The Heart of Betrayal (The Remnant Chronicles #2) - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,109

that?”

“I’m not deaf, Sven. It’s what they’ve wanted for years.”

“Does she know?”

“No. It doesn’t matter. I’d never allow it to happen.”

Sven peeled back the blood-sodden tear in my shirt and grunted. “It was a stupid move you made tonight.”

“I pulled back.”

“Only thanks to me.”

I knew he’d point that out. Watch your step. If they suspected I was anyone other than who I claimed to be, it wouldn’t bode well for any of us—especially Lia. We’d end up dead, but she’d end up married to one animal and serving another at his bidding. The wedding was three days away. We had to move fast.

“Where’s Tavish?” I asked.

“Still working out the details of the raft. He’s acquiring the barrels to tether together.”

Barrels. In a split-second passing today, Jeb had briefly whispered the escape would be by raft, but I’d hoped I had heard him wrong. I shook my head. “There has to be another way.”

“If there is, you tell us what it is,” Sven said. He told me they had already looked at other options and confirmed the bridge was definitely not one of them. It required too many men to raise and drew too much attention. Traveling on land for hundreds of miles to the lower river wasn’t an option either. We’d be hunted down before we reached the calm waters, and there were beasts in that part of the river that did their own kind of hunting. Orrin had already gotten a taste of that. His calf had been shredded before Jeb and Tavish managed to kill the monster that had latched on to his leg.

They insisted a raft was the only option. Tavish had studied the river. He said it would work. Though the drop and rushing waters sent up a powerful mist, that same mist provided concealment, and there were slower eddies on the western bank. The raft just had to be maneuvered into one at just the right point. It was possible. The other advantage to the river was that it would sweep us out of Vendan reach so swiftly, we’d be miles away before they even managed to get the bridge raised to try to follow, and then they’d have no idea where we had exited the river. Orrin said they had left their horses and some of the Vendan horses we had captured roped off in a hidden pasture some twenty miles downriver. It was the perfect plan. So they said. If the horses were still there. If a hundred other things didn’t go wrong. I tried to remind myself that Tavish had always been the architect of details. I had to trust him, but I’d have felt better if I could see the certainty in his eyes for myself. I didn’t know if Lia even knew how to swim.

“How’s your leg?” I asked Orrin.

“Tavish sewed me up. I’ll live.”

“But it needs a dressing too,” Sven said firmly.

Orrin lifted his pant leg and shrugged. The dozens of stitched lines showing above the top of his boot were red and festering, which explained his slight limp. But it had given Governor Obraun and his injured guard a good excuse to join me here. Sven had told Calantha his guard had been attacked by a panther while hunting and was in need of a poultice too.

While we were whispering, Jeb snuck in from another door. “Anyone here need a crap cake?”

I smiled, surveying him head to foot. He was the only one among us who cared about the season’s latest fashion and whether his buttons were polished. Now he was dressed in rags, his hair filthy, and he fully looked the role of a patty clapper. “How’d you get stuck with that job?” I asked.

“Everyone’s happy to open the door for a patty clapper making a delivery. Happy at least for a few seconds.” He made a clicking sound out the side of his mouth, like the snapping of a neck. “We may need to take a few out quietly in their rooms before we make our move.”

“And he speaks Vendan like a native,” Sven added.

Jeb was like Lia, gifted at languages. He seemed to enjoy their exotic feel on his tongue as much as exotic fabrics on his back. But Sven had learned Vendan the hard way—a few years into his service, he was imprisoned, along with two Vendans, in a Lesser Kingdom. They were captured for slave service, as he called it, working for two years in their mines until he and the Vendans finally