Mind Guest (17 page)

“They are not mine, therefore may they be left behind!” I snapped, annoyed at the way he was treating me, but even more frustrated by his suggestion. When Clero’s men caught up with that coach, I wanted to be the only one in it. If attackers become confused about who the target is, they tend to wipe out everyone in sight just to be on the safe side.

“They will not be left behind,” he answered, more interested in reaching for the handle of the coach door than in arguing with me.

“It is necessary that they accompany you, and they shall do so. Allow me to assist you into the coach.”

His hand on my arm forced me up the narrow steps and into the coach, letting me go only when I made the obvious choice between standing up all bent over and sitting down on the right-hand seat. The seething Bellna was doing bubbled through my mind and body, involving me more than a little. Fallan was making an occasional, casual attempt to treat me with the respect a princess was supposed to be given, but only if the attempt didn’t put him out any. I pulled angrily at my skirt to straighten it under me, fighting off the urge to tell Fallan exactly what I thought of him-in terms guaranteed to make him come after me. A boot in the face would teach him to watch his mouth when he spoke to me, not to mention how personally pleasant I would find-I shook my head hard, making sure that line of thought was cut off cold. Bellna’s frothing was beginning to affect my annoyance, and I couldn’t let that happen. I needed Fallen to help me spring Clero’s trap, and even if I didn’t, beating up on him would be somewhat out of character. I could sit there and scowl at the back of his head, but that was all I had better do.

At Fallan’s gesture the four girls hurried to the coach, then climbed inside wearing harried expressions. They weren’t about to disobey Fallan and not enter the coach, but my very obvious displeasure was making them uneasy. The first three to scramble inside made sure to take the opposite seat, as far from me as possible, but that left the fourth one, the redhead, out in the cold or at least out of a seat.

There just wasn’t any more room on the other side, and I was sitting in the middle of my seat. Another man had come up to join Fallan at the coach door, this one wearing a light blue neck scarf of his lieutenant’s length, and when the redhead hesitated, half in and half out of the coach, he decided to take advantage of the situation.

“Should there be no room for this one, Captain, I will gladly take her with me,” he said with a grin, then slid his hand up under her cheap print skirt. “Her presence will pass the time quite pleasantly.”

The girl gasped and reddened when the mercenary’s hand reached its target, but she still had nowhere to go. Her left arm clutched my cape to her body as both mercenaries laughed, and then her widened eyes closed in misery. She couldn’t climb in and she couldn’t climb out, and Bellna was smugly pleased to see her like that. What happened to peasants was of no concern to a princess, the two men were enjoying the girl’s discomfort, and even the other three peasant girls were snickering to themselves. No one felt the least amount of pity for the victim caught in the middle, but I’ve never been bright about things like that. I reached out and took the girl’s right arm, hauled her past me to the seat to my right, then turned my head toward Fallan.

“I had thought grown men would be more difficult to divert from their duty,” I observed in Bellna’s sleekest, nastiest tone. “Apparently, my father’s enemies will need do no more than dangle some pleasant wench before you, and you will be theirs. I now see the necessity for the presence of these peasants: to allow you to retain memory of your commission.”

The second man was as pretty-handsome as Fallan was ugly, and he hadn’t liked the way I’d taken his toy away. My speech turned his frown into a scowl, but before he could vocalize his displeasure, Fallan’s big hand was on his shoulder.

“It is long past time to depart, Ralnor,” Fallan said in a strangely even tone, his eyes unmoving from my face.

“Have the men mount up.” he waited for Ralnor to move away with a curt nod, then closed the coach door with a slam. “As for you, Missy,” he continued in a lower tone, looking up at me through the window, “Princess or no, injured sensibilities or no, you had best learn to curb your tongue. Should I find it necessary to remonstrate with you for impertinence as your father has given me leave to do, you will find the occasion less than pleasant.”

With that he turned and walked behind the coach, undoubtedly to get his vair, leaving me to cope with the painful resonance of Bellna’s shock. My uninvited guest was finding it impossible to believe that her father would have given Fallan permission to keep her in line, and was scandalized at the mere suggestion that he had. For my own part I was fairly certain Fallan was exaggerating if not lying outright, a possibility supported by the uncertain look on Grigon’s face. The Absari agent was still standing on the lodge porch, watching the goings-on but not joining them; when he saw me looking at him his expression turned determined and he started down the steps, but he was too late. Fallan shouted an order, another voice echoed it, and the coach lurched briskly away from the lodge.

“I cannot fathom the reason you have placed yourself in jeopardy for me,” a faint voice said from my right. “You are a Princess and I am no one.”

I turned my head to see the red-haired girl, backed as far away from me on the seat as she could get, still clutching my cape, vast confusion in her big blue eyes. At the same time I became aware of the fact that the other three girls were also staring at me, all of them practically shouting that I’d stepped out of character. They weren’t far wrong, but I didn’t want them to go on believing it.

“I, placed in jeopardy?” I asked with brows raised high, pulling my skirt away from the redhead as though she might contaminate it. “You speak foolishly, girl, for you know not what you say. Think you that lout toyed with you? As you say, you are less than nothing and I am a princess. To put hands upon the servant of a princess is to offer insult to the princess herself, and that I shall not allow. That fool of a captain is now aware of it.”

“And yet he promised you punishment,” the girl whispered, still hugging my cape. “You cannot know what punishment is at the hands of one such as he.”

“Nor shall I know,” I smirked, waving the point away with one hand.

“He attempts to frighten me with child’s tales which I shall not, of course, believe. Have no fear, girl. You stand beneath my protection.”

I turned my attention to the forest we rode through, pretending I didn’t see the looks exchanged among the three girls opposite me.

They were now probably considering me no more than a pompous brat, which was just the way I wanted it. When the attack came, their first thought would be to put as much distance between me and them as possible – which just might keep them alive.

It didn’t take long before our party reached a wide road through the woods, and shortly thereafter the real boredom began. Although the day was beginning to be pretty, there’s just so much you can get out of forests and fields and more forests. My mercenary escort rode all around the coach, their neck scarves streaming out behind them, their eyes constantly in motion in all directions. The four girls in the coach untied their shawls from around their waists and retied them around their shoulders against the early morning chill, then began discussing in low tones the various mercenaries they could see from the coach, possibly to take their minds off how cold they still were.

In all the layers of clothes I’d been stuffed into, cold was the least of my worries; once the sun came up for real, I’d be sweating like a metal bucket filled with ice. I moved in discomfort, silently cursing the way my layered underwear made it feel as if I were sitting on something lumpy. Only chains could have tied me tighter than those clothes, and I didn’t like the feeling. I stared out of the window on my left morosely, trying to block out the giggling of the peasant girls, and suddenly a beautiful red bird flashed out of the trees, pacing us with lazy wing-beats for a moment before turning away back to the forest. I watched the bird until it disappeared, delighting in its beauty and freedom, not realizing that I was being watched just as closely until I noticed Fallan. The mercenary captain rode his vair not five feet from the coach, and when he saw my eyes on him he urged his mount closer.

“I had not known you had a smile of such beauty, Princess,” he said, looking at me in a way that made Bellna shiver in my mind. “A pity it is so often displaced by a pout.”

He grinned then and sent his vair on ahead and out of sight, leaving behind a deep silence in the coach. All four of the girls were staring at me wide-eyed, their faces reflecting the thrilled excitement Bellna was sending racing through my bloodstream. Fallan had actually shown a faint interest in me, and Bellna was almost ready to consider it a promise of undying love. All of the girls, Bellna included, were beginning to have a crush on the big mercenary, and I felt like groaning. I hadn’t had a crush on a man since I’d seen Starman Courageous without his chest pads and girdle; and wasn’t about to be caught up in the nonsense. As far as I was concerned Fallan was nothing more than a pain in the rump, and on that point I would make the decision stick. I turned back to stare out the window again, ignoring an urge to lean out and look ahead that wasn’t mine, and worked at sticking to my resolve.

The motion of the coach put me to sleep for a while, but I was awake again when we reached the inn. We’d only been on the road for a few hours, and at first I didn’t understand why we were stopping. It took a minute before I realized that Tildorani ate four meals a day rather than three, and it was time for the second meal. I wasn’t particularly hungry, but I was too bored not to be looking forward to the stop.

The inn was a large, three-story yellow and white house with a high wall and gate, a stable not far from the house, and a wide entrance court. Stable boys hurried over to help with the mercenaries’ mounts, and Fallan himself came to hand me out of the coach. His touch on my arm was deferential rather than demanding, and combined with the same look he had given me earlier it was enough to turn Bellna shy with fluster. I, however, hadn’t forgotten how pushy he’d been at the lodge; when I climbed out of the coach I made sure to come down right on his foot. The instep is a high pain target, which took care of the half-amused, half-interested look he’d been wearing.

“Oh, how clumsy of me!” I exclaimed immediately, as he closed his eyes and flinched. “I do hope you will forgive me, Captain.”

“Certainly, Princess,” he got out through his teeth, then looked at me with a lot less friendliness. “Had the misstep not been an accident, it would certainly have been punished. As it was an accident, it will certainly be forgiven.”

“How fortunate, then, that it was an accident,” I said with a pleasant smile, ignoring the fact that he had told me he suspected it wasn’t. “Shall we enter the inn now?”

“As soon as I am able to walk again,” he muttered, turning back to the coach to gesture the four girls out. They came out one at a time, making sure to touch the ground nowhere near Fallan’s feet, and the way they loosened their shawls reminded me how uncomfortable I was.

It wasn’t Fallan’s fault that I’d been closed into layer after layer of straitjacket, but having gotten some of my own back from him even raised my spirits about that.

“This way, Princess,” Fallan directed, and led off all alone toward the inn, I followed after him, the girls followed after me, and the rest of Fallan’s men completed the parade. The only one to hurry was Fallan’s lieutenant, Ralnor, who hustled a little to catch up to Fallan before the mercenary captain reached the inn. The two of them paused in the doorway, blocking the parade, and I realized they were checking out the interior before letting me walk in. It seemed like a sensible idea, even though Clero’s men shouldn’t have had the time to get there yet. But then, Fallan and his men didn’t know about the timetable we’d established, and I wasn’t about to tell them.

The appearance of the inn turned out to be acceptable. Fallan and Ralnor moved farther inside and then stepped apart, making an aisle for me to walk through. I used the aisle casually, showing nothing of the upset the Bellna presence felt over what I’d done to Fallan. It was almost like looking out at the world through two sets of eyes, one mine and the other-well, mine also but strangely different. One way Fallan looked big and roughly attractive and annoyingly in the way, the other he was an overpoweringly attractive man of violence and sex appeal. It wasn’t too difficult keeping the two views separated, but it still felt strange.

The inside of the inn was cozy, in a rustic, backward way. The ground floor seemed to be all one room, except fur a part at the back separated by a wall and door, which probably hid the cooking facilities. Most of the back wall was taken up by a fireplace, filled at the moment with nothing but fresh, unburned logs. The numerous windows streaming sunlight were uncurtained, and the animal-tat wall lamps were unlit. More than a dozen travelers sat about at trestle tables of various sizes, and every one of them turned to stare when we made our entrance. A short, thin man came out of the door in the far wall, started when he saw us, then hurried over.

“Forgive me for not having known of your presence sooner, Captain,”

he said to Fallan with a few absentminded bows, his eyes glued to me with a glitter. “May I be of service to you?”

“The Princess honors your house in order to dine,” Fallan answered, his voice cold and dangerous. ‘It were best that you not disappoint her expectations.”

“The Princess!” the small man gasped, utterly delighted. “Highness, my house is yours! Pray enter and be seated!”

This time the bowing was for me, along with the stares of everyone in the room. Considering the fact that Fallan was supposed to be protecting me, he was being awfully generous with information as to who I was. Most nobles traveled around on Tildor without telling people who they were; that was why the innkeeper had addressed himself to Fallan; he hadn’t expected to be told who I was. As a decoy for the real princess it didn’t matter much to me, but Fallan wasn’t supposed to know I was a decoy. I frowned as I followed the innkeeper across the floor and tried to catch Fallan’s eye, but the big mercenary seemed to be avoiding looking in my direction.