Breath of Dragons (A Pandoran Novel) (44 page)

I had to force my next step forward, because what I wanted to do was stop and throttle Thad silent. "What am I supposed to do? Stand there while Valdon's destroyed? With my brother still in it? It's none of your business, anyway."

Thad was quiet a moment, still holding on to my arm. "So you'll sacrifice yourself to save a world that despises you?"

"Don't tell me you're suddenly an expert on sacrifice." I felt guilty the moment the words were out of my mouth, but when I looked at Thad, he was staring blankly at the wall up ahead.

"Is it true?" he asked quietly.

"Is what true?"

"What you said to Del Can't last night about giving me a second chance?"

I blinked. "You were supposed to be sleeping."

He continued staring straight ahead, but a smirk appeared on his face. I grunted and fixed my eyes forward.

"Thanks, Rook," he said softly.

We continued the rest of the way to the wall in silence, and even from here I could feel Alex watching me from beneath the trees. A couple of guards greeted us as we approached.

Thad held me close, gripping my arm like he thought I might try to run away from him. "Thaddeus Mendax," he said, throwing back his hood.

The guard walking toward us faltered and then stopped. He had an angry face, worn and weathered from a hard life, eyes dark and cynical as if he hadn't experienced much happiness. Those unhappy eyes floated over to me, rested on my cuffs for what felt like a very long moment, then moved back to Thad with satisfaction. I silently thanked Thad for using the magical cuffs. "I was expecting Rakken," the guard said in a surprisingly high and nasally voice.

So this guard knew who, exactly, Thad was and he had been on the lookout for me. Were all of these guards servants of Eris? I guessed we'd find out soon enough.

"Well, you got me instead," Thad said easily.

"Lord Eris said you was tied up in Valdon."

"Hm." Thad looked down his nose at the guard. "How interesting that my father shares every detail of his plans with a sentinel at the wall."

The guard's face darkened. Clearly, this was a sensitive subject for him.

"If you don't mind, I'm kind of in a hurry," Thad said in a tone that suggested this entire conversation had been a complete waste of his time.

The guard's lips tightened, and he looked over his shoulder and waved his hand. Gears ground and metal cranked, and the portcullis rose. Thad pulled his hood back over his head, and, without even the slightest glance at the guards, he led me through the wall.

Karth was a magnificent city. It held an old world beauty—the kind I'd seen in photographs of Ancient Rome, where labyrinthinian streets carved through arched passageways like secret paths between buildings. Where smooth stones and rough rocks were laid together in impossible perfection to form the walls of grand structures, and each enormous wooden door was engraved and decorated like a rare piece of artwork. Where dragons and stories were cut from iron, clinging to the roughly hewn walls as support for hanging lanterns. Plants lined the walkways and flowers poured out of baskets hanging from the sills of leaded glass windows, painting splashes of color all over the city of old rock. Everything was packed so tightly together—a great maze of a city—and the buildings towered over me in a way that was dizzying. I thought it might be very easy to get lost in such a place, and I was thankful to have Thad with me.

There were merchants on the streets selling a beautiful garden of fresh vegetables. Great purple eggplants and pyramids of artichokes—each easily the size of my head. There were apples and oranges and bushels of lettuce, and there were many other edibles, too, that I had never seen before. There were pastries and breads, herbs and grains, and there was a certain sweetness to the air that brought the saliva to my mouth and made me lick my lips. The sweetness came from a roaster, just a little farther up from where we were standing, where a great slab of glazed, red meat turned slowly over the fire in a large cooking spit.

People strolled everywhere, clothed in layers of wool from the chill, and children were bundled so heavily that they had to hold their arms away from their bodies because too much fabric prevented their arms from resting at their sides. They shrieked and squealed, running together through the streets while parents—or irritated bystanders—yelled after them to slow down.

Thad led me forward down the main street, still clutching my arm tightly. We kept to the edges of the street, sometimes meandering behind the merchants' stands. One merchant, an older man with a bald head and long, grizzly, gray beard smiled at me and I smiled back, and then he noticed my cuffs. His eyes widened in surprise and then he seemed particularly interested in Thad. Thad made a menacing face I'd never seen before, and the old man got the message and became very engrossed in rearranging his display of leather gloves.

"Try to avoid eye contact, please," Thad murmured irritably in my ear.

"Sorry," I whispered. "But this city is incredible. I had no idea. It looks like pictures of Italy."

"Well, the portal in Karth
is
directly linked with the one in Rome. Marcus Agrippa was born in Karth, you know, and I think that...I
told
you that I'd kill you if you try that again!" He said this much louder than he'd started his history lesson.

I was momentarily startled by his abrupt change in tone and conversation, then noticed the handful of guards up ahead. I immediately got into character. "You're hurting my arm," I spat, jerking it away.

Thad jerked it back. "You think this hurts? Wait till I break it."

The guards stopped, and the one in front held up a hand, motioning for us to stop. I shrank back a little in my hood, looking down to hide my face.

"What do you got there?" asked the guard in front, addressing Thad.

Thad grabbed my cuffed wrists and I whimpered, trying to pretend he was hurting me. The chain between my cuffs clattered a little, and when the guard noticed the shimmering runes on the cuffs, he looked leery. "A high magic mage?" the guard asked Thad.

So this guard did
not
know who we were. Good, then not all of the guards in Karth had been compromised.

"Yes, and I'm not sure how much longer this charm will hold, so if you'll excuse me…" Thad was starting to pull me forward when an arm stretched out, blocking our path.

This arm didn't belong to the guard we'd been speaking to. It belonged to another guard who had been standing near the rear of the small group.

"You look familiar," said a raspy voice I thought I'd heard before, but I was too afraid to look up lest I be recognized.

I felt a prick of Thad's anxiety. "And you stink like ale," he said easily. "Hard to do your job when your senses are impeded."

But before the words were out of Thad's mouth, the guard ripped my hood back. My heart pounded in my ears and Thad's anxiety skyrocketed through the roof. Very slowly I glanced up. It was Denn Faris's father, Lorimer Faris. He had been a guard at the wall in Valdon and had caught me once when I'd tried to escape with Fleck. I could only assume that my uncle had since stationed him here to look out for me.

"Well, well, well," Lorimer sneered, his ugly face twisted in cruel mirth like a pumpkin on Halloween. The other guards looked confused, however; clearly they didn't recognize me, but I doubted it would be long before Lorimer chose to enlighten them. "And your escort is…" He ripped back Thad's hood; Thad's face was as blank as an empty canvas. "Thaddeus Mendax."

A few of the guards looked to each other. This name didn't mean anything to them, but mine would.

"What's going on here?" asked the guard who had spoken initially.

Lorimer looked between Thad and me as if trying to piece something together. It seemed he couldn't figure out how Thad could be here—with me, no less—without his knowing about it. "I’m not sure," Lorimer said slowly, as if dragging the question out might give him time to solve the mystery. "But the lady you have before you is Princess Daria Regius of Valdon, granddaughter of King Darius Regius and second heir to the throne of Gaia."

Great. Exactly what I hadn't wanted to happen.

His words were met with heavy silence. A few of the guards shifted, their curiosity turning to disgust, and the people who had been within hearing distance suddenly looked back at me with disdain in their eyes. There was whispering and murmuring, and a heavy cloud of resentment simmered all around me.

"Are you sure?" asked another one of the guards, appraising me with a look on his face that said I was not what he would have expected.

"Oh, I'm sure all right," Lorimer said. "I guarded the wall at Valdon and caught her trying to escape once. Meeting someone for an afternoon tryst, were we?" He leaned close to me. "I heard from Denn what a little whore you are."

My blood boiled beneath my skin, but Thad squeezed my arm so hard I had to bite my cheeks to keep from crying out in pain.

"Or was that when you were plotting your way into the games so that you could take Pendel away from its people?" He chomped on these last words and a bit of his spit flung out and landed on my nose. I couldn’t wipe it off, though. My hands were cuffed.

His words had the desired effect. Now all of the guards looked hostile, and a small but angry crowd started forming around us.

Apparently, all of Pendel thought about as highly of me as Sir Randik had.

"Lieutenant Faris." Thad inclined his head, though his eyes narrowed. "I would appreciate it if you did not notify the entire city that we're here. I've been instructed to keep this as quiet as possible. Which is why we were
trying
to be discreet."

Lorimer licked his lips, his eyes twinkling with endless possibilities. I could see that he believed Thad, and he was anxious to be in on this profitable secret. He glanced back at his small squadron. "I'll escort these two to…where did you say you were headed?" He looked back at Thad with genuine interest.

"I didn't," Thad replied flatly.

Lorimer smiled. He had an ugly smile. His lips were already thin, but when he smiled they completely disappeared, and all the wrinkles in his face deepened, making it look as though someone had carved a hash symbol on each of his cheeks.

"I'll be back, boys," Lorimer said to the other men. "Going to see justice served."

The first guard who had spoken seemed to have finally put his personal feelings aside and come to his senses. "But this is the princess. Are you sure King Darius shouldn't be notified that his granddaughter is here? I can't imagine he'll be too happy knowing we've held her prisoner."

"I'm on my way to alert him now," Thad said, leveling a gaze on Lorimer that told him to be quiet.

Lorimer licked his lips again, watching me. He looked like a reptile.

"Now, if you'll excuse us," Thad said.

The other guards stepped aside, giving Thad and me room to pass through, but Lorimer followed closely behind.

Thad stopped, stood up tall, and glanced over his shoulder at Lorimer. "Lorimer, what are you doing?"

"Like I said. I'm coming with," Lorimer said.

"No, you're not. My orders were to bring her alone, and—"

"Well, my orders were to report immediately if I so much as caught a whiff of the princess, and I say there's something here that smells foul."

Thad and I exchanged a quick glance, then Thad's eyes fluttered shut in frustration. "Fine." He opened them again and squeezed my arm as he led us forward.

We had to lose Lorimer, somehow, and I had to keep up this disguise until then. What we needed to do was get off this main street. There were people and guards everywhere, and no telling which of them would come to Lorimer's aid if we attacked him out in the open like this. What we needed to do was sneak down one of those narrow passageways—preferably one without people.

"The quickest way to the dungeons is that way." Lorimer pointed down a narrow alley that look just like every other alley we'd passed.

"We're not going to the dungeons," Thad replied, sounding bored.

Lorimer was quiet and then said, "You're taking her to the steward, then? That's a smart move. Let him see the infamous princess who conned her way into the games and lied and cheated in an attempt to take Pendel. Perhaps he'll have her publicly flogged."

"There will be no flogging," Thad said. "I'm sorry, but can you stop talking? You're giving me a migraine."

Lorimer didn't hear, or chose not to. "And I'll tell them what a whore she is. I have it from my son, Denn, that she made her way around the entire class of new Academia graduates, trying to win them to her side for when she took Pendel. Clever, princess, and you've got the looks to get away with it, I'll say…" His eyes slid over my body in a way that made me want to punch him. "But unfortunately for you, whores don't inherit crowns."

My legs shook as I walked, clenching my teeth to bite back my retort. We needed to lose him now. I wouldn't be able to hold my tongue much longer, and by the sideways glance I was getting from Thad, I could tell he was afraid of this, too.

"Ow," I said suddenly. "That hurts."

Thad's confusion swelled. "Deal with it," he said, his expression in stark contrast to his sharp tone. He was trying to figure where I was going with this.

"Let go of me!" I struggled against his arm, pretending to kick him but getting off balance at the last moment.

Thankfully, Thad caught on, and right before Lorimer stepped in to help, Thad's grip eased and I bolted. My boots slapped on the hard pavement as I shoved past people and vendors and plants. It was surprisingly difficult to run with my hands tied together; it threw my balance off, and I almost tripped over my own feet a few times. I glanced back just in time to see Thad and Lorimer chasing after me, with Lorimer in the lead. Still sprinting, I managed to grab the leaves of a huge fern and jerk it over so that it fell with a loud crash upon the street. This bought me a few extra seconds while I sprinted, glancing down each and every passageway, trying to find one that was dark and vacant enough.

Not such a good idea in the midday sun.