“We came in over the wall, the way I followed you,” the Exile girl said. The memory of that night came back to the Prince—how scared he had been of her, how certain he had been that she was coming to kill him or stop him from reaching the Seeker.
“Were you following me to stop me or to see what I did?”
She did not respond.
“Now is not the time,” Tomaz said. “We came in over the wall, is that way still safe?”
The Prince paused, then nodded. “No one should know about it but the Seekers. Chances are the guards don’t even know there’s anything more than an abandoned guardhouse up there. I would bet that way is much easier to get through than the gates.”
Immediately, both Exiles turned and ran for the stables, trusting him completely, just as if he’d never betrayed them. For a brief instant, he couldn’t catch his breath, but then he was running just as hard as they were.
Chapter Twelve: Out of Banelyn
They made it to the stables easily, as no one had thought to guard them, and then quickly through the hidden door, which Tomaz simply threw a shoulder into and it crumpled inward. From there they made it to the top of the Black Wall, and then began to descend the other side. The Prince was so tired, though, and the places on his wrists where he had fought his bonds so chaffed and sore, that when he was still a good ten yards above the rooftop, his hands gave out.
Luckily, Tomaz had gone down first, and the big man caught him before he tumbled to his death.
Once they made it to ground level, things became easier. The guards inside the walls had been alerted, but the Outer City was still mostly silent. As the Prince had predicted, everyone had gone to the main gates, and the Seeker’s Path had remained unguarded.
As they passed through the city, they picked out a few pairs of clean Commons clothing drying on tightly stretched bits of thin rope the Exiles called clotheslines. The Prince, very gratefully, shed his filthy clothing, even his undergarments, and changed them all for fresh cotton replicas. To his surprise, he was quite excited to pull on the new Commons pants and shirt. They certainly weren’t his Prince robes, but they were comfortable and provided good mobility, which would help with the escape.
“Princeling,” Tomaz rumbled.
He turned and saw that the big man was holding up a hammer he’d found in an equipment rack. The big man motioned for him to approach, and the Prince did. Tomaz held the Prince’s hands over a low stone wall, and then deftly swung the hammer once, twice, thrice. There was a loud clatter of metal, and then the shackles fell away, and the Prince was free. For a long moment they all stood,frozen, waiting to see if anyone had heard the noise. But when no alarm was raised, a hand tapped the Prince on the shoulder, and he turned to see the girl holding up the smaller of the waterskins and a tiny cake of Tomaz’s soap.
“Wash those cuts.”
“No, I’m fine,” he said.
“Do it,” the girl insisted.
“We can do it when we’re safe away from here,” he insisted back, feeling that she was being unreasonable.
“We can do it now,” she said, eyeing him dangerously, “when we don’t have Imperials right on top of us. I’m not saving you just so you die in a week from infection.”
“We’ll have time later.”
“Just wash the cuts.”
“Make me,” the Prince retorted.
“Makeyou? Are youseven? Just wash them!”
“No!”
The girl seized the waterskin, but the Prince refused to let go, and the result was that they ended up nose-to-nose glaring at each other again.
“Save the bickering for later,” Tomaz rumbled. “We’re escaping right now.”
A beat passed, and then both of them dropped the skin, which the big man caught and tied to his waist. Tomaz turned and vaulted over the wall that surrounded the garden. The Prince and the Exile girl followed close behind, very pointedly not looking at each other.
They made their way through the Outer City and circled around to the Roarke road, heading south. The haphazard, rundown backstreets of the Outer City turned once more to wide, smooth paving stones, and their pace picked up. Soon they were past the last houses and shops and crossing the large grassy area that surrounded the city.
A wind sprang up behind them and brought sounds of pursuit, but they were far away now, and the cries were fading as they left the city. The road began to twist and turn, making its way through a series of small hills. They were all panting for breath now, and the Prince felt as though his heart might give out from sheer exhaustion. But somehow he found the energy to carry on until they’d gotten far enough away and left the road altogether.
Tomaz and the Exile girl slowed, and the Prince gratefully followed suit. They headed toward a series of larger hills covered in trees. Pine trees. The smell cast the Prince’s mind back to their journey through the Elmist Mountains. That journey had been defined by his need to escape from the same Exiles who were now his one chance of survival. If he had been more rested, he might have better appreciated the irony.
They stopped on a grassy hillside at the tree line of a forest from which they could just see Banelyn. They stood there for a moment, catching their breath, the Prince barely able to stand. Tomaz disappeared off into the forest, and the Prince took one step to follow but almost fell to the ground. He wished they still had the pack horse, even if he had to be tied onto it again. As if in answer to his prayers, Tomaz emerged from the wooded glen leading the very same packhorse the Prince had stolen and taken into the city.
