Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf 1)

“He’s having one of his parties at the Stein and Flagon tonight. Find one of the captains—?they’ll retrieve him.”

Nathaniel was already sprinting away when Zan took me by the arm. “Come on.”

We were closer to the second gate than I imagined. Two quick turns and we were out among a gathering crowd. Zan and I found a place to stand along the edge of the road next to a line of thorny hedges, waiting like spectators at a spring parade.

This road was a main highway, an unbroken stretch that began beneath this gate and ran to the steps at the castle entrance. Lights had begun to go on in the windows above me, and it wasn’t long before people were pouring from their houses to see what the noise was about.

Beneath the gate, which bore the marble likenesses of three towering women, the portcullis was raised, and three figures, quite small in the distance, stepped forward onto the border, all holding one of Simon’s stolen invitations ahead of them.

It went much faster for them than it seemed to have gone for me. A red flash that turned to blue and then disappeared, and they were all inside, panting and heaving but otherwise no worse for wear. I strained to get a better look at the last little figure on the left, his hair shining like burnished gold.

I was overcome with anxious fear. Was Conrad all right? Was he hurt? Did the passage across the wall make him sick? Was he scared?

Two horses carrying men in formal guards’ uniforms came thundering down the road from the castle, and the crowd split to receive them. “Good,” Zan said under his breath, “Nathaniel got to the captain in time.” I stared at him for a second—?in my worry about Conrad, I’d almost forgotten he was there.

When the riders reached the gate, the tolling bell stopped its mournful call and an expectant hush settled across the uneasy city.

The two guards, having spoken to the gatekeeper, turned and reined their horses into an escort position as the three travelers remounted their own horses, the man on one and the girl and child on the other. All of them were bedraggled and stained with the marks of hard travel.

“Make way!” the castle riders called. “Make way for the princess of Renalt!”

I shuddered, feeling suddenly vulnerable, exposed. Lisette, Toris, and Conrad and their castle escorts were coming fast now, the beat of their horses’ hooves resounding on Achlev’s ancient cobblestone. They couldn’t learn that I was here. Toris would kill me if he saw me; I was certain of it.

With mere seconds to go before they thundered past, I yanked Zan behind the hedge and threw myself into his arms, using him like a shield so that even if the branches did not hide me, his body would.

Zan stared down at me in astonished alarm as I huddled against him, using the pinpricks of blood I could feel beading up from bramble scratches to cast a feverish spell. “We are not here, we are unseen . . .”

Despite the thorns and the awkwardness of being so intimately clasped in a strange girl’s arms, Zan did not attempt to disentangle himself from me until the riders were long out of sight. Slowly, I regained enough of my sense to lift my wary gaze to his. My spell waned to a whisper and died on my lips as he searched my face with a new awareness, confounded and cautious, as if I’d transformed from damsel to dragon in front of his eyes.

Zan asked quietly, “Anything you want to tell me now?”

“Yes,” I answered, surprising us both.

Then, in sudden panic, I gave him a swift kick to the shin and a hard shove from the hedge and tore out the other way, too fast for him to follow.

13

I didn’t sleep much that night or the next. I did drift off for a few hours on the back stoop of a tavern but was woken up by a bucketful of frigid water when the proprietor discovered me. “No place for your sort here,” he said, spitting a mouthful of tobacco juice at my feet. “This is a respectable establishment.”

I slogged the roads of Achlev, waiting for my clothes to dry—?wishing I’d taken Zan’s money and hating myself for it—?and felt my hopes diminishing. I’d vowed to bring Toris down and rescue my brother, but now that I was lost in this mazelike city, I wondered if such a thing was even possible. I was helpless, without even the most basic tools for survival: food and shelter. I couldn’t gain those without money, and the only way to get money was to earn it or steal it. My first attempt at picking a pocket, however, won me only a welt across my back from an old woman’s cane. I quickly abandoned all ideas about a life of thievery and decided to look for work.

The problem was, I had no skill with which I could acquire employment. I could not sew or cook or clean or serve. I slowed down in front of a brothel or two, considering the possibilities, but even there I had no experience to speak of and little to recommend me, as I was over-endowed in angles and under-endowed in curves. Ultimately I decided against it, but I did wonder how long I’d have to sleep in the streets before I found myself on the brothel doorstep again, and what was the likelihood of finding patrons who were really into elbows and knees? I was still looking back at one when I stumbled into something that gave a small squeak.

“Watch it, lady!” a little girl cried, and I realized I was being glared at by three children holding hands, forming a protective ring around three round stones. Another little boy was sitting gleefully on one of the stones, having broken through their circle to claim it. The children scrambled to get to the other two, but one girl was left standing and pouting.

“Not fair,” one of the girls said to the boy. “You didn’t break our wall. She did.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your game.”

“Doesn’t matter how the wall gets broken,” the boy said. “You’re still it.”

The children reassembled themselves into a new ring as I moved past them. Their singsong chant followed me to the edge of the square.

It begins with three dead white ponies,

Then a maid, a mother, a crone,

Then upon a bed of red rosies,