Third Daughter (The Dharian Affairs, Book One) (25 page)

“I could go alone,” Aniri said.

The prince turned to her, his gaze slicing through the dark. His eyebrows lifted subtly. “I forgot. You’re a spy.” A hint of smile came out. “But I doubt you have experience navigating Sik security in secret retrenchments in the frozen mountains of the north.”

The heat from the fire was wafting stronger under her coat now. She unbuckled it, letting it hang loose. “Even if General Garesh has not returned,” she reasoned, “surely the people will recognize you.”

He touched his hood. “I will be as unobtrusive as possible.”

“You will be recognized. Word will return to General Garesh. You said he has been looking for a way to arrest you. If you accompany me, it will be even more obvious that you have been the one to secret me to the skyship’s hiding place. Perhaps we can observe it from a safe distance.”

“They’ve built a special encasement that spans the ravine,” he said. “It’s an engineering marvel, truly, and wouldn’t be possible without the Samirian engineers. But you cannot see anything until you get inside.”

Aniri held her jacket open. The fire had finally blazed up, and it quickly had become almost too hot to bear. “Then take me close, and let me go the remainder of the way. I only need to see the skyship to know for certain you are telling the truth, no more.”

He shook his head. “I can hardly let you go alone, Princess. You will need someone to ensure you are safe. The last thing we can afford at this point is for you to be caught infiltrating the skyship hideaway.”

Aniri sighed in frustration, putting her hands on her hips. Realizing she was still armed with her saber—her father’s sword—she decided to make her point that way. She quickly reached inside and drew her sword. With a quick arc overhead, she brought it down to point at the prince’s heart. He jerked at her sudden movement, his hands becoming unlaced from behind his head. The razor sharp tip was a good foot away from his body, putting him in no danger.

“I am capable of defending myself.”

“I see,” he said with a small smile and a luxurious look along the length of her blade. “I shall have to reconsider my plans to steal into your bed later this eve.”

She arched an eyebrow at him and slowly withdrew her weapon, steadying its blade in the air between them, before sheathing it again.

He relaxed but didn’t fold his hands behind his head, instead running a hand across his face. “If you are caught, I will be forced to come after you.”

“Then I will be certain to not get caught,” she countered with a smirk.

He shook his head but didn’t argue. Suddenly he leaped up and lunged for her, catching her around the waist and pulling her to him. She instinctively pushed against him, but he held her firmly, then beat at her legs. Only after a moment, did she realize what he was doing. Part of her cloak had caught fire, and he was beating it with his bare hands. She froze, rigid against him, letting him put the last of the embers out by striking her leg, none too softly.

When he stood, his face was flushed, and she could see a roil of emotions playing across it. He still held her close around the waist.

“Thank you,” Aniri said, breathless, her face close to his. There was a warm flush through her body which had nothing to do with the heat of the fire, and she was glad for the dark that covered her blush at having him hold her so intimately.

“Trying to save you from fire is becoming a habit of mine.” His face relaxed, and a small smile returned as he released her. Aniri tried to ignore the feeling that she didn’t want him to let her go. Then he shook his head. “This seems like a very bad idea, you going alone, Aniri. I don’t like the odds on it.”

She straightened, trying to banish the still-traveling flush that warmed her body. “If you’re lying to me and hauling me out to the frozen north to see nothing at all, then I’m in trouble regardless. But if you’re telling me the truth, and this skyship really exists, then we need you to stay out of General Garesh’s cells. And we both need to return to Bajir to find a way to ensure peace. That won’t be possible if you are caught. If I’m caught, well, the Princess of Dharia will have turned out to be untrustworthy after all. You’ll need every bit of help you can get to defeat your own general, and that is where Dharia might actually be able to help.”

“Not if their princess is being held prisoner by General Garesh.”

“Especially if the Third Daughter of the Queen is being held by a general in the mountains of Jungali,” Aniri said. “I promise you, Prince Malik, my mother will not stand for that. And I will let her know who her true allies are.” She tried to muster the confidence she should have in those words, but she wasn’t at all sure the Queen would come after her. She hadn’t gone after her father’s killers, and he hadn’t disappointed her the way Aniri had.

The prince smiled. “Well, if she’s anything like her daughter, I certainly would not want to cross her.”

Aniri resisted smiling in return. Her mother was not like her. If it served Dharia, the Queen would abandon her to the barbarians in the freezing mountains. Aniri had brought the Queen’s aetheroceiver, but any messages at this point might work their way back to Janak, who would surely come after her and ruin any chance she had at discovering the skyship—and whether or not Devesh had told her the truth about the Samirians.

She might be caught by General Garesh and hung for treason, but that was a risk she knew going into this. With a distasteful glance at her singed black coat—it was fortunate the burnt portion did not stand out—Aniri turned to claim the bed for the night, ignoring thoughts of Prince Malik just recently in it.

She would need her rest for a day that might be her last.

The shashee stable housed at least twenty of the beasts, all snuffling out mist in the crisp morning air. The mountains loomed over their stable, like Devpahar herself accepting their vaporous offerings in return for safe travels. Aniri was thankful the cold contained the stench of the stable—which was more than she could say for the stable owner. He was as wide as he was tall, covered in a vast furry wrap that smelled like damp shashee. He lumbered like his beasts, but his disposition was nowhere near as gentle or calm as the creatures he tended.

“Twenty yakles,” he said to Aniri. It was as much grunt as words.

Prince Malik was doing his best to hide under his hood by pretending to examine a selection of tapping canes hanging on the wall. They both had acquired new coats over their hooded cloaks—a tan hide of some kind, trimmed in fur at the hood and sleeves. According to the prince, the overcoats would disguise them as Sik traders, and they were definitely suited to the frigid mountain weather, if less so for stealth. Although she supposed camouflage was a relative thing.

Aniri had no idea if twenty yakles was excessive for a day’s shashee rental. “Twenty?” she said, aghast. “Is there no law against robbery here in Sik province?”

The stable owner huffed and crossed his arms across the expanse of his chest. He only managed to reach far enough to tuck his hands under his armpits. “Nineteen.”

“Sixteen.” She cast a look over the beasts as they shifted in their pens, the thin rails too frail to keep them quartered if they had any mind to leave. But they seemed content to stay, huddled together no doubt for warmth. “And don’t give me the sickly one in the middle.” She gestured with her chin. She had no idea if there were any sick shashee, but with the size of the herd, there must be one lesser among them. Her hair blew slightly in a gust of air from the open door of the stable shop. She had bound it in a braid, but the double hoods of her cloak and the overcoat had worked it loose. She probably looked as bedraggled as the shaggy beasts.

“Seventeen,” the stable owner said, “and no lower. And you will have to use ring saddle. No carriages today.”

“Deal.” Aniri had no idea what a ring saddle was, but it would have to do. The prince said they weren’t going far. The round man shuffled off to find their mount, and Prince Malik drifted her way once he was out the door.

“Princess, spy,
and
experienced tradeswoman,” he said from under his hood, still up. “Is there no end to your talents?” The sarcasm was heavy in his voice.

“I’m fairly certain we were robbed.”

The prince paused a beat. “Actually, I think you got quite the deal. I think he was intimidated by your beauty.”

Aniri just shook her head. “Please tell me a ring saddle isn’t going to present a problem.”

“We only have about an hour journey. I think I can tolerate sharing a shashee with you for that long.” He grinned, then ducked his head as the stable owner’s heavy footfalls sounded outside. The prince slipped a few paper bills into her hand. Keeping his back to the owner, the prince shuffled into the sunshine outside. A young stableboy clad in heavy coats brought the animal to him for inspection.

The stable owner beckoned her to come outside as well. The weathered, grayish beast he had selected for them had clumps of fur that hung below its massive chin. The “saddle” was barely more than a brilliant red blanket draped across the animal’s back and looked more to protect it from the cold than to hold them securely to its back. In fact, it looked as though a good wind could lift it clean free. A shape under the blanket formed a ring of sorts, and sat between the hump at the rear and the massive shoulders in front.

The stableboy tapped his cane on the animal’s nose, bringing it to a stop, then fetched a stepladder that reached halfway up the beast’s side. It didn’t seem nearly enough, but the prince quickly climbed the steps and grabbed hold of something hidden under the blanket. Then he miraculously flung himself up onto the animal’s back, landing perfectly in the saddle.

Aniri just stared.

She could see the grin under his hood, so she strode forward, determined to at least appear she knew what she was doing. She shoved the bills into the fat hand of the stable owner and gamely climbed the steps, but when she reached the top, she couldn’t tell what she was supposed to do next. The prince reached down and grasped her arm, so she grabbed onto his rough hide sleeve and tried to leap up on the beast. She only made it halfway, but the prince managed to haul her up the rest. The saddle was smaller than it looked, forcing her forward into the dip at the center. She couldn’t help but sit pressed against the prince’s back. Their bulky Sik overcoats provided plenty of padding between them, and her thin leather gloves gave her some sense of propriety, but it still felt strangely intimate.

She wished she had bargained harder for a carriage.

The stableboy handed up the tapping cane, and the prince gave two light taps to the beast’s forehead. It swayed forward in a great motion that felt like it would fling Aniri from the saddle. She clutched at the prince’s overcoat to keep from falling off. A low chuckle came from him, barely rising over the shuffle of woolly feet on the frost-crusted ground. The swaying grew more rhythmic once the beast got going, but Aniri still was forced to hold fast, synchronizing their bodies in order not to bang against one another.

An hour suddenly seemed like a very long time.

They lurched away from the outskirts of the trading village and into a steep canyon carved from granite. It was dark, the sun not yet cresting the mountains. Tiny shrubs clung to crevices in the shadowed walls, their gnarled branches permanently bent in a perpetual battle against the wind. They pointed back to the village like a thousand fingers of warning against their slow progress deeper and deeper into the canyon.

Aniri knew this would be dangerous. Her boasts of the Queen coming after her were simply that. But even if her mother chose to rescue her from the barbarians in the frozen north, Aniri wasn’t sure how the Queen’s infantry would fare against the harsh climate and difficult terrain. Lives would certainly be lost in the process. The Queen could well be right to forsake her.

Aniri and Prince Malik didn’t speak. The sound of the shashee’s grunts and the scraping of its feet on the graveled road mixed with the hollowness of the wind, making speech seem a lost effort. Eventually, Aniri tucked her head behind the prince’s back, sheltering her face from the cold.

The road narrowed as it hugged the craggy mountainside, winding higher and higher. How could any kind of flying weapon have been built in such a remote area? Then she spied a thin rail line at the bottom of the canyon. Supplies and materials must run by rail, because only a shashee or a drawn wagon could navigate their increasingly narrow foot trail.

The air grew even thinner as they climbed. The cold turned Aniri’s breath into a steaming cloud. It left her warm spot behind the prince and trailed behind them. The rhythm of the beast lulled her, and time passed quicker than Aniri thought possible. Soon the prince tapped the beast to a stop, and she lurched against him, clutching again. The shashee slowly knelt to the ground, one giant tree-trunk of a leg at a time. When it folded down, the prince slid off, then held a hand up to help her.

“Are we taking a rest?” she asked once she was on the graveled dirt beside him.

The prince pointed farther up the road. It disappeared around a bend in the canyon. “This is the last turn before the airharbor.”