And above everything: Don’t get caught.
Walking as quickly as they dared, the pair wound along the outer ring of tents. Past dying fires, hushed conversations, babies crying with the new morning.
The princess made a hard right, down an offshoot that barreled closer to the center of the camp—her instincts told her it would be quieter. Fewer babies and families, tents of a smaller, more singular size. Bachelor row. Still, a few clothing lines were strung up on poles or between consenting tents, clothing being aired out after a day’s travel. Taillefer’s stride slowed a half step. “Cloak, north-by-northeast.”
Amarande’s eyes caught on the item, hanging heavily on a line—this garment wouldn’t perfectly mask his tattered Itspi guard’s uniform, but it was definitely an improvement. She gave him a wordless go-ahead.
Taillefer diverted toward the clothing line, plucking off the cloak without a single hesitation or a pause in his stride. He made another right, Amarande on his heels, and shrugged it on. The garment wasa rugged brown, thick with the mingled odor of campfire and leather oil. It was a little short but did the job—hiding the golden thread and ripped shoulders where Taillefer’s sewn-on cloak had previously been. It also had a hood, which would come in handy.
They hooked left, realigning their path with the horse pen, which was now straight ahead, about a half mile from where they’d veered.
“Perhaps we save the food and waterskins for closer to the horses,” Amarande whispered, glancing over her shoulder at some sort of commotion—two men with raised voices near where they’d nabbed the cloak.
Taillefer saw it, too. “Step faster.”
No titles or names until they were past all this—that was something they’d discussed, too. With a thousand sets of ears, there were too many wrong people around to hear a clue.
“We cannot appear to be running,” she whispered.
Taillefer responded by cuffing her wrist to pull her along. He was basically jogging now, his knees picking up, obscured a little by the flow of the cloak. She wrenched her arm away as they turned another corner, trying to put tent peaks between themselves and the two men. “I am with you; you don’t need to—”
“OOF.”
Taillefer was sprawled flat on his back before Amarande’s head jerked up. A man the size of the ogre she and Osana had met at the Warlord’s Inn stood there, coffee splattered down the front of his tunic and dripping down the sides of a tin mug in one of his massive hands.
Surprise wound the meaty swoops of his features. “Where’s the hurry, man?” he spat, rolling his shoulder as if it’d been knocked out of its socket with the blow that had landed Taillefer on the ground. A bruise was already blooming on the prince’s cheek as he blinked up at the lightening sky, trying to make sense of what had just occurred.
“We’re sorry; it won’t happen again,” Amarande answered for Taillefer, quickly and quietly, extending a hand to him so that he might stand and they could get out of the way.
“Little Queen, is that you?”
Amarande’s breath caught, as her eyes shot toward the ancient voice and a campfire a horse length away. And, there, raising herself from a stoop, was Naiara, the healer who saved Luca’s life in the IsileanCaravan. As if in confirmation, her apprentice Señe appeared at the old woman’s shoulder, coffee carafe held tight. Commotion came from behind them as someone tripped and fell, almost as if they’d walked right off the edge of the precipice where the princess was very carefully standing.
Before Amarande could answer, Naiara took a step forward, angling to get a proper look at the hooded boy on the ground. “Kidege?Luca?”
In that moment, time seemed to stop—the giant suddenly aggressively rigid; Amarande wishing the stars would steal those two syllables back; Taillefer pushed up on one knee, not yet to standing.
Then it all crashed into motion.
“Luca?”The giant’s voice was louder than anything Amarande had heard since the wedding that wasn’t. His meaty gaze drilled into Taillefer. “This is the boy who would unseat our Warlord?”
Stars, no.
Naiara audibly gasped. For all her talents and knowledge, it appeared the wisewoman did not understand the power of Luca’s name.
Taillefer got to his feet and purposely shrugged off his hood to prove he had no Torrentian blood. “No, no, this is a misunderstanding. My name is notthat.I—”
The giant grabbed Taillefer by the front of his tunic and hoisted him into the air.
Amarande’s sword was out front in a flash. “Put him down. We mean no harm.”
“Your sword says otherwise, girl.”
The sound of more unsheathed steel rang out. Two female guards stood at the conjunction of a pair of tent rows. Amarande didn’t dare glance at Naiara or Señe—the healers would be in trouble enough for harboring knowledge of Luca. A pang of regret hit as she wished she hadn’t turned her head at the first sound of the healer’s voice.
“Have your friend put him down, and I shall stow my sword,” Amarande said to the guards—both carried swords like Ula’s, curved and deadly.
“Release him, Kerbasi.”
