The Immortal Prince by Jennifer Fallon

Author:Jennifer Fallon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2007-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 37

By the time Cayal finished speaking the carriage had reached the crossroads outside the city. Arkady was jerked back into the present—quite literally—by the coach turning right, taking the road that led into the mountains. The main road through the city to the palace dwindled into the distance. It was still possible to reach the palace by this route, but it was much longer.

Arkady had given the coach driver her instructions before they left the palace this morning. The destination she had in mind was an inn some two miles along the road, favoured by miners on their way to or from the mines located in the Valley of the Tides, as well as prospectors who scoured the nearer mountain streams around Lutalo for alluvial gold.

Cayal had fallen silent, his gaze fixed on the passing scenery. Although she wanted to hear more, Arkady was glad of the chance to gather her thoughts. What she was planning was at best foolish, at worst an act of treason against the crown. Far from saving Cayal from torture at the hands of Declan Hawkes, she might well bring the same fate down upon her own head.

“Lebec Palace is rather less salubrious than I imagined,” Cayal remarked, as the coach rocked to a halt in the yard of the run-down inn.

The inn was owned by a one-armed man named Clyden Bell. Arkady’s father had amputated the old miner’s left arm after he was caught in a cave-in and in danger of half a mountain falling on him. Clyden had never forgotten her father’s courage that day. Nor had he forgotten he owed his life to a passing physician, heading home from a visit to Fioma, with his ten-year-old daughter in tow. Arkady still remembered the lantern trembling in her hand as she stood by her father’s side in the dark mine, listening to the creaking timbers threatening to collapse on top of them. She had handed him his bone saw and the other instruments he needed to free the young man, wiping the sweat from the brow of the trapped and terrified miner, pretending she wasn’t scared witless.

Clyden hadn’t forgotten it, either. If there was anywhere in Lebec Province Arkady could be sure of complete discretion, it was at the inn belonging to Clyden Bell.

Nobody came to open the carriage door. As instructed before they left the palace, the Crasii escort surrounding the carriage remained mounted. They would not move until they were ordered to.

It was the question of who would give the order that Arkady had brought Cayal here to settle. That’s what she intended to tell Stellan, at any rate. I was trying to force him to admit he was a Caelish spy, she planned to say when she was questioned. I never thought he’d make a run for it…

Arkady took a deep breath. One step at a time, she reminded herself.

“I asked permission once, to amputate some of your fingers,” she informed Cayal, surprised at how steady she sounded.

Cayal eyed her askance.

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