We rumbled over the stone path until we reached the guardhouse, and new voices moved around us to check the cart’s contents and ensure the merchant wasn’t sneaking out palace treasures.
“I’d toss you a jar,” the merchant said lightly, “but the partygoers cleaned me out.”
“No need,” one of the soldiers said. “Have a good night.”
“Aye,” the merchant said, and clucked his teeth as he urged the horse on.
I waited until the sound of the road changed from palace stone to cobblestone, then peeked out. The guardhouse was behind us, growing ever smaller. When we passed beneath the overhanging limbs of an oak tree, I hopped down, moved into the shadows, and readjusted my cloak.
I’d made it out of the palace, and no one was the wiser.
I sprinted from corner to corner down the narrow, house-lined roads between the manor and the ring road, using shadows as a protective cloak, and only had to dodge around patrolling soldiers once. I didn’t see or hear anyone following me, and I was good enough to recognize a tail. When I reached the manor, I snuck along the wall and found her sitting in the pangan tree, one leg dangling down, her arms around her other knee.
“You’re nearly as loud as Galen,” she whispered. She stepped to the wall, then dropped to the road.
“He’s still pouting.”
“Good. What are you doing here?”
“Jonas is dead.”
“I heard. I’m sorry, Fox.”
“We weren’t friends, but…”
“But,” she said, and squeezed my arm. “Still awful.”
“I need a break and a drink.” I gestured toward the manor, my old room. My future room. “Do you have any wine in there?”
“No,” she said after a moment of consideration. “But the garrison lifted curfew for the night to celebrate Catalaya’s arrival.”
I held up a coin. “Then the drinks are on the Lys’Careths.”
It wasn’t Springmarket; there were no performers or decorations, no sense of celebration. But strongholders weren’t going to miss an opportunity to drink themselves into Oblivion, so there were plenty of people on the streets. None of them paid any mind to me. If the Aetheric practitioner was looking for me, I didn’t feel it. I wasn’t interesting enough, or rich enough, or Aetherically gifted enough to matter. And no one’s safety was guaranteed, anyway.
We went to the inn at the northern market, which was nearly full and buzzing with noise and servants delivering pitchers of ale. The mild chaos made me feel better. As did slipping a gold coin from the purse of a woman who yelled at a servant for not moving quickly enough.
“Sweetwine,” I said, passing the same coin to the same servant when she asked what we wanted. “And sweet justice,” I added with a sigh, sitting back in the wooden chair. I closed my eyes for a moment, letting noise and people and scents—sweat, old beer, candles, yeasty bread—surround me like soothing water. It wasn’t a bath in the palace, but it was comforting all the same.
“Are you going to yell at me for leaving the palace?”
“No. I don’t like a cage, either. How’d you get out?”
“Back of a wine cart.”
“A classic for a reason.”
I nodded. “The guards are worried about people sneaking into the palace; it apparently didn’t occur to them I’d try to sneak out.”
“It wasn’t just Jonas,” she said. “The reason you’re here.”
“Catalaya gave me a lecture.”
“About the prince?”
I nodded. “I’m just a horse in his stable, and he can only marry a noblewoman, and she knows how to run the palace, blah blah blah.” I didn’t have the energy to get into the details. Also, sweetwine.
She frowned in consideration. “Royals don’t always have choices.” When she lifted her gaze to me, there was worry in it. “Same goes for nobles and thieves. He’s decent to you, to me, to his servants. I think—and gods know I hate to say this—I think I respect him.”
