were no more dragons now, but in Mamoru’s eyes I recognized some of that same fear. He did not know how long he must wait, or even what he was waiting for. It was why he had reached out to me in the first place.
I closed my hand over his and held it tight while we waited.
The guard we’d spoken to broke away from the rest to stand in front of us once more. He looked at me, then the horse and then my lord, all with a scrutiny that I would never have allowed if we had been our true selves.
Then, just as I’d become certain that Mamoru would bruise my fingers with the grip he held them in, the guard nodded, and the gate began to open.
“Get out,” the guard said, with a nod toward the gate.
I fought down the urge to take him to task for speaking so rudely to my lord, but Mamoru gripped my hand with his own pale fingers and hunched over the horse’s neck with a quiet groan. Instead of reprimanding the fool, I thanked him.
Then we were outside the palace.
The last time we’d ridden out of the palace together, my lord had been on his own horse. The sun had been high in the morning sky, the air crisp with the fall of autumn, and he had led his own company of foot soldiers and flag bearers, nearly seven hundred men in all under his command.
My lord shivered, and I led the horse on in silence until the palace walls were the vaguest of shadows behind us, and farther still. I couldn’t be too careful.
The road we were on led deep into the heart of the city; if we continued to travel on it, we would reach the old dome by dawn. If we’d but had the time, I would surely have stopped and offered up a prayer there, for our safe passage. It was a familiar route, and a well-traveled one.
I led the horse off the road and under the bower of a maple tree. Its leaves looked black as dry blood in the pale moonlight.
“If you will permit me, my lord,” I whispered, as Mamoru bent his ear to my lips, “I must join you on the horse for now. We will travel faster that way, else I would never suggest it—”
“We are no longer in the palace,” Mamoru replied. I could see only half his face, the shape of a scythe moon; the rest was turned away from me. “Act practically rather than on protocol.”
“My lord,” I consented, and swung myself onto the mount behind him. The horse protested for a moment, but merely out of laziness; he was a mammoth beast, and after the first huff of annoyance, he settled into an easy trot. I wished to ride him faster, but the path was a trail too easy to follow. I urged him instead to the trees. It would be a while before we reached the mountains, but we had a better chance of hiding there than in the larger towns along the main roads, and the idea of being caught out in the open did not sit easy with me. I was a servant first and foremost, but I was also a soldier, and one trained to look to the skies, at that.
The Emperor was a different enemy we were fleeing, but Iseul was as formidable as a dragon and twice as clever as its rider.
After a few moments’ stiffness, still curled like the ailing serving woman around himself, my lord relaxed. Sometime after that, he allowed himself to lean back against my chest.
“It seems like something out of an old play,” he said, very softly, but even the sound of his own voice seemed to startle him, as though he hadn’t known how loud a whisper could be in an empty darkness.
When I’d comforted him on the eve of his first battle, he’d had the strength of an army and his birthright behind him. He was fighting for an empire.
I was silent now, the wind blowing his hair against my neck, the horse moving at a steadfast gait. I wondered how he would run, if pressed to it, for he wasn’t a horse built for racing but rather for heavy loads. It was lucky in some ways and a worry in others.
No one will learn we are gone yet, I told myself. We needed only to disappear, and that required subtlety, not speed.