“Practice.”
“Great,” Margaret groaned. “Something I don’t have. How is any of this going to protect me?”
As she said the last word, Adelei moved. She crossed the distance between them in four steps and brought her dirk up. Margaret scrambled with her dagger but managed to block Adelei’s blade. Margaret’s eyes widened at the halt of Adelei’s dirk. “If I had wanted to harm you, my blade would have injured you. But you deflected some of the force, which would have given you longer to get away, get help, or even hurt me. No move is a wasted move.”
The guardsman from earlier stuck his head in the practice room and cleared his throat. “It’s almost time for Her Highness’s meeting with the Duchess.”
Adelei stripped the chain mail off and hung it over the straw man.
“Thank you,” Margaret whispered. When Adelei turned, Margaret waited for her at the door. The princess glanced at her with a flushed face. “I know I’m not good at such pursuits as, well, fighting or stabbing people, but you didn’t have to do this. I know you’re trying to help.”
Only by biting her tongue, did Adelei prevent her mouth from falling open. She exited the practice room first and escorted Margaret to her suite. Strands of Margaret’s hair tufted out of its braid in places, and sweat left lines down her made-up face. Nisha, her lady-in-waiting, rushed forward, her fingers unwinding the braid with deft movements. “And you meeting with the Duchess in ten minutes,” Nisha muttered. She snapped her fingers, and six handmaidens brought powders, perfumes, and brushes.
The crew set to work on making their princess presentable again, and Adelei used the distraction to duck out of the mayhem. She stopped into her own room long enough to strip her own clothes. Not that she’d worked up any real sweat against Margaret, but for the job she had in mind, she needed a completely different outfit.
Rags borrowed from the laundress and then “modified” by Adelei would disguise her today. The coarse, muslin dress smelled of hay and barns and bore several holes at the shoulder. The matching sea-green corset’s threads did little to give her a waist, though it did shove her flat breasts up and give the suggestion that she had them.
Barefoot would have been best, but Adelei didn’t want to risk the chance of injury. The slippers she pulled over her feet were a size too large, and she hoped she wouldn’t need to do any running in them. Just in case, she pulled the leather laces at the side as tight as they would go.
She closed her door and stopped short of Margaret, who was exiting her suite with an entourage of handmaidens. The princess stopped to stare at Adelei. “Where in the Thirteen did you get such a hideous outfit?”
Adelei pursed her lips. “I need to go down to the city’s lower circle.”
“In that?”
“What would you have me wear, Your Highness? If I wore something like your dress, I’d be robbed the moment I stepped foot off the main road. Besides, I need to blend in. You know, with the impoverished people of your city, Your Highness.”
Margaret flushed, and Nisha hurried her out the door. Her honor guard followed her, while Adelei turned the opposite direction. She avoided the main stairwell and took the servant’s stairs instead. When she popped out in the servant’s wing, a few of the pages stared at her a moment before continuing on their way.
The fewer eyes she drew, the better.
Once in the stables, she rubbed dirt and hay across her face and arms, then scurried out before she was spotted. A guard stopped her at the gate to the upper circle of Alesta. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Adelei pulled the silver signet from her pocket. His eyes widened at the sepier star, and he ushered her through without another word. The majority of people gave her wide clearance as she passed, doing so until she reached the second to last set of city walls. It was easier to blend once she crossed over into the lower circle.
She’d tried walking the streets as a member of the royal army. The moment the prince’s name had passed from her lips, people stopped talking to her. Before long, word had spread through the lower level that a “guard” was looking to “hang someone for talking about His Highness.”
There were several seedier inns down toward the middle of the lower circle, away from the city gates and most of the guards. When Adelei walked into the first one, the innkeeper said, “No beggars.” She held up half a notch and slid into a table. The sleeve of her dress fell down to reveal a round, pale shoulder, and she ignored it. With no stockings, her dress exposed the hint of an ankle as she sat and waited.
She didn’t have to wait long.
Within a moment or two, a woman with a much healthier chest and hips strode up and tossed a penny her way. “Clear out,” she muttered, and Adelei rolled her eyes up to meet the woman’s gaze. “This be my turf. Ye not welcome here.”
Adelei slid out of the table with a shrug, but left the coin behind. The ample-chested woman needed the money more than Adelei did. Back out in the daylight, she crossed the street to an alley that led to yet another inn. This time when she claimed a seat, the only two who took notice were the barkeep and an old man at the bar. She fell into the same routine, exposed shoulder and a hint of ankle, when the old man hobbled over with a glass of watered-down wine.
“Surely someone as hard workin’ as you could find work in a city of this size,” he said as he slid into the seat across from her.
“One would think, but things are changin’ wit’ the new prince
