Clearwater Dawn (19 page)

“You thinking to stop trusting me with your secrets?” she said sleepily.

“I was cut,” he said, kneeling to kiss her. “I told you.”

“So I shouldn’t worry?”

“You know all my secrets,” he said.

She rose up, stretching as she glanced to the still-open window.

“It’s not even light. Come back to bed.” She slid across, pulled the nest of blankets back invitingly, the curve of her hip in shadow where he traced it with his hand.

“I need a horse,” he said.

“I know that feeling.” She ran her fingers up his thigh, laughed when he didn’t.

“I need a horse,” he said again. “I need to ride out this morning.”

Her expression changed as she rose up on one arm, wide awake suddenly.

“The courier you’re readying for this morning isn’t a courier,” Chriani said awkwardly. “I think the princess means to ride out herself for the frontier. Seeking her father.”

He felt her pull away even before the blankets closed around her again. She pushed back, sat up against the wall.

“This isn’t about what you said last night,” he said carefully. “There’s nothing between the princess and I except that Barien charged me with keeping her safe. She can’t be allowed to ride out alone.”

“So tell Ashlund.”

“I don’t know if Ashlund can be trusted.”

She rose, then. Padded naked in the lamplight to find her tunic and leggings, hit the ladder barefoot as Chriani called her name in vain. He jumped past her, hit the floor hard in the darkness. He managed to grab her up blindly as she tried to force her way past him, felt her hand come up to strike him hard. It was the same cheek Lauresa had hit. He winced as she stalked away.

“One chance. The truth,” she said coldly.

From the stalls, he heard the first restless stirrings of horses. At his chest, he felt the ache that had first stirred in him a month before.

In his mind, he felt for the one small piece of truth that would hide the larger lie.

“She’s a princess,” he said. “I’ll make gatehouse fourth watch chief when I’m sixty if I’m lucky. Use your head, Kathlan.”

“You were close to her once,” Kathlan said. With the rush of obviousness that came from an understanding he should have had long before, Chriani heard the uncertainty in her. He saw the defiance in her eyes.

“When I trained her?” In the darkness, he saw her look away. “We were children, Kathlan.”

“I was a child the first time I fell in love,” she said. She tossed kindling to the embers still glowing in the stove. “But I’m not a child anymore, and I’m not ready to wait for you to decide whether you are or not.”

He came up behind her, then, held her tight. He could feel her press back against him for a long moment, then she unclasped his hands slowly from her waist. As the fire caught, she tossed split fir from a neatly stacked pile, slammed the stove door closed.

“I want to ride with the rangers,” she said. The defiance of her eyes was in her voice now in a way that Chriani had only rarely heard.

“Then you will.”

“I can outride anyone in the keep, half the Bastion garrison.”

“I know,” he said, and it was true.

“I’ve never told anyone that. Now I’m telling you. What do you tell me in return?”

Chriani was silent a long moment. He felt the first heat from the stove, realized how cold he was.

“I don’t know what you want to hear.”

“That you’ve got ambition beyond being some noble’s lapdog the rest of your life would be a good start.”

She pulled on her boots, tied her hair back with her mother’s ribbon.

“I can’t promise you a future when I don’t know yet what the future is for me,” he said.

“If you don’t know your own ambition, Chriani, what in nature’s name do you know?”

“I know that Barien is dead for saving the prince’s life, and he told me with his last breath to keep the princess safe.” He was surprised to hear the anger in his voice, hadn’t felt it coming. He checked it. “That’s what I am right now,” he said. “What I am after that’s done, I don’t know yet.”

Kathlan’s expression had softened, but her voice was cold.

“Well, when you find someone to tell you, maybe you can tell me, too,” she said.

She pulled tack and a saddle from a bench close by, slung it over her shoulder as if it weighed nothing.

“There’s a roan gelding destrier shod and ready, last stall by the gates. I trained him myself. You get him saddled and out of here before I’m done, I can tell Ashlund you stole him if he asks.”

She leaned in to kiss him as she passed, though. Chriani felt the pain flare at his chest as he watched her go.

He had the roan combed out and saddled in good time, then quietly ate from the bread and cheese left at the stove bench that he was fairly certain was Kathlan’s breakfast. He left her most of it but took her blanket, plus a battered shortsword and cloak he found hanging in the farrier’s stalls. He had to bend the cloak to get it on, dirt caked thick enough across it to almost close over a jagged gash at one shoulder.

As he slipped past her, Kathlan was working on a lean grey palfrey farther down the stalls. She had it saddled but was still checking its shoes as Chriani quietly slipped the bars at the gate, led the roan out into darkness. He stayed close along the wall that flanked the market court before slipping off toward the trade road, less chance of being seen from the keep that way.

Crossing the square out of sight of the gates, he slipped into the shelter of a ruined archway that flanked Five Hog’s House on its corner. He had good line of sight to the keep, watched for any sign of movement as he paced the horse to keep it warm. Whichever way she went, he’d be close enough to catch her, either cutting east from the gates if she was headed down the dock road, or south along the trade way to follow Chanist’s troupe where they headed into the sunset two nights before.

Whatever her route, though, he knew that if she’d gone so far as to plan to slip away alone before dawn, it was going to take a fight to accompany her, just as he knew he didn’t want it happening within the walls of the keep when it came. He wasn’t sure how she was going to arrange to slip out of the Bastion unseen, but Chriani was confident that once Lauresa’s mind was made up, not much would get in her way.

Then, unexpectedly, he found himself thinking about how much explaining he’d have to do if he was wrong and it was Ashlund himself or some other garrison rider heading off that morning. Or if no one showed at all, how long would he wait before the market court filled up and he had to go back to knock at the gates with a stolen horse and an explanation he could never give?

But when he saw the stable gates open, he knew. He hadn’t been waiting long enough to feel the cold yet, the sky only just edged with the copper-white of dawn. He saw the grey palfrey slip through the gate behind a figure wrapped tight in a familiar weather-stained cloak. His eyes pulled all detail from the shadow, marked the livery and saddlebags of a courier. He saw the figure carefully scan the road to both sides before she swung on to the palfrey’s back.

He saw Kathlan as the gate pulled shut, dark hair framing her face where she watched him. Then the rider was moving, pushing the horse to a fast trot across the market court. Heading south, anxious to get out of sight of the keep in a hurry.

Chriani was in the saddle as she approached, breaking out from hiding as Lauresa pushed past him. She saw him, turned on him quickly. Stared with a genuine shock that Chriani found pleasing.

“Highness,” he said where he pulled in beside her. She reined to a halt, her horse skittish where the roan held steady.

“Return to the keep at once,” she hissed. Where she tried to back away, the palfrey’s hooves skittered on frosted cobbles.

“Thank you, highness, but I have a hankering to travel.” Chriani circled her carefully, kept the palfrey hedged in as she turned to keep him in sight. The princess was easily his equal in the saddle, he knew, but he had the advantage of having unexpectedly scuttled what was probably a very well-laid plan. From what he’d learned these past days of Lauresa’s ability to plan, he could only imagine the distress that caused her.

“This is not your affair,” she said coldly.

“Not my affair? How long do you think before they realize you’re gone? I was alone with you last night, you think Ashlund wouldn’t have me in thumbscrews before the morning was out?”

“My absence has been accounted for. Yours has not. This is my journey.”

“Yes, you said so last night. Unable to trust anyone in the Bastion, you said. I’m sorry I didn’t realize I was included in that number.”

Lauresa’s eyes were blue steel where her breath flared.

“Go back now.”

“Why did you lie to me?”

“Keeping my family’s business to myself is hardly lying, tyro.”

“Where it concerns an attempt on the prince’s life and the royal heir riding alone into a potential war zone, this goes far beyond family business.”

“Do not presume to tell me how to care for my own father!”

“I was told to watch you, and I will watch you until you pass the borders of Brandishear for the last time! With your permission or without it, I will keep you safe as Barien did.”

“I trusted Barien!” Lauresa shouted, her voice an echo off the stones. Within the words, Chriani felt a cold contempt that went beyond any affectation.

“And what have I done to inspire your distrust, highness?” he said quietly.

“You knew the bloodblade when you found it…”

“As did you,” Chriani said.

“I recognized that blade because one like it killed my grandfather when I was five years old and made my father prince. What of you, tyro?”

Chriani had no answer. He felt real anger from her now, not the imperious disdain she’d directed to him that first night. She looked from him to the keep, anxious. Already, there was movement along the lanes leading to the market court.

“That’s what last night was about, then,” he said. He felt his anger twist inward, cursing himself for missing what should have been obvious. “Not just wishing to hear what word had spread, but to question me.” He remembered her hand in his, the feeling of her body that shredded away suddenly to become the memory of Kathlan moving above him in the dark. He forced the images from his mind, tried to push all the memory away.

“Getting word to my father is my responsibility.”

“Keeping you safe is mine.”

“I order you…”

“I take my orders from Barien and none else!” It was Chriani shouting this time, but Lauresa wheeled as his words echoed, trying to break for the cover of an open lane even as he cut around her, held her to the open cobbles of the square.

Lauresa looked back one last time to the walls behind them.

“Keep with me,” she said. Her voice was very cold. “Fall behind and you can make your own way back.”

“Highness.” Chriani nodded, backed the roan up to watch her spur ahead, the palfrey off like a shot along the road, frost-steam rising behind it.

They rode hard to the city’s edge, slowing only as the last trade way outposts dwindled to the first of the farm laborer’s huts, smoke rising from scattered chimneys. Behind them, dawn had broken, the gleam of white from the water obscured by the rise of the headlands where the keep spread in stark silhouette.

Where Lauresa trotted ahead, she made no sign that she was even aware of Chriani behind her, no signal to him where she cut hard into the woods past a small roadside cairn. A narrow patch of rocky ground there was swallowed by the woods beyond, Chriani following her to see a trail open up in the shadows, all but invisible from the sunlit road behind them. The moss-lined track had been recently torn, he saw. Chanist’s troupe riding through two days before.

They were alone as they rode, no sound around them but the horses’ steady plodding and winter birdsong in the twisted witchwillow that rose to hem them in. Silver-grey branches scattered the light, kept them in shadow as the sun slowly climbed.

From somewhere to the right, Chriani caught the intermittent ripple of a still-flowing stream, the path following the shelter of the trees that grew in ranks alongside it, he guessed. The land was higher here, pushing steadily up from the coastal lowlands of the city, the air thick with fog that seemed to Chriani only slightly less cold than Lauresa’s silence as she rode. Though they stopped twice to rest and water the horses in streamside clearings, the princess sat both times with her back to Chriani in a decidedly purposeful way.

She looked over when they stopped a third time late in the day, though, the sun beginning to burn through the haze just in time to set. He was making his way carefully through a frozen track of bog that spread ahead of where the ice-edged stream twisted back into the woods, scouring the snowberry bushes growing wild there for the frozen fruit that still clung to their branches, only ripening with the first frosts.

“What are you doing?” she called.

After the long silence of the day, her voice startled him. Chriani glanced up, saw her watching where she leaned back against an upthrust wedge of stone. Though it was heavy with moss where it jutted from the ground, it was unnatural in its placement somehow. He thought he remembered seeing others like it along the trail they were following. Ranger markers, he guessed.