Her eyes flashed, cold grey. Tight with stifled fury, she seized his manacled wrist: pressed into his palm the tinker’s steel wire he needed to spring his locked irons. Since caution would lead him to silence the watchman, the enchantress dived back under and left the prisoner to make his escape.
Elaira pushed herself hard, stroking downstream beneath the inky water. She did not resurface until her cramped lungs screamed for air. The murky flow buoyed her on, after that. Better to float slowly than risk splashing noise. A half league from the delta, she overtook her wrapped bundle of baggage and remedies, set afloat and left drifting since sunset.
‘Blessings for small favours,’ she gasped, bleak-tempered after weeks of anxiety, and chills that set her teeth chattering.
The choked stands of reed on the bank finally thinned, where a willow grove shaded the verge. Elaira crawled out of the river. She masked herself in the dank gloom of the hummock, laced with dense brush and old roots. Forest-bred scout, Sidir could seek her out. No pity for his inconvenience: she could not bear to watch as he murdered. Companion to his fallen high earl, hatred for town-born would have marked him young. Since his kind preferred death to a life in captivity, he likely would vindicate his mishandling by strangling the luckless guard.
Elaira gritted her jaw, still annoyed as she surveyed her surroundings. One night after dark moon, the sky blazed with stars. Their reflections drizzled the face of the river, blurred where the black eddies ruffled. No pursuit seemed in evidence. The enchantress wrung out her sopped shirt and sat. She waited, arms clasped to her knees, while her braid ticked an erratic tattoo of droplets onto the moss at her back. Twenty-four insufferable days, with her hands tied up by appearances; the experience galled, quite as cruel as the iron set upon Arithon’s prized liegeman!
‘I’d rather have saddled myself with a donkey!’ Elaira snapped under her breath.
A wavelet lapped against the mud shore-line. Then the waters parted, and Sidir emerged, furtive as a stalking lynx. He slipped through the undergrowth with scarcely a sound, then came on as though drawn by a beacon. Naked, emaciated, he had lost no strength. His hand was a vice from the barge pole. Elaira was inflexibly caught by her wrist, then jerked to her feet before protest. As she bristled, she felt his born talent sweep over her, a sensation like flushing heat. Too late for resentment: his lineage was gifted with truesight.
That stripping exposure slid past her shields, and his rushed whisper snapped in reproof. ‘I didn’t kill anyone! The wretch on deck got himself a dinged head. Nothing more. He’ll wake back up howling and chew off the gag. For my kindness, we have to keep moving.’
‘Arrogant beast!’ She broke his taut grasp. Bent to her damp baggage, she yanked out the plain shirt and breeches inside, since all he had thought to retrieve from the barge was the rope coiled over his shoulder, and a riverman’s knife, unsheathed in his opposite hand. She tossed the clothes at his feet. ‘We could have sped south on a galley from here, but for your insane sense of caution!’
Sidir tilted his dark head, dropped the knife, caught her chin. Starlight brushed the white hair at his temples; and also silvered the tears, streaming hopelessly down her cheeks. ‘Anyn’e ain s’teirdael,’ he murmured in musical Paravian, then translated the diminutive phrase. ‘Handfast to my prince, there’s no more hurt than a brand for this.’
She could have slapped him, if not for the noise. ‘Sting for your pride! Atwood is closed to us! A Fellowship Sorcerer has wakened the old centaur markers. For eight days, my scryings have shown nothing else. You’d have heard the song of the stones in your dreams, if you hadn’t been hell-bent on slavery!’
Sidir caught his breath. He let go, touched her fingers to quell her alarm. Then he snatched on the shirt, which had been loosely cut to keep from binding his welted skin. His quick pause could be sensed, for that kindness. The enchantress held her tongue, grim, while he eased the breeches over the weals on his ankles. Yet wordless, she passed him a soft, calf-skin belt. He fastened the buckle, which chafed nonetheless. His strained breath said as much as he bent and retrieved the knife from the ground.
Before Sidir straightened, the enchantress delved into her satchel again. His cry was stifled ruthlessly silent: perhaps he wept, masked in darkness. His gratitude warmed her subliminal senses as she thrust upon him her gift of hide lacing and boots.
‘Princess, Lady,’ he murmured. ‘The trade-road. Most swiftly. If Atwood is closed, the wise course is to raid. This country’s no place to throw off the search those townsmen will launch for a fugitive. We’ll have to go mounted if we’re to escape.’
They set off at a run, with Elaira unable to match his long-strided sprint. Sidir slowed and flanked her. Through thicket and thorn brake, and forest-bound glades, he pushed on until she was winded. Forced back to her pace, he pressed towards the low ground, sloshing through streamlets to confound their scent for the dogs.
‘They won’t expect us to try the road, south,’ said Elaira, first chance she could speak.
‘I won’t rely on that hunch.’ Sidir laid bold hands on her waist. Before the enchantress exclaimed in surprise, he boosted her onto a tree branch. ‘Stay here. Catch your breath. I’ll find horses and come for you.’
Gone the next instant, he left her no choice but to mind his instructions. Elaira braced for an uncomfortable wait and a struggle to remain wakeful. Yet the Companion’s return was swift. This time, past question, his knife was not clean: he carried two Sunwheel surcoats. The horses had messenger’s seals on their saddle-cloths, and a dispatch case, tagged for Pellain.
‘Irony’s with us. Tight security’s got the couriers riding in pairs.’ Sidir tossed over the smaller of two man-sized garments. ‘Put that on. Leave your braid tucked inside. If we gallop the check-points, we’ll be waved straight past. Damned war’s got the country-side stirred like a pot. Stay moving, we won’t be questioned.’
Elaira took the reins of a fiery mare and mounted despite the beast’s sidling. Sidir stowed her satchel inside the cerecloth cape the past rider had rolled at the cantle. Since her beardless face would draw notice, past daybreak, the clan liegeman vaulted astride and plied urgent heels to his horse.
The pair of them rammed ahead through the brush. Whipped by low branches and snagged by dense thorns, they broke through to the open road. Sidir spurred ahead, pressed beyond care for horseflesh. ‘I strung a rope trap,’ he explained when, reined back to ease their blown mounts, he flashed a glance over his shoulder. ‘No way the bodies I left in the brush are not going to draw buzzards, as carrion.’
Now, every league of advantage was precious, covered by moonless darkness. Elaira rode with no word of complaint. Here, where the trade-route skirted the coast, the lights of southbound galleys could be seen, riding the sheltered waters towards Whitehold. They passed encampments of tents more than once. The smell of manure meant troops of light horse, and ox-drawn supply trains. Elaira stroked the soaked neck of her mare, sorry for the hard usage, but too well aware of the risk to Sidir. A slacker’s mistake would doom his survival. Though she ached, and her knees stung with saddle sores, she asked for no respite. Already, the stars in the east sky were paling. Dangerously soon, the first blush of rose brightened the low-lying cloud-banks.
By then, the horses were stumbling and spent. Sidir opted for mercy. He dismounted before letting them founder. The animals were stripped of their tack and set free, with the gear and the Sunwheel surcoats left sunk under rocks in a trout pool. The cerecloth, they kept, since the weather would turn, bringing the chill rain of autumn.
Since no rest was prudent within sight of the coast, Sidir stuffed the dispatches under his shirt and plunged westward into the undergrowth.
By noon, he found them a bed in a thicket, piled under the yellow drifts of shed ash leaves. Elaira fell asleep where she sat, sunk into dreamless exhaustion. She did not awaken through the afternoon. Sidir snatched the interval before she aroused to thumb through his stolen dispatches. Their content painted the picture he feared: of troops