She looked toward Norrine. The girl slept soundly in the corner of the carriage, wrapped in furs. She stirred and let out a whimper. Erika adjusted the fur around her shoulders. Yes. It had been worth it. This girl was a powder mage, kin in sorcery in a land where being a powder mage meant death unless you had the name of a great family to protect you. The thought of Santiole’s death sickened Erika. She hoped the mistress-at-arms would be pleased to see them reach safety at last.
“My lady!” Dominik called. “Riders on the road behind us! Coming fast!”
Erika put her head out the window and looked back down the road. There they were, at least a dozen of them on horseback, carrying torches and gaining ground fast.
Was it more Longdogs? Bandits? It could be anyone.
The pressure in Erika’s chest threatened to turn into full-blown panic. She was only a few hundred yards from the gates of Budwiel. She had come too far to fail now.
“Faster!”
Dominik whipped the horses into a gallop and the carriage jolted hard on the dirt roads.
“What’s the matter?” Norrine asked, wakened by the sudden jostling. Erika ignored her and stared at the gates of Budwiel, silently urging the carriage faster. A glance behind her said the riders were coming up too quickly. They would be on them just outside the city gates, which would find her still on Kez lands.
“Norrine,” she said. “When I tell you, you have to leap from the carriage.”
The girl’s eyes grew wide.
Erika went on, “Get into the ditch as fast as you can. It’s deep, it’ll conceal you from the torches. You mustn’t make a sound.”
Norrine nodded bravely.
“Dominik,” Erika called. “Stop the carriage.”
“Are you sure?”
“Now!”
Dominik reined the horses in quickly and Erika took Norrine by the hand. “Out to the left, go quickly.”
The girl opened the door and scrambled into the ditch without hesitation. Erika composed herself, wrapping the furs around her and easing back into her seat as if unconcerned. Within moments the sound of galloping hooves closed in and surrounded the carriage, and men’s voices shouted at Dominik.
The carriage door was yanked open and Erika stared into the eyes of Duke Nikslaus. Sorcerous fire danced upon the tips of his gloved fingers, casting half his face in shadows and causing Erika to shy back.
“My lord Nikslaus,” she asked, “is that you?”
The fire disappeared from his hands and the duke jerked the blanket away from Erika, then moved the pile of furs from the other corner. “Why did you run when you saw us?”
“My lord? You gave me a pit of a scare,” Erika said. “We thought we’d been set upon by bandits again.”
“Where is she?”
“Who?”
Nikslaus’ jaw flexed angrily, all hints of his cordial, graceful attitude gone. “You know bloody well who.”
“I don’t!” Erika’s heart pounded and she wrung her hands to keep them from trembling. “If you’re looking for Santiole, she was killed by bandits on the high pass, along with my grandfather’s man Tirel.” The panic came through in her voice and she urged herself toward tears, as a woman who might break into hysterics at any moment.
Blind obliviousness was her only weapon now.
The tightness in Nikslaus’ jaw disappeared slowly and he stepped out of the carriage, conferring with one of his men.
“You were set upon by bandits?” he asked when he returned.
“Yes! Five of the filthy bastards. They killed Tirel and wounded Dominik. Santiole killed two and I, one, before they retreated. Santiole died from her wounds.”
“You fought them?”
“I had to!” Erika said, forcing indignity into her voice. “We were fighting for our lives.”
Nikslaus seemed to consider this for a moment. “Three of my men are missing. They were on the same road as you.”
“Most likely ambushed by the same band of highwaymen that attacked us.” Erika took deep breaths, her hysterics only partially faked, and tried to gather herself.
“Bandits,” Nikslaus said flatly. “Like the bandits in your grandfather’s forest.” His tone indicated just how convenient he thought her story was.
Erika leaned forward, jutting out her chin. “The king needs to clean up his bloody roads,” she exclaimed. “You’ve lost, what is that, five of your men now? And both Santiole and Tirel have been with my family for decades. They’ll be impossible to replace.”
Nikslaus sniffed and retreated from the carriage once more. “Search the fields and ditches along the road,” she heard him say. “Question the driver.”
A voice answered him in a whisper, likely thinking Erika too frazzled to hear. “Shall we kill them both, my lord?”
“We’re a stone’s throw from Budwiel’s walls, you bloody idiot,” Nikslaus hissed back. “There will be a dozen witnesses.”
Questions were directed at Dominik but the old man played his part perfectly. Erika watched with no small amount of trepidation as Nikslaus’ men swept through the nearby fields with torches held high and leapt down into the ditches to search them by hand. She kept the pommel of her sword in a vice-like grip and wondered if she’d be quick enough to draw, killing Nikslaus before he could react with Privileged sorcery.
Nikslaus returned to her carriage about ten minutes later. He crawled inside and sat across from her, exactly where Norrine had been a quarter of an hour ago. His face was lit eerily by the light of a torch outside the window.
“You’ve not yet asked why we’re holding you here.” Nikslaus said calmly.
Erika felt a cold sweat break out on her brow. “I assumed you had a good reason. You are the king’s servant, after all.” Her voice trembled.
“Indeed. I am going to let you go now, but be warned, my lady. I will be watching you. And if you decide to play this game with me again, I will present your head to the king.” Blue fire sprouted from the fingers of Nikslaus’ runed gloves, dancing like candles in the wind. He drummed his fingers on the side of the carriage, leaving black burns.
“I don’t know what you are accusing me of.”
“I think you do.” Nikslaus climbed out of the carriage, leaving Erika alone with the sound of her own pounding heart.
The sound of hooves retreated, but Erika could see from her window that Nikslaus’ men were still searching the surrounding fields and up and down the road. Dominik, holding his wounded arm stiffly, appeared at the window. “My lady, are you all right?”
“You did well,” she answered with a nod. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure. We can’t risk….”
Erika said a silent prayer for Norrine. “I know. Take us inside the city.”
Norrine tumbled to the bottom of the deep ditch that ran alongside the road into Budwiel.
She was less than a dozen paces from where she’d left the carriage and was already coated in mud. The walls of the ditch blocked her vision of the road and the carriage and everything but the sky above and, further on, the torches of Budwiel’s main gate. But there was nowhere to hide. Water came up to her ankles and the walls were too steep for her to climb back out. The Longdogs wouldn’t be sloppy this time. Norrine remembered Santiole’s warning not to trust to luck after the Longdogs had failed to find her back at the Leora manor. Now Santiole was dead and Norrine wondered if she would soon join her.
She could hear hoofbeats and angry voices shouting.
They would find her, and they would kill her. Like they’d killed Phille. Like they’d killed Santiole.
Nothing to do but run, a hunted animal near the end of the chase.
She slipped and stumbled as she went, trying not to catch herself on the slick ditch walls so as not to leave any sign of her passage. By now they would have caught up to Erika’s carriage. They would be searching Erika, and they would then search along the road.
They were going to find her. It wasn’t a matter of ‘if,’ but ‘when.’ Budwiel’s gates seemed impossibly far away, looking up into the night, the flickering torches atop the wall taunting her. Norrine felt tears running down her face. Mud and water squelched in her boots and covered her from head to toe. The clothes Erika had given her.