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I heard myself thank him, reassuring him that I had been in the saddle before, but that it had been a while and the chaise was most welcome – all the things a humble human girl ought to say, and they still fell from my lips as if I’d never been anyone else. My mind, meanwhile, continued to spin without pause. Was it just kindness, this helpful gesture? Were they putting me in a chaise because I could not run off so easily that way?
It could not bedangerous, could it, accepting the offer?
The gate was already croaking shut behind my back. I threw a last glance over my shoulder, just in time to catch one more glimpse of Tared and Creon near the shore – the first with his arms crossed, the latter with his hands in his pockets, neither of their nonchalant postures enough to hide the wariness in their unblinking gazes.
Then the iron-plated doors slammed back together.
The sound of an impenetrable fort – or, if one was standing on the other side of the walls, of a perfect prison.
Unease crawled up my skin. But the gate watchers were already hauling bolt after bolt back in place behind me, and Delwin’s people were mounting their horses; no way out now, not unless I wanted to thoroughly ruin my chances with the consuls forever. And anyway, wouldn’t it be a little cowardly to run before anyone had even spoken a single unkind word to me?
So I gingerly stepped into the elegant two-man chaise Delwin had provided for me. I smiled and nodded and shook hands with the members of my escort. Like Valter and Editta’s troublesome daughter, desperate not to embarrass; like Miss Matilda’s promising apprentice, paid to flatter even the most unflattering clients.
Emelin of Cathra, back in the company of humans.
Chapter 19
The men and womenin their shining city armour were quiet around me as we left the gate behind and rode down the meandering sand road, the plodding of hooves and clinking of the stirrups all that broke through the serene silence of dawn. Low hills and boxwood hedges on either side of us restricted most of my view of the surrounding area. The air, however, carried the sweet, comforting fragrance of ripe wheat and dewy grass; there had to be farmland nearby, perhaps just a stone’s throw away.
So it was not the grain itself that surprised me when the landscape finally opened up around us and I could see the miles ahead.
It was theamountof it.
Like a blanket of gold covering the hills and plains in between, rippling in the clean morning breeze – acres and acres of it, stalks bending under the weight of their bursting ears. On the horizon, I could just distinguish the darker green of orchards. To my left, a field of cabbages was basking in the golden light; to my right, a small irrigation canal cut through swathes of even more grain, the water crystal clear and sparkling, reflecting the coral-coloured clouds spreading across the sky.
Shreds of mist still hovered over the fields here and there, lending a dreamy, almost unearthly quality to the scene. As if we had stepped into the fairytale illustrations of Valter’s most expensive book, the one with hand-painted pages showing a world I’d thought could never truly be.
It didn’t look like magic. It just looked like happiness.
And if this was a prison … gods, at least it was a gilded one.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ Delwin said, riding next to me, and only then did I realise he must have been watching me carefully as we’d rode out from the shelter of the boxwood.
‘It’s gorgeous.’ The breathlessness in my voice was entirely genuine. ‘And … and it’s all yours to keep, too?’
He must have come from the world outside; he understood that remark with a grim ease that could only have been nurtured by tribute season after tribute season. ‘Miraculous, isn’t it?’
‘Utterly unbelievable,’ I said, and again I meant every word of it.
We rode on in a slightly more comfortable silence, past the lush fields of grain, past a ring of fallow land, past another irrigation canal and a field of leeks ready to be harvested. So much food, and none of it would ever be loaded into fae ships under threat of death and violence – it truly was a challenge to wrap my head around it.
The world was waking up around us. The farther we progressed, the more people came driving in the oppositedirection; ox carts full of burly young men, the occasional workhorse pulling wagons containing empty crates. Every single person looked well-fed and content, cheeks rosy from the fresh morning air; they laughed and chatted among themselves, not a trace of fear or tension to be found as they went about their daily work. None of the harried urgency that I knew from the farmers of Cathra. None of that ever-present awareness in the back of their minds that one mistake too many would mean death, either through punishment or starvation.
I wanted to cry.
I wanted to smile so much it hurt.
Two or three times, I thought I saw a familiar face in the groups passing us by, but each of them turned out to be a stranger upon closer inspection. Still, my heart jumped every single time I caught sight of some familiar haircut, a familiar shirt, a familiar pair of broad shoulders – they werehere, after all, the people I’d once called mine, and surely they couldn’t all avoid me for days if we were walking around in the same damn city?
Could they?
I squashed another shiver of nervousness.
And then we rounded a last bend in the road, passed the ridge of a low hill covered in chestnut trees … and there it was, peaceful and bustling, sprawling out between a small lake and a stretch of vibrant pasture where hairy cows and goats stood grazing.
The city.
Thousands upon thousands of flint and thatch roofs, separated by a spiderweb of streets, surrounded by a low, broad rampart covered in snowy white lilies. Trails of smoke spiralled from chimneys wherever I looked. From our slightly elevated position, I could see market squares and city halls, parks and an open theatre; the pentagonal shape of a temple rose above theroofs at the centre of the town. Not too far from it, an ornate marble building stretched along the long side of a square – the seat of the consuls, I suspected, who would be ruling the people who’d chosen them from behind that grand façade.
