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Amira
“The coast is clear. Keep moving—ow!” Her foot caught on a loose cobblestone.
Daindreth barely caught her in time to keep from falling. Her shoulder jarred and she cursed that sorceress, the Kadra’han, Cromwell, and Vesha, too, for good measure.
After losing Thadred, they had searched the city, but found no sign of Thadred or the sorceress who had taken him. Amira and Daindreth tried to leave and went to several of the city gates to find extra patrols at each of them, just as Cromwell had said. The soldiers searched under hay wagons and through barrels of ale, though they never said just what they were looking for.
Cromwell had told them the truth about that, at least.
They waited until dusk and tried to go back to Cromwell’s house for more answers. But they had arrived to find the place surrounded by at least three Kadra’han.
Amira hadn’t gotten a good look at them, but she had been able to sense their magic and the telltale bands of ka around their necks. Whether Cromwell was bait or a captive, she couldn’t tell. She wasn’t even sure he was still alive.
The assassin and the archduke had retreated, but Amira had noticed after a few blocks that they were being followed. The Kadra’han had caught their scent.
They staggered around the bend in the street to find their horses tethered where they’d been left. Illuminated vaguely by the firelight from an upper-level window, Amira located her mare’s reins and unlashed them, her one good hand shaking as she did.
She didn’t have time to untie Thadred’s dappled gelding. They’d have to leave him lashed to the hitching line.
“Here.” Daindreth finished untying her horse.
“Get on your own horse. They’re closing!” At Amira’s back, she could sense the ka of the Kadra’han coming closer and closer.
One of them had clambered onto a roof and two of them came running down the alley. She’d lost track of the fourth.
“After you,” Daindreth grunted, grabbing her foot and shoving her up onto the horse’s back. Daindreth unlashed his own horse’s reins and was in the saddle in the bat of an eye. He spurred his horse in the opposite direction of their pursuers and Amira spurred her horse after him.
The Kadra’han came rushing at their backs and Amira coiled darkness around herself and her horse, hoping to obscure their view of Daindreth.
They careened through the darkened streets, outpacing their pursuers in moments. On foot, the Kadra’han stood no chance of catching them.
Amira felt the ripple of spells fill the air and panic rose in her chest. She didn’t know how to counter magic. She barely knew how to use her own.
Luckily, the spells at her back fell short and she was able to breathe easier.
It occurred to her that only three of the four Kadra’han had given chase. What had become of the fourth?
For that matter, what had become of Cromwell?
Amira wasn’t sure if she regretted the idea of that man meeting his end at the hands of a Kadra’han. But what about Livian and their two younger boys who were still at home?
The Kadra’han wouldn’t have a reason to hurt them, would they? The family hadn’t even witnessed what had happened, but...
Daindreth led them through a narrow city square still littered with the debris of the market earlier that day. A few scattered streetlamps illuminated the empty crates and wagons, the canvas tents and seller’s stalls that had been left bare for the night.
A wagon lay in their path and Daindreth spurred his horse toward it. His horse cleared the cart’s traces and Amira’s horse leapt after him.
Daindreth glanced over his shoulder and seeing her still close behind, veered toward the left and the direction of the warehouse district.
“No!” Amira shouted. “Right! Take a right!”
Without questioning, Daindreth obeyed. His horse pivoted toward the right and Amira’s horse followed easily. At this point, Amira was no longer sure how much she was steering her horse and how much her horse was simply trailing the chestnut mare in front of them.
They moved as fast as the dark and the damp cobblestones would allow. They reached the artisan and trade district, the street lined with signs for clothiers, farriers, blacksmiths, silversmiths, weavers, tanners, potters, coopers, cobblers, and more.
“Dain!” Amira called ahead. “Easy,” she said. “Slow down.”
Daindreth reined in his horse in front of them and she did the same. His chestnut slowed into a brisk walk before stopping. “Are you alright?” He swung his mare around. “Amira?”
“Fine,” she panted, grimacing at the pain in her shoulder. “Just fine.”
“Are you sure? They didn’t hit you?” Dain pulled his horse to a stop so that the animals were shoulder to shoulder, and he faced Amira from the saddle.
“No.” Amira shook her head. “You?”
“They weren’t trying to hit me.”
That much was true enough.
“Did we lose them?” He glanced past her, and one hand slid back to his sword.
“For now,” Amira agreed.
“How do you think they found us?”
Amira almost shrugged, but then the stiffness in her shoulder made her think better of it. “I doubt we were that hard to find. They probably figured we would go back to Cromwell. After a flare of magic like the one our friend Sairydwen made, at least one of them probably sensed it.” She glanced to her aching shoulder. The sling was crooked, and she would need to have Daindreth readjust it later.
How she hated being wounded. Even with her new accelerated healing, it would be a day or two before she could use her arm properly again.
“Do you think Cromwell will tell them where we’re going?” Daindreth asked.
There was no real question as to where the two were going. Thadred might be the bait in the trap, but no matter what the Istovari sorceresses had in store for them, they had to go. They couldn’t leave him, though the idea had occurred to Amira once or twice already.
It didn’t matter.
“Of course, he will,” Amira snapped. “With our luck, they’re all in league, somehow. The Istovari, the Kadra’han, Cromwell, and Vesha.” Yet even as she said it, Amira knew it wasn’t true.
There were at least two sides in this cold war. The Istovari and Vesha were each their own. Whether Cromwell and Hylendale were on one or the other or their own side was a whole other question.
Daindreth glanced behind them again. “To the forest to find the sorceress’s trail?”
Amira chewed her lip, thinking. Without their horses, they could have climbed out over the walls between patrols or slid out through a drainage culvert. But they needed to keep their horses and short of leading a frontal assault on a gate tower, she had few plans. They were fenced in as surely as pigs for market.
Amira thought for a moment, not sure what she planned to do. Cromwell’s words came back to her then. I will leave the collie gate open tonight.
She’d dismissed his words at the time as meaning an entrance to his house, but...collies? He didn’t have collies.
Her brow furrowed as she considered it more. Her father had often said the city walls were meant to keep the sheep safe from the wolves. It was a common enough saying.
“Collie gate,” Amira repeated softly.
Amira went still, looking to the palace. In the night, it was a large shadow illuminated here and there by points of light. It was nothing in comparison to the majesty of the Mynadra palace, but here it was a colossus that seemed ready to swallow the whole city.
“Amira?”
“Sheep farmers in the north sometimes build stone fences as high as a man’s shoulders to stable their flocks at night. To keep out the wolves.”
“Yes?” Daindreth glanced around them.
“But that can keep out their dogs, too, so most of them add a small door that can be opened to let the collies in and out.” Amira exhaled a long breath. “Cromwell is telling us we can still get out the city’s collie gate.”
“Meaning?”
Amira shook her head. “It could be another trap Cromwell has set for us.”
“The way I see it, Cromwell hasn’t trapped us so far.”
Amira shot him a glare. “He betrayed us to the sorceress. He got Thadred taken prisoner!”
“Yes,” Daindreth agreed, a hard edge entering his voice. “I haven’t forgotten, but he has helped us evade the Kadra’han. Whether he is our friend or our enemy, I don’t think he wants us captured by my mother’s agents any more than we do.”
Amira rubbed her forehead, smoothing the frown lines, wishing she could smooth her anger so easily.
“So, what does collie gate mean to you?” Daindreth asked.
“This way,” she said, turning her horse toward the eastern end of the city. She nudged her mare into a brisk walk. “There’s a postern near the palace. I used it when I needed to leave the city inconspicuously.”
Daindreth nudged his horse after hers, still keeping one hand on his sword. “Guarded?”
“Of course.”
“Used often?”
“Only a few late-night couriers and me. It was a safe way to leave the city when I was sent on my father’s errands.” Amira surveyed the quiet street ahead, sensing the ka of the people within the buildings and the cats, dogs, rats, and other small creatures that skittered in the dark. So far, no sign of their Kadra’han pursuers. “I used it the night I was sent to kill you.”
“Really?” Daindreth’s expression was hard to read in the dark.
“Yes.”
“Well then.” Daindreth straightened and squared his shoulders. “I’d say it’s a lucky gate. Wouldn’t you?”
Amira almost laughed at the ridiculousness of it all.
