AllFreeNovel
Share Us
-
A couple of hours later we had reached the eastern gate of the city, forced to scuttle and slink our way through the streets while remaining hidden from the late revellers and early risers, which made for slow progress. We hadn’t dared to say goodbye to the Hernándezes – as much as I wanted to thank them for their courageous hospitality, it was too much of a risk for all of us. Val or Welzes might have had someone watching the laundry awaiting our return, and the best we could do for the couple was not expose them to any further danger. Still, I imagined them fretting when their prince didn’t return, wondering what had happened to him. I knew that feeling well.
“That’s him. The red-headed guard Lord de la Vega said was open to bribes,” Ren murmured, and I followed his assessing gaze to the man stationed in front of the heavy gate. The city walls towered over us, blocking out the stars and making climbing them an impossibility. Which, I imagined, was the whole point.
“Is that red though?” I asked dubiously, eyeing the guard’s hair in the light of a nearby lantern swaying gently on its hook. “It’s more like...an interesting brown.”
“Dull auburn, at least,” said Ren. “Come on, my knees are killing me! I can’t stay squished up like this a moment longer.”
“I’m fairly sure cramp isn’t a valid reason for risking our lives if you’re wrong.”
He waved an impatient hand. “I’m never wrong.”
“Ah,” I said dryly. “That fact had eluded my notice because of all the times that you were-”
I was silenced by a hand clamped tightly over my mouth. It smelled of oranges.
“Mathias,” the prince whispered, his face an inch from mine in the gloom. “Now is not the time to start spreading lies about completely imaginary moments in which I didn’t quite get things right.”
When he dropped his hand, I nodded, chastised. “Of course. Because we need to stay focused.”
“No,” said Ren. “Because I have a cramp. Move your ass before I’m tempted to bite it.”
I considered that. “And if I want you to?”
“Then I shall magnanimously oblige,” he conceded, offering me a grin. I felt a little giddy at the sight of it; he had barely smiled these last few days, and it must have been the knowledge that we’d soon be out of Máros and putting distance between us and those who hunted us that allowed him to do so now. It even made me shift aside to let him out of the hiding place we’d been crouched in – this time, a small gap between two rows of empty crates that stank of rotting seafood.
“Señor, a moment of your time,” Ren called loudly, approaching the guard with all the subtlety of...well, an entitled prince used to getting whatever he wanted. “I believe you can help us?”
The man narrowed his eyes. “Us?”
“Oh,” said Ren, clearly remembering too late that good upstanding citizens of Máros did not generally keep company with enemy northerners, which is why we’d fuckingagreedthat I’d stay out of sight while he handled the delicate negotiations for the bribe. “No, just me. I need to leave the city.”
“Come back at daybreak like everyone else.” He narrowed his eyes. “Or do you have something that won’t pass the checkpoint inspection?”
“I do,” Ren said cheerily. “And I heard you take money in exchange for opening up that gate back there for a minute or two without any inspection required?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.I let my forehead smack forward into the crates, silently cursing his sudden inability to be diplomatic.
The man’s eyes widened, and his mouth gaped comically.
“Are you...are you attempting to illegally bribe a member of the city watch?” he finally bit out, the words nearly exploding from his mouth.
“Well,” my prince said, shrugging, “I’m certainly not attempting tolegallybribe you. Do you want the money or not?”
A drawn sword was the only answer he received.
I pulled out my knife, tiny in comparison to the gleaming two feet of metal pointed at my lover’s throat, and prepared to die horribly and pointlessly in his defence.
“An imprisonable offence,” a new voice said from the street, and I inadvertently shrank back into the shadows of my hiding place. “Yet not a fatal one, so I suggest you sheath that sword, Cortez. I’ll see him to the gaol.”
The original guard gave a sharp salute to the stranger and a nasty parting look at Ren, but it was only when the second man grabbed my prince’s arm and yanked him away from the gate that I got a good look at what he was wearing: the uniform of another city guard. Only this one was marked with the rank of captain.
I sighed.
The captain dragged a sullen Ren past the pile of crates I was hiding within, but I didn’t dare move with the gate guard Cortez still watching them go. When he finally lost interest, I gave it another half minute before darting across the road to lose myself in the shadows lurking at the base of the huge city wall.
Several hundred yards later, just far enough to be out of sight and earshot of the gate, I caught up to Ren where he was depositing a fistful of coins into the captain’s hand. The man counted them out carefully, raking the fingers of his free hand through his hair. His decidedly red, and not Blesseddull auburnhair.
