The man stumbled forward and dove at the innkeeper’s orders: “Catch her before she gets that hand in her boot again. You’re no good to me with a knife in your eye!”
The giant was so long his fingers were wrapped around Amarande’s ankles in the next instant. She kicked, but his hands were large enough to void her movements, and he pulled her forward as if she were a rag doll, the silk of her skirt slick against the expensive weave of the rug.
“No … don’t.… I-I…,” the princess stuttered. She’d been taught to fight much larger people, Koldo always emphasizing that for women technique was everything, but they’d never taught her how to survive an eight-foot nightmare.
Scrambling, Amarande put a hand in her pocket for her diamonds—the innkeeper’s greed was the only thing that might get her out of this now.
But then there was more movement, the ring of steel, an extended spray of blood.
Osana.
Osana, standing there with Amarande’s swords, one downturned and scraping the floorboards, the other straight through the giant’s back.
Impossibly, the big man got to his knees, then to his feet. Osana whistled and tossed the untainted sword to Amarande, who caught it as she stood, and then, using two hands, the girl pulled the other sword straight out of the man’s back before he made it to his full height.
Amarande got her sword up in a high guard, ready for the giant to turn and lurch at them. Osana followed, trying to copy, but clearly she’d never held a sword in her life until the moment she decided to thrust one into the ogre’s back.
But he did not lurch at them. Instead, he pressed a massive hand to where the blade had come out of his stomach, eyes flicking to the innkeeper, who was frozen behind the desk, his melty-soft features waxen.
“No good. No good,” the giant grunted, and then collapsed forward. He fell onto the marble desk, which buckled under the weight, and onto the innkeeper, too slow to move out of the way.
Amarande grabbed Osana’s hand then. They ran for the door, pausing only so Amarande could stamp out the knocked-down candle, which had, from its side, tipped melted wax onto the floorboards, its flame now a mere hairbreadth from lighting that runaway wax and setting the wood on fire. Then they sprinted out of the inn, across the portico, and into the sun. The horses waited, shifting on nervous hooves.
“Thank you,” the princess coughed out as they mounted their horses, swords out and ready for the innkeeper’s retaliation until they got their horses going into a hard gallop.
“You saved me, I save you,” Osana answered, though her face went pale as the giant’s blood dripped from the sword to her hand. She’d killed him; Amarande was sure of it.
The girls looked back as they wound around the edge of the wooden wall, waiting for the owner to come rushing out—or to perhaps send out more lackeys, because if he broke his own rules with one man, there were likely more.
But the innkeeper didn’t come, and he didn’t send anyone after them. He was a man who waited for prey rather than one who gave chase after it—a spider instead of a tiger.
Osana yelled to Amarande over the rushing wind, “You said four riders on three horses, yes?”
“Yes, so?”
“They’ve gone this way.”
“How do you know?” Amarande asked, sheathing her sword. Osana had nowhere to put hers and kept it out, the wind peeling blood off the Basilican steel.
“You aren’t the only one who can track.”
Headed due west, they raced for two more minutes, until the compound could be fully seen behind them, along with any possible retaliation. Amarande slowed Mira, and Osana slowed, too, pointing to a line that cut through the shifting sands. An indentation large enough to be a path.
And there they were, three pairs of horse tracks, and one person walking. All away from the compound, their path leading back to one of the doors in the wooden wall.
It wasn’t a perfect track, not really. More like an educated guess than something that could be corroborated.
Several yards away, the footsteps stopped and simply became three sets of hoofprints.
But then Amarande saw it—a small cluster of white flecks.
Amarande pulled Mira to a hard stop and dismounted to check, plucking a tiny beige grain from the scorched earth. Yes, a few oats, slipping through again.
Luca leaving clues. Which meant he was still alive and coherent. Thank the stars.
“What is it?” Osana asked.
“Proof.”
“Is it true what you said? That you left your kingdom because your stableboy was kidnapped to push your hand into marriage?”
Amarande nodded, her earlier concerns about what this girl knew assuaged by her very recent actions. “Yes. All of it.”
The girl chewed her lip. “I don’t know much about being a princess, but … can’t you just get another? That would be a good job for anyone.”
Amarande mounted Mira so that she could look the girl in the eye. “I can replace the stableboy, but I cannot replace what he means to me.”
Osana’s eyes widened. “But you’re a princess. You can’t … you wouldn’t…”
“Love a commoner? Of course I can, and I do. Love doesn’t know anything about class, nor should it be bound by it.”
Osana was quiet for a moment. “If I help you find him, may I earn a place at your home?”
Amarande looked at the girl then, covered in the giant man’s blood, hand still gripping the sword. Egia—truth. “Osana, you have earned that sword, and you most certainly have earned a place. But this journey is my own, and dangerous enough. You’ve been good company, but I won’t have you risk yourself for me without training. You’ve done enough already.”
“But I want to come with you.”
“And I want you to find a place at the Itspi, and the truth is … I’m unsure what will happen when I find these men and my love.”
The girl’s lips parted, but she stopped, giving Amarande space to continue.
The princess appreciated all the girl had done, but something in her gut told her that she must be alone to get Luca. She might die at the hands of the kidnappers, but she couldn’t see this girl do the same. Not for her and her quest. Not untrained and exhausted.
“You say you can track? Head east to Ardenia, and to the Itspi. Ask for a man there called Serville. He is the head of my castle guard. Tell him what you know about me, show him the sword, and tell him this is Egia, and that I have Maite. He knows where to find the inscription that proves it. I wish I could send you with more proof than that, but hopefully all those things will combine to him believing you—he’s a smart man and he will see you for a clever and loyal girl.”
“Please let me come with you.” Her voice was small, eyes downcast, as she made her plea yet again. So young yet so very weary. “I … I don’t want to be alone.”
Amarande placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “On my honor, you have a place in my home, and after you make it there, you won’t be alone again. Now, go.”
Osana nodded, accepting her first order. “Until I see you again, Princess.”
* * *
THE princess was closing in. She couldn’t see them, not yet, but the hoofprints in the russet earth grew deeper with each passing minute, the wind receiving less time to wipe the earth clean of the riders’ path. A loping angle toward the only functional port in the Torrent.