“I know you didn’t think much of the former Western Prince.”
“I never saw the former Western Prince, and I don’t know anyone who did. Were he and the current prince close?”
He shook his head. “They’re both sons of the Emperor Eternal, but they have different mothers. They grew up in separate palaces, and then the former Western Prince was sent to the gate. Hard to get close to someone you rarely see.”
“What about you?” I asked. “How long have you been a soldier?”
“Most of my life,” he said.
He added nothing else, so I came up with my own theories. Maybe he’d been a prisoner before becoming a soldier. Maybehe’d been impressed by the surly captain of a Carethian ship searching for treasure.
Maybe I was obsessed with adventure.
“Why are they hanging white eggs?” He gestured to the open window.
I looked back and grinned. “They aren’t eggs. They’re moons.”
“Since when are the moons shaped like eggs?”
“Have you ever built a moon of glue and paper? It’s harder than it looks.”
“I have not, so I’ll take your word for it. Why are they hanging moons?”
“Springmarket is in a few days. The festival for the year’s first double full moon, which is lucky for farmers, especially those who grow mountain lilies. If the bulbs are in the ground by Springmarket, the harvest will be good. There are celebrations in the markets with food and performers and dancing. You don’t have that in the City of Flowers?”
“There’s a buttercup festival in the spring.”
“It’s because of the first empress, right? The flower thing?”
“Yes, the flower thing. Do you know the story?”
“Warlord falls for the daughter of one of the kings whose lands he conquered, kidnaps her, wins her over with flowers?”
Nik didn’t look impressed by my summary. “The king of the Edgelands had a daughter,” he said. “The man who would become the first emperor conquered the Edgelands and fell in love with her. She said she’d only marry him if he built a beautiful capital city—not the run-down fortress it was then—and filled it with flowers. He upped the ante—said he’d not only build a capital but unite the nations and bring peace to the land.”
“And did he?” I asked.
“He won the war, created Carethia, and built the City of Flowers. It still blooms today.”
“Sounds like a storybook tale. Pretty to hear, but nonsense.”
“How so?”
“The first emperor probably didn’t plant the flowers; he made servants do it. And she’s the one who had the idea to build it in the first place.” I shook my head. “If that’s romance—giving over your stories so a warlord sounds like a hero—then I don’t want it.”
“What do you want?”
“Freedom.”
We reached the gatehouse and came to a halt while Yue chatted quietly with the soldiers. And then we passed beneath its shadow and into the sunlight toward Carethia’s border.
“Are you going to stare out the window the entire ride?”
“I don’t know when I’ll have another chance to see this,” I said, and put my chin on my hands. “So I intend to see it all.”
It was remarkable to see so far, and remarkable that there was so little to see. Once we were fully out of the stronghold and the district, the landscape was entirely flat—an endless field of gray-green grass that shifted in the wind like waves in an inland sea. The road was clear and well-traveled, but it was impossible to tell how far we’d gone—and how much farther we had to go.
We stopped after a while at the edge of a narrow stream to water the horses. I got out of the carriage and stretched. Wren climbed off her horse as easily as she’d gotten onto it, then led it to the water. And was glaring at Galen when she walked past me.
