Sasharia En Garde (46 page)

No matter which, she was alone, on the road. And no one
seemed to know who she was.

That is, no one
else
seemed to know who she was.

Sharp voices echoed up the marble stairs from Prince
Jehan’s rooms. Atanial knew from the tone that there was trouble, but she could
not hear the words.

Something had to be wrong in a big way. She sensed tension
when the servants came to invite her to breakfast with the king, as had become
habit.

She was already dressed, her hair braided up with pearls to
distract from the startling silver roots of her otherwise blond hair. The
number of guards at the stairways had increased. Of course no one had told her
anything of what was going on since her brief conversation with Jehan. She
couldn’t even ask, because she knew the servants were questioned by that oily
Chas every single time they came up to her tower.

As she walked down to breakfast, she wondered if she’d find
the usual scene, the prince sitting there staring out the window, Canardan
wearily pleasant and sometimes wry as they verbally fenced.

The first surprise of the day was when she found Canardan
alone.

“Sent Jehan off somewhere?” she asked as she sat down.

Since the weather had cooled, they’d begun eating in the
king’s conservatory, a room facing east, mostly windows, filled with potted
plants. Atanial had expressed delight the first time she saw it, and had made
the mistake of asking if it had been Ananda’s chamber. Canardan had talked
right over her—pleasant, even funny—as if she hadn’t spoken. Oh. Ananda had
become one of
those
subjects.

Now she wondered if Jehan had suddenly become another one,
as Canardan reached for the fresh bread, offering her some first.

Then he sighed. “He slipped away to visit another female,
apparently. No, he didn’t tell me. He never does. But a letter was found in his
chambers. Perfume. Written in purple ink, if you can imagine. Do these so-called
artists really think they will actually marry him? It cannot be his company—”
Canardan shut his mouth, a gesture so determined Atanial, watching in
fascination, saw his jaw clench.

A letter was found
.
So the prince was not exempt from searches, either. Definitely signs of trouble
in paradise.

“Up all night worrying, eh?” she asked, and when he gave her
a narrow-eyed glance, she deflected the flash of anger by shifting from
specifics to general. “The price of parenthood on all worlds, I suspect.”

“Your girl left you up all night worrying, I gather?”

“Oh yes.” That was only fair, since she’d asked first. But
to ward any more questions she added, “I was always afraid she might lose her
temper with some villain, and the police would come to arrest her for ridding
the world of one more slimebag.”

He did not ask if that was a subtle hint. He knew it was.
Therefore he knew how unsubtle. But he also knew she was being irritating in
order to sting him into revealing more, and though he felt the usual surge of
laughter and attraction that her ripostes inevitably caused, he was too tired
to keep his guard up. He fell silent, only answering when, in desperation, she
turned to the weather and the harvest.

Such a limping conversation couldn’t end fast enough for either
of them. Once she’d turned down his offer of a ride—a picnic—a tour (in other
words, another public display of his prize prisoner), she excused herself.

That left her to another boring day. Later she barely
remembered it. What she did remember was the faint but persistent tapping at
the window long after she’d finally dropped into troubled dreams.

She sat up, disoriented. The tapping had sounded like the
brush of barren twigs against a window, the way the bitter, dry desert winds of
Southern California blew the tree branches all during the months that elsewhere
were called winter. But she was in a tower, not in Los Angeles.

She sat up, and once again heard the faint tapping.

She threw off the covers and ran across the floor of the
bedroom, and started violently when she saw a pale face peering in through a
dark window.

She stumbled back, then halted when the pale starlight
revealed the oval of a young female. She unlocked the casement, swung it open
and stared down into vaguely familiar eyes. A hand extended up in mute appeal.
Atanial gripped it and pulled. The girl shifted her weight; there was a rustle,
a heave, and the young woman tumbled inside the window.

“Sh, sh,” she hissed softly, though Atanial had neither
spoken or made a sound. The girl looked around fearfully and whispered, “You
have to come now. Tam can only vouch for his sentry watch.”

“Tam?”

She blushed. “Sharveshin.”

Tam . . . one of Kreki Eban’s conspirators.

“Marka?” Atanial peered down. Yes, the starlight glimmered
softly on short reddish curls ruffling all round the girl’s head.

“It is I. Come. Did you know they are getting a trial? The
king cannot kill them now. So I’m here to get you out of the castle. Tam and,
well, some others, they are all covering your exit. But you have to climb down
outside the window, which isn’t warded like the doors are.”

Obviously young love had managed to overcome political
differences. “Climb down the stones of the tower?”

“There’s ivy.”

Atanial gritted her teeth. The idea of climbing down a
hundred feet of ivy did not appeal, but neither did staying here in this
jewel-box prison one second more, now that she no longer had to.

She swung around, dug through her clothes with shaking
hands, and dressed in layers of dark, sensible clothing. Into her bra she shoved
her magic tokens, and the few bits of jewelry she’d been given. She would
probably need them to trade for food.

Marka slipped out the window. “Put your hands and feet where
I do.”

It felt like four hours later she was maybe ten feet below
the window, her hands aching from the death grip on the branches, her muscles
trembling, when she felt a familiar nauseous ache behind her sternum that
spread outward as heat.

She stopped, leaning her forehead against her arm, and
nearly sobbed.
Great. Climbing down a tower
wall, and here comes a hot flash.

“Princess?”

“I’m on my way,” she muttered, her voice shaky.

She wiped her sweaty hands on her clothes one at a time,
placed a foot, a hand, and eased herself down a few inches. Ivy tickled her
nose, but she held her breath against a sneeze. Hand. Foot. Hand. Foot.

Later that journey seemed longer than all the weeks of her
imprisonment. But at last, oh, at last her foot encountered stone, and she
stepped onto the sentry wall.

Marka took her hand, sweaty and gritty as it was, and pulled
her unresisting inside a dank access-way. They flitted down some mossy steps
and across a dripping hall that smelled of mold and old wood. Then they
continued down, this time to a stable.

“Here she is,” Marka breathed, running toward a shadowy
corner.

Tam Sharveshin emerged, sword in hand. “Ride out.”

A tall, skinny teenage boy with a prominent Adam’s apple and
tousled cinnamon hair silently handed to Atanial a folded cape, the plain brown
of a runner.

“Don’t tell us where,” Tam added.

Atanial shook her head. “I won’t. But I’d like to know whom
to thank for this rescue.”

Tam and the teen glanced up at the tower where Prince
Jehan’s rooms were lit, even though he was gone.

“Ah.” Jehan Merindar.

The teen said in an unprepossessing nasal honk, “He told us
to arrange it. Not to say when. So he officially won’t know when or how. His
fellows in the guard helped. They’re all busy looking elsewhere.”

“I understand.” Atanial suspected the cost of being caught.
They were so young to be in such danger, but she knew better than to mention
it. From the looks of him, that teen would on Earth be a computer geek, the
type who loved logistical challenges. “What will you say?”

“Nothing, if I get back to my patrol. They know you have
some magical device.” Tam mimed holding a disc. “I overheard the orders for the
search of your rooms when you were with the king, under Magister Zhavic’s
direction. Rumor was, the magister thinks you carry a token around, but the
king wouldn’t let him search you. So we figured if there were no signs left
behind—and they won’t think to check the ivy—they’ll figure on magical
transfer. And no one on wall duty right now will see anything at all.”

Atanial nodded, then the boy gave her a hasty lesson in
horse care, indicating the feed bag, rolled blanket, and curry comb in the
saddle pack. “Most people will help with a horse if asked,” he finished.

Atanial thanked him as she shook out the cape and pulled up
the hood. The soft, sturdy woolen garment smelled sun fresh. “All of you—I mean
all including those outside this space. Thank you, my dears.” She kissed Marka
and Tam, laughing silently when they blushed like children.

She hesitated before the teen, whose shoulders had come up
to his jug-handle ears. She knew from his agonized face, his defensive posture,
that however he felt about kisses from young ladies, he was definitely at that
age when teenage boys would rather be tortured by fire and sword than kissed by
old ones. So she patted him kindly on the arm, and laughed to herself at the way
Marka and Tam’s hands came together, gripping tightly.

She mounted up and left at a sedate pace, riding along the
military trail they’d pointed out, staying with it only until she was out of
sight of the city gates. Then she turned off the road.

Before long the low gray clouds began to drizzle, and she
discovered that the runner cloak was warded against wet. The cool, sweet air
smelled the better for the sense of freedom.

During the days and days she’d had time to think, she’d
decided if she ever won free, she would begin her search at the abandoned
morvende geliath Math had talked about, where mysterious mages had once taught
him some mysterious magic: Ivory Mountain. Oh, not ivory from animals. They
didn’t kill mammals for fur, meat, or anything else on this world. “Ivory” was
far weirder, a stone that was more like metal, and in ancient histories—so Math
had told her once, his eyes wide with wonder—it
sang
.

But before she found her way to Ivory Mountain, she needed
allies. Alone, she couldn’t do anything. But one thing people in Los Angeles
knew was the sheer weight of a crowd.

An inward image of a smart girl with capable hands, jug ears
framed uncompromisingly by braids: What better person to go to first than Lark
Silvag?

Because she rode northwest, she and Jehan happened to be
on the opposite sides of the city, one departing, one arriving. Though they
would have loved to have the leisure for a talk, they were unaware of the
other’s movements.

Jehan’s mood was sober. Triumph after a successful escapade
didn’t last long any more, not before the impending storm of trouble
threatening the kingdom. At least this time he was spared the necessity that—it
was becoming more obvious every day—only he insisted on, the swearing of a new
partisan not to himself but to King Math. Elva Eban was already sworn to Math.

Even thinking about it brought Owl’s voice back a year or
two ago. “What are you going to do if he’s dead?”

“I can’t think of that,” Jehan had responded. “I have to go
on as if he’s alive.”

Owl, who had never known Math, shook his head with some
sympathy. “You’d better think of it. Because you can be sure Randart is. Every
single day.”

Owl’s voice echoed in Jehan’s ears as he rode through the
south gate, waving in response to the salute from the sentries on the wall. He
was going to be facing Randart soon, maybe now, more likely later. Jehan had
hoped to get back before the war commander, who detested magic as much as he
distrusted it. But that couldn’t be counted on.

The covert glances sent Jehan’s way when he reached the
royal castle’s stable served as his weather vane. From the silence, the furtive
glances, and the tension in hands and shoulders, it seemed his father was in
far more of a temper than Jehan had expected. Maybe they hadn’t found the fake
letter, or maybe they had and had figured out at last that those letters were
indeed fake.

He handed over the reins of his mount and walked inside. He
was met almost at once by a runner who said, with scared eyes, “The king would
like you to come straightaway in, your highness.”

“All right. Thank you.” Tension gripped him.

His father sat in his workroom. As soon as Jehan walked in,
Canardan threw down his pen so hard it clattered to the floor. “Why,” he began
in a tired voice, “did you see fit to ride out without a word to anyone, not
even your own servants?” He flicked the letter. “Was her desire for your
company really all that much more alluring than duty?”

“I thought so.” Jehan kept his voice even. “But then my duty
is surpassing tedious. Not that I find Princess Atanial tedious, but trying to
get her to go on rides, or even a walk in the garden, is not much of a duty
when she refuses every single day, leaving me little to do.”

Regarding his son with a strange mixture of relief and
anger, Canardan said abruptly, “Atanial vanished.”

Jehan had not expected that so soon. Mentally saluting Kazdi
and the other guards, he exclaimed, “What?”

Canardan saw that unfeigned surprise and let out a slow
breath.

Jehan comprehended then that his father had feared he’d been
involved.

The king said in a far milder voice, “Atanial. Is gone.
Missing. Probably used that thrice-damned magic token the mages said she had on
her, but which I, being a fool, insisted they not take off her because she
assuredly kept it next to her person. She would never have forgiven that.”

What that revealed: the king had had her rooms searched, and
she knew it. She hadn’t trusted him, and he knew it.