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The next twenty minutes were spent avoiding grim troops of guards and soldiers, an activity which involved a great deal of hiding in uncomfortable positions, as well as a lot of doubling-back and changing direction. I had no idea whether all of these armed men had been alerted to my escape and were looking for me, or if they were running around in response to the recent arrival of their long-lost queen. Either way, I had no desire to find out.
Perhaps my preoccupation with this explains why it took me so long to notice something else -- Inmar was lost. He was leading us forward with the cautious uncertainty of someone who had no idea where he was going. At first I thought he was just being cautious, but every time we came to a cross corridor he would hesitate, frowning, until we heard footsteps coming, and were forced to go in whichever direction led away from them. I held my peace for a while, uncertain whether I should say anything.
It took me another few minutes of silent walking to realize something else -- I was notlost. However long it may have been since I’d last set foot in the palace, I still remembered enough of the general layout to know that Inmar was leading us more deeply into the castle. If we were looking for an exit, we should have been headed in the other direction.
I looked at Inmar again, suddenly suspicious. Maybe he was only pretending to be lost. There was only one way to find out. “Inmar,” I whispered, after we’d navigated around an unsuspecting scrub girl.
He didn’t even hear me. I had to whisper his name loudly, several times, before he finally looked up. He was frowning again, his eyebrows bunched up in a distracted knot.
“What?” he asked.
“I think we’re going in the wrong direction,” I told him.
Inmar stopped short. “You think, or you know?”
“I’m pretty sure,” I admitted.
Inmar’s mouth compressed into a thin line. I waited for him to ignore me and keep walking, since I was undoubtedly ruining his nefarious scheme. Instead, he surprised me. “Explain,” he ordered tersely.
“I don’t know exactly where we are,” I explained. “I can’t remember that well. But I have a general idea. I think we’re in one of the outer public levels of the palace, and we’re heading inward toward the royal suites and offices. If we’re trying to get out, we should be going in the opposite direction -- back toward the servant’s quarters. There’re more likely to be unused outside doors there.”
I shot a quick glance at him. He didn’t look mad -- he looked like he was thinking. “All right,” he finally said tersely, “you lead. I’m lost.”
His admission surprised me. “Shouldn’t you be able to use your faerie senses to tell all this?” I couldn’t resist asking.
“There’s no such thing as ‘faerie senses’,” he informed me loftily.
“Then how did you find me?” I asked. I was genuinely curious.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he waved in front of us. “We can’t stand here all day. Someone will notice.” He took off down the corridor we’d just walked up without so much as a backward glance.
I spent a moment staring blankly after him. He was acting a little oddly, even for Inmar, which was certainly saying something. After another blank moment, I realized he was also walking very quickly, and would soon be out of sight if I didn’t catch up. I hurried down the corridor after him.
He was waiting for me at the next flight of stairs. “Which way?” he asked, nodding at the branching passageway below.
So he really was going to let me lead. I went down the stairs ahead of him, suddenly a bit nervous, and chose the left-hand corridor, reasoning that it seemed to lead back in the direction we‘d first come. What I had told Inmar earlier was true. I didn’t know precisely where in the castle we were; I just had a very general idea.
Two hours and numerous wrong turns later, I was willing to concede that I was as lost as Inmar was.
“I would never have guessed,” Inmar observed, “that the servant’s quarters would have quite such an excellent portrait gallery. Or quite such an abundance of carpeting.” He kicked one foot over the rich burgundy beneath our feet.
“I’m doing the best I can,” I told him. “You weren’t having such an easy time of it earlier, were you?”
“But I never claimed to know where I was going,” he pointed out with irritatingly smug logic.
And there was little denying that now we were well and truly lost. We certainly weren’t anywhere near the servants’ quarters. The only good thing about our situation was that we seemed to have finally gotten past all of the troops of guards.
“With a palace as large as this, they really don’t need a dungeon, do they?” Inmar mused. “They could just turn their prisoners loose and let them wander for the rest of eternity.”
“You’re hardly one to complain about large palaces,” I snipped. “Faerie’s is larger.”
He cocked his head to one side, considering. “I suppose it is, in a way. But in a way, it’s really not.” Talking to him was a bit like walking in circles.
“I still can’t believe we haven’t come to an exit by now,” I continued, aware of how whiny I sounded. “I could have sworn this was the right direction, at least.”
“It looks more like someone’s private wing,” Inmar said thoughtfully. “We should keep an eye out for people. It will be a lot harder to escape notice if this is a private wing -- there’s bound to be questions.”
I nodded. My feet were beginning to hurt and my stomach had been complaining loudly for some time now.
“In here.” Without warning, Inmar suddenly grabbed my arm, pulling me down a short cross-corridor, and through a doorway.
“What?” I spluttered. “What are you doing? Let go of my arm.”
He did. “Time to sit down for a bit,” he explained implacably, looking around the room. It appeared to be someone’s charming little private parlor. I could only pray that it wasn’t used very often. “There. There’s a chair over there,” he said. “Go sit down.”
I did as he suggested, but only because I really was beginning to feel a bit dizzy, and my hand was throbbing again. Getting lost in castles tends to take quite a bit out of you.
He settled himself against the stonework of the empty fireplace. “We have to rest sometime,” he said. “We might as well find someplace comfortable to do it.”
I nodded, and we both sat there in silence for a moment.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked abruptly. Then wished fervently that I could take the question back as it hung there, suddenly sounding harsh and awkward.
“Mad?” Inmar turned his head to consider me. “I’ll admit that you’re not the most brilliant navigator I’ve ever met, but as you so graciously pointed out, I wasn’t having much more luck.”
“No. About --” I waved my hand uncomfortably in the direction of the rest of the castle. “About everything else,” I finished.
“Why would I be?” He sounded genuinely surprised and I strained to see his face through the dimness of the room. “Añasandre has been plotting escape and revenge for centuries. It was coming, regardless of any part you played.”
Oddly enough, his words made me feel better.
“Why did you come get me?” I asked, determined to have an answer this time.
He was quiet for a while, and I thought maybe I’d pushed him too far. “I… felt partly responsible for you,” he finally said. His tone didn’t encourage further questions on the topic. I wouldn’t have known what to ask, anyway. I couldn’t very well demand to know if he was telling the truth.
There was another slightly uncomfortable silence.
“What now?” I finally asked.
“Now?” Inmar turned his head to consider me. “Now we stay put until one of us comes up with a Brilliant Plan. I expect it’ll have to be me,” he continued mildly, “since you look like you’re about to fall over. I’ve been told that it’s rather difficult to come up with Brilliant Plans when you’re face first in the carpet.
“It is a very nice carpet,” he added absently.
I leaned back against the chair, promising myself I would only close my eyes for five minutes, then we’d be up and off again. “I’ll just think up something while I rest,” I said.
I heard him laugh softly, right before I fell asleep.
“Food?” he asked, stilling his hand so that I could see the fleshy orange fruit he was holding. There was a pile of little muffins on the floor next to him. I took the fruit, too hungry to object to his methods of waking me up. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep, anyhow.
“Where’d you get this?” I asked suspiciously, biting into the sweet flesh. “How long have I been asleep? Why didn‘t you wake me up?”
Inmar ignored me while he sorted through his muffin pile. “Currants,” he stated disgustedly, tossing one aside.
When he finally found one to his liking, he settled down cross-legged on the floor and turned back to me. “I found these in a bedroom down the hall. I’m sure they won’t be missed. Or maybe they will, but I find that I really don‘t care. You’ve been asleep for a couple of hours, and I did wake you up, just now. You could at least thank me.
“I’ve put the time to good use, you’ll be glad to hear,” Inmar continued. “I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my Brilliant Plan.”
I waited expectantly while he chose another muffin. “Well?” I finally asked, after it became apparent that he wasn‘t going to say anything more. “Let’s hear it.”
“It’s simple,” he told me. “While I was borrowing our little meal, I checked the bedroom, and as I thought, there just happened to be a servants’ passage along one wall for discreet entrances and exits. If we follow it, it should take us straight down to the lower regions of the castle, where we will then find an outside door and proceed to make our escape.”
I tried very hard to find a fault with his plan, but unfortunately it seemed pretty straight-forward, and with a much better chance of success than our previous tactic of wandering randomly into strange wings of the building. Inmar knew it too.
We finished eating in silence, then I reluctantly got up from my chair and followed Inmar as he led the way out of the room and down the hallway, into another hall, down a few shallow steps and halfway up yet another hall. “In here,” he whispered. “Wait while I make sure there’s still no one here.”
He eased open the door a crack, and cautiously peered around. “It’s fine,” he reported, opening the door the rest of the way. I followed him into the huge room, wrinkling my nose. Whoever claimed it as her own -- and it had to be a she -- possessed a ghastly sense of taste. The chamber was opulent to the point of being ridiculous, decorated in tones of gold and bright red. I navigated carefully around several spindly chairs piled high with cushions, while trying to simultaneously avoid the vases of red roses that seemed to be perched on every available surface . The room itself was so warm that I thought I might pass out.
“Over here in the dressing room,” Inmar said, gesturing toward a small door in the far wall -- the only thing not covered in gilt and red velvet. I followed him, and waited as he pulled it open -- and suddenly the room was filled with an ear-splitting shriek.
Inmar jumped back from the door as though he’d been burned, almost tripping over me in his haste to back up. A petite redhead came flying out from the door, half-dressed in an assortment of frothy undergarments. She stopped abruptly just in time to avoid crashing into Inmar, then caught sight of me and let out another impressive screech. We both stood frozen, watching as she waved her hands about melodramatically.
“Somebody! Come quickly! Help! Help me!” she wailed. “Get out of my room at once.” A frightened maid peered out from the dressing room behind her. No one else moved a muscle. Inmar seemed rooted to the spot.
“Thieves! Marauders! Get out of my room! How dare you!” The woman was scanning the room as she spoke, presumably either for a way to get past Inmar, or for some heavy object to throw.
“No, it’s… it’s all right,” I tried to assure her. “We were just… er… I’ve been newly hired, and I was being shown around this wing by the… um… by him.” I waved at Inmar.
The woman’s eyes narrowed, and I could tell instantly that my story wasn’t going to wash. “No servant here would dare to sneak around in such an outrageous outfit.” It finally dawned on me that I was still wearing jeans and a shirt. “Furthermore, I was not made aware of any such happenings.”
By her tone of voice, it was clear that we ought to understand that absolutely nothing would ever happen without her first being made aware of it. “No, you have come to rob me or murder me in my bed. I will not have it! Somebody! HELP!” She began to back up slowly into the dressing room, her gaze still flitting nervously between Inmar and me.
“Ilsa?”
We all turned as new arrival appeared on the scene. A man was poking his head cautiously through the doorway. “What’s all the racket? What’s… Ariane?!”
I let out a disbelieving breath. “Orren?”
It was.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, coming the rest of the way into the room and surveying the strange display we all made. There was a rather odd expression on his face. “Ilsa, what is going on?”
“How should I know?” the tiny woman huffed. “You mean to tell me that you know these… these people? I demand that they be removed from my chambers at once. Have you no respect for the proprieties?”
“I, well, yes, I… yes, of course,” Orren said, clearly at a loss. I almost felt sorry for him. “I was looking for you,” he finally said, turning to face me. “Maybe we should go out into the hall and discuss-”
“You were looking for her here?” Inmar drawled, breaking in. “How very convenient for you.”
I watched in fascinated confusion as Orren’s face turned red.
“What do you-” I opened my mouth to ask. And then I fully took in the sight of the half-dressed woman still standing in the doorway to her dressing room, still clothed in nothing but her few rather magnificent and very expensive undergarments.
It finally clicked.
I turned back to the two men, not sure with whom I was more annoyed.
Apparently Ilsa had been surveying me just as closely. “Do you mean to tell me that you know this woman?” she asked, turning to Orren with a sniff. “She told me she was a servant.”
“She is,” Orren said rather absently, still staring at me.
“She isn’t.” Inmar’s voice was icy.
Orren’s head jerked up, and he turned to look at Inmar. The two of them stood there for several seconds, regarding each other out of narrowed eyes.
“And who are you?” Ilsa interrupted, turning to face Inmar again. “Are you a servant also?”
Even Orren had the good grace to realize that now she’d really gone too far. “No, Ilsa, neither one of them is a servant,” he said, glancing a little uneasily at Inmar, who now had murder in his eyes. “Why don’t you stay here, sweetling. I need to talk to them. I’ll explain later.”
Sweetling? I glared at no one in particular. Inmar glared at me. Ilsa glared at Orren, who clearly decided that now was the time to make a retreat. “Come out into the hall with me,” he said to us, beckoning. “I really do need to speak with you.”
Out in the hall, he led us to a small alcove a little distance away, then turned to face us both. “I really was looking for you,” he told me earnestly. “Earlier, I mean. Not now. Just now I was… well, anyway I-”
“You were….?” Inmar inquired politely.
“Now look,” Orren turned to Inmar, his chin jutting out dangerously. “Do you have a problem?”
“Yes,” Inmar said, “you.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes,” said Inmar.
“You were looking for me,” I prompted Orren quickly, before the insults could escalate into anything more pointed.
“I was looking for you,” he agreed, turning his attention to me after one last glare at Inmar. “Things are in a bit of an uproar right now, and it took me a while to get away, but I went down the dungeon the first chance I got. I thought I could help you escape if you’d… if you’d let me, and then you weren’t there. I didn‘t want to raise any alarms, so I‘ve been looking on my own.”
I stared at him.
He took a deep breath. “I know things ended rather badly between us the last time we met Ara, and I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you that. I’ve been wishing I could go back to that day and take back all that I said and did. It’s just that… it was a bit of a shock, is all, and even though I know you, or thought I did, and even though I… I like and admire you,” he swallowed nervously, “I’d still grown up, my whole life, being told… well, it doesn’t matter now, especially since I suppose my family has all we’ve been wishing for after all, much good it will do us. In fact, they ought to be thanking you.” He let out a bitter bark of laughter. I was silent for a moment. He seemed to mean what he said, but that didn’t take the sting out of his earlier betrayal.
“Your queen not quite what you’d imagined?” Inmar asked caustically.
I jumped. I’d forgotten Inmar was still standing right beside me.
Orren sighed. “No,” he admitted. “ In all our eagerness to reclaim lost power, no one thought to think that maybe when she did return, she wouldn’t have much use for the current monarchs, and wouldn’t have much of an interest in anything but taking up her old wars and vendettas.” He glanced nervously over his shoulder. “The next few days will be touch and go as the power balance is redistributed. Everyone is in the process of finding out that a living, breathing legend might not be such a wonderful thing, after all. Not that there’s anything we can do about it now.” Orren shrugged.
“The point is,” he went on, “my offer to help you escape still stands.” He glanced at Inmar. “For both of you.”
“How noble of you,” Inmar said. “But if you would just be so kind as to point us in the direction of the nearest exit, we should be able to manage just fine.”
I glanced uneasily at Inmar. It had only just occurred to me that he’d never actually told me his plans once we were outside of the castle. Was he really only interested in helping me escape? “Actually,” I told Orren, “we’d welcome your help.”
“No,” Inmar interrupted, “we wouldn’t.”
“Yes, we would,” I said.
“The very least I can do is escort you out of the castle,” Orren said. “After that, it’s up to you. But I’ve misjudged you Ara, and I’m sorry for it, and I’d like to do something to make up for it.”
I had to swallow past the lump in my throat. “Thank you,” I said quietly. “Hearing you say it means a lot to me.”
Inmar coughed loudly.
“Right,” said Orren, suddenly brisk and business-like, “let’s be on our way, shall we?”
So saying, he turned and led us back into the corridor.
We made much quicker time with a guide. Orren led us in what I suspected was a slightly circuitous route, probably in an attempt to avoid awkward situations, but even so it took us only another twenty minutes of brisk walking to reach an unobserved side door which in turn led to a small courtyard with a door on the far side that promised freedom.
We all paused in the courtyard, and spent several awkward moments staring around, Orren tugging uncomfortably at his hands.
“Right,” I said at last, trying to break the sudden quiet. “Thank you, Orren. I don’t know what we would have done if we hadn’t bumped into you.”
He smiled slightly. “Is there anything else I can do? Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
I was tempted to say yes, please come with us because I don’t know where we’re going, and I don’t know if I can trust Inmar, but I didn’t. I just -- didn’t.
“No,” I said instead, “we can manage from here. I hope,” I paused. What did I hope? “I hope you come through the next few months and years all right,” I finished awkwardly. “I’ll be thinking of you, even if our paths never cross again.”
“I’d like to think that they will,” Orren said, giving me a crooked smile.
“I highly doubt it,” Inmar announced blandly. “We should be going, if you’re quite through making your farewells. Ara?” He gestured toward the door in the wall.
“Be well,” I told Orren, and with a last, backward glance, we were away across the courtyard and through the door.
Once outside the walled enclosure, with the door firmly closed behind us, I came to a halt.
“What’s the matter?” Inmar asked, glancing back at me in irritation. “Already missing your bonny boy?”
“Inmar,” I said, trying to sound reasonable, “now that we’re finally out of the castle, I think it’s only fair for you to tell me where you were planning on taking me.”
Surprise registered briefly on his face. “The only place in all three worlds that you’ll ever possibly be safe,” he told me. “We’re going to find the Amarantine.”
It took several long, slow seconds for that to sink in. “We’re going where?” I asked, unsure if I’d heard him correctly.
“The Amarantine,” he repeated. “You remember old Grimwald from your last stay here? His people.
“I can take you,” he added sarcastically, “back to your world, or back to Faerie, but since you didn’t seem particularly happy to stay put in your world, and I’ve already wasted considerable time and effort to get you out of Faerie, there really aren’t many other options. It’s more-or-less inevitable that a large-scale war is going to break out between Sutheria and Faerie sometime soon, and the Amarantine are quite extraordinarily skilled at cutting off the outside world when they so choose, so you might actually be safe there.” He sounded as if he doubted that last very much. “If you really want, I will take you back to your world,” he finished.
“I’m afraid,” a new voice cut in, “that you won’t be doing any of those things. ”
We both whirled around so quickly that I almost fell over. Leaning against the bricks of the wall and lazily appraising us both was a young woman of middling height and indeterminate age. She had a mop of dark curls, and was wearing a tunic and breeches that looked as though they had been stitched together from several dozen other pairs of breeches and tunics.
“What do you mean?” I asked cautiously.
“Just what I said,” she replied, straightening up and coming closer to examine us. “He,” she indicated Inmar with a swipe of her head, “won’t be doing any of that. I, on the other hand, am under orders to escort you safely wherever you wish to go, although I’ve also been instructed to encourage you strongly in favor of the Amarantine. We’ve people most eager to meet you.” She smiled, flashing a mouthful of white teeth.
“We?” I echoed.
“We,” she repeated. “I’m Malys, by the way. They sent me down here to replace Grimwald and to keep them updated on the goings-on around the castle. After I caught wind of your return, they told me to track you down and keep an eye on you. It took me long enough to find you,” she added, sounding faintly irritated. “I’ve been watching the back entrances all day.”
“That’s all very well,” Inmar broke in, “but as you can see, I’ve already offered to take her wherever she’s going, so you’re really not needed.
The woman smiled again, this time showing all of her teeth. “You’re not getting rid of me, Inmar,” she said. “I’m under orders.”
“Neither are you getting rid of me,” Inmar shot back.
They were silent for a moment, then both turned to look at me. “So… where are you going?” Malys asked, cocking her head.
“I-” I paused. It was a little disconcerting, having them both stare at me like that. “I’m going to the Amarantine.” Inmar had been right when he said there really wasn’t anywhere else. Faerie was out of the question, and I hadn’t exactly been happy back in the ‘real’ world.
“Excellent.” Malys bounced up on her heels. “Let’s get started.” From the spot where she had been standing earlier, she stooped to retrieve two lumpy bundles that had escaped my notice. She shot a disgusted look at Inmar. “I suppose I can’t very well get rid of you, can I?”
“No,” Inmar agreed, “you can’t.”
With a little hiss of exasperation, she turned back to me, handing me one of the lumpy bundles. “You don’t mind carrying that, do you? ‘s not heavy.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned and began walking down the wide slope of lawn away from the castle, toward the distant forest below. I followed her. Inmar followed me. And so our odd little party headed off to find the mysterious Amarantine.