by Morgan Rice
The mask hid half his face, but even with it, Sophia could see that he was handsome. He didn’t have the hard edges of some of the soldiers in the room, but he still seemed strong and athletic.
He wasn’t one of those leering at her, or at the other young women in the room. Sophia caught none of the sense of violence from him that she’d gotten from Prince Rupert, and none of the problems that she’d seen in so many other thoughts there. There was something quiet about him, almost peaceful.
That wasn’t how Sophia felt, though. She could feel herself breathing faster at the sight of him, and her eyes stayed locked to him as he moved around the room. It was only as a man bowed low in front of him that she picked up the one thing she hadn’t realized:
This was Prince Sebastian, younger son of the dowager. Not the one who would ever inherit, but still far more than she could ever hope for.
Sophia started to look away, but found her gaze drawn back to him as if she couldn’t stop it. On the way there, she caught sight of Lady D’Angelica and her friends, and even if she hadn’t been able to read her thoughts, Sophia would have seen the hungry look the noblewoman gave the prince.
When she did look at Angelica’s thoughts, Sophia froze.
One drink, and he’ll soon be sleepy enough.
Sophia made her way toward the other girl through the chattering crowd. Sophia saw her touch a pouch set at her waist.
I just hope that the physiker didn’t cheat me. If this doesn’t work fast enough, I’ll never be the one to get him to his bed.
Sophia could guess at her plan now. Angelica was planning to give Prince Sebastian some kind of sedative, then go out of the hall on his arm. She was going to trick him into bed with her, regardless of his wishes.
When I’m with child, he’ll have to marry me.
That intercepted thought pushed Sophia over the edge. She had to stop this. She snuck up close behind the other girl, using her talent the way she’d used it to steal on the street, watching for the moment Angelica’s attention wandered, and then reaching out as calmly as waving a fan to snatch the bag from her belt.
Sophia could have thrown the sedative away, but right then, she felt that the noblewoman deserved more than that—for what she’d been like with Cora, if nothing else. Sophia took a glass of wine, quietly adding some of the powder within and stirring it into the drink. She moved close to Angelica again, watching for the instant when she would set down her wine for a moment on one of the small tables around the room.
It was a matter of a few seconds at most, but Sophia had been waiting for it, and that made it easy to switch the wine. She walked away, sipping Angelica’s drink, while the young noblewoman drank from the one Sophia had doctored.
It took a while to see any effect. For a minute or two, in fact, Sophia wasn’t sure that she’d managed to do anything at all. Then she saw Angelica sway slightly, swatting away the attempt by one of her friends to help.
What’s happening? Have I made some mistake?
Sophia saw her grab at her belt, searching for the now missing pouch. Angelica stumbled then, and this time one of her cronies did catch her. She looked as though she wanted to fight, or argue, but the whole coterie of them quickly swept her from the room, presumably looking for somewhere to rest.
Sophia smiled to herself at the thought that the other girl was getting what she deserved. She looked over at Sebastian.
Now for the part that she deserved.
Because the truth was, there was no one else in the room she had eyes for but him.
CHAPTER TEN
Kate felt worse off than she’d been before she got on the boat. She shivered as she walked through the city, the failing light nowhere near enough to dry out the soaking wet clothes she wore.
She was hungry too, so hungry that she was already contemplating theft to fill her rumbling stomach. Kate found herself looking around at every shop and food stall, searching for an opportunity, but there was no chance at the moment, even with her talent letting her spot when the coast was clear.
She almost found herself wishing she were back at the orphanage, but that was a stupid wish. Even before she’d run away, it had been a worse place than this. At least on the streets, there were no nuns to beat her for making mistakes, no endless hours of working at pointless tasks to avoid the sin of laziness.
This was close, though, and Kate found herself hoping that her sister was better off than this. Her attempts to connect with Sophia weren’t working, though. Either that, or she was caught up with something that had her attention, so she couldn’t answer. She tried to connect with Emeline again too. Again, there was no answer.
Kate kept walking.
She wasn’t sure where she was in the city now, but from the look of it, she hadn’t landed in some noble quarter. There, she imagined that the cobbles would be gleaming white marble, rather than cracked brick and granite covered in a layer of horse dung. The houses around her looked cheaper even than the ones around the House of the Unclaimed, and from inside them, Kate could hear occasional shouts and screams, arguments and laughter.
She passed by an inn, where the candlelight within lit up carousing barge hands and workers. The words of a bawdy song carried out onto the street, and in spite of herself Kate found herself blushing. One of the men beckoned to her, and Kate hurried on.
By daylight, Ashton had been a bustling, rough around the edges place. In the growing dark, this corner seemed a lot less friendly. In an alley nearby, Kate was sure that she heard the sounds of violence. As she passed another, she caught a man and a woman pressed up against a wall together and she looked away.
Kate knew that she had to get warmer than she was. In daylight, she might have been warm enough to dry out simply by walking around, but by night, with the moonlight streaming down on her in a haze of silver and the wind cutting through her whenever she didn’t keep close to one of the walls?
She was going to freeze do death if she didn’t find a fire.
There were fires all around the city in hearths and grates. The chimneys of the houses around her belched smoke into the night sky as their inhabitants cooked on them and kept warm. It wasn’t as though she could just walk into one of their houses, though.
She could try an inn, but inns cost money, and if she just hung around one, Kate had no doubt that someone would want to know what she was doing there. So she kept walking, looking longingly at the inns nearby and trying to ignore the sounds of the city’s more dangerous inhabitants as they went about their nocturnal business.
Finally, Kate felt as though she couldn’t go on any longer. At the next inn she came to, she slipped into the courtyard it enclosed. She might not be able to pay for a room, but this one had a stable, and she might at least be able to keep warm there among the horses if she was careful. There would be stable hands somewhere, and the owners of the horses within would be out in the morning to take them. For now, though, Kate couldn’t pick up any thoughts that would point to people being too close.
There were three horses in the stables at the moment. One was a dark stallion, large and aggressive looking. Another was a docile white pony that looked far too thin and poorly cared for. The third was a chestnut mare, which whickered as Kate moved close, slipping into her stall to huddle down among the straw. She took a blanket that was draped over the horse’s back, and it didn’t seem to mind when Kate wrapped herself in it.
It wasn’t much, but it was far better than walking the street trying to dry out. She didn’t try to sleep, because she didn’t want to risk someone sneaking up on her while she did it. She just sat there while slowly, gradually, she started to warm up a little.
She also started to think. She had been planning to get out of the city when the boys had found her and she’d been forced to run. Her plan had been to steal everything she needed, from food to weapons, clothing to… well, a horse. Was there any reason she couldn’t still do that?
Kate crept to the front of the stall, looking out while simu
ltaneously extending her other senses. She had no illusions about what would happen to her if she was caught stealing something as expensive as a horse. It would be the branding iron at least, and more likely the noose.
But right then, when the alternative was dying a slow death in the city, it seemed more than worth the risk.
Actually doing it was the hard part. Kate could see some of the tack for a horse set on the wall, and the chestnut mare held still while Kate set her blanket in place and settled a saddle over the top. It was obviously used to strange people saddling it for its owner. She found more of the tack for it, and half-remembered lessons at the orphanage in how to be a good servant told her some of what she needed to know about where it all went. The rest, Kate guessed at, and when the horse didn’t pull away from her efforts, she suspected that she had it right.
She opened the stable door as quietly as she could, every creak of the wood or squeak of the bolt sounding impossibly loud against the quiet of the night. She didn’t dare to ride the horse from the stables, so instead, she led it quietly, step by step, until she reached the gate that led to the street.
“Hey, you! What do you think you’re doing?”
Kate didn’t hesitate. Her climb up into the saddle wasn’t graceful, but it was fast. She dug her heels into the horse’s flanks and yelled at the top of her voice. At the same time, she sent, as powerfully as she could, the urge to run.
Kate didn’t know which aspect of it brought the horse to a gallop, but right then it didn’t matter. The only thing that did matter was that she found herself clinging to the horse as it sprinted through the nighttime streets. Shouts sounded behind her, but they quickly faded into the distance.
The real difficulty was hanging onto the horse. Kate hadn’t ridden before. The orphanage assumed that the only ones riding around her would be whoever bought her indenture. Certainly not her, and certainly not this fast.
That meant that she clung to the horse’s neck for dear life, not even trying to steer it as it chose its own path past carts and the few pedestrians still out there. She hung on until the horse’s strength started to fade, then pulled on the reins, trying to draw it to a halt.
She managed to slow it to a walk, at least, trying to orient herself. She didn’t know exactly where she was in the city, but she had a sense of where the river was, because she’d pulled herself from it not that long ago. If she kept heading in the opposite direction, eventually, she would be out of the city.
Kate pointed the horse in what she hoped was the right direction and kept riding. She might not have ridden before, but she quickly found herself getting the rhythm of it, gripping with her legs and keeping going as her new mount took her past shops and inns, brothels and gambling parlors.
She passed one of the gaps in the old walls there. There had been a time when she would have had to ride through a closed off gate, getting past guards who would have wanted to know where she’d gotten the horse. Those days were long gone, though, the gates destroyed by cannon in one of the civil wars. Now, Kate was able to ride through with ease, traveling through into the greater quiet of the outer city.
There were still shouts somewhere behind her, but Kate doubted that anyone would be able to catch up now. Just to be sure, she kept off the main roads, so that anyone chasing would have to search for her. Out here, that meant going past rows of wooden buildings, most with their own small gardens to try to grow some extra food.
For the first time in her life, Kate felt truly free. She could just keep going, out into the Ridings with their open fields and their small villages, and no one would stop her. She would be able to find what she needed out there, whether it was food, or weapons, or just the freedom to live off the land.
She took a deep breath, resisting the urge to kick the horse into a gallop again. It had run hard enough for one night. For now, she wanted to keep going at a pace the chestnut could maintain until morning, so she let it continue its brisk walk through the outer reaches of the sprawling city.
It wasn’t until she saw a blacksmith’s shop that Kate drew her mount to a halt again. It was the one cluster of stone-built buildings in a sea of wood and clay brick construction, so solid looking that it seemed as though it had been there forever. There were examples of the owner’s work out in the space around it, from wrought iron gates to scythes awaiting sharpening, to barrels of arrow shafts, just waiting for arrowheads to fit them.
Those caught Kate’s attention. If there were arrowheads, there might be other things to go with them inside. There might be short hunting bows, just waiting for the kind of elaborate metal fittings some people loved. There might be knives. There might even be swords.
Kate knew that she ought to keep going. It would be safest not to risk any more thefts until she was clear of the city. Even the horse had been a massive risk. Yet it had been a risk that had left her far better off, hadn’t it?
And maybe it was better to do this now, all in one go. People were already hunting for her, so maybe it was better to take all her risks tonight, rather than risking spoiling things once she was out in the open country. Somehow, Kate had the feeling that it was better to leave all her small crimes behind in the city once she left Ashton. This was still part of the life she was trying to leave behind; she didn’t want to spoil her new life by making enemies in the villages out in the Ridings or the Shires beyond them.
Her mind made up, Kate hitched her horse to the fence around the side of the blacksmith’s shop. She hopped over that fence, and the moment she had, it felt as though she’d done something irrevocable. She crept toward the blacksmith’s shop, keeping low.
There were three buildings. One was clearly the main shop, another looked as though it might be the blacksmith’s home, while the third was probably some kind of storage area and workshop. That was the one Kate slipped toward through the darkness, on the basis that it was the least likely to be tightly locked, and the most likely to contain completed weapons.
Sure enough, when Kate looked in through one of the tiny windows, she could see barrels with sword hilts and bows sticking from them, mixed in with ornamental ironwork and long nails designed for boat building.
Now, she just needed to find a way in. Kate made her way around to the door, but there was a large, wrought iron lock on that and the handle wouldn’t move when she tried it. She moved back around to the window, eyeing the leaded glass there. Would she fit through? It would be a tight fit, but Kate thought that she might make it.
She would have to break the window to do it, but with so many objects scattered around the yard, that proved to be easy. She just picked up a twisted iron railing spike and swung.
The glass breaking sounded far too loud against the silence, and Kate held still, listening for activity. When there was none, she knocked out the rest of the glass and pulled herself through the window.
Kate searched through the barrels. She didn’t know as much about weapons as she wanted to, but Kate could see that some of the creations here were better than others. There were some swords that seemed light and springy, while others seemed like cheap copies of them. Even some of the blades with more elaborate-looking hilts had blades without any flex, and with just a dull shine to them rather than the wave patterned metal of the better ones.
The same went for the bows. Some were just straight yew and ash, while others seemed to be composites of many layers of wood and horn, bound with metal. Kate took the best she could find. If she was going to do this, she was going to do it right. There was no way that she could climb out of the window again with them strapped to her, so she tossed them out ahead of her, then climbed back through, tumbling to the ground in the darkness and coming up to a crouch.
A hand closed over her shoulder, large enough and strong enough that Kate had no chance of escape. She spun, trying to pull away, and strong arms wrapped around her.
Kate swallowed, knowing she was finished.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sophia forced herself to stand a
nd watch the ball as the dancing started, groups of people moving through formal court dances that she simply didn’t know the steps to. She wanted to rush forward in the direction of Prince Sebastian, but right then, it was hard to get her feet moving in the right direction.
What did you come here for, then? Sophia asked herself.
That was the question. She couldn’t be timid about this. If she couldn’t bring herself to even talk to the prince, then she had to make her way over to one of the other men in the room. If she couldn’t do that, then she needed to leave, sell what she had, and hope that it would be enough to keep her off the streets for a night or two.
Wasn’t it better to go over to the prince than to do either of those things? Wasn’t it better to just talk to a young man she liked? Sophia found herself able to move again with that thought, and she started to pick her way through the crowd.
Not everyone was dancing, even now. The older nobles there mostly watched from the sidelines, talking to one another about whose son or daughter or niece was dancing the most elegantly, about the wars across the Knife-Water, about the latest artists patronized by the dowager or the fact that Lord Horrige’s daughter had elected to become a nun of the Masked Goddess. Just the mention of it was enough to steer Sophia away from the conversation.
She kept drifting toward the prince. He wasn’t dancing yet, although his brother was, swapping from partner to partner with the laughing ebullience of a man who knew he could have his pick of the women. Sophia made sure that she avoided him. She had no interest in being swept up in the whirl of his amusement.
As she stepped out toward Prince Sebastian, she was sure she caught him looking her way. It was hard to tell for sure with the mask obscuring his expression, but her talent seemed to catch his surprise.
