CHAPTER EIGHT
THE PRINCE
A wedding kavah. It took only a little inquiry—and a few coins—to pry the information from the stable boy’s lips. He was the sly sort, knowing her secret might prove of worth to him. I threw him a few more coins and a stern warning that the words would never pass his lips again. The secret was to remain ours alone. After a slow perusal of the sheathed sword hanging from my saddle, he seemed at least bright enough to know I wasn’t one to be crossed. He couldn’t describe the kavah, but he had seen the girl furiously trying to scrub it from her back.
Furious. How well I knew the feeling. I was no longer amused or curious. Three weeks of sleeping on hard, rocky ground had taken care of that. It seemed for days I was always just missing her, only a step behind, then losing the trail entirely before finding it—over and over again. Almost as if she was playing a game with me. From the vagabonds who had found her wedding cloak and were patching together their tent with it, to merchants in the city with jewels to trade, to cold campfires off rarely used trails, to a filthy torn gown made from fine lace woven only in Civica, to the hoofprints left on muddy banks, I had followed the meager crumbs she left me, becoming obsessed with not letting her win at the game Sven had spent too many years training me for.
I didn’t like being played with by a seventeen-year-old runaway. Or maybe I was just taking it too personally. She was throwing in my face just how much she wanted to get away from me. It made me wonder if I would have been as clever or as determined if I had actually acted on my thoughts the way she did. I felt beneath my vest for the only communiqué I had from her, one filled with so much gall I still had a hard time imagining the girl who wrote it. Inspect me. We’d see who did the inspecting now.
I dunked my head beneath the flow of cold water again, trying to cool off in more ways than one. What I really needed was a good long bath.
“Save some of that for me, friend.”
I whipped my head up, shaking the drops from my hair. A fellow about my age approached, his face as streaked as mine with hard days on the road.
“Plenty for all. Long journey?”
“Long enough,” he answered, plunging his head beneath the water after he had pumped a steady stream. He scrubbed his face and neck with his hands and stood, offering his wet hand. I tried to size him up. He certainly seemed friendly enough, but something about him made me wary too, and then as his eyes glanced at my belt and weapon at my side, I knew he was just as carefully sizing me up—the kind of scrutiny a trained soldier might employ—but with the necessary casual regard. He wasn’t just a merchant at the end of a long journey.
I took his hand and shook it. “Let’s go inside, friend, and wash some of the dust from our throats as well.”