Sasharia En Garde (34 page)

But then, if Math turned out to be dead, a future drunken
king would be so easy to guide.

Zhavic smiled a welcome. “I am sorry to disturb you, your
highness. It was at your father’s request. First, would you care for
refreshment?”

“No, thank you.” Jehan seemed to gather himself inwardly,
then he looked up. In his hands he carried something with ribbons dangling.
Seeing the mage’s gaze go to it, Jehan snapped open a fan with expertise. “I
brought this for the queen. Do you think she’ll like it?”

“Queen Ananda . . . seems to have departed.
No one knows where. Your father has given us to understand that she retired
into the countryside.”

The prince’s eyes narrowed. For a heartbeat he almost looked
intelligent. But then a hangover would probably look the same. “I see. But he
doesn’t actually know that?”

“No one knows where she went. However, your father requests
me to convey his wishes. He is giving a masquerade ball at week’s end for
Princess Atanial. It is his desire to introduce the two of you to one another
at this event, which is intended to honor you both. He desires your presence
directly back in the capital.”

The prince turned his head toward the window, as though the
emptiness out at sea would fill the emptiness of his head, the mage thought
wearily.

Then Prince Jehan gave Magister Zhavic an airy salute. “It
shall be as he wishes. I will depart at once.”

Jehan’s boat vanished in the fleeing darkness of the west
along the coast.

I stepped out onto the deck of the yacht. No one in sight
except for two figures at the wheel, who looked up.

I said to Owl, “Can we talk?”

He led the way to the cabin, where my coverlet was still
spread on the obviously unused bed. I gathered it into my arms, hugging it
close. Then I faced Owl. “You’ve got a couple of choices here. Either you’re
going to have to put me in irons, and I’m gonna fight you every inch of the
way, or else let me dive over and drown. Because I’ll keep trying to get to
shore. Or you can give me the rowboat and let me go.”

“I’ll tell Zel to fetch your gear,” he said.

Oh. Okay. That was . . . easy.

I retreated, feeling inexplicably awful. I was still wearing
clothes belonging to Kaelande, the Colendi cook. I skinned out of those, put on
my shirt and trousers, and shoved Kaelande’s things through the cleaning frame.
It was disguise time for me—a thought that gave me pause, seeing as how I’d
just been dinging Jehan for his false faces. But I shook it away.
He
was a prince, after all.
I
was a fugitive.

Owl rejoined me and gave me my little box of mementos and
coins. I checked. Everything was as it should be. “Ready.”

Owl indicated the yacht’s tiny hold. “He wanted me to offer
you your choice of weapons. Anything you think you might need.”

“That’s all right. Please let me take the boat.”

“I’ll row you ashore.”

“That’s all right—”

Owl raised a hand. “The launch is already there. I would
really rather not be stranded here without a boat, leaving him with two to
bring back.”

“Oh. Right.”

“I have some shopping to do before the tide turns anyway.
You can go your way, I’ll go mine.”

I felt highly uncomfortable, but was too tired to do much
beyond climb down and take my place in the boat. We scarcely spoke on the long
row in. When we came to the dock, Owl said, “Farewell, Princess.”

“You too,” I managed, and I climbed up the barnacle-dotted
ladder between the tide-marked pilings, and hastened down the dock without
looking back.

Once I reached the street, though, I
did
look back. Not once but several times. I bobbed and weaved,
trying to stay as unobtrusive as I could. My rain-washed hair was drying in a
massive cloak of frizzy curls, but I left it that way. If they were still going
by the description of me at the old castle, they were seeking a woman with
braids. Just once I’d wear it down, but next time I was in public it would
vanish under a sober cap, foiling any possible new descriptions going out.

I made my way up the street, so tired by now that the
sunlight sparkling off glass and metal along the market street seemed to jab my
eyes. But I made it to what I was seeking, an unobtrusive-looking inn, where I
paused in the doorway, doing one last sweep for long white hair and brown
velvet.

Though I didn’t know it, Jehan was at that moment galloping
to the southwest toward the capital at the head of an honor guard containing
his father’s servant and Randart’s handpicked spy.

Satisfied that Jehan was not lurking somewhere about, I
entered the inn. They had rooms to spare (in fact they were all empty, what
with the fleet having sailed) and so I bought myself a night, stopped only long
enough to help myself from the magic-cleaned water bucket they put out for
guests, and then I retreated to the bed and was soon asleep.

I woke at dawn the next day, feeling more human, if not in a
better mood. But the inn provided a breakfast of fresh buttered biscuits with
honey, crisped potatoes with cheese and eggs, and plenty of hot liquids to
drink. My mood altered gradually from
Just
kill me now
to
Well I might as well
live
as my body responded to the food like a dry garden under a fresh rain,
and by the time I was done eating I had a plan of action.

The idea was not to draw attention to myself. So I was quite
methodical. I straightened out my clothes (which looked better after a trip
through the cleaning frame), braided my hair tightly in a single tail down my
back like I saw both women and men wearing, and made my way back down to the
moneychangers. This time I cashed in three of the smaller stones, each at a
different booth, so no one would remember a handful of jewels or vast amounts
of money and equate it with a tall woman yadda yadda.

After each stone, I moseyed up the street, past hand-woven
fabrics of every imaginable type and color, baskets, shoes, gear. I stopped to
make carefully planned, sober, unostentatious purchases.

After that I retreated to the inn and changed. When I
emerged again, my braid was wrapped round my head under a plain scarf of blue,
and I wore a long robe of pale blue heavy cotton over riding trousers of forest
green.

By the end of the day, as vendors were finishing, I made my
last purchases, a sword and a horse, having spotted what I wanted earlier. But
now, in the flurry of closing, the tired vendors seemed to be distracted. After
a very short dicker and a good price, I found myself the owner of an older
cross-country mare who seemed to be mild and well cared for.

I bought her a good saddle pad. Onto it I hooked my new tote
bag carrying all my goodies wrapped round my rolled coverlet, which in turn
held the box of mementos. On the other side of the saddle pad, I’d hung the
saddle sheath containing my new sword, a good dueling rapier.

As the sun began to set, I rode quietly out of the harbor
city with the departing marketers. My mare ambled not ten paces from the top of
Market Street, where I’d confronted Zathdar—Prince Jehan—what seemed a hundred
years ago. Was it really only two days?

No answer.

I rode until well past dark, stopping in a small market town
that had its own inlet to the sea. The inn was full of merrymakers celebrating
a wedding, but they had a few hammocks slung for desperate travelers and I
slapped my cash down before anyone else could claim one. For an extra charge, a
stable hand tended to the mare’s food, another got out curry brushes, and a
third checked her feet.

Satisfied that the mare, at least, would sleep in a good
mood, I retreated up to my hammock, and despite the singing, rhythmic stomping,
roars of laughter from below, and the sounds of people breathing, sighing,
rustling around in the attic around me, I dropped into sleep.

The next day, I began my long journey toward Ivory Mountain,
where I hoped to find my father.

The lookouts on the towers at the royal castle in Vadnais
sent runners below to announce that the prince was arriving.

More correctly, the dust from the road was spotted by the
guards on the walls just about the same time two outriders appeared on
foam-flecked horses.

By the time Jehan and his honor guard trotted tiredly
through the outer gates and up the streets to the castle, the brown and silver
banner indicating the Crown Prince in Residence hung below the king’s banner,
limp in the humid air.

A small army of stable hands waited to take the drooping
animals in hand as the guards dismounted, everyone weary from the grueling pace
the prince had kept. (Why did they volunteer for honor-guard duty? Hadn’t
everyone said he always stopped at every inn to get drunk and flirt with the
prettiest girls around?) But no one was more weary than Jehan, who hadn’t let
himself sleep more than a couple of hours at a stretch for several days.

His mood was vile. Not because he was hot and tired, but
because he had tried to outrun his thoughts. He knew better. But the chattering
voice in his head had kept pace right with him, whispering all the things he
should have said to Sasha to convince her, leaving him with the even more
depressing retort:
Doesn’t matter. She
wouldn’t have believed anything I said
.

That was the worst of it. She didn’t trust him, didn’t
believe him. He’d never cared what anyone thought before. There were six people
who knew his secret identity—well, nine, with Sasha and the Ebans—but somehow,
in a matter of days, Sasha’s opinion had come to matter the most.

Canardan, glancing out of one of the windows above the
military courtyard, was shocked at the grim tension in Jehan’s face. He sent a
runner to bring his son upstairs at once, and so Jehan appeared in his private
room not long after, bowing his head in salute, his tangled white hair
imprinted with the dust of the road.

“Jehan?” Canardan said, puzzled. He’d never seen his son
this—this angry, no, this
present
.
His mood altered to uneasy question.

“You summoned me, Father.”

“You seem to have ridden as if all Norsunder was on your heels.
What did Zhavic say to you?”

Jehan blinked, seemed to gather himself, then his face
smoothed into a semblance of his customary lack of discernable expression,
despite the dust smudges. “A party. I must get to my tailor. I would not
dishonor your guest by appearing in last winter’s masquerade costume.”

Canary was relieved, and irritated. “So you nearly ran the
horses to death to get to your tailor?”

“We changed mounts at dawn. Had a race the last way, but it
began to get hot,” Jehan said, with his usual maddening habit of answering
someone else’s question, and not the one his father had asked. “The horses were
all right, hot but not blown,” Jehan added, and Canary nodded. That was true
enough.

So Jehan wasn’t angry, only overheated from the summer sun.
Probably had an aching head. Canardan had had enough of those of late, and not
just from the weather. “Well, get yourself some fresh clothes. Eat. I want your
report on what happened at the games.”

Jehan bowed and left, determined to get a grip on his mood before
he faced his father again. He could see questions there.

As soon as he was gone, Canardan turned to his chief valet,
a slight man of indeterminate age who went unnoticed by all who did not know
him. The other servants, who did, were afraid of him. “Chas. Make certain he
and the princess do not meet. Unless I am there to witness it.”

Chas did not speak, only bowed and effaced himself, smiling
as soon as he was alone. He seldom spoke, but when he did, the other servants
listened, for they never knew when it was his will or the king’s being
expressed. Either way, whatever they said or did was sure to reach royal ears.

While Jehan was taking a cool bath, Atanial moved from the
upper reaches of the castle to her own rooms. She’d heard the horns, and
watched from the window at the staircase as the boys assigned to banner duty
put up the prince’s flag in the place she used to see Math’s hanging.

She went out onto the nearest balcony that overlooked the
courtyard, but all she’d seen was dust and milling horses and military people,
with stable hands dashing about in between. Once she thought she caught sight
of white hair gleaming in the sunlight, but almost immediately the figure
vanished below.

She crossed back to her room and summoned her maid. “If the
prince has a free moment, I would very much like to offer him some
refreshments.”

“If it pleases you, your highness,” the girl said nervously.
“I can ask permission.”

Atanial smiled. “Whenever the king wishes.”

Interesting. So Canary didn’t want them meeting on their
own, then. But what did
that
mean?

Now, for the first time, Atanial looked forward to the ball
whose preparations had thrown the entire castle into a state of madness.

She went to the window, looking down into the garden court.

All the servants had brought in relatives to help clean and
decorate the ballroom with the summer blooms raided from gardens outside the
city. The air smelled day and night of baking, and everywhere one encountered
the sounds of brooms wisping, the squeak of vigorous polishing, the slosh of
windows being washed. The one time she ventured into the anteroom to the great
chambers, a horde of little girls leaped to their feet, flowers drifting into
piles on the floor, half-fashioned garlands dropping, as they curtseyed then
stared at her in dismay. She made a hasty retreat.

She moved to the balcony again.
In all this craziness I bet I could slip away.

Okay. Then what?

Trouble for all the servants, that’s what. And maybe threats
against those in the dungeon or wherever Kreki and the others were stashed.
Meanwhile, exactly what would she be doing, other than lurking around the
countryside?