“Do you know who Elizabeth is? Or us?”
He shrugged. “I thought so.”
“This stays between trusted friends. She is Princess Elizabeth of Dire. Her father, the king, sent her on a diplomatic mission to Kondor and we are not supposed to know her during the trip. Why, is not important. She has been our master since we were children and we live in her apartment in Castle Crestfallen.” I settled back, certain to have impressed him. He would understand our importance and how our tasks were royal appointments.
He waited a while before speaking. “I was not the beggar you met on the docks, or better said, I was not always that wretch of a man. My father was a powerful merchant, and my two older brothers worked for him. Another became a priest. There was not a position for me in his business, so he purchased an officer’s commission in the King’s Army, and I was made a messenger. An officer.”
“I suspected you were educated, and that usually means you come from a wealthy family. What happened?”
“To them? I hope to find out they are well, but my father supported our king.”
“After you were taken prisoner and tortured, there was no way to go home?”
He shrugged. “The pain lasted for years. Fever often had me in sweats for days. At times I crawled, dragging the leg with the arrowhead. You found me on one of my better days.”
I’d suspected a similar tale. A wretch born to beg who spoke and acted differently. That line of thinking brought me to my own origins for the thousandth time. It was a common thread in the tapestry of Kendra’s and my lives. Like Flier, we didn’t speak and act like lowborn, but we had no other solid reason for thinking otherwise.
No, that was not fully true. There was one other thing. Our dark skins, thin features, and thick hair all said we came from Kondor, or somewhere similar. Not Dire. That indicated we had traveled in a time where only the wealthy did so. Setting aside a few borne of royalty, merchants, and sailors, nobody in Dire traveled beyond the kingdom borders, and seldom beyond their towns or villages.
I suspected it was the same in other kingdoms, which begged the question of why were my sister and I alone in Dire? A common sailor would never be permitted to take his children along on a voyage.
That left wealthy merchants and royalty who could afford to travel. Again, there seemed to be another option. The word flee, brought up an unconsidered idea, one that might ring with a hint of truth. If our parents, or one of them, had fled another kingdom with us in tow, then died, it might better account for our circumstances.
“Do you remember the way across the pass?” I asked.
He nodded as he said, “I crossed it more than twenty times in one year, alone.”
That was enough of an answer. A commotion drew my attention. People were crowding to the rail, their attention on the horizon. They had spotted land.
After the intense storm and the listless days sailing along the stationary storm front, everyone was anxious to reach port—even if it was Trager. The water from the kegs tasted old and green, there were no fresh fruits or vegetables, and the baked goods were long gone. Salted fish satisfied a belly, but a mind demanded more. I’d heard the wine was also running low. That might turn the passengers against the ship.
Kendra came up from behind and startled me. In other circumstances, it may have been funny when I jumped and pulled my knife.
She glanced at Flier and decided to speak freely in front of him. “Elizabeth apologizes for her aloofness, but it is part of the task her father gave her and those with her. She is to meet with the Council of Nine in Kondor—not the king. She is to negotiate a treaty. She indicated there is more, but didn’t share it with me. There were others present in her cabin.”
“And us?”
“We were never supposed to be on the ship. She was holding us in reserve. Only a few of her entourage know of us as anything but servants.”
“So, we sail with her to Dagger and help if she requests it?”
Kendra shook her head. “She wants us to travel by land if possible, using Flier as a guide if he is willing, and we will meet her in Dagger. That is assuming the storm is intended to block you and me, and she is allowed to sail on. One way or another, she has a message to be delivered to Avery, of all people. The message is simple. We are to order him to ‘proceed’ and no, I do not know what that means. He will.”
We sat in silence, the three of us. We would do as she instructed, but there was more unsaid. “At Crestfallen, when a royal audience is required, the least powerful of the pair travels. Assuming that is true of this meeting, Dire is the weaker.”
“Perhaps not the weaker of the two, but the one that wishes the meeting to take place,” she said. “Or the one more willing to make a deal.”
The silence lingered on. Flier said, “If your king had been in communication with the king of Kondor in years past, he might wish to understand what has transpired to change the leadership to the Council of Nine.”
I added, “And to make sure the same thing does not happen in Dire. But Elizabeth is to meet with the council, not the king.”
Kendra seemed to agree. Then she said, “I asked if Elizabeth can take the girls on the ship with her. She refused. Her reasons were sound, and I accepted them.”
“Meaning they will travel with us?”
She shrugged but remained quiet. The other choice was to leave them in Trager, which was unthinkable. It was not her first choice to take them with us, but she would accept it. The girls would either remain with us, or we would find another solution—which seemed unlikely.
Hours later, as the ship pulled up next to the same dock, a small crowd waited to greet us as the same two longboats towed us to the same pier. There were merchants with wrinkled apples in a basket, smoked strips of small meat that might have been made from any animal, and a few handcrafted wooden items. In short, nothing we would be interested in.
However, there were also a disproportionate number of military, milling with the crowd and trying their best to look unobtrusive, which only made them stand out more in their clean uniforms and healthy bodies. While there had been a few during our earlier docking, now there were dozens.
Kendra and I had agreed to take Flier ashore and purchase the supplies he felt we required to cross the Vin pass, clothing, food, and more. She leaned closer to me and whispered, “None of us goes there until we figure out what’s happening with all those troops.”
She wouldn’t get an argument from me. I turned to Flier.
He was watching the group closely. “The city has no police anymore. Trager doesn’t have an army. Those are royal guards from upper Trager. They serve the council and usually remain up there.”
I said while noticing Kendra hung on our every word, “Ever see them down here at the docks before?”
“No. I mean, one or two at a time, but never more.”
“You said upper Trager again. I get it that the palace is on the hillside, so it is higher or upper, but you made it sound like a place in a foreign land, a place where nobody goes.”
“Nobody does. If you look above the rooftops, up on the hill, you’ll see a ledge with a short wall built on top. Without a pass issued by the palace guards, anyone going there is killed. No second chances.”
“The king lives there?” Kendra asked.
“Some say so. He used to, but about the time they took me prisoner, he dropped from sight.” Flier didn’t elaborate but didn’t have to. He suspected the king was dead and the city ruled by a council, the same story we kept hearing variations of in one land after another. Councils probably reporting to mages, in some fashion.