I’m wearing a cloak and sitting beside Thorin while we drive a wagon full of hay bales toward Mosswell. Saeth and half the men who volunteered for this mission are sitting on the bales behind us. Tucked between the bales are weapons: the guards’ crossbows, half a dozen daggers, some axes, and one long bow that the rebels were able to steal from the night patrol weeks ago.
Weapons I hope we won’t have to use.
It’s earlier than I’d like, but Francis said that if we wanted to pretend to be a labor wagon returning workers from a day in the fields, we wouldn’t be doing that too late. So we’re going to strategically drop men along the way to stand as lookout while we first fetch Reed, then Sommer—and then hopefully Saeth’s family. I was surprised that the rebels were willing to agree to this small mission—but they seemed surprised that I was willing to go with them, so maybe we’re even.
But I couldn’t have sat in that little house for hours, wondering about the outcome.
I couldn’t ask them to risk their lives if I’m not willing to risk my own.
The wagon rattles along as a darkening gray sky spits rain down at us. The roads are crawling with citizens, but few people even glance our way. I’m tense under my cloak anyway. No one will recognize me as the king, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be stopped or questioned. It’s unlikely, but not impossible. Saeth still has bruising along the side of his face and a split in his lip from his fight last night. To the night patrol, it would look suspicious.
I should be worrying about everything we’re doing here. Once we approach Sommer and Reed, there’s a high possibility their homes are being watched—if they’re there at all. But if we succeed here, I’ll need a better plan of what to do next. A successful mission tonight won’t leave anyone content to sit idle. Victory breeds hope, and there’s precious little of that. I need to nurture it, not squash it.
But I’m not pondering all that, because I can’t stop thinking about that stupid list of dates in Quint’s little book.
What could it be? Why wouldn’t he tell me?
Instead of going back to sleep last night, I laid in bed and stared at the ceiling and wondered about it for an hour. If it were innocuous palace nonsense, like the dates when a tailor was to arrive or when the stationer requested a fresh supply of paper, there’d be no reason for him to keep from telling me. And none of those things would require adding a date to the list after our conversation.
Something to do with the revolt or the rebellion against the palace, then? My heart went cold when I considered that angle. But . . . I couldn’t make that work in my head. Quint is part of the revolution now. He was in danger from it before. If he were working against me somehow, there’d be absolutely no advantage to staying by my side. He could hand me over to Allisander Sallister and be done with it.
Besides, I can’t figure out why a list of dates with no other information would matter. What good is it? What could he possibly need it for?
Honestly, that’s why I should stop thinking about it.
But I can’t.
The night was so quiet, the light from the lantern spinning his red hair into gold.
Are we going to argue over semantics again, Quint?
If it pleases you.
He’s infuriating. I’m glad he remained behind.
Alone.
A little spike of fear pokes at my heart. He stood in the doorway, blocking Francis and the other men when they came after me with axes and hammers. I have half a dozen of those men with me now, but there are plenty left to harass Quint if they were so inclined.
To say nothing of the patrolmen who fought with Saeth last night.
They were miles away. Saeth said he crossed the stream a dozen times. They won’t be able to find his tracks or follow. Quint is safe. Surely.
He can sit in the house and write notes in his little book.
“Up here,” one of the men says, jarring me from my reverie. “Let me down by the bakery.”
Thorin nods and draws the horses to a slow walk, and the man leaps down from the wagon.
“Thank you kindly for the passage, gentlemen,” the man calls, all part of the act. “I can make it home from here.”
The others shout back to him cheerfully, but my tongue is tied up in knots. Beside me, Thorin clucks to the horses, and they trot on.
I glance at my guard. “They’re all so calm,” I say under my breath.
“They haven’t done anything yet.” He casts a look at me. “And no one wants them dead.”
I suppose that’s true.
Another two drop off the wagon by a bowyer’s narrow shop: a young man named Nook, who can’t be more than sixteen, and his father. Another man jumps down by a butcher’s stall that has dogs lounging on the bricks out front. They’ll all follow the wagon, but quietly. Secretly.
“You know the route?” I murmur to Thorin once most of the others have all dropped off the wagon. Now it’s just me, my guards, and Francis.
Thorin nods. “I know this part of the sector.”
I’m glad one of us does.
Rain falls harder, and the people on the street swear and try to duck under cover. I can’t decide if that’s better or worse. It’ll be harder for the men to surreptitiously follow us, that’s for sure.
A woman shouts out, “You there!”
I startle hard, but Thorin doesn’t even turn his head. The horses don’t slow.
“Just a washerwoman,” Saeth says at our back, but he draws his hood forward. We’re not close to his home yet—I don’t think, anyway—but I wonder if he’s worried about being recognized.
I don’t have the mettle for this. My leg still aches from the arrow I took through the thigh over a week ago.
The washerwoman calls out again. “I said, you there. With the wagon!”
Thorin sighs. “Whoa,” he says to the horses, drawing them to a stop.
“Are you crazy?” I whisper at him.
“It might look crazier to ignore her,” Francis says from behind us.
“Be on your way!” Thorin says to the woman, making his tone bored. “I have to deliver this to the Royal Sector and get back before dark.”
“I need some hay for my mules. Can I buy a few bales off you?”
“It’s prime alfalfa,” calls Saeth, his voice pitched lower. “Too rich for your mules.”
I don’t want to look down at her, but I need to relax into this role, or I will be the one who ends up ruining our plans. I spent years slipping out of the palace as a young man, and weeks doing it as the Fox. I can do it again.
She’s drawn close to our vehicle, and there’s less risk of her recognizing me, so I pull back my hood and peer at her in the rain. Mud has begun to collect between the cobblestones of the street, and her clothes are already sodden and clinging to her frame.
“These are already bought and paid for,” I say, and then I cough hard before I can stop myself.
She moves a step closer, and her voice drops to a whisper that’s hard to hear over the rain. “You’re sick. I have Moonflower to trade.”
That’s unexpected, and my eyes snap to hers. Somewhere behind me, Francis draws a sharp breath. I’ve hardly had a dose of medicine since leaving the palace, and I know doses run thin in the Wilds, so I haven’t dared to ask for more. A part of me wants to toss her a few bales right now, the mission be damned.
It’s only been a second, but the woman must sense an easy mark, because she moves even closer. “I have enough for three weeks. A month if you’re careful.”
A month! That would help a lot of people.
Francis shifts closer to me. I can sense his eagerness, too.
But a note in the woman’s voice is tugging at my awareness, and I study her, trying to figure out what it is. When I was a boy in the Wilds, hiding in plain sight with Corrick, it was rare that someone could trick me, but it’s been years and now I’m more used to the slick and polished manipulations of the consuls. My instincts are rusty and slow.
“I could meet you at the end of the row of shops,” she adds. “There’s a wheelbarrow there. No one would be the wiser.”
My heart keeps thrumming in my chest, but the woman is peering up at me expectantly, waiting for an answer. She puts a hand against the rail of the wagon, as if she could hold it in place through sheer force of will. Thorin is a statue beside me, waiting for an order.
“It’ll only take a minute,” Francis whispers. “We don’t need the hay.”
The woman shrugs. “You need to decide soon, though. If you won’t do it, I need to find someone who will.”
If I don’t do it, someone else will have a month’s worth of Moonflower.
My throat tickles, and I think of the way I could barely catch my breath when Francis first confronted me.
Here, King. Sit.
Oh, how I wish Corrick would return.
The sky is darkening overhead, and she’s right. I do need to decide soon.
But then the woman glances off to her left, and her eyes seem to lock on something. Someone.
When her gaze shifts back to me, in that moment, I know. Whatever this is . . . it’s not a genuine offer. Maybe she’s a lookout for the night patrol, hoping to trick someone into illegal dealings, or maybe she’s with a group of common thieves who wanted her to slow the wagon so they could steal what we have.
Either way, I look down at her and say, “No. Again, this alfalfa is due for the Royal Sector.” Then I snap at Thorin, “Go.”
He must hear the order in my tone, because he clucks to the horses, and the wagon lurches forward roughly enough that people in the road scatter and stare.
Francis grabs hold of my arm from behind. “It only would have taken a minute!” he growls, his tone low. “We don’t really need this hay!”
“If Moonflower were worth the price of animal feed, Kandala wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“But she had enough for a month!”
“She was working with someone. It was a trap.”
He glares at me in the rain. “You don’t know that.”
He’s right. I don’t know for sure. But I glare back at him. “If you want to try your luck with that woman, I’ll toss you off the back with some hay bales, and you can give our regards to the night patrol when she turns you in for smuggling. There’s a reason she targeted a wagon full of strangers. If she has a month’s worth of Moonflower, she could be selling it in small doses, not trading it for alfalfa.”
He blanches a little at that, then draws back.
I turn my head and look at Saeth. “She was with someone else. Stay sharp.”
He nods, but I’m the one who needs to stay sharp. We press on, leaving the village behind. The sky grows darker, the rain pouring down to drench us fully. Francis has moved back in the wagon to sulk along the railing, but he hasn’t said anything else about the woman or the Moonflower. I hope he’s not going to be a problem.
“Do you still see the others?” I murmur to Saeth. “Are they following?”
“I’ve spotted some of them,” he says.
“Do you think that woman was on to us?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t see how she could have been.”
And she’s far behind us now. The others who’ve followed should have spotted her, and they would have sent up an alarm.
“We’re close to Reed’s house?” I say.
Thorin nods. “Another ten minutes.”
It feels like an hour.
But eventually, the sky is pitch-black, and Saeth shoves a dagger through the wall of the wagon, making wood crack and splinter without causing any actual damage—though Thorin swears loudly and jerks the horses to a stop. Many of the houses out here are more widely spaced, with barns and small livestock pens, or large planted gardens. Some, however, are smaller and close together, with shared yards.
Saeth makes a show of jumping out of the wagon and examining the “broken” wagon wheel.
“Can it be fixed?” I say loudly.
“I’ll need some tools,” he says. “I don’t have any with me.” Saeth looks at Francis, then nods at one specific house. “Go see if anyone can help.”
The rebel scowls and climbs down from the wagon.
This was our plan, but I’m suddenly wary. What if Reed is also suspicious? Francis is clearly still resentful after what happened in the town square. What if he says something to put us all at risk?
I cast a glance behind us to see if there’s any chance we’ve been followed, but I can’t see anything in the rain and darkness. Shadows shift among the trees, and I don’t know if they’re our men or others. Even Saeth has moved away at some point, and is now invisible somewhere between the wagon and the houses.
Maybe we should have waited.
I think of Francis confronting me with an ax—or scowling in the back of the wagon. He wouldn’t have waited. If I didn’t give these men a mission, they would have come up with one on their own.
The door is open, and a figure stands in the doorway, but with the light behind them, there’s no way to see who it is. Light glints on a weapon near the wagon, and my heart pounds, but I realize it’s Saeth, ready for trouble. The low murmur of voices carries back to us through the rain, but I can’t make out much of what they’re saying. Francis must be convincing, however, because eventually the door closes, and the figure follows Francis out into the weather.
When they pass Saeth, he steps out of the shadows, and Reed must sense a threat, because he tries to whirl.
My guard stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “It’s Saeth. Keep walking. Head for the wagon.”
The shock on Reed’s face is visible in the shadows, but he keeps walking.
That shock doubles when he gets to the wagon and Thorin gives him a nod and murmurs, “Nice night, eh, Reed?”
The shock triples when I step down from the wagon to face him.
He inhales sharply, but before he can say exactly what I know he’s going to say, which could give us all away, I point at the wheel. “Take a look. Can you fix it?”
I’ve made my voice an order, and he looks at the wheel automatically, but I can see him trying to work out the implications of my presence here. Thorin is close, and Francis is hopefully near the back of the wagon, providing lookout as he promised.
“Down here,” I say, pointing. “It looks like a rock has broken the wheel. Crouch down for a better look.”
He obeys, and I follow. Almost immediately, he turns to look at me, and I shake my head.
“Keep your eyes on the wheel,” I say. “Look like you’re examining it.”
He nods and swallows. “Yes, Your—”
“No,” I say. “No titles.”
He nods again. “As you say. But there’s no damage.”
“I know. I need to talk to you. Thorin guessed my personal guards would be dismissed. We were worried you might be in the Hold. Are you being watched?”
“No, Your—No. For the first few days, I think we were. But there must be too many of us. They still come every morning to question whether we’ve seen you. They ask the neighbors, too.”
I glance under the wagon at the other houses. A curtain shifts in the window of one, and a shadow moves in the window of another. We need to be quick here.
“What else?” I ask him.
“They’ve promised a thousand silvers to the first guard to report your whereabouts.”
I let out a breath. That’s quite a sum. Far more than I would have guessed. A far larger reward than I ever would have offered, for anyone.
The consuls must be desperate to find me. I wonder if it’s proving harder to paint the king as a criminal if they don’t have me in a cell. A tiny flicker of hope burns in my heart.
“Is anyone tempted?” says Thorin.
“At first we all scoffed,” Reed says. “But—but much has happened. They’ve frozen our pay and our accounts. They’ve implied we were assisting the king, so a lot of the merchants won’t sell to us. Food has grown scarce. I’ve been scraping by, but it’s been more than a week. A few of the families aren’t doing well.”
I have to fight to keep my eyes on the wheel instead of looking at Saeth, but I know he heard that.
We’ll fetch your family, I think. I promise.
“We’re being watched from the houses,” says Thorin, and there’s an urgency in his tone that I cannot ignore. I glance back under the wagon just as another curtain shifts.
I look back at Reed. He’s young, and I haven’t known him as long as many of my other guards. It’s hard to put loyalty up against a thousand silvers if they’re being starved out of their homes. Right now he’s tense, biting back a shiver as rain threads his hair, his eyes fixed on the wheel.
My chest is tight, because he could refuse to join us, and there’d be absolutely nothing I could do about it—aside from kill him to keep our presence a secret.
“I didn’t do the things they’ve said,” I say to him. “I haven’t poisoned the people. This is another attempt to take the throne.”
He nods. “I know.” He glances at me before looking back at the wheel. “But Captain Huxley stripped our weapons on the first day you were gone. Some suspected—”
“Someone is coming out,” says Saeth.
“Advise me later,” I say to Reed in a rush. “We’re planning to retake the Royal Sector, but I need more people from inside the palace. Would you be willing to join us?”
His head snaps around. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
“You’re turning down a thousand silvers?”
He looks at me like I’m crazy. “I swore not to take bribes against the king. How is this any different?”
The relief that swells in my chest is so potent that I nearly can’t contain it. I clap him on the shoulder. “You have my gratitude, Reed.”
“We have to go,” says Thorin.
“Meet us in two hours,” I say to Reed. “There’s a small abandoned mill at the crossroads between Steel City and Artis. Can you get there?”
He nods briskly. “Yes.”
I keep my voice low. “Good. The wagon will slow, but not stop. Climb onto the back. Bring whatever weapons you have.” A man and woman have approached from one of the houses, so I don’t wait for an answer to any of this, I just raise my voice. “Thank you! We were worried we wouldn’t be able to make it back tonight, and there’d be hell to pay from the foreman.”
Reed looks back at me and nods. “I’m . . . glad I could help.”
Thorin and Saeth climb onto the wagon, and I follow, and Thorin says to the woman, “You’re lucky to have such a kind neighbor.”
The man grunts and says, “Not so lucky. He’s one of the ones who was working for that crooked king.”
“They’re going to hang him when they catch him,” says the woman. “As well they should, for what he did.”
“Poisoning us all,” says the man. He spits at Reed’s feet.
My hands have already formed fists, but Thorin cracks the whip, and we’re off.
