The princess will save y.., p.12
The Princess Will Save You, page 12
ONE AT A TIME AND YOUR LIFE ON THE LINE.
Amarande dismounted and tied Mira to the post. She tipped her chin at Osana. “Stay here.”
The girl didn’t protest, and Amarande felt confident she couldn’t steal away Mira without Amarande hearing and preventing her from getting far. Feeling the weight of the girl’s stare against her father’s crossed swords at her back, she tested their modicum of trust and walked away.
As the princess’s boot heel hit the single-plank step leading to the building’s shade portico, a voice came from within. “Remove your weapons before entering.”
Amarande hesitated, her father’s swords pressing into her back.
“I see those swords, girl. Drop them where you stand.”
The princess brought both boots back to solid ground. The voice came again, male and even. “I am alone and unarmed and so shall you be. Or you won’t enter at all.”
The princess directed her words, clear and just as stern as the man’s, at one of the two front windows situated on either side of a massive wooden door, both shaded and dark from the overhang. “How do you expect me to enter weapon-free when your sign clearly states my life is on the line?”
“Enter that way or don’t. I expect your wits to be the sharpest thing in the room.”
Egia and Maite each came out of her makeshift scabbard with a quick metallic swish. She set them gently on the wood slats of the portico, marveling again at the materials this man possessed in such a place. In all her father’s stories of the Torrent, nothing like this had ever been mentioned. It was nearly as big a surprise as the black wolf.
Feeling naked without her weapons, Amarande entered, blinking, her eyes adjusting from the fierce sun to extreme shade. The building’s windows were nothing but pinpoints of light within, thanks to the portico overhang. As the door slammed shut behind her, a dozen lit candles within flickered from their positions atop built-in ledges and pedestal tables.
As the flames recovered and grew, she saw she was standing in some sort of grand entry, the rest of the structure peeling off in a series of closed doors. This room, though, was a presentation of wealth, each candle strategically placed next to a fine vase, shade plant, plush chaise. At the very center, at a slight angle from the door, was a broad marble-topped desk, and a man sitting behind it with his elbows trained along the top, hands gently clasped together. This man was the same age her father had been, but soft with comfort.
“Welcome to the Warlord’s Inn. You have come alone, yes?”
The Warlord’s Inn? That went against everything the princess knew about the ruler’s decrees. Movement was key; housing people who could use close proximity and routine to conspire? Definitely not. But in the past day, it had become as clear as the diamonds hiding in her skirts that there was so much about this place—and the Warlord—she didn’t know.
Amarande didn’t react. She simply replied, “Yes.”
“And you have no other weapons upon you?”
The princess’s knife sat heavy in her boot. “As demanded, none but my wit.”
“We shall see about that,” the man said. “These are not my edicts; they are the Warlord’s. No one is to be stationary unless they are alone. One in and one out, and a tax upon each head. At the inn you can purchase shelter, food, supplies, and information. Now, I ask you, what do you require?”
The princess didn’t hesitate.
“Food, supplies, information.”
He laughed, long and hard, everything echoing off the empty hollows of a place filled with nothing but this man and other people’s belongings. “That’s a heavy load for a girl who looks as if she’s just come from a celebration.”
The princess’s muscles stiffened under her ruined skirts—again with cracks about her gown. If the Warlord was a woman why did she elevate men such as these who didn’t have the capacity to comment on anything other than her appearance? Surely the Warlord could find better. Or women—Koldo could stop this man’s heart with the right expression.
Amarande’s eyes narrowed—both she and this man were visibly unarmed, but they were not equal in training. “Do not let my appearance deceive you.”
The man reset, tenting his fingers. The more she watched him, the more he reminded her of an aged Renard—lily white and bland, the lines of his body fading along with his coloring. “The majority of my guests can only pay for one of the four.”
Of course. That lump crawled back into her throat. Tears pressed against her eyes. It would cost all her diamonds just to get what she needed to continue this journey past the morning.
The man continued. “Of your requests, which is the most important?”
The princess answered immediately, swallowing that lump away. “The information.”
“And what is your payment?”
“Nothing until I know you have what I need.”
The man smiled, thin. “You’re the chicken or the egg kind, I see.” He untented his fingers, his posture hardening. “But let us remember the particulars of the sign beyond my door. The second portion of that sign isn’t simply for a rhyme. By standing here, you are gambling your life. If this transaction doesn’t go your way, it’s off to the compost garden with you.”
The princess coughed out a laugh at the utter lack of drama in the name. “The compost garden? Am I to do manual labor or become worm food?”
The man was not impressed with her reaction.
“Not quite either. If you run afoul of me, you will be unceremoniously dumped into the very special white sand at the center of my compound. It’s fed by a geyser that runs as hot as the Warlord’s fire pits. The second you slip through that earth, you’ll be poached right in those beautiful clothes. An hour later, the earth will spit you into my garden and you’ll become stock for stew, tallow for candles, marrow for horses. I’ll use every single piece of you until there’s nothing left.”
It was so over the top that Amarande didn’t believe it. But she’d already laughed at the man’s name for the place, and she needed to get whatever information she could before she broke a vase over his head or retrieved her swords.
“Noted, sir—”
“Innkeeper.”
Stars, of course.
“Innkeeper, how do I purchase information from you?”
“It’s a simple exchange. You tell me what you want. If I confirm I have what you need, you give me information in return before I give you an answer.”
Not ideal, but her father had taught her to play. If you underestimate your opponent, you overestimate yourself.
“I am looking for four riders on three horses. They should’ve come this way last night. One boy, my age, of Torrent, is a hostage.”
The man’s posture relaxed. It was as if he only had two settings: cold and stubborn or sagardoa warm and ready for gossip. He leaned back and, though he didn’t have a mug in his hand, she imagined him at one of the cafés lining the market outside of the Itspi, trading information of a less valuable kind. “That is something I know about. The only question is how you plan to pay for it. I trade in like. In this case, information requires more information. I will accept nothing else.”
The diamonds lining her pockets clicked together, at the ready to test his policy. The knife in her boot, too. Amarande chewed her cheek. Somehow, she thought her news would hit this man differently than it had the guards. Finally, she spoke.
“I am the information. Princess Amarande of Ardenia, running away from my castle after someone dear to me was kidnapped to push my hand into a marriage contract.” She lifted her chin. “Surely you can find value in that.”
The man leaned forward and again tented his fingers. Amarande’s knife hand twitched.
“You were correct earlier—your looks do not deceive, Princess. What do you think those who you seek paid for their time here? I already know all about you and your stableboy.”
“Good, then which direction did they go?”
The man clicked his tongue—tsk, tsk, tsk. “Tell me who they work for.”
“Pyrenee.”
The man tilted his head. “I said who.”
How was that answer incorrect? “Renard.”
The man tilted his head farther. Clicked his tongue again. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Amarande’s guts turned to water. Had the kidnappers lied to him?
“Where are they? Was my … was he hurt—the hostage? What did they tell you?”
The princess’s questions died on her lips as a door opened to her left and she realized they weren’t alone. The innkeeper made the rules, but he didn’t abide by them. A man twice the size of her father staggered out and grunted, “Pretty compost.”
Amarande’s hand was in her boot in a flash, but the ogre was much faster than he looked, picking her up as she grappled for her knife. His massive hands grabbed her about the waist, an arm curling around her back and across her stomach as she knelt. She was upside down, several feet in the air, knife jiggling against the slit of space between her stocking and the top of her boot shaft. The giant man belly-laughed, and she shook with it. “No weapons, girl. No weap—”
The repetition died on the man’s lips as Amarande kicked back and up hard, heel of one boot and then the other smashing into his jaw from the underside. The giant’s head cracked back, spittle and blood flying along with maybe a tooth or two, and his arms failed.
She fell to the floor face first, getting her arms out in front just quick enough to roll forward, backbone smacking against the plush rug and wooden floorboards with a thud, and to her feet.
The giant stumbled into a vase and marble pedestal with a crash, knocking the candle there to the floorboards. Amarande didn’t see if the flame caught, because the ogre was moving toward her again, the man behind the desk screaming orders now. The giant tossed the sharp remainder of the vase at her as she reached again for her knife, and Amarande turned in time for the large shards to hit her back.
The man stumbled forward and dove at the innkeeper’s orders: “Catch her before she gets that hand in her boot again. You’re no good to me with a knife in your eye!”
The giant was so long his fingers were wrapped around Amarande’s ankles in the next instant. She kicked, but his hands were large enough to void her movements, and he pulled her forward as if she were a rag doll, the silk of her skirt slick against the expensive weave of the rug.
“No … don’t.… I-I…,” the princess stuttered. She’d been taught to fight much larger people, Koldo always emphasizing that for women technique was everything, but they’d never taught her how to survive an eight-foot nightmare.
Scrambling, Amarande put a hand in her pocket for her diamonds—the innkeeper’s greed was the only thing that might get her out of this now.
But then there was more movement, the ring of steel, an extended spray of blood.
Osana.
Osana, standing there with Amarande’s swords, one downturned and scraping the floorboards, the other straight through the giant’s back.
Impossibly, the big man got to his knees, then to his feet. Osana whistled and tossed the untainted sword to Amarande, who caught it as she stood, and then, using two hands, the girl pulled the other sword straight out of the man’s back before he made it to his full height.
Amarande got her sword up in a high guard, ready for the giant to turn and lurch at them. Osana followed, trying to copy, but clearly she’d never held a sword in her life until the moment she decided to thrust one into the ogre’s back.
But he did not lurch at them. Instead, he pressed a massive hand to where the blade had come out of his stomach, eyes flicking to the innkeeper, who was frozen behind the desk, his melty-soft features waxen.
“No good. No good,” the giant grunted, and then collapsed forward. He fell onto the marble desk, which buckled under the weight, and onto the innkeeper, too slow to move out of the way.
Amarande grabbed Osana’s hand then. They ran for the door, pausing only so Amarande could stamp out the knocked-down candle, which had, from its side, tipped melted wax onto the floorboards, its flame now a mere hairbreadth from lighting that runaway wax and setting the wood on fire. Then they sprinted out of the inn, across the portico, and into the sun. The horses waited, shifting on nervous hooves.
“Thank you,” the princess coughed out as they mounted their horses, swords out and ready for the innkeeper’s retaliation until they got their horses going into a hard gallop.
“You saved me, I save you,” Osana answered, though her face went pale as the giant’s blood dripped from the sword to her hand. She’d killed him; Amarande was sure of it.
The girls looked back as they wound around the edge of the wooden wall, waiting for the owner to come rushing out—or to perhaps send out more lackeys, because if he broke his own rules with one man, there were likely more.
But the innkeeper didn’t come, and he didn’t send anyone after them. He was a man who waited for prey rather than one who gave chase after it—a spider instead of a tiger.
Osana yelled to Amarande over the rushing wind, “You said four riders on three horses, yes?”
“Yes, so?”
“They’ve gone this way.”
“How do you know?” Amarande asked, sheathing her sword. Osana had nowhere to put hers and kept it out, the wind peeling blood off the Basilican steel.
“You aren’t the only one who can track.”
Headed due west, they raced for two more minutes, until the compound could be fully seen behind them, along with any possible retaliation. Amarande slowed Mira, and Osana slowed, too, pointing to a line that cut through the shifting sands. An indentation large enough to be a path.
And there they were, three pairs of horse tracks, and one person walking. All away from the compound, their path leading back to one of the doors in the wooden wall.
It wasn’t a perfect track, not really. More like an educated guess than something that could be corroborated.
Several yards away, the footsteps stopped and simply became three sets of hoofprints.
But then Amarande saw it—a small cluster of white flecks.
Amarande pulled Mira to a hard stop and dismounted to check, plucking a tiny beige grain from the scorched earth. Yes, a few oats, slipping through again.
Luca leaving clues. Which meant he was still alive and coherent. Thank the stars.
“What is it?” Osana asked.
“Proof.”
“Is it true what you said? That you left your kingdom because your stableboy was kidnapped to push your hand into marriage?”
Amarande nodded, her earlier concerns about what this girl knew assuaged by her very recent actions. “Yes. All of it.”
The girl chewed her lip. “I don’t know much about being a princess, but … can’t you just get another? That would be a good job for anyone.”
Amarande mounted Mira so that she could look the girl in the eye. “I can replace the stableboy, but I cannot replace what he means to me.”
Osana’s eyes widened. “But you’re a princess. You can’t … you wouldn’t…”
“Love a commoner? Of course I can, and I do. Love doesn’t know anything about class, nor should it be bound by it.”
Osana was quiet for a moment. “If I help you find him, may I earn a place at your home?”
Amarande looked at the girl then, covered in the giant man’s blood, hand still gripping the sword. Egia—truth. “Osana, you have earned that sword, and you most certainly have earned a place. But this journey is my own, and dangerous enough. You’ve been good company, but I won’t have you risk yourself for me without training. You’ve done enough already.”
“But I want to come with you.”
“And I want you to find a place at the Itspi, and the truth is … I’m unsure what will happen when I find these men and my love.”
The girl’s lips parted, but she stopped, giving Amarande space to continue.
The princess appreciated all the girl had done, but something in her gut told her that she must be alone to get Luca. She might die at the hands of the kidnappers, but she couldn’t see this girl do the same. Not for her and her quest. Not untrained and exhausted.
“You say you can track? Head east to Ardenia, and to the Itspi. Ask for a man there called Serville. He is the head of my castle guard. Tell him what you know about me, show him the sword, and tell him this is Egia, and that I have Maite. He knows where to find the inscription that proves it. I wish I could send you with more proof than that, but hopefully all those things will combine to him believing you—he’s a smart man and he will see you for a clever and loyal girl.”
“Please let me come with you.” Her voice was small, eyes downcast, as she made her plea yet again. So young yet so very weary. “I … I don’t want to be alone.”
Amarande placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “On my honor, you have a place in my home, and after you make it there, you won’t be alone again. Now, go.”
Osana nodded, accepting her first order. “Until I see you again, Princess.”
* * *
THE princess was closing in. She couldn’t see them, not yet, but the hoofprints in the russet earth grew deeper with each passing minute, the wind receiving less time to wipe the earth clean of the riders’ path. A loping angle toward the only functional port in the Torrent.
At least that’s where she thought they were going.
It made no sense, but she followed. It didn’t matter the kidnappers’ destination—they wouldn’t get there with Luca.
The sun was barreling toward the horizon now. Sunset was still hours away, but with each passing moment the lack of sleep pressed deeply into Amarande’s eyelids. Her father had trained her to track prey like her life depended on it, yes, but he hadn’t simulated the other parts of a journey like this—she’d always gotten as much sleep as she needed.
In the new light, the sands changed, too, the flowing seas of dust and earth becoming more irregular. Shrubbery brave enough to survive here poked up toward the coming night. She’d been told the Torrent was nothing but sand and sky and plateaus for miles on end, but this vegetation multiplied with each horse length. Amarande squinted ahead and saw the cut of a clear path through the scrub as it grew thicker, and the smudge of trees on the horizon.
