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So the Duke of Leornian was building another army just up the river. Colonel Rath’s scouts should really have known that, but William knew the fault was at least partly his, as well. These trips to the market should have turned up some sort of hint of the new encampment. Unless his sources were lying to him deliberately. That was a sobering thought. Perhaps it had been a mistake to start paying for information. People started telling you what they thought you wanted to hear, and then you were wasting your money.
Not even an hour after Baron Broderick had told him the news, William prowled the Ealdmund docks, looking for fishermen and boatmen who had been up the Trahern in the direction of the Summer Palace. New sources—not the same fellows he talked to all the time. His eyes slid from one weathered, tanned face to the next, skipping over the dockside girls in their patched dresses, slouching in the alleyways.
One of the girls waved at him, though, and when he gave her a second look, he realized he knew her, and she certainly wasn’t one of the locals.
“I had to find a way of following you down here,” said Lily Serrana, when he joined her. “Does the disguise suit me?”
“It’s hard to think of you without silk and jewels,” he said.
She laughed. “You’re too kind. I didn’t come down here fishing for compliments. At least not entirely. My friends are ready to get your family out of town, if your wife is willing to go.”
“What, right now?” William was rarely taken so completely aback. “You mean today?”
“Well, tomorrow morning. Did you still want to do it?”
William thought of the look in Baron Broderick’s eyes when they had last spoken. There was something cagey and mistrustful. It could be that his lordship was getting more paranoid in general, but it certainly felt as if he was specifically mistrustful of William now. The captain general was a patient man, but he wouldn’t tolerate repeated failures or consistent disloyalty.
“If he knew I was talking to this woman,” William thought, “then Gwen and Robby would be dead before sundown.” He didn’t have the slightest doubt that the baron would do it, if he could. He had ordered the death of an 8-year-old king. Why would he balk at two nobodies like William’s wife and son?
“Yes, I still want to do it,” he answered.
“Good. Make sure everything is ready to go. I’ll be at your house with the carriage at dawn.”
He didn’t go straight home, though. Old habits died hard, and he wanted to know as much as he could about this woman he was trusting his family’s lives to. So he went around the block, picked up her trail, and followed her through the city.
She went to the Immani legate’s residence, which was hardly a surprise, but she stayed there less than half an hour. Once she left, she went to the cathedral square, where she met up with a short, slim, dark-haired young man wearing a ridiculously large hat. Together they went to a nearby inn and took a room.
“A new lover?” thought William. “I wonder if the senator knows about this.” Strictly speaking, it was none of his business, but it couldn’t hurt to have a few secrets to trade, if Lily ever turned out to be untrustworthy.
The inn had a kind of loggia or veranda running around the inner courtyard, and William climbed up to it by a rickety old staircase for a quick look in Lily’s room.
He peeked in the window through a crack in the shutters to see the Immani woman locked in a passionate embrace with the young man. When they stepped apart, William heard the boy speak in a tearful, choking voice that was nonetheless strangely familiar.
“I know we can’t have forever,” he said. “But if we only have a few days, I want every one of those days to count.”
Then Lily started stripping the young man’s clothes off. Except it wasn’t a man at all. It was decidedly not a man. And when the hat fell away, William saw it was Princess Elwyn. He jumped back from the window and left as quickly as he could, face burning with unaccustomed embarrassment.
Now this was a real secret, a valuable secret. The kind of thing that people would pay tremendous amounts of money to keep safe or to uncover. Not that he had any personal, moral objections. If the princess found happiness with Lily, then good for her. It certainly explained her strange reluctance concerning her marriage. Young Broderick would be a good husband for almost any woman. But not for a woman who didn’t want a man at all. Even so, few people at court would take the news quite as calmly as he did.
He walked around the neighborhood for a while, trying to decide what to do. Eventually he realized this wasn’t really an urgent intelligence matter, and it could wait until tomorrow. Possibly until after he’d spoken to Lily about it. He went home after that, intending to help Gwen pack. But Gwen, ever resourceful, had been putting things away here and there, bit by bit, so their packing took only a few minutes.
She didn’t seem surprised at all that their day of departure had come so suddenly. “I figured it would be like this,” she said, curling up in his lap.
“You’re not sorry to leave, are you?” he asked. Now that the moment had arrived, he felt bad about it, like he had let them down. He had married her and brought her to Formacaster, and in the end, he hadn’t been able to protect her. Not without help, anyway.
“I’ll miss the Rowleys and the other neighbors. But no, I’m not really sorry.” She kissed him. “Do you know what I’ve been thinking of today?”
“I wouldn’t hazard a guess.”
“Our first night together.” She giggled. “Not our wedding night. I mean, that first time I stayed in your room.”
He’d gone back to Haydonshire from the war, four years earlier, with bits of Loshadnarodski arrows still in him and a nasty infection. The physicians had told him he ought to go home and settle his affairs. But Gwen, daughter of the knight who lived on the next estate, had taken his wounds as a personal challenge for some reason and had nursed him back to health. She’d even had the audacity to stay overnight in his sickroom, after which her father and older brother made it clear to William that they expected him to do the right thing, even though Gwen hadn’t done anything more intimate than change his bandages. And yet, the moment they told him that, he had realized he wouldn’t mind marrying her in the least.
He had asked her, and her response had been, “I was wondering when you’d get around to it.” She had actually wanted him, though he still found it hard to believe she did.
They checked to see that Robby was asleep, and then they locked the door and had wild, carefree sex, like they hadn’t had in months. William tried not to think about how long it might be until they could do it again. Gwen fell asleep with her head on his chest, and he lay awake for a long time, until his arm went numb, because he didn’t want to disturb her.
As promised, they found Lily at the forge at dawn, with the Immani legate’s carriage waiting in a side alley. That was smart—the fewer people who saw them ride off, the better. Lily was bright and cheerful, and had brought some sweets and a toy knight to keep Robby happy, which worked until the boy realized his father wasn’t coming with them. He started bawling, and Gwen, who had been pretending to be calm, started crying, too. Lily then produced a bottle of fortified wine, which settled everyone down a bit, including Robby, who got his wine in a small tumbler mixed with cream.
William kissed his son, and then his wife, and then they set off. When he saw the carriage turn the corner, he realized he’d forgotten to confront Lily about her affair with the princess. But that was probably just as well. Best not to antagonize the woman as she took his family off to Earstien only knew where.
He left a note for Hazel Rowley, telling her Gwen and Robby were going to visit family for a while, and then he walked back up to the castle, feeling melancholy and more than a little dazed. It had happened so fast, but now it was over, and all he could do was hope Lily was as good as her word. Not seeing them every evening would be a terrible loss. But it was also a tremendous relief to think they were safe now. He could do his duty for Baron Broderick without worrying what sort of vengeance might come down on their heads.
Up at the castle, his first stop was the captain general’s office at the barracks, where he found Broderick poring over a guest list for his son’s wedding.
“Let me tell you, the sooner this is over and done with, the better,” he said to William.
On the far wall, there was a seating chart for the wedding feast, and William’s eyes were drawn to the two largest names, right in the middle of the high table: Young Broderick and Princess Elwyn. He thought of the scandalous secret he had learned about the girl, and he wondered if now would be the appropriate time to mention it.
He cleared his throat several times. “Um...my lord, have you considered that this marriage might not be entirely...wise?”
Broderick looked up with a quizzical expression. “What on earth are you talking about, William?”
“Have you thought that perhaps...your son and the princess might not be well-suited for each other?”
“Well-suited? What do you mean by that?”
He opened his mouth to say it, and then stopped himself. It was really none of his business, and none of the captain general’s business, either. The bride and groom were going to have to work that sort of thing out for themselves. “Uh, nothing sir,” he stammered. “I mean they have...different temperaments.”
Baron Broderick laughed so hard he started crying. “Oh, William. I had no idea you were such a romantic. You really need to stop judging everyone’s marriage by the standard of your own.”