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Last night they had crossed a river in the dark, and Donella was afraid it might have been the Bewerian. That would mean she was in Sahasra Deva now. And yet the trees were all the same, and the misty hills, and the long banks of dark ferns and rhododendrons. She could have been anywhere in the vast Bridweld Forest, for all she knew.
She tried asking the bandit captain where she was, but he gave her sarcastic and evasive answers, like, “We’re right where I want to be.” He called himself “Captain Sir Henry Trilling,” and he claimed to be a knight of some vague and unspecified noble lineage. He was a marvelously smooth talker, but Donella noticed his accent changed radically, from cultured to oafish, depending on whether he was speaking to her or to his men.
She was still “Sir Donald Graham” to them, still wearing her brother’s old clothes. The supple leather trousers and tunic were crusted with mud and dust from the road, and they stank like a farmyard, but in her experience, that wasn’t unusual for young men’s clothes. Hopefully the bandits would leave her alone. She shuddered to think what they would do if they found out she was a woman. Let alone if they found out she was a Gramiren princess.
Unfortunately, some of the bandits—loud, uncouth, and unlettered as they were—could put two and two together. The morning after they’d crossed the river, one of them grinned at her over breakfast and noted that she always insisted on going behind a bush to relieve herself.
“I wondered why,” he said. “So I followed you. And you squat. You always squat.”
“Your food disagrees with me,” she said, putting her hands on her hips and scowling at the man the way she imagined Sir Donald might. “Perhaps if you learned how to cook, I wouldn’t have the trots constantly.”
The rest of the men laughed, and she thought she had bought herself some time. But later that day, when they halted for lunch, Sir Henry took her aside, down into a lonely, shaded gully full of violets and giant green-and-white-striped hostas. It was an alarmingly quiet spot, and the noise of the men in camp faded as they stopped by a trickling little stream.
“You’re a girl, aren’t you?” he said.
She tried to deny it, but then he came closer, arms crossed, glowering at her. They were the same height, but at that moment, it was painfully obvious how much larger and stronger he was. Something in her mind snapped, and she turned and ran, slipping and sliding in the dense carpet of leaves and pine needles.
After only a few seconds, he tackled her, and they went skidding down the gully, ending up in a sticky puddle of black mud and moss. She punched him, but he grabbed her arm. Slowly and inexorably, he forced her around, twisting her painfully, until he was on top, and her hands were pinned.
“Will you fucking stop it?” he panted.
She tried to spit in his face, but the wet glob landed far short, on her own chest. “Are you going to rape me?”
“No. But hasn’t it occurred to you that we all know you’re a girl?”
She glared at him. “Well, since your men follow me into the woods to watch me urinate, it wouldn’t surprise me. You’re no true knight, ‘Sir Henry.’”
“I’m as much of a knight as you are, ‘Sir Donald,’” he said with a smirk. Very slowly, he stood up again. “Please don’t try to run.” Then he held out a hand and pulled her to her feet.
She looked around at the sodden forest floor, and the stands of azaleas, and the huge black trunks of the giant cedars. She could run, of course. Her brother had taught her the basic rules of surviving in the wild, and one of them was, “Go downstream to find civilization.” She could follow this little creek until it emptied into...what, exactly? She had no idea where she was, and what sort of town she might expect to find. She hardly even knew how to say “hello” in Sahasran. How could she ever get away?
“The men went through your saddlebags, you know. You’ve got interesting taste in literature.”
Oh, Earstien. The Sahasran sex manual. “It was, um...a gift from someone.”
“Nice gift.” He walked to one side of her, then around to the other side, giving her an uncomfortably appraising look. “There’s something else the men are saying about you.”
“Oh?” She could feel his gaze traveling up and down her body. It made her want to take a bath.
“We’ve got a few men from Formacaster here, men who’ve been chased out of their homes by the Gramirens. One of them said you look an awful lot like the queen.”
Her heart seemed to stop, and her chest tightened around her lungs. “It’s the nose, I imagine.”
“I disagreed with him at first,” Sir Henry continued. “But now that I’ve had a better look at you, I can’t stop seeing it. You look exactly like her. Well, like a younger version of her, anyway.”
“I...I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“How about you tell me who you really are?”
This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t actually be figuring it out, could he? “I’m just a girl from Severnshire,” she said, with a desperate attempt at confidence.
“Try again. And you might want to try really hard, because I’ve got a feeling you might be someone rather important. Someone the queen might be willing to pay a great deal of money to get back. But if you’re not, then the brothels are always looking for new girls. That’s the other option. I’ve already sent a few letters, and I’ve gotten some very promising offers for you.”
“I thought you weren’t going to let me be raped!”
“And I’m not,” he said. “Neither my men nor I shall lay a finger on you. I have my pride. But on the other hand, I also have my debts, and there are plenty of men who would pay good money to pretend they’re fucking the queen.”
There didn’t seem to be anything else she could do. She had to tell the truth. “I’m Donella Gramiren,” she said. “I’m the queen’s daughter.”
He took her back to the camp, grinning all the while like he’d found a bag of gold in the path, which in a way, he had. It was only later, when she was back in the saddle and they were riding away again, that she realized she could have claimed to be one of her cousins—maybe one of Uncle Lukas’s natural children. He certainly had enough of them. It would have been the easiest thing in the world.
Unfortunately, it was too late now, and in any case, what good would it really have done? Just prolonged the inevitable. Now the bandits would write to her parents, and negotiations would start, and sooner or later, she’d be back at Wealdan Castle to face her mother’s wrath. She almost wished the bandits had killed her.
Things looked bad, but somehow the next morning before breakfast, they managed to take an even more terrifying turn. She was lying on the ground, under a thin blanket with her saddlebags for pillows, when she heard the sentries call out a challenge to someone. And then there were running footsteps, and someone crying, “Wait, you can’t...,” followed by a flash of light.
She rolled over, rubbing her eyes, and saw men struggling to their feet all around and reaching for their weapons. One of the sentries sprinted into the clearing, nursing his head and grimacing like he had been smacked.
Running up to Henry, he said, “Sir, I tried to tell them to wait, but...um, they went right past me.”
The bandit leader got up in time to greet two riders on big gray horses. One was tall and blond—a Krigadamite man, maybe. The other was a small Sahasran woman who smiled around at them all like she had just arrived at a garden party.
“Who are you?” Henry demanded, drawing his sword.
The woman held up her hand. There was another blinding flash of light, and the bandit captain dropped his weapon, howling in pain. Everyone else, including Donella, gasped and took a step back. That had clearly been magy.
“Oh, stop whining,” said the woman. “I didn’t even hurt you that badly. I received your message, Sir Henry, and I had to come see this new captive of yours for myself.”
“I didn’t send you any message,” said Henry. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“You might say you’ve been working for me,” she said, grinning, “even though you didn’t know it. I read all your messages. Now where is this girl you think might be worth so much money?”
Henry didn’t have to say anything. All eyes in the camp turned to Donella, and the Sahasran woman jumped down from her horse and walked over. “Yes, you really do look like her, don’t you?” she said.
“She’s the princess,” said Sir Henry. “She admitted it. You can have her for ten Sovereigns.”
The Sahasran woman held up a hand, and a little ball of blue flame danced and spun over her fingertips. “Would you like to see my counteroffer?”
“Five Sovereigns, then,” said Henry stubbornly.
“You’ll get one Sovereign, and you’ll like it,” said the big blond man.
He dug into his saddlebag, pulled out a fat gold coin, and flipped it to the bandit leader. Henry caught it, but the moment he did, he was yanked to the ground, as if ropes were pulling him down.
“If you’re smart,” the blond man went on, “you’ll keep quiet about this. The fewer people know, the better.”
“Fine!” gasped Henry, struggling against the invisible bonds. “Fine! Take her and go!”
The blond man snapped his fingers, and Henry stood up, swearing under his breath.
The Sahasran woman took Donella gently by the arm. “Come now, dear. You needn’t worry about them anymore.”
Donella went along, and the bandits rushed to bring over her horse and her saddlebags. On the one hand, she wasn’t exactly sorry to leave these men. But on the other hand, these strange foreign hillichmagnars—which is what they must be—were pretty terrifying in their own right. She had a bad feeling that going with them would be a terrible mistake. But what else could she possibly do?
Less than a minute later, she rode out of the camp with the woman on her left and the man on her right. Like they were guarding her.
“Imagine the nerve of those fellows,” grumbled the man. “Ten Sovereigns? They must have thought we were idiots.”
“I was going to bargain them down to two shillings,” said the woman. “But then I used to work in a market, and I don’t mind haggling.” She turned to Donella. “I suppose introductions are in order. We know who you are, of course. I’m Pallavi. My friend here is Vikker.”
“Are you going to let me go?” asked Donella. It was best to know for sure.
“Sorry, dear, but no,” said the woman, with a genuinely apologetic look. “Henry was quite right—you are worth a lot. And in fact, you’re worth a good deal more to me and my colleagues than you’re worth to people like Henry. But chin up. At least you’ll be getting decent food and a warm bed now.”