Caspida hazards a look over the cart, ducking swiftly when an arrow drives into the wall above her head. “Not much farther.”
I have a sickening sense of where we are going, and trapped as I am, there is no way to plead my case, to make her see the truth. Panic begins pulsing through me. I swirl around and around, curling and twisting with dread. Stop, please, let’s talk, let’s think this through, I can help you . . .
The girls reach the wall separating the palace district from the common one and hurtle over it like a troupe of acrobats, dropping to the other side, oblivious to my cries.
Caspida glances up and down the wall. “They’ll not stop here.”
The city is waking as the girls hurry through the streets. Though the sun is still hidden, the sky is turning faintly lighter, and the smells of baking bread and brewing tea waft through the air. The girls are forced to slow their pace, to blend in to the early crowd of yawning commoners on their way to set up stalls in the market. Caspida leads the way, moving with familiarity along the alleys and side streets that bend crookedly between the looming buildings. The others keep a sharp eye out, all of them walking in a tight knot, still hidden in the predawn gloom by their dark clothing. Caspida ties the lamp to her belt so she can draw her cloak around herself, her hood low over her face.
“Guards to the left,” murmurs Khavar. “Don’t look, but they’re coming this way.”
“Have they seen us?” asks Caspida.
“Not yet. We should split up. They’re looking for a group of girls. Separately we’d have a better chance.”
But it’s too late. The guards catch sight of them, shouting out and drawing their weapons. The Watchmaidens peel away in all directions, and the princess bolts into an alley. She ducks into a doorway, swiping aside the curtain covering it and overturning a stack of pots behind it, bursting in on a startled family sharing a loaf of stale bread. A baby in the room begins to cry. Caspida holds a finger to her lips, slipping into their midst, drawing her cloak tightly around herself and covering the lamp.
“Please,” she whispers, dropping her hood. “Don’t say anything.”
The peasants stare at her, then cry out in alarm when a guard storms through the door. He looks around, and the people recoil, faces averted. Caspida lets her hair hang over her face, hiding her features. The guard lifts a lip as he looks around, then wordlessly steps out again.
Caspida stands and pulls her hood back over her face. “Thank you,” she says. “I . . .”
She stares at the meager meal they are sharing, at the crying baby and the four skinny, half-starved children. “I’m so sorry. I will not forget you. I swear it.”
She slips out the door and dashes back the way she’d come, wandering at random up and down streets, all the while gradually heading south. She is shaken and afraid, her breathing fast, her pulse racing. I can sense the clamminess of her skin.
Eventually she reaches the southern city gates, only to find the traffic going out has been reduced to a trickle as the guards question every person attempting to leave. Caspida stands uncertainly, tucked out of sight between a stall selling fig jam and a pair of men arguing over the price of a cart filled with fish.
After a short deliberation, the princess starts forward. The square in front of the gate is growing crowded with murky forms that seem to swim in the gloomy light. Several people carry torches, flickering beacons that circulate through the darkness. Voices, still hushed and yawning, murmur like a flowing current, into which Caspida dips and flows like a minnow. When she reaches the gate, she sidles up to a man holding the reins of a half dozen camels, waiting his turn to exit the city.
“What’s going on?” she asks the drover.
He shrugs and scratches a sore on his cheek. “They’re looking for someone, I’d guess.”
She nods absently, then suddenly lashes out, cutting through the camels’ ropes with a blade that she seems to conjure out of the air. As the drover cries out indignantly, she grabs a torch out of the hand of a startled spice vendor and waves it in the camels’ faces. The animals bray in alarm and bolt, kicking and tossing their heads. Screams break out as people and stalls are knocked over, and the guards at the gate are distracted just long enough for Caspida to slip past them.
Outside the city, the princess breaks into a run. She barrels down the dusty street, dodging the incoming fishermen bringing up their first catches of the day, as shouting and cursing break out around the gate, where the spooked camels are causing a panic that spreads to the other animals in the area.