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“I’ve just remembered a time when you were wrong,” I said to Ren as I joined them.
He tsked. “Cease your delusional ramblings,” the prince shot back at me. “I found him eventually, didn’t I?”
“More like I found you,” said the captain, eyeing me suspiciously. “What the fuck were you thinking, approaching Cortez back there? He’s straighter than a fucking flagpole!”
“That’s what this one once claimed,” Ren drawled, draping an arm over my shoulder and plastering himself to my side. “And now look at him, unable to keep his love-sick, smitten self off me.”
“We’re not looking to cause trouble,” I said in a low voice, my back straining under Ren’s weight. “We just want out.” I nodded at the gold in the guard’s hand.
He cocked his head and licked his lips. “This doesn’t even come close.”
Bullshit. It was twice what Lord de la Vega had told us he usually paid this man for letting entire carts of stock pass unchecked.
“It’s more than compensatory for opening a gate.”
“Ah, but where’s the extra fee for my silence?” the captain asked, leering at us. “Difficult to live in Máros for this past week and not know who you both are. I imagine Cortez will also cotton on shortly once he gathers his wits. If I’m to sell a story in which His Highness escaped back into the city instead of ending up in a cell, I’ll need more...incentiveto remind me of which story’s the correct one.”
I blew out an irritated breath. “This is your fucking king you’re talking to!”
“Then he can afford it, can’t he?”
Ren gave a broad smile, one of the false ones he offered those who wasted his time but knew he had to pander to. “Of course,” he said smoothly, reaching into his coat and pulling out the small pouch of gold we’d been given by de la Vega – with the strong suggestion that he’d be wanting it repaid with interest when Ren returned to power. The prince counted out another three coins and held them out, but the captain smacked his lips and reached for the pouch instead.
“Nyet,” I hissed, slapping his hand away. It immediately dropped to the hilt of his sword and I froze. Fuck, he didn’t even need a weapon to screw us over: a loud yell would do the job just as well, with the gate guard close by and us trapped at the edge of the city with nowhere to run. His cold smirk said he knew it as well as I did.
“Mat,” Ren cooed soothingly, increasing the brilliant intensity of his smile. “This fine gentleman is just doing his job and deserves appropriate compensation for all the perils that come with such a position. The money is yours, señor.”
The captain’s greed clearly blinded him to the implied threat in the prince’s words, for he eagerly accepted the pouch and slipped it into his own pocket, leaving Ren with only the three coins he’d removed from its depths. Surely the man wasn’t stupid enough to think he’d be forgiven for such a thing when Ren recovered his rightful place as king? And then he sneered at us, and my blood ran cold at the realisation that his confidence was based on a belief it would never come to pass. Did all citizens of Quareh have as little faith in Ren as this one?
“This way,” he said, and when he turned, I caught sight of Ren’s lip curling in distaste as he finally dropped the fake amicable expression. We shared a dark look but said nothing, hurrying after the captain as he led us into a shadowed alcove tucked between a guard post and the outer walls. There was a small door there, a service exit in the city wall that was a tenth of the size of the formal eastern gate and clearly designed to be only used by those on foot. After it was unlocked for us, we ducked through in silence, and while I was all too willing to let that continue, Ren turned to the captain with a furrowed brow.
“Which way is south?”
The guard raised an eyebrow. “You’re at the eastern gate.”
Ren nodded eagerly. “We sure are.”
“So south isright,” he said slowly, with the condescension of a man who believed he was talking to an idiot.
The prince turned to look in that direction, squinting over the open plains that lay beyond the walls. “Are you certain?”
“Of course he’s fucking certain,” I said with a note of fake irritation in my voice when I realised what he intended. “The sun’s starting to rise over there, which means overthereis south. How have you survived two decades on this continent without a basic sense of direction?”
“Surrounded by people who worried about such nonsense for me,” Ren said airily. “And you can’t talk. You didn’t even know where Naledowas,Mathias.”
“Oh do forgive me for not memorising every last coastal port in your stupid fucking country. I’m sure my ignorance of Quarehian geography will be terribly inconveniencing to us when we’re hundreds of miles away in Onn. However will we survive?”
“See what I have to put up with?” demanded Ren indignantly, looking to the captain as if for support. The man just shook his head, wisely choosing not to get involved in our argument.
“Get the fuck out of here,” he growled. “And you never saw me, okay?”
With that, he slammed the door in our faces and left us alone in the open countryside beyond the towering city wall that made me feel like an insect.
We shrugged at each other and headed for the road that led out of the eastern gate, following it to the south.
“That bastard stole all of our money,” I seethed, scowling over my shoulder at the city as it slowly began to shrink behind us.
“Not all of it,” Ren said quietly. When I looked at him in surprise, he grinned and withdrew his hand from his other pocket, half a dozen gold coins clutched between his fingers. They glinted in the early morning sunlight. “I set some aside in case he got greedy. I just...didn’t expect it to bethatgreedy.”
