“Not sure,” Tavi said. “Thought I heard something.”
“I do not see how, Aleran,” said a voice from not a yard behind Tavi’s head. “Stones and fish hear better than you.”
Tavi spun, drawing the dagger from his belt. Max reacted even more swiftly, turning at the waist and sweeping an arm back in a blow of fury-born power.
Red lightning bathed the landscape for a pair of breaths, and Tavi saw Kitai smile as Max’s flailing arm missed her by perhaps half of an inch. She sat crouched atop the sacks of grain, the pale skin of her face all but glowing within her cloak’s hood. She wore the same ragged clothes Tavi had seen her in before, though her blindfold had been pulled down to hang loosely around her throat. Mercifully, she did not also wear the same odor.
“Blood and crows,” Max spat. The horses danced nervously, making the cart lurch, and he had to bring them under control. “Ambassador?”
“Kitai,” Tavi said, now understanding the odd, instinctive reaction he’d felt. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you,” she said, arching a brow. “Obviously.”
Tavi gave her a level look. Kitai smiled, leaned forward, and gave him a firm and deliberate kiss on the mouth. Tavi’s heart abruptly raced, and he felt short of breath. He didn’t really intend to reach up and grip the front of her cloak to pull her momentarily closer, but Kitai let out a pleased sound a moment later and slowly drew away. Tavi stared into her exotic, gorgeous eyes and tried to ignore the sudden flames of need that raged through his flesh.
“No justice in the world,” Max sighed. “Middle of the night, middle of crowbegotten nowhere, and you’re the one with a woman.” He drew the horses to a halt. “I’ll walk in from here. See you in the morning.”
Kitai let out a quiet, wicked laugh. “Your friend is wise.” Then her smile vanished. “But I have not come here for us to pleasure one another, Aleran.”
Tavi struggled to ignore the hunger that rose in the wake of the kiss and drew his thoughts into order. Kitai might be able to switch her thoughts gracefully from one trail to another, but Tavi didn’t share that talent-and though he could see the obvious concern in her expression, it took him a heartbeat or three to ask, “What’s happened?”
“Someone came to the camp,” Kitai told him. “He claimed to have a message for your Captain Cyril, but the guards on watch sent him away, to return in the morning. He told them it was important, to wake the captain, but they did not believe him and-”
“So?” Max interrupted. He looked at Tavi. “Happens all the time. Practically every messenger anyone sends thinks the world will end if he isn’t seen at once. A Legion captain needs to sleep, too. No one wants to be the one that gets him out of bed.”
Tavi frowned. “In peacetime,” he said quietly. “There’s a war on, Max. Captains need all the information they can get, and we’re practically blind out here. Cyril’s left standing orders for any messengers to be taken to him immediately.” Tavi frowned at Max. “So the question is, why wouldn’t they obey those orders?”
“There is more,” Kitai said. “When the messenger left, the guards set out after him, and-”
“What?” Tavi demanded, thoughts racing. “Max. Who is on duty at the gate tonight?”
“Erasmus’s century. Eighth spear, I think.”
“Bloody crows,” Tavi said, his voice grim. “They’re Kalarans. They’re going to kill him and intercept the message.”
Kitai snarled in frustration and clamped a pale, slender, strong hand over Tavi’s mouth and another over Max’s. “By the One, Aleran, will you shut your mouth for a single instant and let me finish?” She leaned forward, eyes almost glowing with intensity. “The messenger. It was Ehren.”
Chapter 26
“Wait,” Max said. “Ehren? Our Ehren?”
Before he had finished the sentence, Tavi had already leapt down from the wagon and unhooked one of the horses from its harness a heartbeat later. As he did, Kitai freed the other horse in the team. Tavi grasped the mane of the first horse and leapt up to its bare back, pulling hard against the weight of his armor with his arms as he did. Kitai flicked the long reins of the second horse at Max, then took Tavi’s outstretched hand and mounted behind him.
“Our Ehren,” Max said, heavily. “Right.” The big Antillan shook his head as he clambered down from the wagon, then hauled himself up onto the draft horse, who snorted and shook his head. “Stop complaining,” Max told him, and nodded at Tavi.
Tavi grinned and kicked his mount into a heavy-footed run. He could feel one of Kitai’s slender, fever-hot arms wrap around his waist. Tavi held on to the horse’s mane carefully. He had learned a good deal of riding in the capital, but very little of it had been done bareback, and he knew his limits. “Which gate was he at?” he asked Kitai.
“North side of the river, west side of the city,” Kitai called back.
Beside them, Max rode with the casual skill with which he did almost everything. Max, Tavi knew, had been riding since he could walk. “Did he know he was followed?”
“Ehren knew,” Tavi said firmly.
“So I’m Ehren,” Max said, “with an unknown number of unknowns following me. Where do I go?” Max frowned. “Wait. What the crows am I doing all the way out here in the first place? I thought Ehren got sent to Phrygia.”
“Did you notice that he packed those peppermints he kept around?” Tavi asked.
“Yes. I thought he liked peppermints.”
“No. He gets seasick.”
Max frowned. “But Phrygia’s thousands of miles from the sea and-oh.”
Tavi nodded. “I assume he was under orders to keep it secret, but I suspect he was sent out to the islands.”
Max grunted. “So, I’m Ehren, who is a sneaky little git like Tavi, in from the islands, followed by bad men who want to do bad things. Where do I go?”
“Somewhere that presents you more options,” Tavi called back. “Where you can deal with them appropriately and as discreetly as possible.” He paused for a moment, then he and Max said together, “The docks.”
They pressed on, Tavi in the lead. Dry red lightning lit their way in flickers of dim fire that only made the shadows deeper and more treacherous. Tavi could navigate by the furylights in the town and upon the Elinarch, but he could barely see what was five feet in front of him. Haste was necessary, but they would do Ehren no good if they all brained themselves on low branches or broke the legs of their mounts in potholes in the trail, and Tavi began to slow the pace.
“No,” Kitai said in his ear. The arm around his waist shifted, and she clasped the hand in which Tavi held the reins. She pulled his hand to the right, and the horse altered course, Max’s mount following suit. Lightning flashed, and Tavi saw the black maw of a sharp-edged pothole flash by, narrowly avoided.
Kitai leaned forward, and he felt her cheek against his as she smiled. “I will be your eyes, blind Aleran.”
Tavi felt his own mouth stretch into a grin to match hers, and he shouted to his mount, coaxing all the speed he could from the draft horse.
They entered the town through the eastern gate, shouting passwords to the legionares on duty there, thundering over the stone streets, the heavy steel-shod hooves of their horses striking sparks from the stone. The western gate of the town had been left unguarded and slightly ajar. As they approached, Max crafted a miniature cyclone that hammered it the rest of the way open, and they swept through, altering course to follow the city’s wall down to the riverside.
The town of Elinarch had been founded as little more than a standard Legion camp anchoring either end of the bridge. In the century since, its rising population had spread beyond the original walls, building homes and business around the wall’s outskirts and, especially, constructing extensive docking facilities for the river traffic that supported the town. The wooden wharves and piers had spread hundreds of yards upon either side of the original town’s boundaries on both banks of the river.