She turns, her eyes seeking out Ruti again, and Ruti is frozen by her gaze. It burns like an icy winter wind from the tales, the kind of wind that has never reached Somanchi. Ruti is scorched by it, and it takes all the strength that she has mustered in song for her to duck her head and say, “Your Highness?” in a light tone.
The Heir exhales, raising her chin, a low rumble of thunder in the distance. “Well sung,” she says, and she dips her chin and walks outside to the courtyard.
Ruti follows her, oddly numbed by the entire experience. “Did you … did you feel the—”
The Heir holds up a hand. “Look,” she says, her voice hushed.
Ruti casts an eye across the courtyard, squinting at movements that she can barely make out on the other side of it. They’re near the entrance, and there are tiny flames cupped in hands, a few careful lights that shine only for their bearers. Whoever is coming into the Royal Square doesn’t want to be seen, and Ruti’s breath catches in her throat as one flame-bearer comes close enough to a figure for his face to be visible.
It’s the Regent, and the man bearing the flame wears unfamiliar dress, the clothes of a different land. Ruti’s eyes narrow, and she ventures, “Is he trying for a coup d’etat?”
“No,” the Heir says, her deep voice as low as a Fanged One’s hiss. “No, he isn’t. Those men are from Rurana. Prince Torhvin’s men.” There is a chill in the air, seeping into Ruti’s skin. “He lied to me at dinner. The prince isn’t coming in a week’s time. He’s already here.”
She squeezes her hand. “If he’s right about this one.…” She is silent for a moment, staring down at the dark pattern on her palm. “I can’t be bonded,” she says, quiet urgency in her voice. “I can’t stay here while my uncle passes me off to a man he believes will tame me.”
She turns to face Ruti, her dark eyes gleaming with new desperation, and Ruti can only think to say, “We’re bringing Kimya.”
The Heir looks at her, and Ruti thinks for a moment that the Heir might slap her for her insolence, for pushing an agenda when the Heir is afraid and desperate. But the Heir only nods.
“So be it,” says the Heir. “I will have Kalere prepare an offering to the Spotted One for safe voyage. We leave before dawn.”
They take four donkeys loaded with food and everything else they might need. “They’re slower, but they won’t be noticed like the royal horses,” the Heir points out as they depart. Kimya fits easily on hers, and Ruti is amused at the sight of Orrin, far too bulky for even the largest donkey in the palace, hunched over uncomfortably on his steed.
Ruti has never ridden before, but the donkeys keep a calm pace as they ride southward. “We’re looking at three or four days in Zidesh before we reach Rurana,” she reports, squinting down at the notes that the Heir’s tutors have written for them. “Then maybe another week in Rurana until we reach Guder’s peninsula.”
The Heir nods, riding beside her in the light of dawn. “We will have to be careful in Zidesh,” she says. “Too many know my face. And my uncle won’t rest until he finds me.”
“What will you say when you return?”
The Heir pauses, considers. “That’s a question for the way back,” she says at last. “Then, if the magic holds, I will be in control of my own destiny. And if my uncle resists, I will take control by force.” Thunder rumbles to punctuate her declaration, and Ruti shivers.
“What about your tutors? They must know where you’re going.”
“They won’t breathe a word to my uncle.” She says it with certainty, and Ruti persists.
“How can you know—”
The Heir puts up a quelling hand. “My tutors are mine and mine alone. One day they will be my advisors. They would die rather than betray me.” She shakes her head. “No more chatter. We must ride on.”
They ride for hours and hours through narrow, springy trees that drip water when they are rustled. Snakes hang down in looping shapes just above them, and the chirping sound of monkeys and crickets echoes around them until Ruti can’t recall a time before the noise. The air is fresh and damp, the scent of the wet trees strong in her nostrils, and she is covered by a sheen of sweat only from sitting within it. Eventually Kimya is keeling over on her donkey, arms wrapped around its neck in an attempt to stay on while dozing off.
By the next afternoon, they’re beyond the wet woods and into drier forests with tall trees whose branches are narrow and conical. There are fewer animals here, without the boldness of the snakes and insects of the wet woods, and the air is thinner and cooler. The ground beneath them grows higher and rockier, and they ride up and down mountains that stretch for miles between Somanchi and Rurana’s border. “There are few cities in the mountains,” the Heir says. “Only Lubasa, and small settlements here and there. We can’t stop in Lubasa. My uncle will have soldiers stationed there.”
There has been little conversation until now, only silent riding, and it’s a relief to slip off the donkey when the Heir gives the order. Ruti’s thighs ache, unused to the way the donkeys move, and she collapses against a tree as Orrin helps the Heir dismount.
There is tenderness in his motions, a care toward the Heir that has her stroking his arm, and Ruti feels as though she’s witnessing a private moment between them. She attributes her displeasure to dislike of Orrin, though it doesn’t explain the lump in her throat when she watches the movement of the Heir’s fingers and the way the Heir watches him with attentiveness, as though his words are precious to her. She turns away, listens instead to a high-pitched, distant chirping—a single bird, calling out in the hollow thrum of the night—and watches Kimya crawl to her as Orrin and the Heir speak in quiet murmurs.
When they part, Ruti finally dares to look back at them, wrapping an arm around Kimya. Orrin glances around critically, raising his hands to blast small branches from the trees around them. “Firewood,” he explains at Kimya’s wide-eyed stare. “We will need a fire to keep away leopa—” He freezes, staring around in alarm. “Spotted Ones,” he amends.
To call a predator of Zidesh by animal-name instead of spirit-name is to summon its displeasure. Perhaps that isn’t a fear in the Royal Square, where the people are well-guarded, and there’s a savage kind of pleasure in seeing the fear that Orrin’s words have evoked in both his own heart and the Heir’s. Spoiled, Ruti thinks.
Kimya nudges her as though she knows exactly what Ruti is thinking, and she gets up suddenly, her legs unsteady. Carefully, she makes her way through the clearing where they’ve settled down. She picks up a few small branches from the ground, offering them to Orrin.
Orrin looks startled, and his eyes flicker to Kimya’s unmarked palm with wariness. But he takes the branches and says, “Thank you,” setting them down with the ones he’s already collected. “Can you find some rocks now?”
Ruti helps this time, picking through the rocks until they’ve set up a border between them and the fire. When the site is ready, Orrin presses his hands to the branches and lightning crackles from his palms. The branches glow faintly, fire barely licking at them. It’s dim, carefully controlled so it illuminates only a tiny patch of land. It smells sharper than an ordinary fire, of charred metals instead of the pleasant scent of burning wood, but Ruti can feel its warmth from where she sits in the shadows.
They eat from the rations they’ve brought along. Ruti is ravenous, spoiled by her time at the Royal Square, and she has to actively slow herself down so she won’t devour her meal to the point of sickness. The bread has gotten hard and tasteless after the changes in humidity, but Ruti still savors it. Kimya does the same, eyes closed, and the Heir sits beside her and eats her own bread in silence. Everyone is quiet, focused on their food and exhausted.
Kimya is the first to fall asleep, curled onto Ruti’s lap, and Ruti settles her down on one of the bedrolls. Orrin is tending the fire while the Heir stares into the flames, and the Heir says suddenly, “Did she ever speak?”
Ruti shakes her head, stroking Kimya’s hair. “Not since I’ve known her,” she says. “A lot of Markless little ones don’t speak. Sometimes it’s about survival. Sometimes they’ve just … been through something that took their voice.” She’d met a Markless once who’d been kept by his family for a few years, hidden away behind the doors of their home and abused and used within it. When he’d finally fled to the slums, he hadn’t spoken a word.
The Heir blinks at her. “Not since you’ve known her?” she echoes. “I thought she was your sister.”
Ruti shrugs. “I’ve had a lot of sisters over the years,” she murmurs. “Little ones come to me and don’t leave. But Kimya has survived the longest.” She laughs dully. “Markless don’t have siblings. You’d need a family for that.”
“That’s true.” The Heir is quiet for a moment, contemplative. “So you never knew your family?”
Ruti shakes her head. “I must have lived with them when I was very little. The mark can take up to a year or two to appear. They probably held out hope until then. My earliest memories are all of the orphanages in the slums. There was never enough food and too many children, and eventually I ran away and went to find food on my own.”
When she looks up from the fire, the Heir is watching her, her eyes flickering orange from the reflection of the flames. Ruti wraps her arms around herself, self-conscious in her vulnerability, and says, “What about you, Your Highness? You barely knew your family, either.”
The Heir’s lips quirk downward. “Stop calling me that.”
“Sorry. Is Your Majesty more appropriate now that you’re planning to overthrow your uncle?” She means it to be snide, but it comes out too light, almost teasing. Instinctively, Ruti glances across the fire to where Orrin is tending the flames, his gaze distant.
