“Let’s go,” Jade said. “We don’t have that long until nightfall.”
“This isn’t an isolated inn,” Cat pointed out. “Chatham won’t have a curfew.”
“Not normally, no,” Jade agreed. “But now…?”
“Come on,” Emily said. Being caught out after dark might not be a problem, but Jade was right. There was no point in taking chances. “I want to get something to eat.”
The streets seemed even more crowded as the working day came to an end. Emily looked around with interest, noting how the old and new worlds seemed to have collided. A bookshop sat next to a temple, a street kitchen was placed right in front of a burger bar…she couldn’t help smiling as she saw the young men and women lining up for burgers, while the older folks seemed to prefer the more traditional places. A pizza parlor, a restaurant claiming to sell food from all over the continent…Chatham was clearly a very cosmopolitan town. She was surprised the population was large enough to support so many places.
But it was also oddly conservative, in many–many–ways. Young men and women were either out in groups or escorted by chaperones, watching carefully to make sure there was no hanky-panky. The girls wore loose dresses that revealed little of their figures and no skin below the neckline, the boys wore shirts that were tight around their muscles and thighs, tight enough to make Emily blush, yet revealed very little actual skin. She supposed it wasn’t too surprising. It seemed to be a universal law that a woman needed to guard her reputation carefully, while a man had no such constraints. The trousers she wore would cause comment, if she stayed for long.
They found a table in the burger bar and sat down, listening to the conversations as they placed their orders. Jade purchased a handful of different broadsheets and passed them around, but they were largely useless. Two were bland, refusing to discuss politics in anything more than the vaguest terms; the remainder were so full of monarchical propaganda that Emily found it hard to believe anyone actually took it seriously. Kings were meant to have special powers, she’d been told, but Randor couldn’t walk on water…
They’ve never met the man, she reminded herself, dryly. To them, the king is a distant figure in golden armor. They’ve never seen him vulnerable…or angry.
“We’re going to have to go out drinking later,” Jade said, as the food arrived. “That’s where we’ll hear the real rumors.”
Emily nodded, feeling uneasy. She wouldn’t be going, and she was thankful for that, but she worried about them. She’d heard enough horror stories about drinking competitions to fear for their safety. Jade and Cat would be expected to drink pint after pint of what passed for beer and, watched by so many eyes, it would be hard to accidentally pour it down their front instead. If they came home rolling drunk…
Or if they get picked up by the guardsmen, she thought grimly, I might have trouble finding them again.
She ate her dinner quickly, appreciating the flavors. Food in the Nameless World was more intense, more real, than food on Earth: the meat was flavorful, the tomato sauce was very strong, the mustard appropriately nuclear…it would be a long time before anyone opened a fast food outlet and started cutting down the quality as much as possible. But then, who knew? The pace of technological advancement had surprised even her.
Night was falling, slowly, as they walked back to the inn. “Be careful,” she said, as they stopped outside the porch. “And don’t get yourselves arrested.”
“We won’t,” Jade said. “That would be bad.”
Emily nodded. Chatham couldn’t afford to develop a reputation for harassing travelers, even mercenaries, but the city couldn’t tolerate rowdy behavior either. Jade and Cat might be kept in a cell until daybreak, then marched to the gates and kicked out. God alone knew what would happen then, if they couldn’t get back into the city…she wouldn’t know that anything had happened until it was far too late. She waved them goodbye, then walked up to the bedroom and found the chat parchments. There was nothing stopping her from having a long chat with Frieda if she was around.
The boys returned, two hours later. Emily allowed herself a moment of relief, although she was careful not to show it too openly. They both looked tired and grim, their clothes stinking of beer. Emily wrinkled her nose, trying not to think about her mother, as they stripped off and washed themselves with cold water. It didn’t really improve the smell.
“It’s not good news,” Jade said, once he’d donned a nightshirt. “Alexis is in lockdown.”
Emily’s eyes narrowed. “And you heard this from…?”
“A trader, who carts goods to the city every week,” Jade said. “Nothing perishable, luckily for him, but…he says they have to wait, every time, for the guards to search his carts. He said it was even worse on the river.”
“Joy,” Emily said. “Are they looking for us? Or someone else?”
“He didn’t know,” Jade said. He shrugged. “Drunk as he was, I didn’t dare ask too many questions.”
“The king must know you’re coming,” Cat said, as he stepped out of the washroom and searched for his clothes. “And if there’s anywhere that will actually have a good picture of you, it’s Alexis.”
He donned a pair of trousers, but left his muscular chest bare. Emily tried not to look at the tattoos covering his upper body. He would have carved some of them himself, just as she’d carved the rune on her chest…she wasn’t sure if she should admire his bravery or berate him for being stupid. Tattooing one’s skin always had an element of risk.
“That’s true,” Jade said. “They might well be looking for me. And Emily.”
Emily nodded, stiffly. She’d yet to see a portrait of her that someone could actually use to find her, but the paintings she’d seen of Jade were far more accurate. Jade was probably a little more photogenic, she guessed. He certainly looked much more like the local masculine ideal. He’d changed his appearance quite a bit, but if the guards had reason to suspect and called for a sorcerer…
We’d be caught in a trap, she thought. They could break out of a trap, if they used magic, but that would bring the king’s sorcerers down on their heads. Worse, it would almost certainly guarantee Imaiqah’s immediate execution if she weren’t already dead. There would be no way out.
“They might miss me,” she said. She could walk right past any guard who only knew her through her official portrait. Emily had no idea who’d sat for the painting–she knew she hadn’t–but the only thing they had in common was hair color. “Jade is a bit more noticeable.”
“They’d also want us to have a reason to be there,” Jade pointed out. “I don’t think we could get away with claiming we want to visit family.”
“There might be a way under the walls,” Cat said. “Are there no secret passages?”
“Not that I know about,” Jade said. “And even if there were, they’d be controlled by criminal gangs. They might smuggle stuff in and out of the city, but they wouldn’t want to risk bringing the king’s wrath down on their heads. They’d betray their grandmothers if the price was right.”
“Then we fly,” Cat said. He clapped his hands together. “We change ourselves into birds and fly over the walls.”
“They’d be watching for it,” Emily said. “They’ll have wards guarding the skies.”
“They couldn’t stop us,” Cat insisted.
“No, but they’d know we entered the city,” Jade said. “I helped set up those wards, Cat. They’re good.”
“We could charm a number of other birds and send them flying through the wards,” Cat suggested. “The wardcrafters would have problems sorting out the real birds from the fakes.”
“That would alert them, even if they didn’t find us immediately,” Jade countered. “They’d be on their guard.”