Clearwater Dawn (16 page)

Barien was gone. His job was to look after her, he reminded himself.

I would be pleased to accompany you, highness.

She spun in low again, the same move that nearly caught him before, but Chriani was watching for it this time. A quick parry and cross-strike made where he sidestepped, her blade caught by the guard of his dagger and twisted, spinning from her hands. Lauresa stumbled back as it arced through the air, dropping behind her.

“Thank you, highness.” Chriani had to fight to slow his breathing. “Be wary of repeating the same form too often in single combat. A wary opponent will recognize and prepare against it.”

“Indeed. Thank you, tyro.”

She stooped to pick up the fallen rapier, turned back as if she was ready to continue again. Chriani felt a twinge spike in his back to remind him he’d twisted too far for the sake of the last move. But from behind Lauresa, he saw Ashlund approach, an unfamiliar relief felt at the lieutenant’s entrance. He whispered a few words in the ear of the tyro that Chriani had forgotten about long before. Following Chriani’s gaze, Lauresa glanced back.

“I think that is enough for this day,” the princess said. She held blade and dagger to Chriani, who took them as he nodded, stepping back. And all at once, he felt the familiar distance slipping between them. Replacing the dying warmth of the day that had seemed much longer than he knew it was.

Evenmark
.
At the orchard wall.

For too long, Chriani had carried the memory of too many days like this one. Before two days ago, he would have said they were gone. Easier that way.

“Highness.” Chriani nodded again.

The princess pulled her cloak from the weapons rack as she passed Ashlund, he and the tyro turning from Chriani without a word. As she paced toward the courtyard track, though, he saw the stiffness in Lauresa’s movements that she finally let show. The ache at his chest was flaring now, the black dagger shifting below it to dig into his side, but he waited until he’d stowed the weapons back in the armory again before he adjusted it.

Almost as an afterthought, he slipped the steel ring from his finger, slid it carefully into the sleeve pocket where his picks were hidden. He wasn’t sure if Lauresa had intended that she be able to contact him, but he was determined that he didn’t want to contact her without meaning to. Too many thoughts in him that he didn’t want shared.

It wasn’t until he returned to the gatehouse that Chriani discovered he was expected to do a full shift in the storerooms in addition to his being loaned to Ashlund for the day, and by the time evenmark finally tolled out, he’d only barely finished.

In the bunkroom, he splashed water to his face, cleared the dust of the training grounds from his eyes. Outside, he kept his cloak slung casually under one arm until the gate was lost to sight behind him, slipping it on as he climbed the courtyard track the long way around the Bastion. It would be closer to cross the training grounds, the orchard walls rising just beyond, but even from the gate, he could see the garrison practicing on horseback now, firelight and evenlamps burning brightly in the early dark.

Lauresa was waiting at the wall, lingering in shadow near the bars of the orchard door. She was changed from the day but still looking as little like herself as she had before, in leggings and tunic again, a weather-stained travel cloak tied loose at her throat.

“I was afraid you were not coming.”

“My apologies, highness.” Chriani had carefully scanned the wall and the grounds as he approached. Though he was sure they were alone, it seemed strange somehow to be speaking aloud.

“Which way shall we go, then?”

Chriani stared. From the orchard, he heard the wind over the outside walls whistle through the topmost branches, dark fingers clutching the sky. Lauresa was watching him expectantly.

“I’m to find our way out of the keep? After gatefall, under lockdown?”

“Barien always did.”

Chriani remembered Barien’s late nights. He tried not to let his surprise show.

“With respect, highness, what route did you take with him?”

“Out through the main gate, generally. With a promise to the guards there to bring a flagon of the Lion’s own ale back.”

“The guards don’t know me.”

“I expected so.”

Her face was impassive, and Chriani thought for a moment about slipping the ring on in order to feel whether she was laughing again. He felt the annoyance flare inside him, wondered how long it would be before it became something much darker.

From around the near corner of the Bastion, he heard the horses on the training grounds, the stables bright with light as he’d stolen past them out of the gatehouse. He deliberated for what seemed like a long while over how serious Lauresa had been when she’d threatened to go alone, then deliberated again over whether he could go through with what he suspected was his only way of keeping that from happening.

“Which way shall we go?” the princess said again.

“Come,” Chriani replied.

Through the shadows of the apartments and the garrison kennels that spread beyond the low side of the courtyard track, Chriani led her on, kept her behind him as he watched for movement on the walls above. Around them, the keep was shut down for the day but Chriani didn’t feel the silence yet. Something else hanging this night against the pulse and sound of the city around them, the same sense of distraction he’d been feeling since the morning of Barien’s rites.

In the shelter of a narrow alley mouth that cut between a gallery and the private residences that flanked it, they lingered in shadow for a short while, Chriani watching as a pair of grooms led two horses in from the light of the distant training grounds. As they reached the stable doors, he pulled Lauresa forward, slipped in carefully behind them.

Beneath the shadowed ceiling of the loft above, Chriani quickly led the princess to the leatherworks where he’d come across her father two nights before, empty now. He told her to stay there until he returned, slipping off into the distant din of horses bedding down for the night, someone straightening nails with a faint echo of steel on steel.

In the bustle of movement that surrounded him, none of the half-dozen grooms so much as looked at him where he passed, just one more guard whose orders were best avoided. The stables were warm against the night air where it pushed in at the door, the scent of dung and hay dust heavy as Chriani slipped through shadows toward the stable gate. And even as he scanned the open edge of the loft overhead in the hopes of avoiding Kathlan, she rounded the corner from the harness room in front of him, a dozen paces away.

Her eyes were emerald-green in the light of the evenlamps across from her, the risk of fire making the stables one of the few places outside the Bastion where they’d be found. Chriani stopped, tried to speak but could only nod. He’d been hoping against hope that she’d be gone, still in the dinner hall across the courtyard from the Bastion gate, but in the back of his mind, he’d known that with horses being ridden late, this was where she’d be. He felt her smile as much as saw it. Felt an uncertain pain trace its way around the certain pain that the name of a princess made against his skin.

He adjusted the set of the dagger belt, shifted into the shadows as she crossed the floor to meet him. She kissed him more fervently than he wanted, looked up at him as she stroked his face, his own hand straying to the fringes of her rough-cut hair.

“I looked for you at the rites,” she began, Chriani pressing a finger to her lips.

“I know,” he said. “I couldn’t talk then. I’m…”

“I know. I understand, I mean. I’m so sorry.”

But even as she kissed him again, he felt her pull back. Watching him as if she could feel the reluctance that caught at him. Words hanging, Chriani clinging to the silence like he hoped he wouldn’t have to speak them.

“I’m on duty,” he said at last, almost the truth. “I need access out to the city, then back in later. No one else can know.”

“I’ll be here,” she said. She squeezed his hand, cast a glance over her shoulder to see who might be watching. And then Chriani saw her freeze suddenly, looking with her to see a figure emerge from the farrier’s stalls. Lauresa’s face was shadowed where she’d pulled the hood of the cloak up, but Kathlan’s nod told Chriani she recognized the princess all the same.

“Highness,” she said quietly, but she didn’t look to see the nod returned. Watching Chriani instead as she turned and limped away.

Where Kathlan led them to it, the stable gate was a wain-wide slab of steel-bound oaken beams likely stronger than the wall it was a part of. The bars were chained and locked like they usually were, but with a sinking feeling, Chriani saw a Bastion guard sitting there in a way that wasn’t usual at all. The keep in lockdown, he thought.

He recognized the guard. Garyan, tyro to Waltevi before he’d made rank at High Summer past. Two years younger than Chriani.

Where Kathlan waved him and Lauresa back to the shadows, she stomped out ahead of them. From a nearby bench, she grabbed an empty saddlebag, closed and cinched it tight.

“You!” she shouted. Garyan looked like he’d been drowsing as he started to his feet. “One of your gaumless couriers dropped his horse and left whatever message he was running still on it. Deliver this to wherever it’s supposed to go, now.”

Where she threw the saddlebag, the startled youth caught it just short of his head.

“I’m to watch the gate…”

“Before Ashlund decided you falling asleep in front of it would be better guard, watching the gate was my job, lack-knob. By contrast, running errands for your shite-sotted halfwit riders is most definitely not.”

Garyan looked like there was something he wanted to say, but whatever it was got quickly lost under the weight of Kathlan’s gaze. He half-nodded as if he’d half-forgotten he outranked her as he jogged for the door.

Kathlan checked to both sides as she fit a key at her belt to the lock, Chriani and Lauresa slipping up behind her. She pulled the chain as Chriani slid the bars, a pulse of frigid air hitting them as the door cracked inward. Kathlan waved Chriani back again, put her eye to the gap to carefully check outside before she pulled one door wide enough for him and the princess to slip through.

“My thanks,” he said. “We won’t be long.”

“I’ll be here,” she said again, but there was a cold edge to the voice this time. As Lauresa slipped out after him, the narrow breach of the gate slammed shut behind her. Chriani motioned her back into the darkness of the wall as he checked the road to both sides, clear. Then he motioned the princess forward, pulled the hood of his cloak up as he led her out into the intermittent light of the night markets beyond.

Outside the sheltered island of the keep’s walls, the city was alive, a distant pulse of noise and movement rising like a tide against the refined silence at its heart. And in the thought of that silence, something came to Chriani’s mind suddenly. Kathlan hadn’t asked dismissal of the princess, hadn’t nodded as she and Chriani had gone.

The air was chill, the night clear with a taste of the winter that had so far kept its distance, Chriani thought. Even with the early dark, the crowd that spilled out from the taverns of the trade quarter was heavy. Beyond the formal stalls of the night market, hawkers and merchants spilled over almost to the residential lanes, thick with the day laborers heading home from the taverns, or heading out to them. More than once as they made their way for the heart of the quarter, they passed off-duty garrison guards looking for drink or dice.

“Go slowly,” Lauresa said where she leaned in close to Chriani’s ear. “I wish to listen.” Chriani nodded, slipped the steel ring from within his sleeve, but Lauresa stopped him with a touch. She shook her head, moved closer to him as they walked. He felt her arm brush his side.

“Two people keeping silent in a crowd such as this will raise far more suspicion than the same two speaking.” Her voice was raised against the noise of that crowd, Chriani not hiding his discomfort as he gauged the reaction of the faces around them. “There are many means of concealment,” Lauresa said, “including hiding in plain sight. Growing up always under the scrutiny of others, you learn them all.”

Through a throng of acrobats whipping burning brands above the heads of an appreciative crowd, they drifted slowly, content to let the market’s movement carry them along. The urge to slip into the adjacent shadows of a half-dozen twisting streets was sharp in Chriani, a sense of being exposed fairly burning in his mind. But with every pair of eyes that passed across him without seeing, he realized that the princess was right. The same distance in everyone around them, he saw. Taking them in without notice, the crowd a shield that hid them in plain sight.

“Keep speaking,” she said.

“What do you hope to find here?” Chriani asked. In the throng around them, he focused, a dozen intertwined conversations spilling past with every step.

“Where my father is gone.”

Across from him, a dust-streaked courier talked worriedly to a thickly muscled smith. He was afraid, Chriani realized. He caught frantic words, something about fire along the frontier, getting his family north before it was too late.

“Why not ask Ashlund?”

“Because Ashlund was not told to where the prince himself and the guard were riding, as were neither I nor my stepmother.”