AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A silhouetted man strode down the street, his confident gait familiar. I stepped forward with the words I’d practiced ready on my tongue only to swallowed them. He had not come alone.
Two more people slid through the night—one small and one large. Only the trust we had established over the previous nights made me stay. He would not arrest me for my lies after the kiss, would he?
With clouds covering the far away stars, I could not read Dimitri’s face even when he stopped before me but, with hope, imagined the usual smile wider, the glint in his eye from the barge. His shadows halted close enough to overhear.
He pressed a soft leather-bound book into my hands, his fingers interlacing with mine as he opened it. It was too dark to see anything on the page.
“Tempest, you were right,” he said, voice as thick as the summer air.
“About?” I pulled away, taking the book with me. Since I left the hospital, I had imagined his arms around me as we kissed without interruptions. None of the dreams included an unknown audience.
“The tunnels. I never knew Tal had so many,” Dimitri continued without noticing my apprehension. “Apparently, some of the ancient priestesses swore to forsake daylight to get closer to the Goddess. They used them to get around Tal.” He steered my hand. “Here.”
A small mage light sprang up between us. Besides a large man and a small woman in leathers—now illuminated in blue—we were alone. Still, to use magic in the open… I swallowed.
There was no law against it, but it would surely draw attention. No one displayed their powers so recklessly. It made you a threat, and a threat was a target. Blushing, Mariska had told me that among the nobility it was comparable to baring your breasts. Perhaps worse. I had never understood the taboo before I found myself with magic and learned the effects of overuse—at best an addled brain and loss of inhibitions, at worst permanent brain injury, insanity, and death both to you and those around you.
Surely a mage light would not risk anyone’s sanity, but it would be seen as soon as someone looked down the street.
I yanked Dimitri into the gate alcove. We stood pressed too close and not close enough, our breaths mixing as I finally looked at the pages in my hand.
Delicate lines I recognized as his covered the paper in blue and green squares and lines. I turned it on its side, trying to read the tiny letters.
“What is it?”
“A map.” Pride I had only heard when he talked of Cherny brightened his words. “I know you cannot say more, but you solved it.” He pointed at a green square on the top left. “We’re here. The blue are major streets and landmarks of today, the green are the abandoned tunnels and exits I could find. This is the Archive.”
Lowtown and Rivertown was all blue—the ground around the Taliell too soft and the river arms too numerous for tunnels. My finger hovered over the page, tracing the lines in the air and committing as much as possible to memory. Now that I knew what it was, I recognized the heavy green areas as the Temple District and palace.
I searched for green on 9th Street, where only six blocks away the undead former divine rule’s home stood, but there was nothing. Either Ealhswip did not have an entrance to the tunnels, or, more likely, it had not been marked on the old maps Dimitri found.
I swallowed my disappointment—it could have led us to her front door without me saying a word. What he had created was amazing, even if it was not complete.
“It’s beautiful,” I said and meant it.
He shrugged, but a smile I would once have thought impossible tugged at his lips. “I know a curse prevents you from speaking—and I wouldn’t ask you to—but I hoped we could find an entrance together.”
“I would like that.” And I could steer us east, toward Ealhswip, without revealing anything myself. After almost dying last night, I was more aware than ever of the knife’s edge I walked.
Dimitri nodded at the two who had followed him. I recognized the tall shape of Yahontov despite the leather armor and swordsticking up over his shoulder. The smaller woman had a button nose and hair in a high braid. Perhaps without the great bones melded to her arm and leg guards and helmet shaped like the head of a great mountain cat, some would have called her cute. I returned her biting smile when I saw her blood-red boots reflect the light. With one look, she spoke to something fierce and wild inside me. Despite fearing her kind my whole life, I wanted this bone soldier to like me, for standing close to her felt like stepping up to the edge of a great height.
The prince shrugged as his companions stepped fully inside the light. “I would prefer to have come alone,” he said, “but even going into Lowtown disguised was—”
“Irresponsible,” Yahontov rumbled.
“—risky,” Dimitri finished, throwing the large man an annoyed look. “Taking them with us is the compromise. You know Yahontov. This is Koshka, she’s a scout with the Bone Guard. Both have sworn on the Goddess, they’ll tell no one of our excursion. They know what’s at stake.”
The sigiled ribs of a large animal attached to the woman’s light leather armor would lend her some of the strength and agility of the animal Spirit, or so the stories went. The Roja were the king’s spies, the Guard his elite fighters. Koshka was also about half the size of any bone guards I had seen in the palace.
The mage light colored her teeth blue when she flashed a wide grin, as if she was used to disbelieving looks. “I’m usually in the saddle, but don’t let my size fool you. I could take down this one with one hand behind my back.”
She pointed at Yahontov who grunted in response, though his amusement sang through my magic. Maybe even he was relaxing around me.
I nodded to both, knowing I should have feared them, but liking them despite myself. “Greetings, friend of a friend, I’m…”
I gave Dimitri a questioning look, not knowing how to finish the sentence.
“You’re the first princess,” Koshka said, giving the prince a long look. “Well, you couldn’t have expected us not to notice just because you act like the Oberwaldian has been at the palace this whole time. I have eyes.”
