by Katy Haye
“Is that where he’s being kept?”
I nodded, swallowing down another mouthful of bread. “He’s locked up and guarded. I’d have got him out myself if I could. I need help. I hoped his sister would help him.”
He watched me calmly. “I thought it must have been something remarkable to send the princess of Muirland to our door disguised as a cat.”
“I was trying to take my father’s face.” I wasn’t sure why I was telling him all this, but since I was effectively a naked prisoner in his rooms, it didn’t seem like I had much that needed hiding.
He frowned. “You were trying to take your father’s face where?”
I blurted a laugh at his confusion. “No. I can change my face. I’ve been able to do that since I was a child. So I don’t look like the princess. I make myself look like someone ordinary – a servant.”
“Right.” He clearly still didn’t understand.
“I thought I might be able to make my face look like my father’s, then I could order Lyo to be freed and the guards would obey because they would think I was him.” I lifted a shoulder, then froze, grabbing the blanket back before it could slip off me. “It didn’t work how I expected.”
“That was your first time shifting to another form?”
I heard the intensity in his tone and turned to look at him. “Yes. Is – what’s the matter with that?”
“Nothing, I just… Forgive me, I may have understood Muirland traditions wrongly. I thought women weren’t allowed to use magic.” He got up and walked to the table, reaching for a tin on the top.
“They aren’t.”
He turned back to me, handing me a strip of dried something before retaking his seat. “Eat up,” he told me. “If that was your first time, then you’re likely to be especially ravenous. So, was an exception made because you’re the princess?”
I frowned, not understanding. Then I groaned as I chewed on the dried meat and the taste of beef prompted a burst of saliva in my mouth. “An exception to what?”
“To the rule that women can’t do magic.”
“No.” Fear gripped the small part of me that wasn’t already consumed by hunger. My voice grew faint. “There would be no exceptions for me.”
“Then I really don’t understand – who taught you?”
“Taught me? No one.” I glanced down. “That’s probably why it went so wrong.”
“You transformed to a cat.” His tone was awed. “And you did it on your own.”
“Well, yes, but—”
“The fae coach their children for months before they attempt a transformation.”
“Do they?” I wriggled beneath his hard gaze. Being looked at as though I were something remarkable turned out to be even more disconcerting than being looked through as though I were nothing. The hollow in my stomach was growing more bearable as I finished the dried meat. But a new ache was growing in me. If I was one of the fae, if I lived in the Firethorn Mountains, they’d be pleased with what I’d done. I’d have help. I wouldn’t now be in fear of my life.
I wasn’t in the Firethorn Mountains; I was in Muirland City and I was very much in danger. I turned back to Beardy. “Have you—” I swallowed and started again. “Have you told the palace that I’m here?”
He snorted. “You must be joking. We want no guards here.” I glanced aside, to where a low crooning noise indicated the whereabouts of the dragonette.
Then my attention was caught by the window. Bright daylight flooded inside.
“It’s day! How long did I sleep?”
“All night. You needed it.”
“No!” I pushed to my feet, grabbing for the hand Beardy offered when I wobbled and nearly fell. “Lyo will be executed at midday!”
“We know that.” Beardy spun me around and I dropped down to sit in the seat he’d just vacated.
“We have to stop it happening.”
His gaze darted to something in the opposite corner. The light didn’t reach that far. I couldn’t see what it was. “We’ll deal with Lyo.”
I looked up at him, feeling hope for the first time since the dragonette had grabbed me. “You have a plan?”
The skin around his eyes crinkled. “Yes, we have a plan. We weren’t going to just turn our backs on him, were we?”
Relief made me sag. “He’s lucky to have a brother like you.”
“Brother?” He laughed. “I’m not Lyo’s brother, I’m—” He fell silent, as though he didn’t want to admit to the relationship they shared. “I’m just a friend. More a friend of Kiri’s if truth be told.”
There was something strange in his tone that made me think his words didn’t fully explain matters. A clandestine relationship? That hardly mattered now they were in Muirland. And I didn’t care about their relationship, only that they could save Lyo. A clatter sounded on the other side of the door. “Kiri is Lyo’s sister?” I clarified, making sure I hadn’t misunderstood matters.
The door slammed open. “Yes, I am,” Kiri announced. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
I wrapped my blanket closer around me, as though it might provide a barrier to whatever violence Kiri was planning. I was immeasurably glad she’d gone to the market and left Beardy to watch over me. I didn’t suppose she’d have greeted me with soup and explanations. She looked like she wanted to throw me out of the window and she’d only just set eyes on me.
“I came to help you save him,” I pointed out.
Her lip curled. “You want thanks for that? You’ve just landed another problem in our laps. A problem you’re going to help us solve.” She looked past me to Beardy. “Have you told her?”
I could see from a glance at his face that he hadn’t. I suspected he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to. “Told me what?” I asked, my voice hollow.
She swung to me, glaring. “You’re going to help us get Lyo back, all right. I’m sure the king will be happy to hand his prisoner over in exchange for the safe return of his beloved daughter.”
My brain was overloaded by everything that had happened in the last day or so. I should have been alarmed by her pronouncement. But it seemed I’d finally had enough of fear. I looked into her fierce, earnest face. And I started to laugh.
22 – A Pretty New Wife
Kiri dropped her packages onto the table. She glared past me at Beardy. “What did you say to her? You’ve made her hysterical.”
“She needs food,” he replied calmly. He unwrapped one of the packages and pushed it towards me.
“That’s ours,” Kiri snapped.
“She needs it,” Beardy replied steadily.
The smell of food sobered me up. I took a deep breath. “Trying to exchange me for Lyo…” I shook my head. I tried to catch Beardy’s eye. Surely he could see the problem? But he was regarding me like I’d gone mad.
“Eat,” he prompted.
Kiri folded her arms, but she didn’t try to snatch the food back.
I grabbed the pasty Kiri had brought. It smelled extraordinarily delicious, even with just my human senses. I devoured it in four bites and looked around. Beardy handed me a flagon of water, and I drained that and began to lick my fingers, disconsolate that the food had gone so quickly. “You can’t exchange me for Lyo,” I summed up.
“Why not?” Kiri glowered at me. Beardy simply pushed another package towards me. I opened the greased paper to find an apple roll, still warm from the oven. My eyelids fluttered shut in delight when I bit into it.
“The king will take me back, and then he’ll execute you for kidnapping me. Whether that’ll be before or after he executes Lyo, I couldn’t rightly say. And then he’ll pack me off to Surran before any other dangers can afflict me, so we all lose.”
“Then I can’t see there’s any use to you,” Kiri snapped.
“Jurelle could have stayed at the palace,” Beardy chided her gently. “She came to help us get Lyo free. She didn’t have to do that.”
If he’d hoped to set her suspicions to rest, he was wrong. Her eyes glinted fire while
her tone indicated her disbelief. “Why would you do that for a Surrana you don’t even know?”
“Because he took the dragonette. He helped me, so it’s only reasonable that I help him in return.” I took a breath and admitted, “Because it’s my fault he’s in trouble in the first place. I showed him how to get into the palace when I should have warned him to stay far away.” Heat flooded my face. I picked up the empty flagon and tried to coax another drop from it, mostly to hide my burning cheeks.
“And what else?” Beardy asked. I hadn’t fooled him. He took the flagon from me and refilled it at their water barrel in the far corner of the room.
I waited for him to return before I spoke. It was possible he was simply better at hiding his contempt, but I was pretty sure he was more my ally than Kiri was. “I hoped you’d take me with you.”
“Take you where?”
“Away from here. I’m sworn to marry the Surran king.” It was Kiri’s turn to laugh when I said that, although the sound she made was cold rather than hysterical. “I’ll do anything to avoid that.”
“Anything?” Kiri didn’t miss a chance.
“Pretty much.”
She wagged a finger in my face. “Then walk back into that palace and ask your father to release Lyo.” She leaned closer. “No, tell him to release him. Demand it, as price for the marriage.”
I looked coldly at her. “Do you think I didn’t try that? Do you think I’ve spent the past day wringing my hands and hoping a miracle might happen? He won’t give me a reward for doing something he’s already told me to do. He half-choked me just for asking.”
“Then you’re pointless,” she declared.
I glowered at her. “Lyo told me you’d help me, but I can see he was wrong to make that promise on your behalf.”
“Yes, he was.” She turned away, her jaw working as she stared out of the window.
I jumped when Beardy placed his hand over mine. “We will help you. Kiri is distracted, but she’ll do the right thing.”
“Will I?” she demanded sourly, without moving.
“Yes, you will. We don’t want the king to get a pretty new wife and an alliance with Muirland, do we?” he pointed out. Surran politics. I didn’t much care, so long as they’d help me escape the agreement my father had trapped me into.
Kiri swung back to face us. “So what do we do, then? If she’s no help—” she jerked her chin towards me, “—how do we get Lyo?”
“We stick with plan A,” Beardy said.
“What’s plan A?” I asked. I didn’t expect him to answer. It wasn’t my business, and Kiri certainly didn’t trust me. But Beardy maybe thought I was owed some honesty for everything I’d confided to him before Kiri returned.
“I’ve made an explosive device.” He nodded towards the corner he’d looked at earlier. “We set that off in the marketplace just before the execution happens. In the chaos that follows, we’ll be able to get Lyo away. Then, we just run.”
My mouth dried as the scene unfolded in my mind: a flash of light and heat, people screaming and scattering, fighting with each other as they tried to get away from the danger. A circle around the explosion where people lay still, dead in the blast with no chance to escape a danger they hadn’t even known was there.
“You can’t do that.” I swallowed. “The market will be full.”
“Yes, full of people watching my brother die.”
I scowled at Kiri. “No, full of ordinary people going about their business.” I shook my head, trying to shake away the pictures. “Yes, they’ll be watching the execution, because the king demands everyone witness his justice.” She made a scoffing noise, but I didn’t have time to argue with her; and I shared her opinion of my father’s justice. “You’ll kill and maim dozens of people just to rescue one. I won’t let you do it.”
Kiri’s jaw sagged. Then she snapped back to life. “You won’t be able to stop us. We’ll tie you up and leave you behind here.”
Beardy held up a hand, calling for peace. He faced me. “You came here because you want us to rescue Lyo. If we can’t follow the plan we made, what do you suggest in its place?”
I bit my lip. I’d come to get their help because I’d run out of options. But he was right. If I wanted to help, then I needed to find something useful I could offer.
“You need a distraction?”
“That was the idea,” Beardy confirmed. “I can snatch Lyo from the executioner if we can get everyone to look in the other direction for a minute or two.”
I chewed at my lip as I thought. “The way I look at it, you’ve got a ready-made distraction,” I said at last.
“How’s that, then?”
“Well, the princess vanished from her room in the palace overnight.” A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. “To make things more mysterious, she disappeared from a room that she’d barricaded herself into.” I looked at Kiri. “Was there any mention of my disappearance at the market?”
She shook her head. “I never heard anything of that.”
“So, either no one knows, or my father is keeping it quiet while he looks for me.” But he would be looking. The Surran king needed his new queen. I pulled the blanket close around my face, thinking I might hear pounding on the door downstairs at any moment. I returned to the plan that was coming to life as I spoke. “Either way, it’ll cause quite a stir if the princess suddenly appears in the middle of the marketplace. The rest of the royal family will be watching from the balcony.”
“You think that’ll be enough to get Lyo free?”
“If I stride onto the execution platform, they won’t dare to complete the execution until they get me out of the way. There will be a couple of guards to keep order. So long as you can get past them, yes, you can get him away.”
“That might work,” Kiri said. It was the first time I’d heard anything apart from anger and discontent in her tone.
“How do we get you away?” Beardy watched me calmly while Kiri scoffed. A rush of relief flooded through me. He was my ally. He wouldn’t leave me behind, whatever Kiri wanted.
“I’ll transform back to a cat.”
“Will you be able to do that? You aren’t practised at using your magic,” he pointed out.
“I have used magic before. The second time should be easier.” I thought about trying to change now, just to be sure that I could, but I didn’t feel fully recovered. If I changed now I might not have enough energy to do so later.
“Right, so we’ll get Lyo away in the crowd. You follow as a cat.”
“What time is it?”
Kiri craned out of the window. “Nearly ten.”
My heart jolted. Less than two hours before Lyo was scheduled to die. “We should get to the marketplace now, see how everything’s been set up.”
Beardy nodded in agreement. Kiri had her back to me, stroking the invisible dragonette.
“I need some clothes,” I announced. “I can’t walk through the city wrapped in a blanket.” Kiri turned to cast me a look and I stared her down, aware she was more than capable of telling me I could do exactly that.
“She can borrow some of yours,” Beardy said decisively.
Kiri didn’t look happy at that, but then, I don’t think she ever looked happy about anything. She spun on her heel and left the room.
Silence fell, apart from some clattering from the room next door. The invisible dragonette in the corner clacked its beak. Beardy sat back, tipping his head to the ceiling while he waited. “What’s your name?” I asked. “I’ve been calling you Beardy in my head, I can’t keep doing that forever.”
He rubbed his hand over his chin, then laughed. “Call me Pell.”
“Make sure you get Lyo out, won’t you, Pell?”
Through the beard his lips twitched. “I’ll take care of him. You take care of yourself. Don’t use up too many of your lives.”
I remembered the story about cats having nine lives. I was probably down by at least two already and we hadn’t even started our resc
ue. But freedom was suddenly close enough to touch and nothing was going to take that away from me.
Lyo – Take the Dragonette and Run
“It’s a lovely day. You’ll have a big crowd.”
The day of his execution arrived with the return of the first two guards, the enterprising ones who’d lined their pockets by charging spectators to see the prisoner.
“I hate crowds.”
They laughed. That’s all the guards did now. They seemed to have settled on the purpose of a Surrana being to entertain them. The younger one looked at him with what might have been sympathy. “You won’t have to suffer them for long.”
He leaned against the bars while he had their attention. “I need to see the sky before I die. I need to say my prayers.” They glanced at each other, uneasy at the mention of religion. “You wouldn’t deprive me of that, would you? I can’t go to my death without making peace with the gods.”
“Not up to us,” the older one said. He sounded relieved to shrug off responsibility. “The captain will escort you to the block.”
It was a shame he couldn’t pass that information to Pell. He had to assume Pell and Kiri had some sort of plan. He wished he knew what it was, so he could tailor his behaviour accordingly.
“I just need him to give me a minute. I won’t take long.”
The guards shuffled and turned away. He knew Muirlanders didn’t worship. It was fascinating to see how very uncomfortable the slightest mention of the gods made them. They trusted in magic and their mages, as though magic wasn’t also under the gaze of the gods.
“Ask the captain,” the older one said dismissively. He pulled a pack of cards from his pocket. “You ready?” he asked his companion.
“Always.”
They settled down at the table, leaving Lyo nothing to do but try to imagine the scene he would be walking into and picture ways out of it. Without knowing what Pell and Kiri had planned, he’d be walking into it blind. It wasn’t a comfortable sensation, but it was better than entertaining the idea that chewed on the edge of his mind – that they’d taken the dragonette and run, leaving him to his fate.
