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  “I don’t remember that,” she said.

  Thorn heaved a sigh and turned away from her.

  He was expecting the princess to snap at him for taking so long when he returned — surely, she must have observed that he was speaking with her former nurse, not hastening back — but she only caught eyes with him briefly. The look in her eyes was pity or worry, not anger, and she said nothing but reached for the rope to help him wrap it securely around Karyl.

  Even with the rope wrapped as many times around him as possible and tied in different spots on the saddle, the big man still looked precariously perched on the horse, who was pawing nervously at the ground. Ruben caught at the bridle and smoothed his hand over the horse’s nose.

  “I will lead him,” he said, “if someone will tell me where we are going.”

  “Put Lully on her horse, please,” Irae instructed Thorn. “And Graic on as well. We will go slowly.”

  “We will go slowly where?” said Thorn, putting his things back in his pack hastily.

  Irae paused for a moment. Her face was drawn taut.

  “The nearest healer is two days from here, by my reckoning,” she said. “I don’t believe he will make it that far.”

  “As I said,” said Lully, her voice hoarse.

  “But if we go north a little, and then to the west,” said Irae, speaking a little more loudly so as to be heard over the young maid, “we will come across the haunt of Braeve.”

  “No, we cannot!” said Graic. It was the most coherent thing that Thorn had ever heard from her. The old woman desperately clutched at her former charge with both hands.

  “We must,” said Irae.

  “Braeve will kill you,” said Lully.

  “She will do no such thing.” Irae spoke sharply. It was clear that she was not through with being angry with Lully for arguing with her. “She has taken a vow of good.”

  Graic snorted, and Lully said, “As though anyone ever stuck to a promise like that!”

  “Is there such a thing as a vow of good?” said Ruben, feeling in his pocket for an apple to give the horse. “I’ve never heard of it, and I’ve heard of a great many things in my time.”

  “A vow of good is as lasting and meaningful as a vow of silence from the nuns at Bel Keep,” said Lully. “She’ll see you coming and be unable to stop herself.”

  “We must go to Braeve.” Irae’s tone would allow no further argument. She swung herself up onto her horse and tugged impatiently at the reins. “She has sworn to do good, and I am going to trust it. If she can save Karyl, we have to take the chance.”

  Lully clearly intended to say more, regardless of the princess’s firm tone, but Thorn had hoisted her up into the saddle. She had to grasp tightly onto the pommel with her good hand to keep from falling off. He helped Graic up behind her despite his hesitance to touch the old woman, feeling as though pieces of his memories were going to rub off and transfer to her. The sideways look she gave him was not helping, either.

  Everyone was mounted and ready. Last of all, Thorn swung onto his own saddle, steadied his pack, and settled in. He moved closer to one side of Karyl while Irae took the other to steady him in every direction against the move and sway of the horse on the rough road.

  Thorn couldn’t avoid looking at Karyl’s white, blood-drained face. He also couldn’t help but think that Lully was probably right. The former guard was more than likely not going to survive this next part of their misbegotten adventure.

  As desperate as Irae was to save him, he didn’t like to think how she was going to react if it proved impossible.

  Irae clicked her tongue at her horse and nudged him gently with her boot.

  “North,” she said determinedly, “and then west.”

  Thorn held off on his questioning until they had been traveling for a little time, wanting to assemble the best words to get his desired information without putting the princess on edge. But she appeared on edge enough already, what with the sick and pained man on the horse between them. At last, finally screwing up his courage and choosing his words carefully, he said, “Who is this Braeve, then?”

  He kept his face turned away from her to avoid her feeling pierced by his direct gaze, but he could sense her swift, stern glance in his direction.

  “I wish it hadn’t turned out this way,” she said. “I wish — I should have done something, anything, sooner. I wish I wasn’t so stupid!”

  He kept quiet, deeming this the wisest course of action. After a moment more, she carried on in a rush.

  “Lully needn’t be so concerned about it. It was all some time ago that it happened.”

  “That what happened?”

  “Braeve,” said Irae, her tone somewhat bitter, “is a very clever woman. She was trained by alchemists from Maritrea, and some claim that her understanding of science and medicine and the inner workings of things — mostly things that should not be played with in my opinion — is surpassed by none. I cannot vouch for her, other than knowing her reputation, except for two things. One, she is the one who bestowed the gift of immortality on my uncle the traitor. No one knows how. But it has indeed proven to be effective.”

  “Thus far, anyway,” said Thorn.

  “Thus far is far enough. He has survived at least ten assassination attempts.”

  Thorn thought about this. He was not a violent person by nature, though he understood the rage that drove people to fight. With the adventures that they had been having recently, he felt that he understood it more clearly than ever before. But the thought of coolly, calmly undertaking the murder of someone in cold blood, on behalf of another person’s convictions, was entirely foreign to him. It made him shiver to think of it, and quake again to think that at least one of the attempts to murder the current king was rumored to be on behalf of the young woman who rode at his side.

  She hadn’t ordered it — he needed to believe that — but still, it stunned him sometimes to think of what royalty was willing to do in efforts to achieve power. At times, he felt as though he didn’t know her at all.

  But dwelling on that didn’t help, not when he was actively engaged in her cause and fighting on her side. So, he put it aside to worry about later — probably in the dead of night when he needed to be sleeping. That was usually how it worked.

  “What is second, if that is first?” he said.

  “Secondly,” said Irae, heaving a sigh, “as she was clearly on the side of my uncle the traitor, it was only a matter of time until she took action against me. The time came shortly after she gifted my uncle the traitor with his greatest blessing — after my father had died, and I was still beholden to my uncle for training, for guidance. Before I knew — what he really was. She disguised herself as an old woman and managed to make her way into my home as a beggar, looking for food to stay alive. She was so desperate, so thin, so haggard and wild. I was frightened, but I let her in. I had been warned not to do so, not to let anyone in, but I didn’t like being told what to do.” A trait that she still held to this day, but Thorn chose not to comment on it. “And she looked so sad, so in need, so — desperate,” said Irae again, quietly.

  They rode in silence for a moment. Irae seemed lost in the memory of her own pity.

  “How old were you?” Thorn asked at last.

  “Not quite thirteen,” said the queen. “Scarcely more than a child, though I would have objected if you had told me so at the time. My father had died not even a year before.”

  “So young.” Thorn could picture Irae at thirteen, orphaned and dependent on the guidance of others who were seeking great things for themselves, watched over only by a few loyal servants, with every day bringing a new danger until could protect herself. And where had he been at the same age? Roaming the woods, entirely alone.

  Leaving aside the castle, the kingship, the royals and the riches, was her life so much better than his had been, after all?

  He didn’t want to think about this, either.

  “What did she do?”

&nbs
p; “She took a knife to me,” said Irae bluntly. “She would have done something more complicated, fancy, I think — something with poison, judging by what we found on her — but I conned to her too quickly, even being as young and stupid as I was. I screamed bloody murder, which is what it would have been if Karyl had not come to find me so quickly. I fought her off as best as I could, of course, but she was so much bigger than me. When he came, he caught her by the shoulders and flung her across the room so hard that she hit the wall and slid down to the floor, unconscious. I tried to run at her — for what, I don’t know. I can’t remember — but I slipped on the blood and fell, and I woke up three days later with a head like death and four newly carved scars. Like claws, raking down.” She curved her own fingers and mimed the motion, sideways and down across her torso. Thorn flinched. “Well,” said Irae, with a strange and brittle brightness, “of course my uncle the traitor disavowed any knowledge of what she had done, and I believed him. He had never been anything but good to me at that point. Now — I don’t know. Perhaps he asked or suggested to her that I would be better out of the way. She was unhinged, poor woman — and after she spent a few years in the dungeons, she was released. She went to a convent for a time and took a vow of good. Now she lives in the woods scarcely a day from here, which makes her the best chance that we have to save Karyl.”

  “But she might still want to kill you,” said Thorn.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “How do you know? She might want to kill Karyl, if he hurt her when he was saving you. She could carry a grudge —”

  “No!” said Irae. She met his eyes with her own filled with distress. “Hells, Thorn, do you think I would take us into this situation if I thought there was a chance that it would destroy everything?”

  “Do I think you would take that chance if you might save Karyl?” said Thorn. “Yes, I do. I do think that. Don’t be angry with me, Jelen — I’m not trying to talk you out of anything. I’m only trying to make sure that we are ready for whatever might happen. Can’t you see that this is the best way to preserve all of us, if we are prepared beforehand?”

  She lapsed into silence again, both hands tightening on the reins as she rode. Between the two of them, Karyl let out a soft sigh as they reached a particularly rough part of the road and he was shifted painfully.

  “Keep your eyes open,” she said.

  This was a clear admission that he was correct to be worried. Taking Irae’s usual way of operating into account, Thorn sat up a little straighter.

  “She likes to use knives?” he said.

  He wasn’t imagining the pain and worry in the look she sent him.

  “She likes to cause pain,” she said, briefly. “But things are different now. Things should be different now. They have to be.”

  Thorn cast a glance back over his shoulder. He did not think that Lully could have been in earshot of them, but she was looking at him. As he met her gaze, she shook her head slowly and solemnly.

  He turned to face forward again, worried and uncomfortable. He wanted to trust Irae’s judgment — she had gotten them this far after all. But in one sense they had come this far in spite of the things she and others had done. For instance, the decision to battle with the highwaymen led to the wounds sustained by both Karyl and Lull. Therefore, he wasn’t entirely sure that trusting her judgment was the wisest course of action.

  Well, she had told him to keep his eyes open, and for now, that was what he would do. He wasn’t sure how much time he had to put a plan together, though.

  “We have perhaps a few hours to go yet,” said Irae, as though she could hear his thoughts. “We will be near her before nightfall, and then it will simply be a matter of attracting her attention.”

  Thorn desperately wanted to ask what, exactly, that entailed, but he could tell that he had questioned her enough for one day. He settled down into the ride, one hand on Karyl’s shoulder to keep him steady and remind himself of why they were doing this to begin with.

  He only hoped it would be worth it.

  2

  A New Assignment

  The December King was finding his responsibilities a bit vexing. Perhaps it was because this was the season for contentions, for rivalries, for attempted assassinations. Or maybe the cause was that this wasn’t his responsibility at all, and what he really needed was to learn to delegate. That was what being king was all about, was it not? If someone told him to do something he didn’t want to, he should be able to tell them that and to do it themselves. Otherwise — what was the point?

  Of course, he couldn’t do anything about the attempted assassinations. There was always going to be someone out there who wanted to scale every mountain they came across. If that meant trying to murder the un-murderable, then so be it. The king wasn’t unhappy that the story of his immortality had gotten around. Ultimately, however, it was one of the more tiresome things he had ever been required to deal with. No matter how many times he came through with flying colors and a complete lack of death, someone else seemed to be waiting to try their hand at it. And, after all, he was immortal. That didn’t mean that being stabbed, poisoned, set on fire, and viciously seduced didn’t hurt.

  That last one, of course, had only happened once.

  More’s the pity, was the king’s opinion. It would help if the assassins had at least a little imagination about their task. It would disturb the bloody monotony.

  Each failed attempt added to his legend. Each failed attempt resigned him a little more to his own future: something that stretched out in front of him, endless, like a pathway through the Badlands with nothing on the horizon and everything important left somewhere distantly behind him. And here he was, expected to carry that weight at the back of his mind while sitting here listening to some nobleman or other who claimed to have lost his daughter.

  He knew Batrek Felcin well, in point of fact. Lord Felcin had helped him innumerable times, over the years. He was loyal to a fault, and to the right people, which was almost more important. He was also a little boring. That was why it was so difficult to pay attention to him, especially since the king had gotten so little sleep recently.

  Signaling to Merkin to send in tea, the king shifted his weight and leaned forward. He put his elbows on his knees and gave Batrek Felcin his best impersonation of keen attention and interest that he could manage at three in the afternoon on a Thursday.

  “Your panic renders you difficult to understand,” he said, though that was far from true. Yes, Batrek Felcin was likely panicked; after all, from what the king could remember, he was a devoted father with only one child. That in itself, of course, was rare; most of the nobles in this area seemed eager to spread their progeny far and wide. But the challenge in tracking what the man was saying actually stemmed from the boredom. “Please, begin at the beginning once more. Your daughter has been kidnapped?”

  “She was on the road to Bertam’s Port,” said Felcin. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. If the December King hadn’t known better, he would have said that the nobleman was exasperated. “She had a young guard for company, but he claims that she said she recognized someone and then disappeared into the crowd before he could follow her.”

  “Crowd? On the road to Bertam’s Port?”

  “It was a market day. It’s been an entire week, Your Majesty, and I’m so terribly afraid of what may have befallen her.”

  “Hmm.” The king rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I presume you’ve thoroughly interrogated the guard?”

  “I questioned him quite strongly.” Felcin shifted uncomfortably. “He has always been entirely trustworthy.”

  “Servants do tend to be,” agreed the king, “until suddenly they are not.” He gave a little half-wince at the thought. There had been a few uproars among his own household recently; he didn’t like hangings, but at times there was just no way to avoid them. Even with the delegation from Elgodon just arrived and feasting going on in celebration of peace negotiations, there were alwa
ys a few bad apples trying to upset the cart. “I would suggest that you do a little more than question him strongly, Lord Felcin. That seems the reasonable place to start.”

  “I have kept him under lock and key since then,” said Felcin stubbornly. “If he were to have taken her, it would have been for nothing other than a ransom. No ransom note has shown up, and no one has heard any such rumors. I don’t believe it is the boy’s fault at all. He should perhaps have been more cautious, but my daughter has always been headstrong, even from the time she was a small child.”

  The king sighed and laced his fingers together in front of him.

  “Well,” he said, “if you don’t want to take my advice, that is your decision, of course. It is up to you. However, you did ask for this audience, and I granted it to you out of consideration for your parental worry, which does you credit, of course. Therefore — what precisely is it that you would like me to do for you?”

  Felcin looked up at him, his eyes heavy and wounded.

  “I have done you many favors over the years,” he said. “I know, my king, that you have your ways; and you know, in your heart, that I am loyal. Please. Please, whatever it takes, find my little girl and bring her home.”

  The plea was touching, the king had to admit. It was a difficult thing to look away from the nobleman, broken and humbled as he was. But the doors to the great throne room had opened, and Serhiy had entered. The king’s back straightened, his shoulders tensed — he couldn’t help it. It just happened these days when Serhiy was around.

  The young man wasn’t frightening to look at, by any means. If anything, he was rather sharply good looking with a thin face, all led by the nose, and piercing dark blue eyes. But he moved like violence wrapped in a human body, coiled and ready for action. The king couldn’t help feeling, every time he looked at him, that if someone innocent and helpless happened to come by, Serhiy would chase them down and show no mercy.