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‘Take your coat and don’t wander far,’ warned Lor. ‘There’s a front coming in from the west. The weather will turn.’
‘I’ll take Sophia too. We may not make it past the stables,’ Ana replied, although maybe she’d get punchy and venture beyond the castle walls.
She found Sophia at the falconry with Tomas and watched for a while as they finished tending the baby birds. Tomas had infinite patience, with both the birds and her daughter, and if every now and then his smile hinted at painful memories he couldn’t quite hide, no one spoke of it.
Tomas told her about the selection of weatherproof coats at the stables, behind the tack-room door, and frowned down at Sophia before finally deciding that her little pink parka and ankle boots were okay.
Sophia needed new clothes more suited to her new life; Ana had already received that memo. They were on their way.
The new pony’s name was Duchess, Sophia informed her. Duchess liked carrots, apples, a heated stall and little girls. Sophia knew all the horses in the stalls—of course she did. Names and temperaments. Which horses would hang their heads over the doors to be petted and which bad-tempered beasts to stay away from.
They’d make a stateswoman out of her daughter yet.
Sophia was happy here. With Lor and Silas at her beck and call, and all the animals. Sophia didn’t care about her current lack of schooling at all. She was learning more than she ever had. Some things were working out just fine.
They slipped outside the stable doors and beyond the fortress walls in search of wildflowers, and started along the bridle path towards the mountains. They’d done it before. Just them, the ground underfoot and the sky. The security guards could see them from the fortress walls and were content to give them the illusion of freedom. She and Sophia would walk the fields for a while and then return. No harm done.
A carefree hour later, somewhere on a bridle path, the weather closed in around them. One minute the sun was shining and the next minute clouds were rolling in and bringing a heavy mist with them.
Ana turned back immediately, Sophia’s hand in hers and Lor’s warning in mind, but it was too late. The air was turning to soup and Ana could no longer see six feet in front of her. They’d been able to see the fortress a minute ago and they were still on the track. Nothing to worry about. They couldn’t be more than a kilometre or two away.
‘What is this?’ asked Sophia, waving her hand through the mist.
‘It’s a cloud, and we’re in it. I think it came over the mountain and fell on us.’
‘Will it float away again?’
‘Yes.’ When? being the pertinent question. ‘Meanwhile—’ she looked at the track, only to find it disappearing as she spoke ‘—we sit.’
‘And then what?’ asked Sophia dubiously.
‘We sing.’ And hope someone came for them or the enveloping fog moved on so that they could see their way home again. Ana wasn’t picky. Either one would do.
* * *
Casimir had got into the habit of finding Ana and Sophia whenever he returned to the fortress. The mere sight of them was usually enough to quiet the demon inside him that wanted to lock them away and keep them safe.
He still hadn’t heard from the tribespeople to the north. Four days since his speech; Rudolpho counselled patience and said they’d have to speak amongst themselves before replying, and Theo had counselled similarly. And still he felt as if his skin were slipping his body half the time and that his people were beginning to wonder whether he really could deliver on this grand plan he’d offered them.
He needed to appear in public with Ana and Sophia soon, and the security risks ate at him, reminding him that grand plans had been so much easier to create when he hadn’t had anything to lose.
Schools. Heaven help him, he was going to send his daughter to school; it was a life she knew and a world he was wholly unaccustomed to. He’d spent the afternoon in crisis talks with Rudolpho.
Over schools.
Ana would doubtless spend a good portion of the night trying to reassure him that schooling was a perfectly normal endeavour for a child and that his daughter would fit in just fine.
He wanted her to fit in.
