Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf 1)

The guards were only a few camps away now. Darwyn ushered us into the stable. “Ray has a little hidey-hole in there,” he said. “He didn’t think no one knew about it, but I did. After Ray was gone, Empyrea keep ’im, I moved all my good stuff into it. Just in time, too. When my ol’ lady Erdie left me, she took everything she could get ’er filthy scheming hands on. But I was one step ahead.” He grinned, pleased with himself, until he saw my flat expression and his smile disappeared. He moved aside a big pile of hay in the empty first stall, revealing a plank in the ground. He lifted it and motioned us over. “In here.”

Darwyn’s hidden “good stuff” was liquor in a surprising quantity; the hole was several feet deep and ran the length of the stable, but it was full to capacity with bottles of spirits. I climbed in the hole first, settling in between a jug of ale and some bottles of rum, then brought Conrad down to sit on my lap. The whole space left for us wasn’t more than four feet by four feet; it was a tight fit.

Conrad was trying to peer through the cracks to see what might be happening above, but I pulled him back, pressing a finger to my lips.

It was just a matter of moments before we heard the voices outside our hiding place. The words were muffled through the straw and the wood plank, but we could still make out the string of uncouth exclamations Darwyn was letting loose on the soldiers as they started throwing things around the camp. Then they opened the stall door.

Darwyn said, “There’s nothing in there but straw. See for yourself if you like.”

We jumped as the man began stabbing his sword into the hay, shaking dirt down into our eyes with each jab.

“See?” Darwyn said. “Nothin’. And I don’t suppose the lot of ye are planning to pay for all the damage you’ve done?”

A guard’s voice answered gruffly, “Out of our way, old man. Men! Next camp!”

We stayed down in that hole most of the night, long after it might have been safe to emerge.

When we finally swung the trapdoor open, the movement dislodged a bundle of documents that had been tucked between one of the boards: Thackery’s invitations for crossing the wall, written in Zan’s own hand. I gathered them up and stowed them inside my mostly empty satchel, next to the bloodcloth. From the corner of my eye, however, I saw something glint in the space behind where the invitations had been stashed. I pushed my fingers between the boards and came back with something incredible: the topaz gryphon I’d given to Thackery that first night in Achleva. I clutched it, thanking Thackery and the Empyrea for returning it to me.

Darwyn was pounding on the stable door. “Best be coming out now, girl. Someone’s here for you.”

I put Conrad behind me and readied my knife. If I couldn’t get close enough for a good shot at whoever it was waiting outside the stable, I’d use magic. I’d get us out of here, one way or another. I’d burn and pillage and destroy anything or anybody that stood in my way.

I kicked open the door. Then, stunned, I said, “Nathaniel?”

“Emilie, it is you! I heard the guards looking . . . I thought it might be, but I had to be sure . . .”

Darwyn’s hands were up; Nathaniel had his neck in the crook of his arm, poised to give it a quick twist if the man put up a fight. Grumpily, Darwyn said, “Of course you two would know each other.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, putting my knife away. “Where’s Ella?”

Nathaniel nodded to a bundle of blankets close by, where Ella was staring wide-eyed up at the gibbet where Gilroy’s ghost seemed to be playing a game with her. He would peer out, wiggle his fingers until she gurgled at him, pull back for a moment, then peek out again. “I was at

another camp, procuring horses for us, when they got Zan. There are guards everywhere, watching everything, so I haven’t been able to get back into the city to find him. And then I heard some talk about a girl who appeared out of thin air outside the wall after the gates closed, and she matched your description, so I followed your tracks here . . .” He paused. “Is that Prince Conrad? Emilie, did you kidnap Prince Conrad?”

“No, of course not! He’s my—?”

“I’m her brother,” Conrad supplied, peeking out from behind my skirt.

Nathaniel gaped.

“Too tight,” Darwyn said in a strangled voice. “Too tight!”

“Oh,” Nathaniel said, sheepishly releasing him from the headlock. “Sorry.”

“Bunch of stars-forsaken loons,” Darwyn muttered, rubbing his sore neck. “The whole lot of ye.”

* * *

Despite Darwyn’s fierce objections at being made to leave, Nathaniel secured a place for him in one of the refugee trains heading out. He carried as many bottles of his booze as he could fit into his bag and grumbled ferociously at having to leave the rest behind, but he went. Nathaniel gave him a coin for his trouble. He was kinder than I would have been; Darwyn did help us, true, but only because he feared for his extremities. In my opinion, keeping all his parts attached should have been payment enough.

Nathaniel knew of a good place to camp a couple of miles south of the wall, by the River Sentis. With the roads now overwhelmed by travelers, his options had dwindled. His plan was to bypass most of the slow caravans by cutting through the Ebonwilde and meeting the road again several leagues past the junctions from Achlev to Ingram, Castillion, and Achebe.

“Maybe by then,” he said, one hand on the reins, the other cradling Ella’s sling, “many will have split off to head toward Castillion and Achebe, or Aylward farther west, and the road will be clearer.” He looked at Conrad, sitting in the front of the saddle on the horse that had been meant for Zan, dozing against my chest. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to make sure Conrad is secure, and then I’m going back for Zan.” The sound of his name left my stomach in a twist. “I’m going to get him out. Once that’s done, I can worry about everything else.”

Nathaniel was staring a little. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I still can’t quite comprehend that you’re the Renaltan princess.”