“Come now, we know the worst that can happen. Why not try for the best? We won’t have long before the guards are back.”
At this, a girl with tumbling dark hair and the blue eyes common in Basilica—and similar to her mother’s, so she’d been told—stood and modeled her posture off Amarande. The princess kicked up a smile. “Thank you…”
“Osana.”
Amarande nodded. “Osana, one, two, three—pull.” The whispered command worked, and together they were enough to slide the pen wall an inch.
A girl on the far side of the flat U shape stood. “They have a rock over here fortifying this end.” She turned to the captive next to her. “Help me move it.”
Reluctantly, the other girl stood and strung herself to the end of her chain—just far enough to kick at the rock with her unchained ankle as the first girl shoved against it with bound hands. Everything men could move and erect, women could, too. The rock slid a couple of inches and that whole side of the structure wobbled, looser than before.
Amarande nodded at them. “Excellent. Now, pull.”
The two girls on the end braced, as did Amarande and Osana.
The whole structure bowed.
Amarande turned to the last girls on the other end. The one who’d told her not to waste her time and a girl next to her who looked so similar they could be sisters. Neither had moved, not even to inspect the rock fortifying their end.
“We’re almost free.”
The one who’d protested spoke again, not moving. “It’ll fall on all of us. And then where will we be? Flat as heel-stomped beetles and burnt to a crisp. No thank you. I want to haunt these bastards from the afterlife as beautiful and robust as I am now.”
Amarande turned her full attention to the girl. “If this comes down we have a chance to be free of our leg chains.”
The girl sneered. “Or when they hear a loud crash and find us caught under the weight of this thing, you’ll think you’re special just as you did before—throwing around titles in hopes of an audience. You and your title will escape and leave the rest of us to suffer the consequences.”
The princess leveled her gaze at the girl. She was as blond as Renard—of Pyrenee, or maybe from across the Divide. Wherever it was, it was a place where teamwork had let her down.
“You have my word that I won’t leave you.” She eyed the girl next to that one. “You either.”
This promise was enough for the younger girl, who stood. Her sister’s whisper was out before she’d reached her full height. “Sit down, Kiri.”
The younger one shook her head and began testing her leg chain’s length. She couldn’t get to the rock on that end—her sister blocked the path—but she tried.
“We have another, thank you, Kiri,” Amarande whispered to the others. They reset while the mouthy girl stewed in the far corner. “Let’s try it again on my count.”
Now when they pulled, the wires twisted together to form the quilted structure began to snap. Ping. Ping. Ping. Better. Definitely better. But they were still only getting tension from the bottom half of the wall.
Amarande had an idea.
“You two,” she whispered, pointing to Osana and Kiri. “Can you climb and pull with me? Like this?”
Amarande hooked her fingers between wire slats until she had climbed up as far as her leg chain would stretch. The other girls did the same. The structure bowed against their weight. Nerves flashed across the faces of the girls still on the ground. Even the mouthy one shot to her feet, spurred into action by the desire to get out from where Kiri’s section of the wall bent toward her forehead.
“On my count, those of us up the wall will jump down and pull. Meanwhile, the rest of you will come to the ends of your chains and yank. If it begins to come down, cover your heads and rush toward the wall ahead. If we do this correctly, the tension will dislodge our leg chains and we’ll be out and gathering our things before anyone can check on the collapse.”
Not even the dissenter had anything to say to that. It was a plan, plain and simple.
“One. Two. Three.”
The girls did as they were instructed—three falling to the earth and three yanking, the mouthy girl included.
With a great creak and chorus of pops, the steel snapped along the lower third of the wall. The girls’ leg chains lost their anchors with them, and, as the wall fell forward with a massive clang, all six girls sprinted straight for the opposite rock wall.
One sword was an easy find in the cart, its pommel a beacon and the makeshift scabbard dangling off. The other sword proved to be more difficult to locate, hidden under a pile of cups and saucers and jugs for trade, but soon Egia and Maite were in Amarande’s hands and she began sawing at the girls’ wrist binds. The leg chains were another matter, and the girls realized within a matter of seconds that loosening the anklets wasn’t going to be easy, with a sword or otherwise. The first girl in the line to get her binds cut—Kiri—simply gathered the chain in one hand and began to run. Her sister followed and then each girl after that.
In less than a minute, all the prisoners were free and scattering into the darkness as men’s voices and footsteps charged at the noise they’d made, alarm sounded. Osana lingered, her blue eyes drilled into Amarande’s face.
“Lend me your sword and I will cut you free.”
The princess hesitated. She could do it herself, but it was an awkward reach, and her swing from that angle would not be efficient. It would take her longer to be free of where the leg chain attached to the wire frame than it had taken the other girls.
“Amarande, was it?” the girl said, and suddenly the princess felt naked with the use of her name. Though she knew it, the girl didn’t use her title, and somehow that made it as intimate as if she were using the nickname Luca and Koldo were allowed to use. Stunned into action, the princess nodded. Osana went on. “On my honor, I’ll return your sword and I won’t cut your hand off or spear your heart first. You just rescued me and I won’t hurt you. Trust me—I trusted you.”
Osana was right.
Amarande handed over one sword but kept the other in her grip, threat clear, as Osana righted and raised the sword she’d been given.
The Basilican girl didn’t say anything, just made her cut with her lips curling up slightly at the corners.
Binds shredded, Osana returned the sword. “The horses are this way.”
Amarande fought back the tendril of fear in her belly telling her not to outright trust anyone, even this girl, but the direction Osana ran was away from the thunder of footsteps, and so it seemed like her best option anyway. She had still been unconscious when they’d come into camp and she had no idea where horses might be.
The princess stowed one sword in her makeshift scabbard—Luca’s chest plate wasn’t worth the time it would take to find it and get it on and tight—hauled up her leg chain, and followed, remaining sword out and on guard. She followed Osana around the perimeter of the camp, sticking to the darkest corners as chaos ensued, a thousand men and women rushing around against the backdrop of a roaring fire that almost appeared to leap from the earth’s center itself.
Human tallow made quite the kindling.
As they darted around the camp’s edge, the spires of the greatest tent Amarande had ever seen came into view.