Ally of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  She gaped again, closed her mouth, then blurted out, “But I hardly know you! And—you’re wealthy, and I’m practically homeless!” A woman wearing a heavy rain cape over a gaudy multicolored robe gave her a startled look as she passed. In a lower voice, Fiona added, “You can’t possibly not care about that.”

  “You’ve got four thousand guilders coming to you,” Sebastian said with a grin, and tugged on her hand to make her cross the street with him. “And whatever you might be now, you won’t let that stop you becoming whoever it is you’re meant to be.”

  “But—”

  He brought her to a stop again, this time to avoid a passing caravan whose brightly painted wagons proclaimed that it was one of Veribold’s most famous circuses. “Fiona, I’m not proposing marriage. I just want to get to know you better. To kiss you again, if you’re willing. And I think it might be what you want, too.”

  “What makes you think I’m at all interested in you?” She’d wanted to sound defiant, but it came out sounding more like a plea.

  “Maybe you’re not. But I’m willing to take the chance that you are.” He raised her hand and kissed the back of it, his lips lingering on her knuckles, and Fiona shivered at the depth of emotion in his eyes. “Come on, I think we’re close,” he said, and pulled Fiona along without giving her a chance to respond.

  She wasn’t sure what she’d say if she had the chance. You know you find him attractive, her inner voice told her, and that was some kiss, even if you were too startled to appreciate it fully. He’s interesting, and funny, and he knows your secret and isn’t repulsed by it. His hand was warm and firm in hers, and she found herself acutely aware of the way his fingers curled around hers, how he gripped her hand securely without squeezing too tightly. She wished she dared pull away from him, but the press of the crowd was great enough she’d likely never find him again if she did. But the truth was she liked having his hand in hers, liked the thought of him touching her cheek, her neck…

  She blew out a long breath. She was being ridiculous. Yes, he knew her secret, but she’d been a fool already, ten years ago, and she wasn’t going to be a fool twice. Her judgment when it came to men was clearly suspect—she’d chosen Roderick, after all—and Sebastian was still keeping secrets from her. And what would happen when their quest was over? She didn’t need a romantic entanglement in her life, no matter what her foolish heart was telling her.

  Rain began falling, a patient drizzle that seeped into the heavy linen and dampened Fiona’s hair. The crowd thinned as men and women found shelter in doorways or inside houses. Fiona limped along, wishing she dared remove the thief’s scarf from her foot, but that would only start the wound bleeding again. She wiped rain from her eyes. Was that the Jaixante, up ahead? The white walls and fairy spires looked dull in the rainy overcast, but it was definitely growing nearer.

  Sebastian made another turn, and she recognized the street just moments before he led them into the stable yard. In a stall across the yard, Mittens raised her head and whickered a greeting at her. It was so unexpected Fiona dropped Sebastian’s hand and crossed the yard to say hello to the horse while he went into the inn. She hadn’t realized she could be so sentimental. Mittens slobbered on her hand, and Fiona patted her nose and thought about joining her in the stall, which at least had a roof.

  “Bad news,” Sebastian said, appearing beside her. “Holt hasn’t been here.”

  That killed Fiona’s good mood dead. “You don’t suppose he was caught?”

  “I don’t know what to suppose. It’s certainly possible.” Sebastian petted Mittens absently. “More to the point, we’re both hungry and filthy and we have no money.”

  “We could try the tokens again.”

  “I’m afraid that might be like trying to swat a fly with a burning brand. I was thinking we could offer to work for room and board. If Holt…” He shook his head. “At worst, we sell Holt’s horse and make our way back to Tremontane.”

  “He’s probably just hiding somewhere. He had a longer way to go than we did, and he was hauling three people’s bags.” She didn’t think she sounded as confident as her words proclaimed.

  “I’m grateful the inn’s owner remembered me. I was afraid she’d kick us out as vagrants. Let’s see if she’ll let us wash her dishes.”

  It didn’t look as if the inn’s kitchen had been cleaned in a year. Fiona almost refused to eat anything that had been cooked in it, but when the cook brought out bowls of thin soup and hunks of black bread, her stomach growled so loudly even Sebastian heard it. They ate sitting in one corner on the filthy floor, Fiona reasoning that they could hardly get dirtier. The soup tasted faintly of chicken and more strongly of soap, but the bread was rich and the cook let them have second helpings of it.

  Full, Fiona took a turn at the mountain of dishes in the porcelain double sink, while Sebastian began mopping. Water sloshed around her bare feet, cool and soothing despite how filthy it was. She hoped the cut wouldn’t become infected. There was a little mop on a stick for scrubbing the dishes, and the tap ran with both hot and cold water, so aside from how tedious it was, it wasn’t such an awful chore.

  Fiona fell into a reverie, soothed by the sound of the rain falling more heavily on the tiled roof and pattering on the window panes. They needed to get out of Haizea, but that didn’t mean she had to return to Tremontane; she could go directly to Umberan from here. Or you could stay with Sebastian, her inner voice said gleefully. She remembered his kiss and flushed. It had been awkward, she hadn’t been expecting it, and yet the memory made her tingle all over. She hadn’t been kissed like that in a long time. Roderick’s embrace had failed to excite her for several years before the marriage was over.

  The back door opened, startling her out of her fugue and making her fumble the dish mop. “Thank heaven,” Holt said. He looked worse than they did, bent under the weight of their bags, his dark face ashy with exhaustion. “We have to leave immediately. The guards will be here in minutes.”

  18

  Fiona flung the little mop into the sink, where it sank with a splash. “How close?”

  “Very,” Holt said. “We have no time to talk.”

  Sebastian took his bag from Holt. “No time to change?”

  Holt was already through the door. “Time enough to saddle the horses and ride,” he said over his shoulder.

  Fiona wiped her pruny hands on her wrecked trousers and followed him. “How do they know who we are?”

  Holt dumped his bag and hers on the wet ground outside the stable and began saddling Mittens. “The whole story will have to wait,” he said. “I know only that they are inquiring after Fiona Cooper by name, and they have your description. They have spread out through the city and are being extremely thorough in their examination of every foreign woman in Haizea. It seems disruption of the Jaixante is taken quite seriously.”

  “Let me do that,” Fiona said, fumbling with the horse’s tack, but Holt took the leather straps from her firmly and gave her a little push out of his way.

  “You still don’t know what you’re doing,” Sebastian said to her, saddling his own horse. “This is faster. Put your boots on. Holt, are you sure we can’t just hide?”

  “They have already arrested two women with Miss Cooper’s coloring, one far too young to be their quarry. My impression is that her capture is of such great importance that they are unwilling to take chances on letting her slip away. We need to put Haizea behind us, as quickly as possible.” Holt handed Mittens’ reins to Fiona and turned his attention to his own horse.

  Fiona secured her bag and mounted, then had to turn awkwardly and dig for her rain cape. Riding had started to come more easily to her, but Sebastian was right, she couldn’t do this on her own.

  She turned Mittens in a circle, fidgeting. Sebastian and Holt worked in grim silence, and Fiona waited, one eye on the street, watching for those fluttering robes. Finally, the men mounted, and without a word the three rode out of the stable yard and down the street at a fa
st trot.

  The sun was setting, somewhere past the lowering black clouds, and street lights were flickering into life all along the street. Their orange-tinged light turned the raindrops gold as they hissed past the lamp glass and made white-and-black Mittens look a ghastly yellow. Fiona hunched into her rain cape and tried not to imagine Jaixante guards coming up behind them. The ones she’d scared off with the mysterious tokens hadn’t known her name, so there had been two groups, one sent off down the banks of the river on a fool’s quest that had turned out not to be so foolish, at least in terms of finding them. But the other group…the only way they could have known her name was if someone had put Fiona Cooper’s absence from the Irantzen Temple that morning with the mysterious intruders of the previous night.

  She hunched further, this time trying to avoid her feelings of guilt. What must Hien have thought when she turned up missing? Had she been the one to conclude that Fiona Cooper was involved in the break-in? Fiona had become an excellent liar over the years, concealing her secret, but she’d never felt this guilty about any of her lies. And there was no way to make amends or explain.

  “We can’t travel through the night,” she said to Holt, who rode just behind her.

  “No, but we cannot risk finding a place to stay within the city,” Holt said. “Our only hope is that we outpace our pursuers. A farm, with outbuildings, is what we need.”

  A man holding his coat over his head rushed past Fiona going the other direction. She glanced back after him, but the street was still; no sign of pursuit. The inn was already out of sight. “I think the rain is helping.”

  “It had better be, because I won’t risk going faster on these slick stones,” Sebastian said.

  It felt like they were crawling at that pace, creeping along an inch at a time. The darkness was complete. The sun had set, the storm clouds filled the sky, and the orange lamps made puddles of light on the cobbled streets that shone wetly below the horses’ feet. Soon they had the street to themselves. The darkened storefronts were hollow, gaping eyes and mouths, not the brightly lit plate glass windows of a Tremontanan city, but smaller spaces, some of them shuttered against the night, none of them revealing what could be bought inside. Fiona remembered the lively activity they’d seen when entering Haizea and was struck by the stark difference. The rain was letting up, but she couldn’t hear anything beyond the sound of raindrops hitting the ground. Like the Jaixante, it reminded her of a city of the dead.

  Ahead, dark shapes emerged from a side street and ran toward them, shouting commands in Veriboldan. “What—” Sebastian said, but Fiona didn’t need to understand to know what they wanted.

  “We have to run,” she said.

  Holt turned his horse and kicked it into a faster gait. “This way.”

  They bolted down a side street, skidding on the paving stones, Holt now leading the way. Fiona clung to Mittens’ reins and prayed she wouldn’t fall off, that Mittens wouldn’t trip and break a leg, that they would lose their pursuit in the winding, narrow streets. They crossed another wide thoroughfare, this one crowded with people despite the weather, and Holt turned to parallel it, but was forced to turn again, and again. Fiona was utterly lost. All she knew was that they were gradually moving east, away from the Kepa River and the city center. Did Holt know where they were going? He couldn’t possibly.

  She wiped rainwater out of her face and followed Holt around another turn, then gasped as a dark-clothed Jaixante guard stepped out practically under Holt’s hooves. The horse reared up, startled, and Holt flung himself forward to keep his seat. The guard held a pistol on Holt. “Down,” he said.

  Holt’s horse jigged nervously. “Down,” the guard repeated. “All down.”

  Fiona looked at Sebastian, whose face was set and tense in the orange light. “Do as he says, Fiona.”

  The guard’s attention flicked to her as she dismounted, then to the street behind him as he realized his partner hadn’t followed him. In that moment, Sebastian lunged forward, the pistol came around to point at him, and Holt leaped from his horse to bear the man to the ground.

  The pistol went off with a loud bang, and then Sebastian had joined Holt in the scuffle. Someone kicked the pistol away; it skittered across the paving stones toward Fiona, and she picked it up carefully. She knew nothing of gun Devices and even less of their Veriboldan counterparts, which was what the weapon was, but she held it with her finger carefully away from the trigger and said, “Let him up.”

  Holt had the man pinioned, and he looked up in surprise at Fiona. More movement in the darkness turned into another guard running into the street, pistol at the ready. Quickly Fiona brought her pistol to bear on the man and rested her finger lightly on the trigger. “Drop it,” she said in Veriboldan. The man, his pistol swinging wildly from target to target, finally dropped his weapon. “Kick it to me.” He kicked it so it rattled across the stones toward her.

  Sebastian came to her side and picked it up. “What now?” she murmured to Sebastian. “We don’t have any way to tie them.”

  Someone screamed behind them. Fiona jerked in surprise, but kept her attention on the guard. “Someone’s noticed us,” Sebastian said. “We have to move.”

  “Lie down on the street with your hands where I can see them,” Fiona said. “Holt, let that one go.” She kept the pistol pointed at the prone guard while Holt released his captive and kicked his knee so he fell heavily to the ground. The screaming continued, joined by several voices shouting. Fiona cursed and mounted her horse, thrusting the pistol into her waistband. Holt kicked his horse again, and the three of them took off down the street. Behind them, the guards’ whistles joined the din.

  They rode far too fast down the narrow street. The street lamps were further apart now, and some of their lights were broken. The street narrowed again. The ceramic-tiled houses were gone, replaced by haphazardly constructed shanties of wood and concrete blocks. Light leaked from behind doors that didn’t fit properly, falling on heaps of refuse, some of which moved. The air felt oppressively heavy, like a wet woolen blanket weighing Fiona down. Dusktown. The guards might not be their biggest problem anymore.

  Silent figures watched them from every corner, but made no move to approach them. Fiona carefully didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. She hoped they didn’t look like targets. Holt was a big, sinister figure, and Sebastian wasn’t small, and she…well, Holt and Sebastian didn’t look like targets, and she was armed, if it came to a fight.

  Ahead, someone moved into the street and stopped, facing them. Holt drew his horse up. “Stand aside,” Fiona said.

  “Just want a coin or two for a hungry man and his family.” The man didn’t have his hand out.

  Fiona sensed other figures moving in on both sides. She drew the pistol and pointed it at him, startling him into taking a few steps backward. “Back away,” she said.

  The man glanced to his right, then put two fingers to his lips and whistled. The other figures melted away into the shadows. Fiona realized her hand was shaking and stilled it. The man nodded at her as if they’d just been having a polite conversation and stepped back to one side.

  “The pistols are only going to take us so far.” Sebastian’s low voice carried clearly through the rain.

  “We should move faster,” Fiona said, and Holt picked up the pace.

  She rode with one hand on the reins and the other holding the pistol, her shoulders stiff with tension every time something moved in the shadows. Distantly, she heard the guards’ whistles, calling to their friends, probably capturing some poor Tremontanan woman with red hair who’d spend an uncomfortable night in a cell, not the kind the Irantzen Temple offered.

  Something scuttled across the street in front of them, and she jerked the pistol around to point at Holt’s back, then swiftly brought it away, cursing silently. This was no worse than the slums of a Tremontanan city, but the strange buildings, and the smells, and the dim lighting, made it feel alien, worse than the Jaixante and its windowless fairy spires.<
br />
  Then there were fewer buildings, and no lamp posts, and they’d left the city behind them. The cobbled streets had turned into a dirt road that was almost indistinguishable from the long grass that grew on either side of it. Sebastian and Holt were barely visible in the gloom, and even Mittens looked pale, a patchy ghost. “We have to keep moving,” Fiona said.

  “Carefully,” Sebastian said, and headed off along the road, this time at a walk.

  After a few minutes, the rain stopped, but dark clouds still covered the sky, blocking out the moon and stars. Fiona pushed back the hood of her rain cape to breathe in the wet, chilly air. Her foot no longer hurt as badly, her various aches from running were subsiding, but she was wet despite the cape and her filthy clothes chafed her. She held her tongue. Complaining about minor inconveniences seemed stupid, given that they were still running for their lives. If you could call it running when they were groping along the road, trying not to stumble.

  They rode for what felt like hours, Fiona all the time straining to hear the sounds of pursuit. But it really did seem they’d left the guards behind. She refused to feel relief. Time enough for that when they were safely back in Tremontane. Her head jerked, and she realized she’d nearly fallen asleep on Mittens’ back. “Should we look for shelter?” she said.

  “I think I’ve found something,” Sebastian said. She saw a dark shape that might be his arm pointing off to the right. In that direction, a handful of hunched buildings huddled for mutual protection, and a few lanterns gleamed like earthbound stars. “That’s a farm.”

  “We cannot ask them for shelter,” said Holt, “without risking exposure later. We should not assume those guards will give up their pursuit entirely.”

  “I was thinking we’d just borrow one of their storage buildings.” Sebastian turned his horse in the direction of the farm. “Change clothes, sleep a few hours, and move on.”