Red Heir - Lisa Henry Page 0,58
Loth said.
“No, but he’s a pain in the arse and I didn’t get to shoot the bandit leader, so I should at least be allowed to give him a boot to the meat and two veg.”
Loth shrugged. “I mean, I see your point.”
He hopped back on his horse behind Quinn and rode off leaving Scott laying in the dirt groaning, and he didn’t need ears like a bat to hear the sound of a good, solid kick followed by a yelp, a groan, and a kind of crunching noise as Scott tumbled face-forward into a carpet of leaves.
It was an incredibly satisfying sound.
Chapter Fourteen
It took three days to reach Callier.
They still travelled at night, the road growing busier and the villages more tightly packed together as they drew nearer the city. And then, one night, and one bend in the road, and there it was: the city wall rising up in the distance, with the scattering of towers and spires rising up behind it. It shone even in the darkness. Tiny points of light from thousands of different windows, different fires and different lanterns, different candles, all coming together in a glittering, glowing patchwork that mimicked the field of stars blazing above it.
They stopped and took it in for a moment, and Loth felt Quinn’s hand sliding into his.
Ser Greylord cleared his throat. “I need to go to the castle. I’m expecting news, and I have to report to Lord Doom. If I don’t go straight away when I’ve been seen entering the city, it’ll look suspicious. So my men will go to the barracks, and I’ll be inside the castle. There’s a door around the back, near the laundry. I’ll leave it unlocked, and it’s generally unguarded.”
Loth nodded—every castle had a door like it, in practically the same place—a door where a pickpocket or a noble’s bedwarmer could easily slip in and out unnoticed, their purse a little heavier than before.
“And where are we going?” Scott asked. “What’s happening?” It was the first time he’d spoken in hours, cowed into submission by the presence of the royal guard.
“I know somewhere,” Loth said. He was fairly certain they’d be welcome—after all, what was that saying? Home is where the stomach is. Or was it the heart? Something along those lines, anyway. It didn’t matter. The point was, they’d be able to get a good meal there, at least. The others looked at him expectantly, so he flicked his reins and led them forward, through the gates of Callier. As they rode he murmured to Quinn, “Listen, when we get there you have to pretend to be me, okay?”
“Pretend to be you how, exactly? Be an arsehole and accuse people of horse buggery? Or steal everything in sight and shag anything not nailed down?” Quinn asked, and Loth was fairly sure he was joking to hide his nerves.
He played along. “I’ll have you know you just listed my best qualities!”
“What, lechery and theft?”
“I prefer to think of it as mergers and acquisitions.” That earned him a stifled laugh against his shoulder. “Just follow my lead, okay?” he said, trusting Quinn to do just that. He’d proven over and over on the trip that there was more to him than just the prickly little urchin that Loth had first met in a pile of straw. Really, there always had been—it had just taken Loth a while to see it.
They turned through city streets familiar to Loth. He knew his way around Callier with his eyes closed. A familiar sense of home stole over him as the horses’ hooves clopped against the worn-down cobbles and echoed in the night. Loth had grown up in these streets and taken his first wobbly steps in them. Later, he’d used his knowledge of the narrow, twisting back alleys to evade pursuit by creditors and angry spouses on more than one occasion, people who were bigger than him that he’d shot his mouth off to all the same, because he’d always been a slow learner in that regard. The city even smelled exactly as Loth remembered: a little grimy, a little bit like seawater and, in this neighbourhood at least, overwhelmingly like hops and yeast.
“Lead the way, Your Grace,” Ada prompted, and Loth realised he’d stopped his horse at the turn into the cobbled street where his parents lived.
He turned and surveyed his rescuers and prayed to whichever god would have him that his parents would take this in their stride like he hoped. Looking forward he