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Zan got to his feet, gingerly straightening his spine, hand to his chest. “They got me three days ago, pulled me off the boat in Gaskin after your illustrious Lord Rudolph refused to let us disembark and sent for the Tribunal to ‘take care of the vermin.’”
I put his arm over my shoulders, but even though he was the one covered in bruises and old bloodstains, I was beginning to sag from the post-magic strain. As we hobbled forward together, I wasn’t sure which of us was leaning more upon the other.
“You were on a refugee ship?” I asked. “All this time?”
He shook his head. “Just the last few weeks.”
“And where were you before that?”
“Around.”
“Around?” I scoffed.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want to know what you were doing while I was here, mourning for you.”
“I’ve been moving refugees. Freeing workers from Castillion’s mines . . . anything I could do to help alleviate some of my people’s suffering.”
“And you found skulking around in the shadows more effective than working out in the open as Achleva’s rightful monarch?” As soon as I said it, I bit my lip; Kellan had used a similar argument on me yesterday. But this was different . . . I was Renalt’s unwanted witch princess. Zan was Achleva’s king. “You’d rather be a vigilante? The horseman they’re talking about. Is that you?”
“No,” Zan said. “Not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“The horseman is just a story. Something to make the bad men fearful and the good men brave. All I do”—he winced as we shuffled along—“is perpetuate the idea that someone, somewhere, is standing against Castillion. That the common folk haven’t been forgotten. Castillion can push his borders, force resistors into working his mines, dam the flow of outside news into his territory, but he can’t ever fully eradicate a rumor.”
“You’re betting your problems can be fixed with a story?”
“No. I’m hoping the story will give people reason to survive another day. Things are bad in Achleva,” he said. “You don’t know how bad.” He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I’m buying time.”
“And what happens when time runs out?”
“For a while there, I thought it had.”
“If we’ve gained a stay, it’s not much of one.”
A howl echoed across the hills. A hound, maybe. Or a wolf.
“Stars,” I said. “That’s too close. Can you hurry it up a bit?”
“I don’t know if
I mentioned this, but I just spent the last three days in the Tribunal’s custody. Lyall appeared to harbor a bit of a grudge against me too, and he happens to be very fond of kicking. I’m not sure I have any ribs left that aren’t broken.”
“Yes, well, I’m sure you were a model obedient prisoner and never once made snide remarks about his torture techniques.”
Zan’s lip curled back just a little—a hint of a smile. “What was I supposed to do? His kicks were all force, no finesse.”
When the steeply pitched eaves of the Quiet Canary finally came into view, my relief was tempered by another howl, closer than before. It was a thin, eerie ribbon of sound that rippled down and settled slowly around us.
“That doesn’t sound like hounds,” Zan observed.
“No,” I said. “It sounds like wolves.”
“We have to go faster,” Zan said as the grass a few dozen feet away began to rustle.
“We won’t make it.” The Quiet Canary was less than a quarter mile off; if either of us could run, we might have had a chance. But we couldn’t, which meant we didn’t.
