“They’re not far,” he whispered down. “You’ve only got a minute or two, especially if you don’t want them to see us.”
Tibby held up a finger, her forehead bunched with concentration. Thunder rumbled, the rain continuing, running down their spectacles and dripping from their jaws. Syla again focused on the map and thought of her memories of the trek.
“I think I have… as much as you can give.” Tibby frowned as she released Syla’s hand.
Did that mean it wouldn’t be enough?
“Your moon-mark might guide you a bit when you’re close,” Syla offered.
“Let us hope.” Tibby followed Fel upstream, toward the rocks protruding from the wash. Slick from the water, they looked as treacherous as the current, and Syla hoped they would make it across.
Meanwhile, she climbed into the driver’s seat and picked up a riding crop so that when the men came upon her, they would believe she’d been trying but failing to urge the horses across. They were stamping their hooves, shaking rain off their coats, and looking uneasily skyward each time thunder rumbled, so it ought to be a convincing scene.
It didn’t take long for the first of the men to arrive. The horseback riders had gone around the armored carriage to take the lead and reached the wash first.
“Is that her?” one called.
“Halt, Your Highness!” another shouted, as if Syla were on the verge of convincing the horses to cross.
Fel and Tibby were still in her view, navigating across the wash upstream. She didn’t think the men could see them through the boulders, but they would if they drew even with her.
To buy them more time, Syla jumped down and ran off the road in the opposite direction. The men were gray blurs in her peripheral vision, so she heard more than sensed them turning their horses, harnesses jangling, to follow her. When she glanced back, she spotted one lifting a crossbow, but another man batted it aside.
“Just capture her,” he snarled.
Off the road, the ground was rocky and uneven, and Syla’s foot caught. She banged her knee on a boulder and almost fell down. Body weary from the battering she’d taken the last few days, she was tempted to stop and let them swoop down upon her, but Fel and Tibby would never find the shielder if they werepursued by the soldiers. Syla needed to keep those men from noticing them.
Clambering over a boulder and down a slope, with the wash roaring right beside her, Syla ran. In the rough terrain, the men had to dismount and follow her on foot. That gave her a few more seconds than she might otherwise have had, but the enforcers were taller and faster than she and soon caught up.
One man wrapped an arm around her waist and hoisted her off her feet with a grunt. She wasn’t the lightest of princesses, not like svelte Venia had been, and he staggered. She squirmed about to keep them distracted a little longer.
His grip tightened, and another man arrived, grabbing her by the legs.
“I’m on a mission for the kingdom,” Syla yelled. “I must politely insist that youreleaseme.”
In the awkward position, it was hard to be polite, but she refrained from calling them thugs, brutes, or troglodytes. They were, after all, men who’d sworn an oath to the crown and whoshouldbe loyal to her, if only because she was her parents’ child. But if she pissed them off, they might forget that.
“We’ve orders, Your Highness,” one said calmly as they toted her back to the road. “We need to take you back with us. It’s for your own protection.”
No, it was so she couldn’t take the shielder.
When they reached the road, the enforcers set her upright beside the armored carriage. It had arrived, its driver gazing across the wash and around the rocky slope as he stopped his horses.
“The temple people said she had a bodyguard,” the man said.
Syla wiped her spectacles, using the gesture to hide her glance up the wash. Fel and Tibby had disappeared.
“I lost him,” she said when several faces turned toward her.
Wet and bedraggled with water running from short hair plastered to their heads and down their shaven faces, the enforcerslooked like they would prefer to leave rather than hunting for Fel, but their expressions were skeptical.
“Youlosthim? On the road from the temple to here?”
“The rider got him.” Syla placed a fist over her heart and looked skyward in a sign of grieving. “Thedragonrider.”
“Captain Vorik? Shit. I knew he was still around.”
Several men looked about, hands on their weapons as they surveyed the slope much more carefully than when they’d believed they were only looking for Fel.
