“What have you done, Bashi?”
“That’s Prince Bashanorandi to you!” Bashi nearly screamed his rebuff, pulling hard on Mair’s arm. The Touched girl tried to bite back her cry of pain, but a little of the sound leaked into the clearing.
“My lord Bashanorandi,” Rani forced herself to say.
Bashi nodded, apparently placated. With a curt gesture, he passed Mair to one of his soldiers. “Kill her, if that one takes a single step amiss.”
“Yes, my prince.” The soldier locked his arm across Mair’s windpipe, settling a long, curved dagger against her side. A curved dagger, Rani finally registered. Curved like the knives of the northern troops.
“What are you doing, Bash –, Prince Bashanorandi?”
“Once, I thought I’d wait to show my strength, but you’ve made that impossible. Get on your horse.”
“What?”
“I know you’re not stupid, Ranita. Get on your horse.”
“I’m not riding anywhere with you.”
“I’ll kill you here and now, if I have to.” Watching the pulse beat fast in his throat, Rani understood that Bashi was not making an idle threat. “I’m not going back to Moren, back to Hal. But if I sent you back to Moren directly, I’d never have time to get to Amanthia, before you’d have Hal’s soldiers after us. I just might convince my brother to ransom you two sorry excuses for courtiers, though. Parkman, get the creances.”
The lion-tattooed soldier strode over to the toppled cadge, swearing as the frantic Maradalian flapped her grey and white wings. The man extracted two long leather leashes from the collapsed structure. He snapped the creances between his fists, testing their strength as he turned back to his liege.
Bashi’s eyes glinted in the last of the sunlight. “I don’t want to do it, Ranita. I don’t want to order you killed, but I will if I have to.” The girl had no doubt that he would follow through on his threat. “Mount up now. We have a long ride ahead of us.”
With a warning glance toward Mair, Rani turned back to her stallion. She grunted as she pulled herself onto her high saddle, trying to ignore the slash of crimson that painted the leather as her wounded hand opened again. Somewhere in the struggle of the last few minutes, she had lost her rough bandage.
Bashi jutted his chin toward Rani, and the soldier snapped the creances once again. “Lash her to the stirrups.”
Rani immediately set her heels, ready to kick the horse and flee back to Moren. Before she could act, though, Bashi barked a command to the soldier who held Mair. The man tightened his grip on Mair’s arm, twisting hard and pulling the limb high behind the Touched girl’s back. The crack of splintering bone was audible above the rustle of the high grass, and Mair cried out through her clenched teeth. “Don’t even think about riding off, Ranita. I’ll kill her before you’re out of earshot.”
Certainly Bashi would use more violence to gain his way. The prince’s face was coated with a sheen of sweat, and his hands clenched and unclenched repeatedly in the twilight. Mair began to moan softly, although she tried to swallow her pain. Rani sat still as Parkman tightened the falcon’s leash about her, lashing first one foot to her stirrup then passing the leather beneath her stallion’s belly and binding the other. “Get her hands, too,” Bashi barked, and the soldier complied, using another length of leather.
Staring at Bashi with bitterness, Rani only just remembered to hold her tongue as the prince nodded and ordered Mair released. It was a simple matter for Bashi to have the Touched girl bound, to have her tied to her own mount. Then Bashi’s soldiers seated themselves on their own horses. The prince glanced around the plain nervously, his eyes lingering on the dead falcon-master, the murdered soldier, the maimed one. The falcons’ cadge was crumpled on the ground like a skeleton. Maradalian stood amid the ruins, blinded by her hood, uncertain of the disaster around her.
Bashi nodded to Parkman and pointed his chin toward the hamstrung soldier. “Get rid of that one, and let’s get out of here. We can get to the coast by sunset tomorrow and find a ship to sail north, to Amanthia. With any luck Hal won’t find this till then. We can demand ransom for the girls when we arrive in my mother’s homeland.”
Before Rani could protest, the soldier dispatched his one-time brother, slashing the man’s throat with one even motion. Then the guards fell into formation, one riding at Rani’s left side, one riding at Mair’s right. Two of the armed men followed behind, flanking their prince. When Rani hesitated to spur her stallion, the soldier beside her drew his sword. Before she could decide whether she would take a stand, Mair swayed in her own saddle, moaning as the movement jarred her injured arm.
“You’ve got to help her!” Rani cried to Bashi. “At least let me put her arm in a sling.”
“After we’ve ridden. You can help her after we cross the Yman.”
“The river is two hours from here!”
“Then it will be two hours before her arm is set.”
Rani heard the determination in his voice. In a flash, she remembered the Bashi she had first met when she arrived in the palace. That prince had been a spoiled boy, a noble who accepted his royalty with an unseemly arrogance. He had manipulated nurses and guards, played upon his supposed father’s heartstrings. Now, he had these four soldiers bound to him, and nothing would convince him to take pity on two low-caste girls.
Sighing, Rani touched her spurs to her stallion’s flanks. Mair moaned through lips that were grey in the twilight, but she jigged her own horse forward. As the riders moved east into the unfolding night, a breeze picked up, blowing from the distant city walls. Rani could just make out the rhythmic clang of the Pilgrims’ Bell, summoning the faithful to Moren’s safety, to the haven of King Halaravilli, to the lost comfort of home and hearth.
About the Author
Mindy L. Klasky learned to read when her parents shoved a book in her hands and told her that she could travel anywhere in the world through stories. She never forgot that advice.
Mindy’s “travels” took her through multiple careers. After graduating from Princeton University, Mindy considered becoming a professional stage manager or a rabbi. Ultimately, though, she settled on being a lawyer, working as a litigator at a large Washington firm. When she realized that lawyering kept her from writing (and dating and sleeping and otherwise living a normal life), Mindy became a librarian, managing large law firm libraries. Mindy now writes full time.
In her spare time, Mindy quilts, cooks, and tries to tame the endless to-be-read shelf in her home library. Her husband and cats do their best to fill the left-over minutes. Connect with Mindy online: http://www.mindyklasky.com
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2000, 2010 by Mindy L. Klasky
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-2061-2
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Glasswrights' Apprentice Page 34
