The Turncoat Prince

Chapter One-2

In any case, Calar had betrayed the dragon who had saved her from death after that boar had gored her as a child. The dragon had always meant more to her than her human parents had, and now her father was dead and her priestess mother was long gone into the hills. Darna couldn’t remember her mother’s face, and chances were she was dead too.

Calar had had Tiada killed, and now it seemed that he wanted to end Darna’s much-less-significant life, too, all so that he could rule a barren land, a land with no dragon, with that bloodthirsty pack of Cereans behind him, daggers poised to stab him in the back, which was no less than he deserved. She would leave them to it. Tiada would be avenged, after a fashion.

“I could take you to Myril’s instead,” Thorat suggested, dragging her back from her musings. “It’s almost dark. If you pull up your cloak, no one will see your hair.”

“It’s too hot,” Darna said. “No one wears a cloak this time of year. I’d be less conspicuous in an Enomaean head wrap.”

Thorat snorted at that thought.

“Just put on a cloak,” he said. “You can carry whatever you need for the next few days underneath it, and I’ll come fetch whatever else you need later. Everyone’s probably too drunk to take much notice, anyway.”

Darna looked out the window. She heard a crash and someone shouted, then the familiar festival smell of spilled ale wafted up from the cobblestones. “You’re probably right. I suppose I could go to Myril’s, then.” Myril would hear any threat coming from far away – she would know when she had to hide. It would be safer than being alone.

She wrapped up her best drawing and measuring tools in a leather satchel, along with two clean tunics and a little parchment for notes. Thorat paced while she packed, looking out the window every three strides and sometimes checking the landing.

“What do Calar’s henchmen know about me?” Darna asked him.

“They know that you’re in the city, and I don’t think it will take much for them to find you here. They know that you have red hair, that you look like kin to the prince, and that you have a limp. Some of the older men might remember you from when you were a servant at Tiadun Keep, before you left for Anamat.”

“I doubt it,” Darna said. “No one noticed me then, or if they did, it was only to tell me to get back to work, or to get out of their way.”

“It can’t have been that bad,” Thorat said, in the manner of someone who has always been liked by everyone he met. “Tiadun Keep wasn’t my favorite place, but while they’re not the best of men, some of them are all right. They must have felt some sympathy for a child made to work too much.”

“I was good at escaping work when I wanted to,” Darna said. “Even if they had seen me then, which they didn’t, they’d hardly recognize me without my old mud and ashes.”

Thorat frowned. “Surely, some of them remember,” he said, sounding a little less sure of himself. People had always noticed him, with his bright smile and shining eyes. “But you’re right; people at that keep are dirtier than most, what with not having a public bath. The guardsmen have to make do with a bucket in the stableyard there most of the time.”

“I doubt that any of them would know me,” Darna said.

“It would only take one man who wants that land,” Thorat said. “In any case, they know you were at Ara’s Landing, at the temple, and that you left.”

“But they don’t know I’m with the planners’ guild?”

“I don’t know, but it would be easy enough for them to find out if they ask the right questions.”

He was right. Most of her fellow priestesses – former fellow priestesses – understood that she didn’t like to be bothered, and wouldn’t be likely to tell a stranger where she’d gone. Then again, there was Tiagasa, the governor’s mistress. That one would play whatever advantage she could find, and she wasn’t alone in that. If Calar asked Tiagasa, the temple wouldn’t be a safe haven for long. Men weren’t allowed to bring in swords or knives, but there was always choking or poison. Any priestess with a rudimentary knowledge of simples could poison her. Darna had no particular enemies in the temple, but Tiagasa had ways of making other people fall in with her schemes.

Darna pulled her cloak up and set out for Myril’s place with Thorat and his good sword guarding her back and her stick to clear the way, if she needed it. She tried not to use it: they would be looking for a woman with a limp, and her cloak alone was suspicious enough. No one was paying attention to her, though. Everyone on the streets had a jar of ale or stronger drink in their hands. They were too busy shouting out Midsummer greetings or dancing to badly played music to sink a hidden dagger in her back as she scurried across from one hidden alley to the next.

Myril’s place was on the soothsayers’ street, halfway up the hill from the old bridge in the middle of the city. Darna hoped that Myril would dye her hair again, not that dye would disguise her for long at the temple, where everyone knew her. She would be stuck like a bug on a pin, just waiting for them to find her, and in the meantime, she’d go mad with waiting to be killed. She cursed Calar as a fool, but then, her father had been a fool too. He’d been too charitable to his blood relations. Maybe Calar was simply trying to avoid making that mistake.

Soon, they climbed the narrow stair to Myril’s always-welcoming room, with its bundles of herbs drying on the rafters and its jars of potions on clean and carefully tended shelves. An old farmer passed them on the stair, clutching his bag of remedies. Darna’s neighbor was only the second-best herbalist outside of the city’s temples – Myril was the best, outside the temples or in, and among the best cooks, too, when she had space on her stove for a purely culinary broth.

“I heard you coming,” Myril said as they entered. “I sent one of the boys from the bridge to bring supper from the tavern down the canal.”

Darna dropped her satchel of finely made tools on the floor and leaned her back against the door, slamming it firmly shut. Her heart galloped. She took a couple of shallow breaths. Her hands were shaking.

Myril peered at her. “What is it?”

Darna gulped. She couldn’t find her voice, so Thorat explained.

“Darna’s uncle, the one who killed her father, the prince of Tiadun, has put a price out on her head,” he said.

Myril nodded, rather too calmly, Darna thought. “I should have expected that. I was delivering a few scrolls to the palace this afternoon when I heard a rumor that Gallia plans to challenge Calar’s succession. To do that, she’ll need you.” She took Darna gently by the elbow and led her to the window seat.

“She wants to find me too?”

Myril nodded. Darna didn’t have the energy to pretend ignorance of who Gallia was. Gallia had been her father’s mistress since probably before she was born. He’d loved her, so much so that he hadn’t taken another mistress when he knew that she was barren, even though it had led to all of this; the allegations of his impotence, his untimely murder. If he’d had a known son, it all would have been different, but it was too late for that now.

“What if Gallia finds me?” Darna asked. “Can she stop these assassins?”

“I don’t think so,” Myril said. “She came to the palace alone, without a single servant. She wasn’t in the habit of coming to Midsummer Council, not since Parnet became governor, so she has no particular friends in the city, unless they’re from long ago. She may have gone on to the temple.”

“The temple is safer than the palace,” Thorat said.

“Not safe enough,” Darna said. Her heartbeat had slowed but her hands were still shaking. Three guardsmen were walking down the street below Myril’s window, idly chatting as they went but looking around as if searching for someone or something. This street was the first place anyone would go looking for a former priestess. “Maybe I’d better sit further out of sight.”

She started crying. She never cried, curse it all. Thorat and Myril helped her to the dark corner bed where Myril’s patients sometimes slept. Darna shook her head at herself and tried to say something, but it didn’t work; she just burst into tears again and buried her face in Myril’s soft, strong shoulder. Myril smoothed Darna’s hair and stroked her back. Eventually, her sobs subsided.

“You can dye my hair,” Darna said at last.

Myril shook her head.

“Anything to disguise her, anything at all, will help,” Thorat said.

Myril got that faraway look in her eyes.

“Don’t prophesy,” Darna begged. She hated it when Myril looked into the future. It left Myril shaken even when it wasn’t a crossing time, even when she wasn’t haggard from too much work as she was now.

“Dyeing won’t do,” Myril said in her half-tranced voice. “You have to leave Anamat. This is where they’re looking for you, isn’t it? They won’t think to look in the provinces.” By the time she finished speaking, she sounded ordinary again. The fact that she hadn’t gone into full trance was a small reprieve.

“I can’t go to the provinces,” Darna objected. “I can’t walk that far.”

“You’ll have to,” Myril said.

“You could go into the hills,” Thorat suggested. “The bandits aren’t… They aren’t as bad as I always thought they were. You could be a hermit priestess.”

“I’ll be no kind of priestess at all,” Darna said. “I can’t go to the provinces, and I certainly can’t go to the hills. I’m staying in Anamat!”

“They’ll find you here,” Myril said patiently. “It’s where they’re looking. I could dye your hair, but too many people here would know you anyway. Almost everyone knows you, and you can’t trust all of them.”

Darna looked down the hill to the golden spires of the temple, still glowing in the last light of sunset. She and Myril had been novices there together, then priestesses for a season. The novitiate had been stifling, the priestesshood not much better. True, it had been comfortable, luxurious, but the walls were so confining, the gossip just as bad.

“The temple is the first place they’ll look,” Myril said.

Darna sighed. Myril always spoke the truth, but usually it wasn’t so hard to hear. She’d lived in Anamat half her life, the much better half of it. She’d come as an almost-grown girl, become a woman in the temple, and joined a guild. Here she was, a master of her craft at last, and now she had to leave the city, to pretend… She couldn’t think what she would pretend.

There was a sound outside Myril’s door, and in a flash, Thorat had his dagger out.

“Put that away,” Myril said. “It’s only the boy with our supper. You’d better go now too. Darna and I will be safe here for tonight.”

§

Darna woke late the next morning to the sound of Myril telling someone to come back after Midsummer.

When Myril saw that Darna was awake, she poured two cups of sweet tea from the earthenware jar sitting by the window and handed one to Darna. Myril took care of everyone. It was impossible to feel afraid in her domain.

“Thank you,” Darna said.

“It was no more than you would do for me.”

Darna shrugged. She wasn’t so sure about that. If Thorat or Myril needed her, she would try her best to help them, but she would never have this warm, safe place, and she would never be like Myril. Myril would have been a truly great priestess if the trance hadn’t taken her so hard that she’d almost lost her mind in those depths. It didn’t help that she had no innate interest in lying down with men, not even in the rite, where they had no claim on her. Iola’s presence made matters worse, too, always reminding Myril of what she couldn’t have. She’d come to the fortune-tellers’ row, within sight of the temple but outside its bounds, to be a chronicler and a healer, to measure out her talents in careful, safe parcels, at arm’s length.

Despite the danger, Darna moved to the window to look out. Up the street, a prince’s train was making its procession down to the harbor temple to pay its annual tribute to the ambassadress before her journey to the dragons’ realm. Some prince was there, and he would lie with Iola where Myril could not, go in to the rite and not understand half of it, and leave some of his riches to Iola and the dragons.