She relented, just a little. “Tomorrow, not today. We’ll start early so we won’t have to climb down them in the dark.”
“We can’t sleep here. This place is haunted—and you’re the cause. It is a dead city.”
Her eyes narrowed at my accusation and lowered from the side of the mountain until they found me—where they seized me as firmly as if she had wrapped her arms around my body and squeezed. “The Blue Woman, the local residents, the mages, and even the spirits have departed. Stata, the husk of a man who attacked us is also dead and turned to dust. The mages have all fled to other lands. There is nothing left here to fear unless we trip over a loose stone or brick.”
“The mage who used Stata’s body isn’t dead, only the husk is. He might come after us in another dead man’s body. Or woman. Or bear. And who knows what the Blue Woman’s spirit will do?”
She scowled but said nothing more. It became clear we were going to climb up there, no matter if I wished to or not. Her jaw was set, her lips were thin lines. I met her gaze. “We’d better find a place to spend the night, hopefully so far away you won’t wish to travel back here tomorrow.”
I turned Alexis with a jab of my knee and rode away at a fast gallop as if my words spurred her on instead of my heels digging into her belly. To our left, the dragon had knocked down the City Gate of Mercia that had stood at the edge of the raging white river. It had also knocked down the arched stone bridge beyond that had crossed the river. That left us no choice but to travel back along the old road following this side of the river, back to the Port of Mercia. The port city was located on the main branch of the river, inland a half-day’s sail from the salty ocean, like all great seaports. They were built on freshwater rivers because the ravenous salt-water worms ate the ship’s hulls. The worms didn’t survive in fresh water. Besides, fresh water also killed the weeds and barnacles that attached themselves to the hulls and slowed the ship’s speed.
Sleeping in the barren and rocky open, an area with no trees and few plants of any sort, that was exposed to the harsh, cold and wet winds that swept in off the sea didn’t appeal to me. Our choices were to travel all the way to the inland city of Andover, a large place filled with intrigue and enemies, or the nearer Port of Mercia. The port was a collection of small ramshackle collection of houses built with boards weathered as gray as the rocky land. It was occupied nightly by hundreds of rowdy sailors, loose women, crooked gambling houses, cheap taverns, dangerous bars, and other businesses that existed primarily to fleece the sailors of their wages and the ships of their profits. I liked it there.
While we had been in the Port of Mercia a day earlier, tracking down a couple of rogue mages who fled the city, there had been one little woman with untamed wild hair the color of a hot fire standing at the entrance of an inn. She had looked at me in a way that demanded my return. That was my wish, too.
However, my sister and Princess Elizabeth had recently taken to doing the opposite of anything and everything I suggested. But I knew Kendra had an aversion to sleeping on a single blanket in the damp and exposed landscape where the tallest bush rose only to my knees. It wouldn’t appeal to her. And even those nearby places that offered minimal shelter were few, so I slyly turned to her and said in a false resigned and defeated voice, “We might as well sleep out here on the bare rocks so we can get an early start up those stairs in the morning. It’s going to take us all day.”
She rode on in silence. But I knew she would soon contradict me and insist we sleep in the comfort of an inn at the port. Perhaps, without my obvious intervention, she could be convinced to stay at the one where that redheaded slip of a girl worked. The trick was to be patient and allow my sister to correct me and thus allow me to have my way.
Instead, she said, “Well, you know best, Damon. A bed and a hot meal at a warm, friendly inn sounded good to me, but if you insist, this is where we’ll stay.”
Damn. She had turned it back on me. My horse Alexis would have liked a bucket of grain to eat instead of the thorny plants we rode by, but my foolhardy attempt to outwit my sister had utterly failed, and now we’d both go hungry. Alexis turned her head to look at me with one accusing eye as if the horse understood what had just happened.
The reasons to remain nearby Mercia and the stairs for the night made good sense and going all the way back to town didn’t. The return ride in the morning would give us a later start on the stairs.
She said, just as slyly as my remark and without a hint of humor, “Too bad that little girl with the big smile and all that hair won’t have another chance to grab your attention. Oh, I’m sure you didn’t notice her when we rode through town, but she sure noticed you.”
“The one with the red hair?” I couldn’t keep the eagerness out of my voice and knew the instant her laughter sounded that she’d outwitted me again.
“That would be her,” Kendra laughed again, a merry tinkling of triumph as she spoke in a too-sad voice that was as phony as the voices in a puppet show. “Listen, we’ve been sleeping outside for what seems like weeks. I can do with a bath, soft pallet, and a bowl of hot food. Would you mind terribly if we return to the port and stay at an inn for just tonight? I know it’s a lot to ask, but please?”
I kept Alexis moving and proudly refused to turn and look at the grin that was surely plastered on my sister’s face. The port town came into view after a ride of silence, the low gray wood buildings almost the same color as the fog, and the gray river beyond. In denser fog, it would be invisible. Only the masts of a few ships stood above the roofs of the few two-story buildings. Most of them were only one story, clustered along one main street.
One of them had no stories. It had been destroyed by Kendra’s angry dragon the day before. Inside had been four people, all working in concert against the King of Dire, our king. They had planned to supplant him with a double to impersonate him, to switch places and while ruling he would appoint their friends and cohorts to important positions. They had used the dragon’s essence for the magic they turned against the king. When released, the dragon had taken out centuries of pent-up anger and frustrations on them, and on the building where they hid. When last seen, the pile of rubble that had been a large two-story building stood no higher than my thigh.
The dragon flew over us again as if keeping a wary eye on Kendra, which was probably true. At the elaborate City Gate of the port, a familiar figure lounged against one stanchion and waited for us, arms crossed over his chest in careless disregard. He appeared totally at ease, almost part of the landscape as he stood unmoving, only his eyes followed us. It was a man known as Avery, the head servant for the Heir Apparent, the next King of Dire, and a rival of mine for years. He was sent here on an unknown mission by his master.
I pulled up next to him and waited to see if he greeted me in a friendly manner or the snide way that was normal in our relationship at Crestfallen Castle. Kendra stopped beside me before he spoke, addressing both of us in his superior manner, yet he seemed to allow grudging respect to enter his manner.
“I heard the two of you were returning this way.”
“So, you came out in the damp and chill just to greet us? How thoughtful,” I said pleasantly.
“Ah, Damon. If nothing else, we know you are loyal to the crown, and that will be remembered long after you depart this foul place and return to your shared apartment. Loyal to a fault, some might say.”