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Finally, well after midnight, Appius and I retired to my room. We went to bed and curled into each other’s arms, but neither of us did more than doze until it was time to get up in the morning.
“I think we can do this,” Appius whispered in the pre-dawn darkness as we rose and dressed. “If we can get to Aktau, then I know we can get the rest of the way.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said.
The fact was, even if we got to Aktau, we had no idea what the situation in the mountains was. Royersford had heard almost nothing from the countryside since King Julius had tightened his iron grip on the city. For all we knew, there could be an army in the mountains trying to clear the rubble from the fall and rebuild the bridges.
It felt unlikely, but we couldn’t be sure one way or another. We were about to walk blindly into the abyss.
At least we were going together.
“Is this all of you this time?” the tall soldier—whose name I still deliberately hadn’t learned—met us at the college gate. “You’re not going to surprise us by adding five more or forming your own army, are you?”
The other soldier chuckled, even though it wasn’t much of a joke.
“Just us,” I said. For added measure, I said, “I’ve half a mind to stay behind today myself to get some extra sleep.”
“The nobles wouldn’t like that,” the tall soldier grumbled, pulling open the college gate and gesturing impatiently for us to walk out.
My heart squeezed into my throat. Neither soldier bothered to check our satchels, or even to look too closely at us in the dawn light. The first step in our escape was going well. We might just have a chance to make it out.
I glanced over my shoulder at the college one last time as we headed down the street. Appius, Leander, and Darius looked as well. Mara and Lucius were too busy checking the streets as we headed toward the south hill to bother with the college. But this was it. I might never see Royersford Healers’ College again in my life.
It was surreal. Nothing seemed at all out of the ordinary as we were marched through the streets and up to the south hill. The same people were out doing the same things in the street that they’d been doing every time we’d walked through that way in the past month. No one made a comment about our unusually bulky coats or the fact that our satchels hung heavier on our shoulders.
Once we reached the south hill, we each veered off as we did every Thursday to treat the same patients who we’d each come to think of as our own. We managed to do it with straight faces as well. In order for our plan to succeed, we would all gather at Old Gabe’s house about an hour before the soldiers usually tended to gather us up to take us back to the college.
It was the longest day of my life. I was hot from wearing three layers of clothes, although I managed to remove two layers and stow them in my satchel after my second call of the morning. I had a hard time paying attention to my noble patients, who mostly just wanted to talk to someone different. I could hardly eat the lunch that was kindly provided for me at noon, though on a whim, I kept the slim, ceramic bottle from the weak beer I’d been offered. It might prove useful later.
Finally, after what felt like forever, it was time for us all to gather at Old Gabe’s. I left the middle-aged noblewoman I’d been treating for what was likely her change of life, but what she insisted was a dire wasting disease, and made my way hurriedly along to the back door of the grand estate. We’d arranged the details of how we would get into the back garden on our previous visit, and by the time I stepped through a short servants’ hallway and into the garden, Appius, Leander, and Darius were already there.
“Are Mara and Lucius coming?” I asked quietly, striding across the garden to the fence that bordered the back of the property.
“They’ve already climbed the fence to scout the best path down the hillside,” Darius informed me as I reached them.
I paused and blinked at the gap that had been made in the fence between two posts. This was it. Once we crossed through that gap and made our way down through the forest and cliffs on the other side, it would either be the frontier or death.
“We should go as fast as possible,” I said, whispering as if someone were listening in on us from a few feet away.
I started forward, and it was a testament to how afraid I really was that I took Appius’s hand as I went and pulled him through the gap with me. Appius smiled as if we were at the start of a grand adventure.
Leander and Darius came through the gap last, pausing to fit the fence back into place. The plan was to cover our tracks as much as possible so that when the soldiers came looking for us, they would have a hard time following.
It seemed like a good plan in theory, but within ten minutes of trudging through the overgrown forest as it dropped steeply down from the crest of the hill, I could see that it was a good idea in practice as well. The hill was every bit as steep and treacherous as Mara, Leander, and Darius had made it out to be. There were sudden cliffs and drops in places you wouldn’t have suspected if you hadn’t been looking for them. The ground was still damp and muddy with melting snow, even though the snow was almost completely gone from the countryside and any place out in the open.
“It would be nice if we could climb down this hillside without making it obvious which way we came,” Leander said at one point, glancing back over his shoulder.
I could see what he meant. Six people traveling down a steep hill at a fast speed meant that we’d snapped tree branches and upset vegetation that had been growing peacefully for who knew how long. We could have been more careful and covered our tracks, but we all just wanted to get to the bottom of the hill and meet up with Horacio.
Once I was certain no one would follow us immediately down the hill, my prayers turned to hoping Horacio would actually be there to pick us up at the bottom.
“It’s getting dark,” Appius said from just behind my shoulder. “What if we can’t find Horacio or he can’t find us?”
I had been thinking the same thing, but I felt like Appius needed me to be a leader and not a doubter.
Before I could come up with any sort of answer, Mara said, “He said he’d meet us at The Giant’s Shoe. That’s not hard to find.”
I hoped she was right.
