A Posse of Princesses (28 page)

And it withdrew slowly, almost
reluctantly.

She almost fell at the next hop, she was so
heavy. Like she’d taken one of the boulders upon her back.

Three, two, one. And then a thin, strong hand
reached down and pulled her up the steep riverbank, and she looked
up tiredly into Glaen’s narrow face.

He dropped her hand, reached past, and took
Shera’s hand in his grip. He pulled her up, but did not let go.

Shera said, “Glaen? What are you doing
here?”

“You were gone,” he said. Not
You were
gone
, like the group was gone, but
YOU were gone
.

“I—we thought—” Shera sighed sharply. “We
stupidly thought Iardith needed rescuing. Guess what?”

“We had a bet going on that. I won.” Glaen
drawled with the old irony. “Having bet five to one that she was
the one who abducted Jarvas of Damatras.”

Shera giggled, then choked on a sob.

“Hey. Don’t start, or you’ll get me at it,”
he said in a low voice. “We’ll talk later. I hope you’ve saved up
some of those insults,” he added. He lifted his voice. “We got a
hot meal all ready, so step up to the formal dining parlor as soon
as you put on your jewels, your highnesses!”

Fast as they’d traveled, one of Lios’s people
had traveled even faster—making sure of the trail, and warning the
others. In gratitude Rhis followed Shera up a trail into a clearing
under spreading trees. The welcome glow of firelight drew Rhis
stronger than any mere magic. She allowed her saddle bag to thump
to the ground, the tiranthe giving a discordant hum of strings. For
a time she just stood there, the warmth of the fire beating
gratefully over her numb face and hands, and causing faint curls of
steamy smoke to rise from her clothes.

Hearing soft laughter, she looked around. The
Vesarjans had set up tents; while she’d been in her reverie,
someone had picked up her saddlebag and borne it away.

Reverie. She felt the weight of the magic
stone on her mind, which caused a warning prickle. She caught a
fleeting memory: Sidal’s face.
Diamonds are much stronger than
any other stone .
. .

She forced herself to move, poking her head
into the open tents until she recognized her own saddlebag.

She pulled the stone from her sash. It was
strangely heavy. She could barely lift it. The singing changed to a
high, skull-rattling whistle. But Rhis’s memory of Sidal’s warning
voice was louder, and so, using the last of her strength, she
shoved the stone into her saddlebag.

At once the singing lessened. Then it turned
sweet again, a lovely chord so faint, so beautiful. If she just got
closer, she could—

Gravel crunched under feet right outside her
tent. She knew it was Lios. A rush of feelings chased through her
as she backed out of the tent and straightened up.

“Rhis, are you still angry with me?” he
asked.

He didn’t mean the disastrous rescue plan.
She knew he meant his masquerade. “I don’t think so. I mean, I was,
then I wasn’t, then when I was, I think I was more mad at myself
for saying those nasty things.” There, it was out. And oh, she felt
such relief!

“Perfectly understandable,” Lios said
promptly, and flashed his quick grin. “The poets maintain it’s
perfectly natural to throw blame around. Why, here I am, living
proof. I blamed you for the fact that I was an arrogant fool,
ignoring others’ feelings with my witty ‘joke’ that wasn’t witty or
even much of a joke. Yes, completely your fault—”

She shook with silent laughter, though the
tears still weren’t far away.

“So how about we make a pact: we let our
blames smash into one another, fall to pieces, and vanish.” He
clapped his hands lightly. “There! Gone. I don’t feel any blame
toward you any more, not a speck. Do you feel any for me?”

“No,” she said, and somehow all her pent-up
regret and embarrassment and anger were gone. She laughed, feeling
much lighter inside.

“Good,” he said. “Things are messy enough at
home. Your words were great practice for what everyone else said
when they found out. Hoo!” He gestured, his clothes jingling
faintly.

“What’s that noise?” Rhis asked.

Lios grinned. Then he flung his arms wide and
hopped from toe to toe. “Isn’t that a laugh?” He danced around in a
circle. “Me in chain mail.”

“You look—” She wanted to say taller, but
that wasn’t quite right. Intimidating. But she didn’t want to say
that, either.

“Silly? It feels like walking around with
your own personal mattress—except sleeping on linked metal is not
comfy.”

“You said things are messy at home. I take it
they were mad, too,” she said tentatively.

“Why did I think it was a great idea? One
good thing: I’ll have to think really hard to come up with anything
more stupid.”

“Does Queen Briath know?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Is she—”

“Angry? Yes.” Lios turned his face up to the
dripping branches overhead. Then brought his chin down. “But not
about that so much as what I did after. Don’t blame my mother—there
are reasons—but she doesn’t really like me much. Still, she made me
the heir. I worked hard for it. I really don’t want to lose it all
if I can possibly prevent it.”

“But you came to rescue Iardith anyway?”

He sighed. “We came after you all. You saw
Glaen, I know. Breggo is with the horses.”

Rhis wondered for the first time if someone
might have left behind a clue. At the sound of a familiar fluting
voice, she suspected who might have left a note for her cousin.

She frowned. “It seemed such a good idea at
the time.”

And was grateful when he didn’t gloat, or
scold, or laugh. “How did you get away from that tower? That was a
mighty stroke of genius, by the bye. I hope you’ll do that a lot in
the future. I also wish Iardith had seen you walk into camp just as
we were going over our desperate rescue plan for the last time. It
might even have impressed her. Or maybe not.”

He’d seemed tireless from the distance she’d
been careful to maintain, but up close, the firelight revealed
marks under his eyes. Her heart lurched in its accustomed tread.
“I—” For just a moment she hugged to herself the thought of keeping
that impression of genius.

But she’d already had plenty to say about
liars. “My sister,” she said, discovering her voice had gone
hoarse. “Magic.” She pointed to her ring. “In case.”

He frowned in perplexity and worry. “Where
are my wits? Come over to the fire. The food might not be courtly,
but there’s plenty. Actually, a couple of the boys make really good
trail cornbread. And Andos was smart enough to grab a pot of honey
in the scramble to leave Eskanda.”

Talking in his low, pleasant voice, he
described their journey, making it sound funny, like when he
started out—the mighty prince at the head of his noble minions—his
mighty destrier skidded in a slimy puddle and he did a perfect
somersault and landed face-flat in the mud. From then on one of the
noble minions on a hill horse did the leading. But, tired as she
was, Rhis sensed that he was hiding the anxious effort it really
must have taken, especially since the boys did not have a map with
Taniva’s shortcuts.

He drew her toward the fire, where boys and
girls sat on rocks and in a row along a fallen log, everyone busy
with bowls and spoons.

Rhis was too tired to feel much of anything
when the pretend Prince Lios appeared round the fire, twin flames
reflected in his beautiful dark eyes as he smiled at her and handed
her a bowl. “For you, the last of the honey,” he said. “I’ll never
forget you were the only one to spare a fellow’s feet.”

“Don’t. Remind us,” Lios said quickly. His
face was far ruddier than could be explained away by firelight.
Then he bowed grandly, indicating a mossy rock. “Your throne,
Princess?”

Rhis felt weak laughter. “Princess. We
haven’t done a single princess thing for so long.”
Except when
the king of Damatras—

Shera gave a loud sigh. “It was stupid to
come running up here,” she admitted. “We don’t even have Iardith,
after all the trouble we went to!”

Rhis tasted the cornbread. It was delicious,
the moreso with clover honey drizzled over it.

Lios sighed, staring down the bowl in his
hands, and the untouched food. Rhis looked at his tired profile.
She was glad that they were friends again, that she’d gotten past
feeling angry and awkward and horrible. But getting past the
awkwardness between them hadn’t fixed everything. For the first
time, she considered Lios’s masquerade from his perspective, and
what she saw made her feel awkward and anxious all over again. A
lot of people—his own mother—seemed angry with him. Would they even
be here if he had not traded places with Andos? Probably not.
Though it was hard to say whether Iardith would have arranged her
own abduction if the real Prince Lios had turned her down instead
of the false one.

In fact it was hard to think at all past the
singing chord in her mind. It seemed to have gotten louder. Being
away from it had helped some, but now the singing was gaining in
strength. The stone seemed to want to be moving, and its note was
restless and anxious.

The rise of voices broke her reverie: she
recognized Glaen and Shera arguing. Was it mock or real? She tried
to concentrate on the words, but all she could make out was the
rise and fall of their voices on the other side of camp, where they
sat a little apart on a mossy log. Maybe they didn’t know
themselves if it was real or mock anger, she thought sleepily, as
she slid off her rock, folded her arms over the stone, and just
leaned her forehead on her hands. Just for a moment—

oOo

“Up! Up!”

Breggan ran through the camp, his chain mail
jingling at every step. “We have to ride out!”

Heads popped up—many people had fallen asleep
right where they’d been sitting—lamps were lit.

“They’re up on the high road,” someone
reported.

“Who?” Yuzhyu appeared, hair wild, a lamp
swinging in her hand.

“The Damatrans,” Breggan said. “They’re after
us.”

“We’re too close to the border to give up,”
Taniva declared. “I know a footpath. It will take us straight to
border.”

“Is that how you got here so fast?” Lios
asked.

“Yes.” Taniva patted her travel bag. “Have
special map.”

“Let’s go,” Lios said, lifting his voice.
“Fall in!”

Rhis gritted her teeth and got to her feet.
She longed for sleep, to escape the persistent singing inside her
head.

The note seemed to climb higher and higher
during the day-long dash along those narrow paths, ducking low
branches and being smacked in the face by leaves. Always the sense
of
Faster! Flee! Go!
sang in her head, making thought almost
impossible.

So she didn’t think, she just kept her sight
between her horse’s hairy ears as she followed.

She almost slid into a kind of dream
existence, an uncomfortable one full of shrieking cries and weird
whistles, when she was roused by cries of anger and dismay farther
up the line.

She looked around. They seemed to have come a
very long way in a short time. Sure enough, they emerged from the
thick old forest growth of a shady slope into a clearing just below
a cliff.

Rhis vaguely recognized that clearing, where
she and the other princesses had paused to make their plan for
entering Damatras.

Only now, ranged along the top of the ridge
and blocking off the narrow path, was a very grubby-looking Jarvas,
with a lot of fellows his own age. They’d clearly endured a very
fast ride in order to skirt the fleeing would-be rescuers, and
reach the border first.

“Well done, my son,” the King of Damatras
boomed, riding at the head of a force down a side path just above
Rhis and her friends. The king paused under the shade of a
spreading, leafy tree; that road was much broader than the path
they were on.

“They were riding parallel to us the entire
time,” Lios said in disgust.

Several people sent looks Taniva’s way.

“That is the main border road,” she said. “It
is much longer than my path.”

That, and Jarvas’s presence already at the
border, meant that the Damatrans had to have started out about the
same time Taniva, Lios, and Rhis and her friends left the cave—and
they’d ridden all night.

“They knew all along,” Shera exclaimed.
“How?”

The answer emerged behind the King of
Damatras, as Iardith rode between the guardsmen, looking cool and
amused.

“We always respect a good run,” Jarvas
called, grinning.

“You betrayed us,” Shera cried out, glaring
at Iardith.

The magic stone was singing so loud, its note
so high and sharp, that Rhis’s head rang.

Iardith shrugged. “
You
,” she drawled,
“got in
my
way.” And she pointed at Rhis.

The King clapped his gloved hands and rubbed
them. “It seems I’ve most of the heirs of all my neighbors here,”
he said genially. “What a story this will make! Come along, my fine
young friends. We’ll do you all proud, I promise, while you are
our, ah, guests.”

Silently, but in unison, both Jarvas’s guard
and the king’s men all put hands to the swords they wore at their
saddles. They didn’t actually draw their blades, but they were
clearly ready for a command to do so.

Breggan’s hand drifted to the sword hanging
at his own saddle. Lios already had his hand on his hilt; Glaen,
muttering under his breath, smoothed his hand over his horse’s mane
and then dropped his hand to his own saddle sheath.

Taniva and her guard had already drawn their
steel. They held those sharp knifes pointed toward the sky—they
weren’t even pretending that they weren’t ready to leap into battle
as soon as Taniva gave the signal.