from the others. Krys was one of the taller girls, around Grace and Mary in age. If I had still been the princess we might have been more evenly mat
ched. As it was, I had the advantage in weight and reach that meant she wasn’t going to win a fight unless the other girls dove in after her.
Something in her eyes told me she didn’t care.
I held up my hands and said, “All I was talking about is dressing in a way that won’t draw attention, from the guilds or the militia, or the wat—”
“You want to make me into a little girl again!”
I opened my mouth. I was about to snap something about how it was just some clothes . . . But, to Krys, it wasn’t. She said it was who she was.
Who she was.
I shook my head. “I don’t want to change who you are.”
“You said you want me to dress like a girl.”
I crouched so I wasn’t hovering over her anymore. “No, I just want you guys to stand out less.”
She lowered the dagger and bit her lip. Her eyes were shiny, reflecting the campfire.
“All I want,” I told her, “is for anyone seeing us to see what they expect to see. That could be a frilly little girl, or a farm boy.”
“Y-you . . . you don’t care if I dress like a boy?”
“No. Just look the part.” I shrugged. “I was never too fond of wearing dresses myself.”
“I . . .” Krys ran at me. I had a brief moment to see everyone tense before she tackled me. Then she had her arms around my neck and was sobbing into my shoulder. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I patted her on the back. “Maybe you can let go of the knife now?”
“What?”
I winced. “You’re stabbing me.”
She sprang back from me, the dagger sailing off to my right, causing Mary and Grace to dodge aside. “Oh gods, I’m sorry. Are you all right?”
I rubbed my shoulder where the point of her dagger had jabbed me. “It’s fine.”
Mary picked up the wayward dagger and Grace stepped forward. She may have been about the same height as Krys, but she seemed to tower over the girl. “What were you thinking?”
“I—”