“Sorrel…” he says in a voice that cracks with emotion.
As he finally comes to rest, I wrap my arms around as much of him as I can reach, and smile at the ceiling far above us. There are ways of telling someone you love them without speaking the actual words.
And the way my name left his mouth just now is one of them.
Part FiveThe Start of the War of All Souls
Eighty-SixHide.
Just as the sun peeks over the eastern horizon, Merc and I are checking the tack on the horses. We’re outside the royal stables, attended to by a couple of guards and some uniformed footmen. In spite of the hour, Merc and I are ready to go, and so are our horses. The others are a different story. Given their half-mast eyes and the wafts of mead that emanate from their very pores, the celebrations continued well into the evening.
Putting my hand on Lavante’s silken flank, I walk around to his butt and sweep down to check his back shoes, remembering what Emma warned me. Both seem fine. Then again, if he only throws one when he’s bored? This stallion hasn’t had a moment’s peace unless he was sleeping.
“Oh, I forgot,” Merc says as he swings his pack off the back of his saddle. “I have something for you—”
One of the guards weaves on his feet, goes elbow over teakettle, and lands in a planter. His comrades, and the stable hands, immediately attend to him, and Merc shakes his head as he pulls something out.
“This is yours, isn’t it?”
In his callused palm… is a red velvet bag I never expected to see again.
My breath catches and all I can do is stare. Mare’s coins. “Where… did you find it?”
“I saw it on the ground back at the ruins, just as I was bolting out of there. It was so out of place, and right where you and the stallion were.” He jogs the satchel, the muffled chiming that rises up sweet to my ears. “Heavy. Sounds of only one thing.”
“Thank you.” I take the weight and hold it close, closing my eyes. “Thank you so much.”
He settles his pack back on Snooze. “I don’t know what kind of coins are in there, but going by the weight? I’d say that’s a fortune.”
Glancing up at him, I wonder if he’s thinking of payments and that I hid wealth from him at the start of all this. There’s no bitterness on his face, no tension in his body, though.
“This was… a gift from a very dear friend. Upon her death.”
“Then she must have loved you very truly.” As a second guard faints, Merc steps around his horse—who is, actually, snoozing even with all the activity around him—and goes over to help with a curse. “Oh, for fate’s sake, man. You’re in uniform. Pull it together.”
Turning in to Lavante’s flank, I open the neck of the satchel and pour a couple of the coins into my palm. They gleam in the dawn light, as if bits of the sun have fallen from the sky. I remember Mare, and wonder what she would think of me now.
Only parts of my evolution would she approve of.
I’m putting the coins back when I stop and frown. Picking one up, I angle it this way and that, an eerie feeling coming over me.
“Julion…” I breathe with shock.
I’m staring at his face on the coin. It’s the strike marking that’s different from all the others, the one that features the unbearded young man…
He was no mere knight of the court. He is heir to the throne.
Yes, I think to myself. We go to Prosperitus.
I couldn’t coerce the warrior queen with the crown, but maybe I can leverage a different throne if I do what its prince requested of me.
“So are we ready, then?” Merc asks.
I glance up, and have to shake myself back into focus. “Ah… yes, yes, we are.”
Closing the tie, I put the velvet bag back in the pocket of Julion’s jodhpurs—which have been laundered and pressed by the royal attendants and are just like new. They even cleaned the turban, although I left it behind.
Merc and I both saddle up, and then the guards—minus the two who are sitting on the ground with their heads cradled in their hands—walk us over to an exit in the back of the royal castle’s protective wall. On the approach, as our horse’s hooves clip-clop over the stone aisle, I think of the great gate, the one that opened up to mist and the ruins.
