As his brother had suggested, the haystack here was wide and grinding and as impossible as the sea.
Renard took another swig of water, this time from his own waterskin. Let that anger and frustration wane. Those were symptoms of his ambition. He couldn’t let the symptoms outweigh the real heart of the matter.
He needed the girl.
He needed to be the hero, bringing her back.
He needed to make her see he was right for her. Make her see that he was her future. That they, together, were the future of not only Pyrenee and Ardenia but also the Sand and Sky.
Renard felt the mask he’d worked so hard to create slide over. The boy who’d woken disappointed enough at himself to take it out on others was now buried deep, with any other inklings of a terrified seventeen-year-old boy.
They couldn’t just press on in whatever direction their gut led them. He’d spent the last years of his life learning to outsmart his mother before she could steal away his throne. He could be smarter than what he was chasing.
The prince opened his eyes. His brother stood there, draining his coffee. Taillefer’s confidence, wit, and proclivity for plants over people were among his most annoying traits, but they were also his most useful ones. And, as a right-hand man, he was usually surprisingly supportive. Again, Taillefer raised a brow. “So?”
Always prodding, the little brother. Renard preferred Tai poke at the travesties in his natural arts den rather than at the feelings deep within himself, but out here the options to distract his little brother’s probing attitude were limited.
Renard placed his own hands on his hips. Glanced around. At his back, the plateau and its disappearing shadow, the sun growing higher with each breath. Ahead, an endless expanse of red, dead-ending at the mountains that he called home. The ones his mother was returning to in haste. At that very moment she was likely in her coach, writing letters to the southern kingdoms, wooing both King Akil and King Domingu to greener, more landed, pastures. She wouldn’t wait for them in Ardenia. Renard knew that as deeply as he knew his time was running out.
His chance was running out.
As he squinted, Renard’s attention snagged on movement on the skyline. Neither wind, nor a single black horse with the stableboy and the princess, but a long, snaking thing of patchwork and a certain kind of power.
And suddenly the prince knew what to do.
* * *
THE promise of payment would get someone far in a place like this. No one had to tell Renard this. He felt it like the rising sun’s pledge of heat in the new day.
And he was going to use that to his advantage.
His party packed up and headed out in record time, following his lead with renewed energy, pointed straight toward the caravan they spied in the distance. It was long, snaking, and on the move itself, but slowly and in a crossing direction to their own. The band from Pyrenee caught up within the hour, and the caravan slowed at their approach, recognizing at a distance the purple-and-gold garb of the majority of the group and the garnet-and-gold uniform of the only outlier.
The snaking mass of horses, oxen, and coaches ground to a halt, riders from various connections in the mile-long line abandoning their posts to meet the approaching group.
The riders assembled in a pyramid, with a long-haired, broad-shouldered man at its point, staring down Renard and his men.
“Announce your intentions,” the lead rider said, his mouth covered with a fluttering shroud of linen but his words clear and crisp. This was a man who was accustomed to having people listen to him.
But so was Renard.
“I intend to pay your finest men a generous sum of gold each to hunt down something I have lost.”
“A lump sum isn’t valuable without parameters attached to it,” the leader said. “How long will this task take?”
“It depends on how good the men are. A day, maybe two.”
The leader considered that. Renard’s heart snagged mid-beat on the worry that these men might have no use for gold. But in truth, gold could always be of use—melted and molded in a way diamonds could not. Or at least it was what his kingdom had survived on for a thousand years.
The leader spoke again. “And what is it that you’ve lost?”
“My fiancée.” It was true enough. Behind him, Serville coughed into his garnet cloak. “Princess Amarande of Ardenia. Traveling with a young man of the Torrent on a single black filly. Or, if she’s escaped from his clutches, alone. There will be a further reward for anyone who has credible information on her.”
A man set apart from the leaders immediately nudged his horse forward. “Me and my boys saw her two days ago.”
Renard’s gaze drifted to the two men behind the speaker, and they both nodded. One looked perfectly fine, the other nursing wounds to his shoulder and flank. Looking at the speaking man closer now, the prince saw that his entire left side hung at an unfortunate angle, a hasty sling on his arm doing nothing to haul it back up. Purple bruises marred his face, sand rash obvious, too.
Renard’s heart beat faster, sure and strong. The man’s quick response, along with his appearance—as if he’d just met the ghost of the Warrior King—was a good sign. Still, Renard knew to be cautious. If living with his mother had taught him anything, it was that.
The prince pulled a small drawstring pouch from his belt. He fished out a solid gold piece and brought it into the strong morning light. The metal shimmered as he knew it would, and the men’s eyes grew hungry with each shining turn as he held it out for them to see. “A troy ounce of pure Pyrenee gold is in this pouch. If you can prove to me the girl you saw was her, it will be yours.”
The battered man narrowed his eyes, choosing his words carefully.
“Black horse. Garnet dress of lace and silk. Chest plate two sizes too large. Hair, reddish brown and done up for something special. Blue-green eyes eager to saw a man in half. Two swords crossed at her back”—his eyes flicked to his useless side—“and she knows how to use them.”
Behind him, Renard heard Taillefer snicker. It was funny because it was so dead-on. This girl couldn’t be anyone but Amarande.
Without hesitation, Renard tossed the pouch at the man. He caught it with his good hand.
“That’s her,” the prince concluded. “Am I to deduce from your story that she was alone? Perhaps fearful enough to attack any man to cross her path after what she endured at the hands of her vile captor?”
Again, Serville coughed.
The injured man tucked the pouch of gold into his old belt but didn’t seem moved by Renard’s apparent elation. “She was alone but headed away from both Pyrenee and Ardenia.”
Renard rushed in to turn the tide of conversation from this one of skepticism. “After such an ordeal, it is no surprise that she would have been confused. Do you know which way she went?”
The man nodded. “She was confused enough to think she was looking for four riders on three horses. I see seven of you.”
Another person urged her horse forward—this one a girl, no older than Renard. Maybe of Basilica—blue eyes, dark hair, clothes in tatters, nice sword strapped to her back in a hasty scabbard. “I saw four riders on three horses watering themselves and their horses at the Cardenas Scar two days ago. A Torrentian boy was bound and loudly insisting his princess would come for him. It sounds like your princess could have been looking for that group.”