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He fumbled a chair, but caught it before it hit the ground. Of all the questions she might have asked, he hadn't expected that one.“What?”
“Your name,” she repeated. “What am I to call you?” Or call for help, when the guards inevitably seized her? She grimaced. What a foolish notion. As if he would ever turn around to help her.
His mouth worked a moment before he answered. “Gil.”
A name far too ugly for a face as handsome as his. An alias made sense, but she felt a tingle of curiosity over why he'd chosenthat.
“Very well, Gil,” she said, as breezily as she dared. The last of the barricade came away. As she held open the door, she had the fleeting thought that her sewing basket on his arm made it look as if they were departing for a picnic.
Just the three of us,she thought with a wry smile.
Her, her peculiar savior, and the dead king's severed head.
CHAPTERTHREE
Gil ledher through the familiar narrow roadways behind her home with remarkable grace, pausing only now and then to evaluate the best course to take. Despite the baying of the royal hounds, he was calm and unbothered, unhurried to make any decisions. Yet he did not waste any time, either. Each calculating pause was no more than a moment, just long enough to evaluate the road ahead, the turns they could take, and the sounds that filtered through the noise of everyday life. The rattle of armor or footsteps too regular and distinct made him turn. A dog's whine made him retreat. But every step led them unerringly farther, and Thea followed close at his heels.
She dared not wonder at how abruptly her life had been upended. To pay it any mind at all might have brought her to tears. Instead she watched her footing and held tight to her bag. Gil still carried her sewing basket, an act of chivalry she was sure her back would appreciate before the day was out. With fortune, she would convince him to bear that burden for the rest of their trip.
How far was it to the border? She hardly knew. She knew how big Kentoria was on paper, but the distance between dots on the map was too hard to reckon without tools. Or the map in front of her, she supposed. She had only a vague notion of where things were in relation to one another. All she was sure of was the capital's location beside the lake and the river that fed it, and the heavily-traveled road that led east, toward the coast.
“Where are we going?” Thea barely dared speak. The question escaped so softly that at first, she wasn't certain Gil had heard. After a moment, though, he glanced back at her with a speculative glint in his eyes. At first, she'd thought them the gray of storm clouds. Now she took it back. They were cold and sharp, the scuffed steel of a razor-edged blade.
When he finally answered, his voice was as calm as the rest of him. “Away. For now, that's all you need to know.”
Thea wasn't sure she agreed. Refuge would be easier to find where dogs couldn't track them, where politics wouldn't require them to be handed over to whatever noble took Kentoria's throne now that Gaius Rothalan was dead. Most of the bordering countries were on amiable terms with her homeland; if not allies, at least they weren't antagonistic. Only the small country of Ranor to the north held Kentoria in poor regard, though their forces were so minuscule that they dared not prod the hornet's nest at their feet.
Would somewhere like Ranor let them in? Hide their passage and force the scattered remnants of the Rothalan bloodline to dig for answers? The dense parts of Samara shrank away, replaced with the warehouses, lumber yards, and sugar shacks that had come to represent the kingdom in a way nothing else could.
As she stared past the structures and their workers and into the hills of maples dressed in red and gold, Thea realized she wouldn't see them again. The heart of Samara, the only home she'd known, now lay behind them. Everything ahead was unfamiliar, and panic frayed the edges of her heart.
“Keep walking.” Gil's mask lent his voice an odd resonance, but the rich depths of his smooth baritone remained solid beneath it. Steady. Reassuring in ways it shouldn't have been.
She chased away the thought by changing the subject. “Shouldn't you take that off? The dogs will smell you from a mile away.”
“I see no reason to continue to discuss my choices after I have explained them once.”
“What if someone doesn't understand?”
“Then that's a failing on their part, not mine. I am many things, in addition to being a killer, and one of them is well-spoken.” He put out an arm to keep her from passing him when he stopped. Her basket swayed on his forearm.
Thea started to ask why they'd halted, then decided to look around instead. They'd stopped at the back side of a pavilion where lumber from culled maples sat in tall stacks to dry. She poked a finger at a bead of sap on the end of a board. It had already hardened. From there, her attention swept out across the wide-open field. The green expanse was laced with so many paths cut by wagon wheels, it resembled the leg of her mother's antique table, where the old family cat's claws had carved patterns. A few figures dotted the criss-crossing paths, quiet compared to the noise of the city that lay behind them. She turned an ear back the way they'd come, half expecting to hear the dogs.
She heard nothing.
Gil nodded toward the trees beyond the field. “The river is on the other side of that sugarbush. Once we're through the trees, we'll cross the water. The dogs may lose us there.”
“I can't swim that well,” Thea protested. “And certainly not in a dress.”
“We won't swim. We'll take the ferry.”
She scanned him from head to foot and snorted. “They'll never let us aboard.” On her own, she might have stood a chance. But even had he agreed to remove the executioner's mask, he was still dressed all in black—an unlucky color, one the ferryman would never allow on his boat—and the assortment of knives sheathed at his waist and strapped to his thighs could have armed a dozen men.
For a moment, she thought he might protest. Instead, he glanced down at himself and evaluated his appearance. Without a word, he pulled a piece of dull green fabric from her sewing basket and wrapped it around his shoulders. He was deft, even one-handed, and a moment later, he'd fashioned a makeshift hood and a cloak that covered most of his upper half.
Thea pursed her lips.
“It will do until you make me something new. And then I won't need to worry about hiding.” He removed his mask to reveal a smile so grim, she almost wished he'd kept it on.
