The Blood Curse (10 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I
T WAS LATE
morning by the time they reached Groderling again. Karel dismounted in the main square and tried to appear calm, but panic fizzed in his veins.
I’ve lost her!

“What now?” Prince Tomas looked as grim as Karel felt. “Have we been following the wrong cart the whole time?”

That was the fear that nestled beneath his breastbone, making it difficult to breathe. “No,” Karel said, with a certainty he didn’t fully feel. “The cart that arrived here yesterday afternoon was the right one. We lost it here.” He turned on his heel, surveyed the town square. “We ask questions at the gates again. And the inns. Someone saw that cart and knows where it went.”

He gave orders rapidly and the armsmen obeyed as promptly as they always had, but Karel thought there was a difference in the way one or two of the men looked at him. An edge of doubt.
They’ve lost confidence in me
.

He’d made a mistake. A
big
mistake. He shouldn’t have headed blindly west. He should have checked Arvid’s information, cross-examined the gate guard. How big a mistake he’d made, how catastrophic, remained to be seen.

He led his horse to the nearest water trough and looped its reins around one of the posts. “Leave your horse here,” he told Prince Tomas. “We’re going for a walk. See if we can find any houses that have pigeons.”

Tomas’s gaze sharpened. “You think there’s a Fithian house here?”

“It’s a possibility.”

T
HE ARMSMEN HE’D
sent to the gates returned with the same news they’d brought back yesterday: no carts covered with brown fabric had left Groderling heading north, south, or east.

The news was no better from any of the inns. A few refugees fleeing Sault, but no one matching the description of the Fithians.

Gunvald was the last armsman to return. He crossed the square, his steps fast, almost running, his face alight with excitement.

“What?” Karel demanded.

“I found it, sir! The cart. They sold it to a cartwright.”

“Sold it?” Karel blinked, frowned. “Why?”

“Said they didn’t need it any more.”

“But the princess—”

“The man who sold it asked where he could buy a horse.”

“And?”

“The cartwright sent him to one of the inns. Where he bought a piebald mare. The hostler said it was a woman’s mount.”

Silence followed these words. Prince Tomas turned to Karel. “She’s riding?”

“She’s riding.” Elation filled his chest. He hadn’t lost her. “Gunvald, did you get a description of the man who sold the cart?”

“He was armed. Looked like a soldier. The cartwright was scared of him.”

“Fithian,” Tomas said.

Karel took a deep breath, felt his ribcage expand. They’d lost a whole morning, but they hadn’t lost the princess.

He strode to his horse and swung up into the saddle. “We need to find which gate that piebald mare left by.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

T
HEY CRESTED A
muddy hill and looked down on a settlement. Rand brought his mount alongside Harkeld’s. “Hansgrohe. On the border with Sault.”

Harkeld looked past the town to the wide, bare sweep of highlands beyond. No forest cloaked that broad slope, just tussock and lone trees sculpted by the wind.

Sault. Where the curse already had a grip. Where bloodlust walked the land and people died.

Harkeld shivered, an involuntary reaction, and glanced sideways to see whether Rand had noticed. He hadn’t.

“How far to the curse?”

Rand shrugged. “A hundred leagues, at a guess, but it could be closer than that. Depends how fast it’s advancing.”

The healer studied the town, frowning. Harkeld followed his gaze. “You think there’re assassins down there?”

“It’s possible. Keep your face covered. Lag behind; the shapeshifters will guard you. Thayer’ll ride up front with me.”

“No,” Harkeld said. “I won’t have him used as bait. If there are Fithians—”

“Of all of us, you are the one who must survive.”

“I don’t want any more mages dead because of me.”

“I know.” There was compassion on Rand’s face. “The sooner we cross into Sault, the sooner we end this. Stay at the back.”

H
ANSGROHE HAD A
frantic, desperate edge to it. The town was small, shabby, with muddy streets and sagging wooden buildings, and refugees, hundreds of refugees, heading for Roubos’s ports. Harkeld rode near the back of the mages, picking his way through the throngs of people and wagons and carts and donkeys. They halted at a crowded tavern, where the desperation seemed to have reached fever-pitch. Harkeld’s gaze skipped from face to face: the distraught mother, the grim-faced father, the screaming child.

He looked down at his hands, resting on the saddle pommel.
Only I can stop this. My hands, my blood.

“We need to buy a wagon here. And barrels for water.”

Harkeld glanced to his left. Rand was there, astride his horse.

“We’ll be half an hour, an hour at the most. Try to look unimportant.”

Harkeld grunted a faint laugh.

“Wander off with Adel. Visit the market. Buy yourself lunch.” Rand held out some coins. “The shapeshifters will guard you.”

Harkeld took the coins and dismounted. He glanced around for Adel. The journeyman water mage sidled diffidently towards him.

Harkeld made himself smile at Adel. He deserved the hesitancy, the diffidence; he’d made no attempts at friendship during the voyage from Ankeny, had kept to himself, aloof, seldom speaking to anyone.

Adel cautiously returned the smile.

They left the tavern stableyard. Harkeld glanced back once. Thayer was in the midst of a circle of mages, pretending to be a prince, the most important person on the continent. Harkeld lifted his eyes to the gray sky and prayed to the All-Mother.
Let him be alive when we return
.

T
HE MARKET SQUARE
was three streets away. Harkeld set a brisk pace, weaving through the refugees, his belly growling with hunger. Adel followed. The water mage was tall and gawky, with long arms and a thin throat in which his Adam’s apple bobbed nervously. He hadn’t the fighters’ physique of the other Sentinels, or their confidence—but he must know how to fight, or he wouldn’t be here. It was part of their training—to fight as well as soldiers. Ebril had told him that.

Ebril, who was dead.

Harkeld plunged into the market square, Adel trailing a half-step behind. It was hard to feel safe with Adel as his guard, but a glance showed him that shapeshifters were also there. The sparrow hopping across the rooftops was a mage, the dog sniffing the gutters, the swallow swooping above the square. And Innis was there too, browsing the skeins of wool displayed in a wagon.

Harkeld picked up a leather belt and tried to look as if he was examining it, while his gaze rested on her.

Innis was slender, tomboyish, almost as shy and quiet as Adel, and yet she was the strongest shapeshifter in a century—and the youngest mage ever to take the Sentinel’s oath. Ebril had told him that too.

Strong magic, but not yet certain of who she was in the world. Too young to be a Sentinel, killing people, being killed. But she’d been his armsman for several months. She’d not been shy, then. She’d wrestled with him often—and won often. She’d defended herself against two soldiers at the pass in the Graytooth Mountains, and killed one of them. She’d killed a Fithian assassin.

And she’d been Justen when Harkeld had broken the armsman’s jaw. And Justen in King Magnas’s castle, when he’d believed the armsman guilty of rape and nearly killed him.

Harkeld lowered the belt. He remembered cornering Justen in the stairwell, remembered squeezing the armsman’s throat between his hands.
I almost murdered her
. His stomach turned over on itself, a queasy, curdling sensation.

“Er... Flin? Are you all right?”

He glanced at Adel. The water mage was watching him, his head slightly ducked. Adel was the same age as Petrus and Justen, ready to take his oath as a Sentinel, but he looked years younger, an adolescent yet to grow comfortable in his body.
A Fithian would kill you in half a second
. Harkeld forced a smile to his lips. “Fine.”

He moved on, to a stall selling meat pies. Adel followed. The water mage reminded Harkeld of a half-grown puppy, hands and feet too big, clumsy in his movements, eager to please.

Harkeld bought pies for himself and Adel, then stepped into a quiet space between two stalls. “Want one?” he asked the barrel-chested black dog that was Serril. Shapeshifters weren’t allowed to eat when in animal form—it was one of their Primary Laws—but Sentinels were allowed to break those Laws if necessary, and Serril had to be hungry.

The dog shook its head.

Harkeld shrugged and bit into his pie. He ate quickly, scanning the crowd while he chewed. The pastry was tough, the meat dry, but his stomach stopped growling. His gaze skipped over faces, ignoring the women, examining the men. Were any of them Fithian assassins?
If I was an assassin, this is the kind of town I’d be in
. A border settlement, a place that people and information flowed through. All headed in one direction, now: into Roubos. Anyone crossing into Sault would stand out.
And if the Fithians have even one agent here, every assassin in the Seven Kingdoms will soon know where I am
.

When he’d finished the pie, Harkeld moved further into the market square. He ignored Adel trailing diffidently behind him, and kept his awareness on Petrus and Justen—overhead—on Serril—trotting nearby, ears pricked—on Innis—half a dozen stalls away.

In the dreams, he’d had sex with Innis; in real life, he’d barely spoken to her.
Except when she was Justen, when we were friends
.

He watched Innis examine a fur cloak, watched her scan the crowd. She didn’t know Petrus had told him about the dreams; her awareness of him would be different, if she knew. Conflicting emotions fought in his chest. He missed her, curse it. Missed the dreams. Missed talking with her. Missed the contentment of holding her in his arms, and yes, missed the sex. But mixed with the longing was a resentment edging towards anger that she’d pretended to be Justen, that she’d lied to him for months, that she hadn’t told him the truth about the dreams.
She told Rand and Petrus, but not me!
And overriding those emotions, was an anxious protectiveness. Innis shouldn’t be here. It was too dangerous. She was too young. She should go back to the Allied Kingdoms, where mages weren’t reviled and killed. Where there was no curse.

Something nipped his calf.

“Ouch.” Harkeld bent and rubbed his leg. He frowned at the black dog.

Serril wasn’t looking at him. His gaze was fixed on something on the other side of the market square. He growled, his hackles rising.

The hairs on Harkeld’s scalp stood on end. He slowly straightened, his hand on his sword. He followed Serril’s gaze. A man stood beside a cartload of iron pots. Amid the clamor of the market his demeanor was calm and watchful, alert. He leaned against the cart, but his hand wasn’t far from his sword hilt. His physique was lean, his hair clipped short, his jaw clean-shaven.

His gaze was on Innis.

Harkeld tensed. “Fithian?”

The dog gave a curt nod.

Harkeld’s protectiveness surged into something close to panic. Innis didn’t look like the other women in the marketplace. It wasn’t her garb—the refugees wore a miscellany of clothes; some of them dressed in men’s trews, like Innis, and a few even had swords strapped at their waists. But none of those women carried their swords with ease, as if they knew how to use them. And none of them moved the way Innis did. She lacked the edgy desperation, the fear. She was like the Fithian: calm, watchful, alert. And the man had noticed.

“Does she know?” He pushed through the crowd towards Innis.

The dog nipped his calf again, almost drawing blood.

“Stop that,” Harkeld said, and elbowed his way past a stocky farmer.

The dog sank its teeth into his trews, halting him.