The messenger overtook Alianor’s party at a muddy crossroads inn two days’ ride west of Lagora, where the Albaric tollhouses gave way to the first Aldren watchtowers and the speech at gates and wells sharpened toward the tongue of Aurenne.
They had been riding hard. Alianor had set the pace without apology, and no one had complained. Not even Rafiq, whose cracked rib had barely begun to heal and who sat his horse with a stillness Sivelle recognized as controlled pain. The Lagoran physician had advised two weeks of rest before any travel more strenuous than a walk to a sunny window. Rafiq had been given three days. On the fourth morning, when the party saddled their horses in the inn yard, Sivelle watched him mount with the careful economy of a man bargaining with every breath.
“You should have stayed in Lagora,” she said, riding up beside him.
“And be separated from my prince again? After all the effort it took him to recover me?”
“You cannot sit a horse without your left hand gripping the saddle.”
“I can sit the horse. I prefer not to fall off it. The grip is precaution.”
Sivelle laughed softly. She had known Rafiq for months now. She had learned that arguing with him was like arguing with a wall.
Ahead, Alianor rode at the head of the column with Zeid beside her. Nasir and Khalaf followed, disputing something in a mixture of Jaludi and Vestimarian. Yasin and Fadl brought up the rear, their eyes moving over the road, the ditches, the treeline, the watchtowers, and the sky. The four imperial guards whom Conrad had assigned to witness the closure of imperial interests had peeled away at the Albaric border, their duty satisfied, their report already riding eastward toward Triwels Rock in a leather pouch sealed with the imperial eagle-knot.
The landscape had changed by slow degrees since Lagora. The canals and salt-flats and counting-house bells had given way to rolling hills, oak woods, vineyards stripped by winter, stone villages clustered around church towers, and the constant sound of running water. The roads were better kept than anything in Kedraya, but the toll-stations were more numerous, and the officials who staffed them had the weary, suspicious faces of men told to watch for unpaid taxes, unlicensed merchants, foreign coin, and travellers under false names.
Alianor’s party travelled under no false names. They carried letters of credential from Triwels Rock, Lagoran release papers, Zeid’s household entry for Rafiq, which Khalaf had copied out in triplicate and would gladly have copied again if anyone had asked. The officials who inspected these documents at each toll-station developed a particular expression: the look of men who had expected wool factors and instead found themselves holding a Jaludi prince’s household roll while a princess of Esberia stared at them with little patience.
At the crossroads inn, a low stone building with a sign that showed a badly painted stag with one antler missing, Nasir dismounted first and went inside to negotiate for food, water, fodder, and information. He emerged ten minutes later with bread, cheese, and the expression that meant he had learned something he did not like.
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“The king has landed,” he said.
Alianor, who had been checking her horse’s hoof for a stone, straightened. “Where?”
“Saint Merrow’s Quay. Two days ago. He took ship from the Albaric coast with Lord Baudren, Father Aldemar, and the main escort. The harbour clerk told the innkeeper, who told the stable-boy, who told every traveller between here and the coast. The king is riding inland.”
“Inland.” Alianor’s voice was flat. “Not toward the island heartland. Not toward the capital.”
“Toward Aurenne. The innkeeper says there is trouble at a keep in the hills. A place called Chasluin. The garrison has refused to open its gates.”
Alianor closed her eyes, pensive. When she opened them again, Zeid was watching her.
“He will not wait for us,” she said.
“No,” Zeid agreed. “He will not.”
Zeid looked at the inn sign with its one-antlered stag, swaying slightly in the winter wind.
“Felrian does not need to defeat your father,” he said. “He needs him visible. Impatient. Glorious. Easy to aim at.”
Alianor turned to Sivelle. “How far is Chasluin from here?”
“Two days’ hard ride, if the roads hold. Three if the fords are swollen. The king is at least a day ahead.”
“Then we ride harder.”
She swung back into the saddle before anyone could argue. The party rode west into the hills, and the innkeeper watched them go.
They did not catch Rydric before nightfall. They did not catch him the next day either. The roads were passable but steep, and winter had left the fords high and the inns crowded with travellers who had heard rumours of the king’s return and were hurrying toward Aurenne to witness it. Every town they passed through had bells ringing and banners flying and priests of the Revealed Light leading prayers of thanksgiving for the safe return of the anointed king. The crowds cheered Alianor’s party as it rode through, assuming they were part of the royal train, and Alianor smiled at them with a face that revealed nothing of what she felt.
On the second evening, at an inn where the stable-boy had a withered arm and the innkeeper’s wife had been cooking the same stew for what tasted like several decades, Nasir brought news from a merchant travelling eastward.
“The king reached Chasluin this afternoon,” he said. “The keep is still closed. The castellan had sent letters to the regent asking for instructions. The garrison has not been paid in six months. The king is camped before the walls with two dozen men-at-arms.”
Alianor set down her cup. “He is camped before a wall, with two dozen men, in a region Felrian has been claiming by charter since before we left Triwels.”
“Yes.”
“Ride at dawn,” she said. “We reach him by midday or we reach him too late.”
No one slept well that night. Zeid, lying on a straw pallet in a room that smelled of damp wool and old smoke, listened to Alianor pacing in the chamber next to his. Her footsteps were even, measured, the tread of a knight before battle. He had heard that tread in Solymer, on the night before the betrothal, when neither of them had known what the other was yet. He heard it now and understood that the battle she was pacing for was one she could not win with a sword.
Rafiq, in the corner of the same room, was not asleep either. His breathing was controlled.
“Highness,” he said quietly.
“I am listening.”
“She will not reach him in time to stop him.”
“I know.”
“And you will follow her anyway.”
“Yes.”
Rafiq was silent for a moment. Then, in the darkness, Zeid heard him shift on his pallet, a small sound of discomfort that he would never have permitted himself to make in Solymer.
“Good,” Rafiq said.