She looked terrified by her own slipup, but Crier didn’t even seem to notice. For that, Ayla was grateful. “It’s not safe to leave Elderell, my lady. At least not until extra guards come.”
“How long will that take?”
“I don’t know.” She gestured at the window. “See for yourself, my lady. It’s near impossible to move through the single road. I suggest you both stay the night and return tomorrow instead.”
Stay the night. No, Ayla could not spend another night here, alone with Crier. Even the crowdedness of the servants’ building back at the palace would be more tolerable. At least there she’d be able to wrestle with her feelings away from Crier’s gaze.
Crier looked out the window, and Ayla joined her. At first, she didn’t see anything. But then, when she scanned the rooftops of the village, she saw it: smoke, past the village’s outer gates, rising up into the sky, a black plume.
“Staying is not an option,” Crier said to the innkeeper. Ayla noticed she wasn’t making eye contact either. “We must leave now, we can’t wait this out. We have to deliver a—a time-sensitive message.”
The innkeeper looked despairing. “I must advise you to wait.”
Ayla finally looked at Crier—for an instant, and then she looked away again, jaw working. “We can’t wait. We have to go.”
“Tell my driver to ready the carriage,” Crier told the innkeeper.
“. . . Yes, my lady. If—if that is what you wish.”
Within minutes, the carriage appeared, and Crier and Ayla boarded in a hurry. Around them, the sky was darkening—not with evening. With smoke.
The second Crier closed the door behind them, the driver cracked the whip and they were off, bumping along the cobblestoned street. Ayla pressed herself up against the far wall, as far from Crier as she could possibly get without actually just throwing herself out the window. Mercifully, Crier made no comment.
They drove along, windows rattling with the uneven street, and at first it looked like everything would be fine. Like they’d be able to leave Elderell unhindered by whatever riot had broken out.
Until Ayla realized something was wrong. She heard the driver curse aloud and urge the horses forward, heard a shout that didn’t belong to him, and then another shout, and then another. She tensed, pushing the velvet curtain aside to peek out at the street. At first, she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
Something struck the window hard enough to crack the glass, barely an inch from Ayla’s nose. She gasped, rearing back. Someone had thrown a rock at the carriage window.
“Gods,” Ayla said, her voice low. She scooted toward the middle of the carriage, the desire to stay away from Crier giving way to the desire to remain alive.
“I can hear it,” Crier said. “Them.” Two shouts had become a dozen; a dozen had become too many too count, a wall of angry voices. “There’s a crowd. A mob. Close, and getting closer.”
Ayla swore. “How far are we from the village gates?”
“Not far, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to—”
Another rock hit the window with a crack, new spider webs appearing in the glass. The noise of the mob was growing closer still. Ayla risked a glance out the cracked window and saw, to her horror, a wave of people in the street, another billow of smoke, this time rising from a rooftop only one street away.
“My lady!” she heard the driver scream.
Then the mob fell upon the carriage like waves crashing against rock. Another rock hit the side of the carriage, another earsplitting crack—then Ayla heard the sounds of a dozen hands hitting the sides of the carriage. They were being rocked back and forth, humans shoving at the carriage on both sides.
She braced herself against the shaking wall. “Gods, they’re not going to stop until they rip this thing apart—”
An absurd image flashed into Ayla’s head: the carriage cracked open like a giant black crab shell, her and Crier pulled like soft meat from the wreckage.
“There are more,” Crier said—she had to yell to make herself heard over the shouting and the horrible creaking of the carriage. “They won’t let up.”
“We either wait to see what they’ll do to us once they get inside . . . or we try to escape,” Ayla said, poising to break out. It was their only option. But—
The carriage shuddered hard enough to throw them both sideways, Crier’s head nearly cracking against the window. Ayla gasped.
She dived forward to see if Crier was all right—of course