“Well that’s damned inconvenient.”
“There will also very likely be a bounty attached to our heads,” he continued, watching them carefully for their reactions. “I agree that the specific details of my identity will be kept a secret, but I think that it will be alluded to heavily that I’m an Exile spy. That will certainly get the Defenders riled up. As for the bounties, I assume mine will be significant, because, as the Seeker mentioned, I’m now wanted alive. For you two, the price will be high as well.”
“Unless that Seeker can connect us with our former lives,” Tomaz mused idly. “I suppose the price would be higher then.”
“Yes,” the Prince said, unsure what else to say.
“Shadows and fire,” Leah cursed suddenly, and the Prince felt somehow more comfortable knowing that she was showing some stronger emotion about the situation, which was indeed very serious. “That means we probably won’t be able to get any supplies, will we?”
The Prince found himself utterly flabbergasted. She was worried aboutsupplies?
“We’ll have to go the long way around too,” Tomaz said, looking terribly glum. “Swamps… gaaah I hate swamps. Pesky little bugs all over the place… fuegh….”
“Don’t you two understand?”
Both Exiles looked at him in surprise. He cleared his throat and looked down, trying to contain an outburst.
“I apologize,” the word caught in his throat again, but he persevered, “but don’t you understand that this is one of the deadliest men in the entire Empire? That now he has a personal vendetta against the two of you? He will no doubt command Seeker cells from here to Roarke to actively search for you. Bounty hunters and even common Defenders will have your images branded into their minds by the amount of money that is being offered for the three of us taken together. There will be no place for you to go to ground. No matter where yougo, no matter what town, what city, you will be recognized, and, given half the chance, killed in your sleep. This is not a matter to be taken lightly!”
Tomaz and Leah exchanged a look. The Prince felt his ire rise. Here he was, trying to be helpful and concerned for their well-being, and all they did was treat him like a child scared of a monster under his bed!
But before he could speak and vent his spleen at them, Tomaz held up a hand. “Before you start, let me explain. Twenty years ago, I was a member of the Guardians. A Blade Master.”
Leah looked at him, alarmed, but he forestalled her.
“No no, it’s okay, I told him when we were camped outside Banelyn.”
She relaxed about half an inch, still watching the Prince and Tomaz intensely, but Tomaz paid it no mind and continued speaking.
“I’m nearly eight feet tall,” he said with bluff candor. “I think in these boots I might actually be that and a little more. In any case, I’m not easy to miss. There have been pictures of me in every town, village, city, and hamlet, for nearly two decades. Hell, there’s even a legend about me up in the Port of Valour. It’s a good one, too. Someday we’ll have to go, just so you can hear it from one of the fisherfolk yourself.”
He grinned from ear to ear, but then he looked at Leah, who was frowning at him, and he gruffly cleared his throat and rumbled on.
“The point is that all of the Exiled Kindred who serve as Rogues or Rangers have bounties on their heads and sketches made of them to be put on garrison walls. This may be Leah’s first, but I doubt it. She made a bit of a name for herself up north when we were in Tyne last year.”
He smiled wickedly at her, and for some reason she blushed furiously.
“What do you mean?” the Prince asked.
“Well, it involved a very fashionable dress and two or three young men—”
“Well, that’s enough talk,” the girl said. “Let’s keep moving.”
And with that, she jumped up on the stallion’s back and spurred Malial on ahead, and, though he seemed rather annoyed to have anyone but Tomaz giving him orders, the warhorse obliged, and she was soon lost in the trees.
The next few weeks passed just like that. They would talk from time to time, about this or that, and the Exiles continued to dismiss the Prince’s fears as irrelevant, and as time passed and they saw not a single soul, the Prince fell silent and let it rest.
During the journey he began to learn small details about them, things that prior to captivity he never would have cared about. Such as that Tomaz liked lavender. They passed a clump of it on the journey, and the big man let out such a bellow that both Leah and the Prince turned around and unsheathed their daggers, ready for battle, until they saw the big man jump off Malial and lumber over to the purple blooms. Leah found this hilarious, and actually began to roll about on the ground with laughter. The Prince began to chuckle as well… and then he was laughing full out with her, and so was Tomaz, who took some of the plant and stuck it behind his ears, while holding double handfuls to his nose and inhaling deeply.
It felt good to travel with the two Exiles, the Prince had to admit to himself. True, the fare was nothing grand, mostly what Leah and Tomaz caught and harvested along the way to supplement the supply of cheese and dried meat they’d restocked in Banelyn via the mysterious Trudy, but there was a strange, peaceful quality to the woods that caught him by surprise. It was a kind of serenity that he had never encountered before. The summer was fading slowly into autumn, and as it did the mornings became chillier and fog would roll in at night to cover even the tallest of the tall trees, leaving them wrapped in a cocoon of misty silence.
The cold was too much for the Prince the first few days, as they built no fire so as to risk not even the slightest chance of pursuit, and even with the extra blanket he could only curl into a ball and shiver through the night. But afterthey were sure they had lost any pursuit, they began to make small fires, and the nights became easier to bear. The first deer Tomaz saw was quickly brought down, gutted, skinned, and over a few days transformed by a mysterious process the Prince could neither explain nor fully comprehend: the hide was stretched, scraped, painted with some foul-smelling stew made of various rendered animal parts, and then left to dry attached to the back of Malial’s saddle, extending out past his rump like a strange sail. When it was done, Tomaz presented it to the Prince and told him it was a coat, if he could make it into one.
“I did the prep work, since I enjoy doing it,” he said, “but the rest is up to you. You can make it long, you can make it short, full sleeve, no sleeve, whatever you’d like. I’ve got a couple more scraps of hide in one of the packs if you need anything, and of course I have plenty of thread. So figure it out and make yourself a coat.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing how this turns out,” Leah said, and they both turned to see her bringing in wood for that night’s fire, a smirk on her face.
“Don’t listen to her,” Tomaz said to him a quiet, conspiratorial whisper, “she’s just worried your first coat will be better than hers.”
