“Better to leave than to accept silence,” Bren says with an air of beleaguered heroism. He rises, feet spread to take his weight as the carriage rattles along.
Matsin glances out the window. We are just past the river. “I don’t believe we’ll be stopping until we reach the palace.”
“No need to stop,” Bren says, as if this were the most foolish thing he’s heard in a while. He turns and smiles at me. “I doubt we’ll meet again, Rae. Safe travels.”
“Prosperous arrivals,” I respond automatically, before I even realize he is moving, the door flying open as the horses trot along. He bounds away—not out, but sideways, catching an outer railing on the side of the carriage perilously close to the wheel before disappearing from view altogether, the door swinging back.
Swearing a black stream, Matsin shoves his head out the door, but wherever Bren is, he’s no longer hanging off the carriage. One of the soldiers riding at the rear shouts a question, turning his horse, but Matsin calls back, “No, let him go,” and then swears again.
After a long moment he returns to the bench, sitting down heavily. “Which ring is he associated with? I’m aware the princess had contact with thieves on the west side. Is this—”
“Did you know I had tea with the Black Scholar the night I went missing?” I ask cheerfully.
He stares. “That’s who’s looking for you?”
“And visited Bardok Three-Fingers,” I muse, pleased my distraction technique has worked. “But you’re right, it’s the Scholar who wants me.”
Matsin’s eyes narrow. “How would you have met those two?”
This is the man who has taught the princess and the rest of us self-defense—or at least, begun our lessons. If I’m going to distract him, I might as well get something useful out of it.
I smile tightly and say, “Taken prisoner by one, nearly bartered to the other. Do you know what else? I attempted to escape by climbing out a window. But a man came up behind me as I reached the street and put his arm across my throat, and dragged me back to the house. Same as what those other men did to Kirrana.”
“Did you pass out?”
“No, but I couldn’t get my feet under me, and if he’d pressed any harder I might have.”
“Probably a chokehold.”
Sounds about right. “What, precisely, does one do to break such a hold?”
Matsin studies me and then nods. He knows exactly what I’m doing in changing the conversation. We spend the rest of the ride going over how to reach back to one’s attacker’s hands, catch hold of a finger, and pull it until it breaks. Although Matsin does not attempt to make me practice in the carriage.
“The pain will usually cause an attacker to release their hold, even if only momentarily,” he tells me.
“And then?”
“Then turn around, put your thumbs in their eyes, and dig them in and across,” Matsin says, holding up his hands toward an imaginary attacker’s face and demonstrating. Brutal but doubtlessly effective.
“And then run,” Matsin finishes.
“Always run,” I agree, because in the end, I can’t argue with escape. At whatever pace one is able to manage.
We alight in the palace courtyard. Matsin moves aside to speak with his quad. I glance around as I start toward the doors, and jerk to a stop. There is one other carriage pulled up in the courtyard. It is heavily guarded, and there, coming through a side door with a fully armed escort, strides the foreign prince, his features pale and skin pulled tight, like a living skull, his straw-colored hair falling unkempt over his forehead.
I back up until I am all but covered from sight by the bulk of the carriage beside me. But the foreign prince doesn’t notice. He barely looks about the courtyard. They reach the second carriage and his lips shape a snarl as he says something hard and sharp to the soldiers around him. I creep forward, keeping in the shadow of the carriage, to watch as he waits and then realizes he will have to open the door for himself. He does so, his eyes bright with fury, and climbs into the dim confines of a carriage that would be beneath the lowest of our nobles.
A soldier slams the door shut and locks it. The windows are small—too small to allow a full-grown man egress. Now that the prince is closed into the carriage, a dozen hostlers lead up horses for the guards. A quad climbs up to ride on the carriage, while the rest mount up on the horses.
Matsin has paused, watching as the captain leading the escort calls a command. The guards start forward, the carriage rattling over the pavers and through the wide gates, carrying the foreign prince with it. There’s a deep relief in seeing the carriage disappear beyond the gates. I don’t doubt Kestrin has arranged for the prince to be taken far beyond our borders.
“Still here, kelari?” Matsin asks, having turned back to me.
“Yes.” I nod, gather myself. My foot is hurting no more than it usually does when blistered, and my wounded arm only twinges slightly when I move it. No need to delay any longer.
I take a step forward and something twirls past my face, pale as a rosebud, and then flits sideways to land on my shoulder. I blink, turning my head to see a tiny white-breasted bird, its wings pink and its beak decidedly laughing. Not a rosebud at all.
There’s something strange about it though, its eyes dark but not bright. I’m used to birds eyeing things with a sort of liveliness about them, shrewd and aware. This bird is not. Even the slight opening of its beak—what I had initially taken as avian good humor—seems hollow and somewhat unnerving.
It’s not alive. My stomach gives a sickening lurch and I reach to flick the thing from my shoulder before my mind registers that I might not want to touch it. The dead-eyed bird takes flight before I can, though, whirling
