“And I’d venture to guess,” he continues, “that before the journey here, your ideas aboutthe right thingmight be a bit different from now, after learning the truth about Rian and everything he revealed.”
That smacks me in the face twice as hard. I flush a little. “Ouch, Erik.”
He glances over, then gives my pack straps a little back-and-forth tug again. “Besides, if you hated the night patrol so much, I can’twaitto hear your opinion on palace guards.”
His voice is gently teasing, trying to pull some of the sting out of the air.
It works. “Maybe a few of you are all right,” I say.
“That’s fair. Some of us are real bastards.”
I giggle and cast a glance up at him in the sunlight. “And you’re right. I didn’t understand before. But I didn’t have all the information.”
“No one ever does. How could we? We all come from a different place. Sometimes I listen to the consuls blustering about something stupid, and it’s hard to remember that they’ve never spent a single moment of their lives outside a palace or an estate. But it’s not just them. When I started as a patrolman, I was in Sunkeep first, and there’s so little crime. It was easy, so I thought that’s what it was like everywhere. But then I was assigned to a new unit, farther north, through Trader’s Landing. And you might not know this, but back then, before anyone was smuggling Moonflower, they were smugglingexplosives.”
I turn wide eyes his way. “Really?”
He nods. “For raiding the mines in Mosswell. I had been chasing down cutpurses and the occasional night burglar in Sunkeep, and suddenly I was grouped with patrols that were facing armed smugglers sitting on piles of bombs. The main roads were safe, but as soon as you took a wrong turn, you could be dead. I was young—it was intense.” He shakes his head and whistles through his teeth. “I had no idea anything like that was even happening in Kandala. I’ve heard it’s worse now since there hasn’t been a consulthere in years. I’m sure that’s how rebels were able to smuggle explosives all the way to the Royal Sector.”
I think of my parents slipping down darkened paths of Artis and through the Wilds to pass out medicine. Our biggest threat was always the night patrol. I’ve never been as far south as Sunkeep, but that’s where Karri was from originally. I’ve been to Trader’s Landing, but not since I was younger, fetching medicinal supplies with my parents. It seemed to be a bustling, lively sector, and even though my parents always warned me to stay close, I always assumed it was because of how crowded the roads were. I never considered being afraid of people smuggling something likeexplosives.
“Does the king know this?” I ask.
Rocco looks at me like I’ve asked how to breathe. “Of course.”
So Corrick must have known it, too. I pair this with everything Rocco just said, and it all really does make me feel naive. Corrick must have tried to tell me in a million different ways, but somehow the lesson lands this time.
“How long were you there?” I say.
“Less than a year. That’s where I was chosen to apply for the palace guard, so I went from Trader’s Landing to the Royal Sector. I remember when I wrote to my parents to say I was taking a position as a guardsman, my mother wrote back and demanded that I ask the king why he kept changing the shipping levies at the ports. Of course I couldn’t do that—but it wasn’t until I stood beside the door through a thousand boring consul meetings that I learned how much negotiation went into those stupid shipping levies, because it wasn’t like King Harristan was doing it on a whim.” He glances down. “But that’s what I mean about how we all come from a different place. We don’t really know until we . . . ?know.”
“Did you ever tell your poor mother you just couldn’t ask about shipping levies?” I tease.
“I told her I’d have to wait until I was in the king’s personal guard to get that close, because I never thought I would. Now I never hear the end of it.” He rolls his eyes. “One day she’ll stop asking.”
“Wait—you weren’t in the king’s guard the whole time?”
“Oh no. I was just a rank and file palace guard in the beginning. I wasn’t chosen for King Harristan’s personal guard until after his coronation.” He pauses, and his tone turns grave. “None of us were. He had all of his father’s personal guards dismissed, then selected his own from among those remaining.”
The words fall into the air and land more heavily than I’m ready for.Dismissed.
Because Harristan and Corrick’s parents were assassinated.
Rocco was right. Their lives are so touched by tragedy. All of Kandala seems shadowed by it.
He glances over again, and he seems to sense the need to change the subject. “What about you?” he says. “I know you were raised to be an apothecary. Did you grow up in the Wilds?”
“No,” I say. “In Artis, really. Though we used to travel into—”
Rocco shoves me to the side of the path so forcefully that the weight of the pack nearly takes me down. I have to grab hold of a tree. Wood cracks somewhere nearby, but I barely hear it over the sound of my breathing. My nails dig into the tree trunk, and I realize Rocco is blocking me now, his crossbow drawn and aimed.
I duck a little to peer under his arm, but I don’t see anything or anyone.
“What’s happening?” I whisper.
“Don’t move,” he says. “She’s behind that tree there.” He gestures with the weapon a little.
I look, and then I spot the woman, most of her body hidden behind a wide tree. I don’t have time to recognize much more than curly black hair, skirts that brush the ground, and a crossbow in her own hands.
