The Caravan Road (11 page)

“I don’t doubt the Duke,” Charls put a brave face on his doubt, and the three of them quickly left the room and entered Alec’s invisibility bubble once they were within the hall.

“Did you see something?” one guard asked another in the front hall of the palace, pointing up to the stairs.  “I thought I saw,
” he hesitated, unwilling to say
that he thought he had seen a disembodied head momentarily, knowing that he would open himself to ridicule, given the absence of any such spectral vision at present.  “Never mind,” the guard lamely stopped himself.

Alec, Charls, and Carla stood still midway down the stairs, wondering if they had been spotted.  Alec was straining his grasp on the ingenaire energy to keep his bubble of bent light as large as possible, but the descent down the stairs required it to expand beyond his ability, and so the top of Carla’s or Charls’s head would bob in or out of sight as they slowly inched down the stairs.  Without further detection, the three passed out of the palace and through the gate, then around a corner of the main road in the city, where Alec released his energy out of sight of the palace.

“Extraordinary!  We walked right past the guards at the gate,” Charls exclaimed.  “What do we do now?”

“We wait for our friends to arrive,” Alec said simply, then he squatted down on his haunches to rest.  The trio waited for several minutes until the small squad of soldiers and others came noisily down the street.

Alec stood, and stepped to the center of the street, his hands raised high over his head to draw the attention of the approaching forces.  He felt a terrible pain and a blow in the back that pressed him forward, then he heard Carla’s voice scream, and he blacked out.

Chapter 6
– Alec’s Injury

When Alec awoke he was in a narrow bed that was in a gloomy attic.   The angled gable roof was only a few feet above his head, and the source of dim light was somewhere off to his left.  His chest felt aflame with pain, and it flared to an even more intense level as he tried to take a breath.  He moaned, then coughed, then felt spasms of even more pain.

“Here,” a soft voice called, and a small packet was gently pressed between his lips into his cheek.  He turned his head to see who was there.

It was an older version of Carla, a woman with the same red hair and high cheek bones, though a wider m
outh and thinner lips than Alec
had noticed on
his
young companion.  “These herbs will lessen the pain; just let them rest in your cheek.”

Alec gave his head a slight nod to signify he understood, and his hand reached out from underneath his cover, then groped to find hers, and gave a weak squeeze.

“You just rest.  You’re safe here for now.  Carla will return after sunset.  She’ll be so pleased to know you woke up.  The girl has sat here by you constantly,” the woman told him.

“Your daughter?” Alec tried to croak a question, but his chest felt pierced with increased pain, and he closed his eyes as a spasm stormed through his torso.

“You can’t try to talk,” the woman brushed her fingers across his forehead.  “Stay quiet, rest and heal.”

Alec closed his eyes, and fell back into a drowsy state of anxious sleep, trying to understand what had happened to him.  The pack of herbs in his cheek began to act, making his mouth feel numb first, before the pain diminished slightly in his chest.

When he opened his eyes again, the room was dark.  He tried to look around and detected two faint gleaming points at some unknown distance.  When he blinked, the points were further apart, and then they were eyes in a face, reflecting some small amount of light, and a hand lay gently on his shoulder.

“Alec, stay still.  Don’t try to talk,” Carla spoke to him.  “You’re very sick, and we can’t bring a doctor to see you.  The duke’s patrols are looking all over the city for you and me and Charls and anyone else they think is against them.”

Alec closed his eyes, and tried to ignore the pain he felt with every breath.  He wished he knew what had happened to him, but the pain was so severe he couldn’t call upon his Healer energies to diagnose or cure himself.  He slowly raised one hand and laid it upon Carla’s, giving a feeble squeeze to show his appreciation.  There was so much he wanted to know, but couldn’t ask.

“My mom says thank you for what you’ve done for us, for healing my dad the first time, and for watching out for me.  She’s been here watching you almost as much as I have.  The soldiers have been here once already searching our house, but they didn’t look up here,” she warned.

“As soon as you’re well enough to move, we’ll try to get out of the city to some place safe.”

Alec gave a slight nod, then closed his eyes.  He rapidly dozed off, and Carla sat beside him a while longer, his relaxed hand still atop hers on his shoulder.  She was worried, though thankful he was still alive.  She had screamed in terror when an arrow had bolted from the roof of a building near the palace and pierced all the way through his chest from the back, its point protruding from the front of his chest, evidence of the force with which it had been shot.  She and Charls had immediately grabbed Alec and begun to hurry him away, as a squad of guards from the palace had come charging towards them.

The small collection of Alec’s converted supporters had put up a brief and unsuccessful street battle against the palace forces, who were led by an Ajacii, but the battle had lasted long enough for Carla to lead the other two to safety in her own home.  Her mother had made the decision to draw the arrow out, a procedure Carla had been unable to stand to watch, then they had bandaged Alec and hidden him and Carla up in the attic just minutes before palace forces had knocked on the door and stormed into the house, as they did every other house in the vicinity, looking for Alec and the others.

Charls was hidden in a nearby house, and Carla had spent the day there with him, waiting until dark before she stealthily returned to her own home and Alec.  She and Charls had talked during the day, telling each other all that they could about Alec, Carla trying to explain the few brief hours she had seen him, and Charls recollecting the times in years past when Alec had been involved in the governance of his duchy.  And Charls had provided a comforting presence for Carla, who had lost her father and then lost the security of Alec’s presence in the same day.  Charls was a steady man, one who recognized her emotional strain and reacted sympathetically, letting her talk throughout the day about her father, providing the opportunity for her to release a portion of the pain and frustration that had bottled up inside her.

It was Charls who recollected a possible way to help his duke heal more quickly.  “The duke showed me a patch of plants in the palace garden that he said he had brought from an estate near Eckerd.  He said the plant could cure anything,” Charls confided to Carla.  “If I can get back into the palace, I could pick some and bring it back to heal him.”

Carla sat silently, pondering a return to the palace.  “I can get you into the palace garden,” she said at last, “if you’ll go along with my plan.”

“What plan is that?” Charls asked, leaning forward, studying the girl intently.

“I will go to the gate of the palace, and tell them that my elderly mother wishes to see the flowers in the palace gardens one time before she dies.  The guards will let a harmless girl in, I suspect, especially with her frail mother, and then we’ll go find the duke’s plant, pick some, and leave,” she said in a straightforward manner.

“I suspect the guards will gladly let such a pretty girl into the palace,” Charls said, pleasing Carla with his gallant comment.  “But how will you and your mother know which plant to pick in the garden?”

“This is the best part!” Carla said with a sparkle in her eye.  “You’ll be dressed up as my mother!  You’ll be able to go in and pick the right plant!”

Charls reared back abruptly, his eyes widening.  “You can’t be serious!”

“You can do this; this is for Alec!  This is for your duke,” Carla spoke emphatically.  “This may be the only way.  You saw that arrow sticking all the way through him; he’s not going to recover from that without something extraordinary, maybe this plant you say he told you about.”

“If we’re caught, I’ll go back to the dungeon, or execution,” Charls said.  “You’ll suffer the same, but not right away.  Are you really willing to risk the things they’ll do to you?”

“The first time I saw the duke, he saved me from being taken to the palace and raped,” Carla said.  “He didn’t know me, or anything about me.  There wasn’t anything to know.  I was a complete stranger to him, and he fought to free me.  He saved my father’s life, at least for a little while, and he went into the palace to set you free.  He can make this city the good place it used to be, better for everyone.

“I’ll do whatever it takes to set him back on his feet,” Carla said, rising to her own feet.  She reached over and grabbed Charls’s shoulder, urging him up.  “Let’s go get you dressed for this; the sooner we do this, the better.”

With a sigh, Charls resignedly acceded to the girl’s plan, recognizing that it was in fact the only way he could imagine they would be able to enter the palace grounds now.  Together they entered her mother’s room and slowly dressed the unhappy steward in a strange collection of dress, blouse, and many scarves that covered his head and much of his face. 

Charls returned to Alec’s room and took one of the knives from his unconscious duke, then returned and met Carla at the front of the house.  With that done, Carla tied a scarf over her own bright red hair, and the two of them walked back towards the palace they had escaped from just days before.

Chapter 7
– Deposing the Duke

Carla felt intimidated when they were within sight of the palace gate.  She had been raised in the city, and lived there all her life, without ever entering the palace until Alec had smuggled her in.  It was a place she had always fantasized about with her friends around the market place, the big building with servants and feasts and carpets on the floor, the features they believed it had and that made it opulent in their eyes.

For Charls, it was a return to a place that had been his assumed place of duty for decades, one that he took for granted, or had until a few weeks earlier when the new duke had arrived and turned the world upside down.

“Slow down,” he hissed to Carla as they began their walk in view of the guards.  “Remember, I’m your elderly mother.  You need to slow down to help poor, frail me.”

“Sorry,” Carla said contritely.  She immediately shortened her stride and offered her arm, while they approached the watchful guards at the gate with a more measured gait.

“My mother,” Carla began, once they reached the gate, “has always wanted to see the gardens in the palace.  She’s heard such wonderful stories about the flowers there.  I thought that for her birthday today I’d bring her here to ask if we could go in for just a little while to see the garden.  We’ll only go straight there and then come straight back out,” the girl wheedled in her most winsome fashion.

“We’re not supposed to let any strangers in,” the bolder of the two guards on their side of the gate replied, “but we could make an exception for the right reasons,” he added with a smile that held no warmth.

Carla quelled her desire to shudder at the licentiousness the man conveyed.  “We’re worth it,” she replied, and held still as his hand reached out to take hold of her arm.

“Come with me, and I’ll show you something,” he spoke, as he started into the palace grounds, leading Carla and Charls along the winding way that led into the interior of the palace grounds, where the garden was enclosed.  “Tell you mother to go enjoy herself, and I’ll show you something in here,” the guard told Carla as they stood outside a gardeners’ storage shed.

Carla looked at Charls with despairing but determined eyes.  “You go see if you can find the pretty ones,” she said, then bowed her head as she stepped into the shed, the guard directly behind her.

He closed the door behind him, then reached for Carla and pressed his lips against hers.

“Wait,” Carla struggled, but the man easily overpowered her immediately, knocking her to the floor with wordless hostility and focusing on ripping her clothes until he heard the click of the door latch behind him, and turned to see Charls slashing violently with his smuggled blade, burying it deeply in the surprised guard’s unprotected chest.

“We’ve got to hurry now,” Charls said.  “They’ll miss him in about a hour, and we can’t go back out through that gate without him.”

“Thank you, Carla said tearfully.  “I wasn’t sure how long you’d take; I didn’t know how long I could fight him off.”

“I still need to find the plants and take some,” Charls said.  “I only stood outside the door for a minute; I didn’t think he was the kind to be subtle or slow.”

Carla gathered together the torn fabric of her blouse, wiped the moisture from her eyes, and helped Charls stuff the dead guard’s body beneath a wheelbarrow in the back of the shed.  They emerged from the storage building and walked towards the corner of the garden that Charls recollected Alec stopping in to show the agrimonia patch he was growing.