The Fire Prince (The Cursed Kingdoms Trilogy Book 2) (25 page)

Britta went out into the empty corridor. Her heart pounded in her chest.

She opened the door to the storeroom, stepped inside, closed it. Armsmen stood at parade rest on either side of her.

Rutgar and Lukas were at the little table coloring pictures. Lukas’s face lit with a smile. Rutgar scrambled to his feet. “Britta!”

“Stay there, darlings. Don’t move.” Britta raised the vial and sprayed to her left and right. Vanilla. She glanced at the men’s faces, saw flared nostrils, wide eyes, rigid faces.

Britta crossed swiftly to the boys. Behind her, the armsmen toppled, one after the other, crashing loudly to the marble floor. “Don’t worry,” she said, crouching at the table, smiling at Rutgar and Lukas. “They’re just asleep. Here, eat this. It will stop you falling asleep too.”

“Why are they asleep?” Lukas asked in a tremulous voice, clutching the Horned Lily root.

“Because they won’t let me take you to Lundegaard,” Britta said. “Eat it, love. Quickly now!”

“Is Harkeld in Lundegaard?” Rutgar asked, brightening.

“No, sweetheart, but your grandfather’s there, and your uncles. You’ll like to meet them.”

When the boys had eaten the root, Britta measured poppy syrup into their mugs. “Drink this and we can go.”

Both boys obediently sipped.

Lukas lowered his mug with a whimper. “I don’t like the taste.”

“It’s not very nice, is it?” She smoothed baby-soft hair back from his brow. “But you need to drink it before we can leave.”

Rutgar drained his mug first, Lukas a few moments later.

She took their hands and led them past the fallen armsmen. Did the scent of vanilla linger in the doorway?

“I’m tired,” Lukas mumbled.

Britta ushered the boys into her suite. Rutgar clutched her robe when he saw the armsman lying just inside her door. “Don’t worry,” she said, bending to kiss his cheek. “He’s only sleeping.”

Lukas’s eyes were half-closed. He seemed not to see the armsman, or the blood-soaked rugs and Karel’s sword lying abandoned, or the ashets and tureens from the dinner trolley tumbled on the floor.

Britta led the boys to the settle.

“Are we going now?” Rutgar asked drowsily.

“Soon,” Britta said. “Have a nap first. I’ll sing you a lullaby.”

K
AREL GRABBED THE
iron ring, hauled the metal cover out of its hole, and reared back as the stink of the sewers filled his nose.

He leaned forward and looked in. Nothing but blackness. His ears caught the hiss of fast-flowing water far below.

“They say a bondservant fell in once,” Yasma said. “Her body was never found.”

Karel glanced at her. “Truth, or tale?”

She shrugged.

Karel took off his greaves and wrist guards and threw them into the sewer. The sword belt and scabbard followed, and his silver torque. Rather than unbuckle the breastplate, he slit the straps with his dagger. He laid the breastplate and dagger on the floor, as if they’d had been tossed aside. “There’s some blood left? A little on the breastplate. Then throw the bladders in.”

Yasma obeyed. She threw the emetic and its antidote into the sewer hole too, and the bag the pepperwort leaves had come in. Lastly, she pulled off her iron armband and dropped it down the dark, hissing, stinking hole. “Britta’s slippers?”

Karel glanced at her feet, at the bloody slippers. “Wear them back to her rooms and leave them there.”

He sat back on his heels and examined the scene. The dinner trolley smeared with blood, angled across the corridor, half tipped over. The breastplate and discarded dagger. The trail of bloody smears and drips leading back down the corridor. A woman’s small footprints. The open sewer.

“Let’s go.”

He walked carefully back down the corridor. A single boot print would destroy the scene they’d crafted.

At the corner, he glanced back. The bloody breastplate looked like the carapace of some gigantic, dead insect.

Y
ASMA AND
K
AREL
emerged from the bondservants’ corridor into the parlor. “Are they asleep?” Karel asked in a low voice.

Britta rose from kneeling beside the settle. “Yes.”

They worked quickly, silently. Yasma packed the All-Mother’s Breath, Horned Lily root, and poppy syrup into a pillowcase, and on top of those, Britta’s jewels. Britta copied out her note to Jaegar, scrawling the last sentences in large, agitated writing, and smeared bloody fingerprints on it. She burned the original, making sure the parchment crumbled into ash.

The armsman went through the suite methodically, double-checking everything. “You have your masks?” he asked, coming out of the bedchamber, two blankets in his hand.

“Yes.”

He touched his chest. “And I have the key to the padlock.”

Britta handed him a leather pouch. “Twenty gold pieces.”

He tied it to his belt. “And the rest?

“In the pillowcase.”

Britta looked around the parlor. No one could mistake that a struggle had occurred here. Or that people had died. The two drying pools of blood were appallingly large. No one could lose that much blood and survive.

They sprayed themselves and the boys with pepperwort infusion and refilled the vials with the last of the mixture. Yasma rinsed out the bowl it had steeped in. “That’s everything, isn’t it?”

Britta exchanged a glance with Karel.

He nodded, and rolled the two blankets and slung them over his shoulder. “Remember, we have less than ten seconds to get out of the wagon. Move fast. And get off the road fast. There’ll likely be a lot of traffic since the gates were shut half the day.”

He crossed to the settle, picked up Lukas, and handed him to her. The little boy was deeply asleep, his cheeks flushed. Britta cradled him in her arms and watched Karel pick up Rutgar. Apprehension was tight in her chest. Escape seemed so close, freedom almost a tangible thing.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

T
HEY WALKED SWIFTLY
through the empty bondservants’ corridors, the armsman first, with the blankets and Rutgar, then Britta and Lukas, and Yasma last, carrying the pillowcase, spraying the pepperwort to hide their trail. The eighth bell tolled. The coronation ceremony was halfway through. The kitchen bondservants would be returning to their duties. Britta’s chest grew tighter, her ribcage squeezing her lungs.

When they reached the stables, the armsman held out his arm, barring the passage. He crouched and laid Rutgar on the floor. “Wait here.”

Two minutes later he reappeared. “Spray low,” he told Yasma. “We don’t want the horses to inhale it.”

The stables were fragrant with hay and straw and horse dung, dim, warm, full of life. Horses nickered and snorted, they twitched their ears, flicked their tails, nosed each other over the sides of their stalls.

The dung wagon was just inside the wide stable doors, with the cobbled yard beyond. Britta halted in the shadows, clutching Lukas, scanning the empty stableyard. Rain drizzled down. She lifted her gaze to the golden roofs of the palace. The guard towers were just beyond view.

Karel laid Rutgar down and shrugged the blankets from his shoulder.

“Do you need help?” Britta whispered.

“No.”

Karel lowered the wagon’s tailgate and reached for a shovel. A few minutes’ work and the manure was piled in the middle of the wagon. He took one blanket, spread it on the wagon tray, beckoned to her.

Britta trod across to him, holding Lukas. Karel took the boy while she scrambled up into the tray. She lay on the blanket with her back pressed to the side of the wagon, her head towards the tailgate, and reached for Lukas, tucking him into her body.

Karel spread the second blanket over them, then shoveled dung to cover them. “Too heavy?”

“No.”

“Can you breathe all right?”

“Yes.”

A pause, and then the blanket was lifted and Yasma crept in beside her. Another pause, she heard Karel whisper, “Here,” felt Yasma reach to take Rutgar.

She heard Karel fasten the tailgate. He shoveled again, for longer this time. Finally the sounds stopped. Silence. Karel would be spraying pepperwort infusion around the wagon.

The blanket moved, pulling taut over her. Karel was joining them.

She could see nothing, but she heard movement and knew the armsman was drawing manure over the blanket.

Silence came. The smell of horse dung was strong, but fresh air crept through cracks in the tailgate and found its way under the blanket. Britta heard her own breathing, heard Lukas’s breathing, heard the sound of her heart beating.

T
HE NINTH BELL
rang, and time seemed to slow down. The final hour before nightfall lasted forever. Britta counted seconds, minutes, hours. Surely something was wrong? Was the silence because their escape had been discovered?

No, strident bells would be ringing alarm. As they had when Harkeld had escaped.

And then she heard the bells, not just tolling the hour, but announcing the ascent of Osgaard’s new king, a loud pealing that went on and on and on.

The last note died. Jaegar would be feasting now. Would he send someone to check on her? Would Frankl?

Voices came into the stableyard.
Take the dung wagon now,
Britta begged them silently.
Before our escape is discovered
.

The voices passed them by.

Britta lay in the dark, tense, waiting for the bells to ring a warning. Manure pressed down on her. Lukas was warm in her arms, deeply asleep.

After an eternity came the soft
clop clop
of hooves. Someone spoke close by. “Easy there.”

She heard a horse being harnessed between the shafts, felt the wagon sway as the driver climbed aboard, heard the crack of a whip.

The dung wagon lurched forward.

K
AREL LISTENED INTENTLY
. Cobblestones in the stableyard, rough and jerky, voices at the palace gate, and then the smooth rumble of wheels on paving stones. He gripped the edge of the topmost blanket, ready to fling it off. The town gate must be close now—

He felt as well as heard the moment when they entered Rakhamn. The wagon rattled, slowed slightly.

Karel counted the seconds under his breath.
Three, four, five
.

He thrust the blanket back—night, a torch flaring behind them—and reached for Yasma, tossing her out, handing Rutgar to her as she ran to catch up, reached for the princess, for Lukas. The rumble of wagon wheels drowned their footsteps, drowned the grunts of breath.

Karel grabbed the pillowcase, hauled the blankets out, leapt over the tailgate, and ran for the side of the road. He crouched low on the wet cobblestones, panting, his heart hammering in his chest.

Ahead, the dung wagon passed into a flickering ring of torchlight, then vanished into darkness again.

No shouts came, but another wagon was rattling towards them.

Karel moved back until he was pressed against a cottage. Where were the princess and Yasma? The boys?

Not on the street. The wagon passed without pause.

Karel straightened and walked quickly in the direction of the gate, blinking rain from his eyes. Four steps—and there was a dark shape huddled against a cottage. The princess, with Lukas in her arms. He took the prince from her and gave her the bulging pillowcase. Another five steps, and there were Yasma and Rutgar. He handed Yasma the blankets, slung Rutgar over his shoulder, and headed for the shed.

K
AREL’S HANDS WERE
covered in dung. He wiped them on his tunic as best he could and gave the key to Yasma. She unfastened the padlock and raised the lid of the trunk, things he heard rather than saw. It was like being blind, so dark was the night. “Don’t lose that padlock and key,” Karel whispered to her.