“I’ll meet you at the Bonnie Blues tonight,” she promised as she walked him to the front entry. A few curious glances were cast their way, but she ignored them and no one said anything. “Just remember to be there to meet me,” she added.
She ushered him back through the gates and went up to her room to wait for nightfall.
It was all very exciting.
She managed to put up a good front through dinner, even pretending that she would think more about going off to Libiris—(as if!)—and would take her father at his word that there would be no more encounters with the marriage-minded Laphroig. She had more faith in him on this one. But she was fifteen years old, and no fifteen-year-old ever took the word of a parent at face value and without reservations. It wasn’t that parents were deliberately duplicitous—although sometimes they clearly were—but rather that they tended to forget their promises or to find a way to misconstrue their parameters. Whenever that happened, it somehow always ended up the child’s fault. Given where things stood in her life, Mistaya was having no part of that.
But she talked and smiled and laughed and pretty much acted the way she knew they wanted her to act and didn’t let her anxiety over managing a clean break interfere with their meal. She loved her parents, after all, and she knew they wanted only the best for her. Mostly, they delivered. But in this case they were going to have to start over and find a better route.
When dinner was finished, she excused herself on the pretext of wanting to do some reading and retired to her bedchamber. There she sat down to wait, biding her time until the castle stilled and her parents retired. They always followed the same procedure, looking in on her before going off to bed, so she couldn’t try to leave before then. Because she had slipped them a sleep-inducing potion in their ale at dinner, they were likely to check in on her much sooner than usual. So she sat patiently, and before long there was a knock at her door.
“Mistaya?”
“Yes, Mother?”
“Your father and I are going to bed now. But you and I will have a talk in the morning about what’s happening. Your father means well, but he is impetuous and sometimes oversteps his parental boundaries. Sleep well.”
Mistaya listened to her footsteps recede, and as she did so she felt a pang of regret over what she intended to do. She had committed herself, though, and there was no guarantee that her mother could help her in this business, no matter how well intended she was. Better that she go to her grandfather’s and bargain from a position of relative strength.
She gave it another ten minutes, then pulled on her cloak and went out the door.
It was dark and silent in the hallway, and she slipped down its length on cat’s paws, little more than a passing shadow faintly outlined by clouded moonlight against the wall. She didn’t have far to go, so she took her time, careful not to make a sound or do anything that would alert the watch. Once she was safely down the hallway and had reached the hidden passage, they were unlikely to find her no matter how hard they looked.
She arrived at her destination without incident, triggered the lock in the panel that concealed the door, waited for it to slowly open, and stepped inside. From there, she went through the walls and down the stairs to the cellars, opened another hidden door in the stone-block walls, and followed a second passage to the outer walls and the door hidden there that opened to the outside world. She knew all this because she had made a point of finding out. You never knew when you might need a way to slip out without being seen, and an obliging Questor Thews, not once suspecting her reasons for asking, had revealed it all to her some time back. She supposed this constituted some sort of betrayal of trust, but she didn’t have time to worry over it now.
Once outside the walls, she slipped around to where the old rowboat was anchored at the back docks, stepped in, and paddled her way across the moat to the far shore. It took hardly any time at all, and because the moon had slipped behind a bank of clouds, there was no light to betray her to the watch should they happen to look down from their towers.
Smiling with no small measure of self-satisfaction at how easily she had accomplished her goal, she prepared to set out for the stand of Bonnie Blues and Poggwydd. But first she decided to see if Haltwhistle was anywhere around. She called for him in a whisper, and almost immediately he appeared, standing right in front of her, short legs barely enough to keep his mottled brown body off the ground, long floppy ears faring little better, reptilian tail wagging gently.
“Good old Haltwhistle,” she greeted, and she kissed at him on the air.
Together they went looking for Poggwydd. They found him waiting in something of a grumpy mood, sitting with Mistaya’s sheet-wrapped travel bag clutched between his bony knees, a scowl on his wizened face. “Took your sweet time about getting out here, Princess,” he muttered.
“I had to be careful,” she pointed out. She reached for her bag, smiling. “Thank you for taking care of my clothes, Poggwydd.”
To her surprise, he put both arms around the bag and hugged it possessively. “Not so fast. I have a few questions first.”
She fought down a sudden surge of irritation. “What do you mean? What sort of questions?”
“The kind that require explanations. For instance, why do you need a compass, a map ring, a fairy stone, and a book of wizard spells to deliver a bunch of old clothes?”
Her jaw dropped. “Did you look through my things?”
“Answer my question.”
She was fuming now. “Precautions against trouble. I have to travel some distance to make the delivery. Will you give them to me please?”
He ignored her. “Traveling is required because whoever you are taking these clothes to cannot come to the castle to get them?”
“That’s partly it. Give me the bag, Poggwydd.”
If anything, his grip grew tighter. “Hmmm. You know, Princess, it’s dangerous traveling alone at night. I think I had better go with you.”
“I can do this by myself, thank you. Besides, I have Haltwhistle.”
“That’s right. You have the assistance of your weird little dog. Clearly, he is a better friend to you than I am.”
“What are you talking about?” she snapped.
“Well, you trust him enough to take him along, but not me. He probably knows the truth about what you’re doing, doesn’t he?”
Her mind was racing. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Then allow me to enlighten you. Maybe it slipped your mind, but you are running away.”
“I am not!” She tried to sound indignant. “If you don’t give me my bag right now, I really will stop being your friend!”
“Sneaking out of the castle at night, having me meet you with clothes and travel stuff you could have carried out by yourself, and then telling me you intend to go somewhere mysterious alone? Sounds like someone running away to me.”
She regretted ever thinking it a good idea to give her bag to this ferret-faced idiot. But it was too late for regrets. She had thought herself so clever, letting Poggwydd do the hauling. That way, she had reasoned, she wouldn’t be burdened with the extra weight and if caught could argue that she was just going for a walk.
“You better tell me the truth about this right now!” he insisted. “If you don’t, I’m going to start yelling.”
“All right, don’t do that!” She sighed, resigned to the inevitable. “My parents and I have had a disagreement. I am going to visit my grandfather for a while, and I don’t want them to know where I am. Okay?”
Poggwydd looked horrified. He leaped to his feet, arms waving. “You really are running away?”
“Not exactly. Just … taking a vacation.”