The Sergeant had spurred ahead, and by the time the rest arrived, there was an officer awaiting them. The insignia on his collar was in the same purple and green and his cockade of feathers had an extra metal embellishment.
He looked curiously at Roane, but when his glance went to the Princess his eyes widened and his astonishment was plain. He moved swiftly to the side of that mount and held out his hand to aid her down.
“Your Highness!” Then he turned upon the Sergeant. “Off with you to the Colonel; tell him we have found the PrincessI”
The Sergeant took a second look and climbed back into the saddle. Under his spurs the duocorn leaped under the gate arch, thudded out into the road beyond.
Roane was aided from her own perch far more gently than she had been bestowed there. And she followed the Princess up to the second floor of the left-hand tower, where chairs were hurriedly brought, the second having been summoned by a hand wave from the Princess for Roane’s accommodation.
“Your Highness, we have been out hunting for you. When the word came by courier bird last night that you had disappeared from Hitherhow, the Colonel dispatched three companies in search—led the first one himself. But how—” He had glanced several times at her coverall, and at Roane, as if he wanted explanations he dared not ask for openly.
“I was taken from Hitherhow,” Ludorica answered, “from my very bed. By the grace of the Guardians, and the good will of the Lady Roane Hume here, I escaped whatever fate was intended for me. For the rest—it is not to be discussed openly. But you I have seen before. You accompanied Colonel Imfry to Urkermark on the occasion of the last birthday review of His Majesty. You are Captain Buris Mykop, and you come from the stead of Benedu.” ,
“Your Highness, but only once did I have the pleasure of being presented to you—and you rememberl”
She smiled. “Does anyone forget those who serve them faithfully? It is not strange to do so. Rather it would be unfitting and strange if one did not.”
She leaned forward suddenly and tossed the collar wound with the chain onto the top of a nearby table.
“You see there, Captain, a small keepsake of my adventure. That collar was fitted to my throat for a space, the chain was well anchored to hold me at another’s pleasure.”
The Captain looked from the Princess to the chain. He put out one hand to touch the collar. When he turned, his face was grimly expressionless.
“And who did this, Your Highness?”
“I do not know—yet. But doubtless all shall be made clear in time. It suffices for now that that did not hold me as was meant. And for that, thank my Lady Roane.” She nodded to her companion, and the Captain gazed at the off-world girl as if he would impress the sight of her on his memory for all time.
“What day is this? We have been turning night into day for our traveling. I can no longer reckon clearly.” “It is the fourth day of Lackameande, Your Highness.” “And it was on the second that I rode to Hitherhow,” she said. “There has been no word of weight out of Urkermark?”
“None, Your Highness. By all accounts the King rests comfortably with no change in his condition.”
Ludorica relaxed a little. But that she did not altogether rely on that report was proven when she asked:
“The Leichstan border is within two leagues of here, is it not? This is the Westergate?” “That is true, Your Highness.”
“And what—” But what she might have asked was lost in sounds below. A moment later another man came into the room with a rush which halted when he saw Ludorica. He was tall and young, but there were already lines of responsibility on his face.
Beside Sandar’s finely cut features his would seem blunted, plain, of a coarser mold. Yet Roane found she was staring at him as the Captain had earlier done with her; she wanted to fix his face in her mind. Though why, she could not have told.
His hair was close to the shade of his tunic, a rusty red-brown, but his eyebrows were as black as the Princess’s, and one had an upward tilt which gave him a slightly cynical look.
The way he eyed Ludorica now made Roane a little uncomfortable, as if to be witness was taking an unfair advantage. Then that expression was gone as he crossed the room, took the hand Ludorica held out to him, and raised it to his lips, bowing before her with a grace Roane would not have credited him with had she not seen it for herself. “Good greeting, my Princess!”
“Good indeed, kinsman.” It seemed to Roane that the Princess stressed that last word deliberately. It might have been a private code, or a warning. “I hear you have been searching for me.”
“Did you believe we would not?” He spoke with a drawl, and he smiled as if inviting her to share some small joke. “But as always, my Princess, you have managed to prove yourself a worthy daughter of kings and have not needed our efforts after all. Captain,” he said to his subordinate, “we might well all enjoy a glass of lasquer, and—have you yet lunched, my Princess?”
“Lunched?” She laughed. “Kinsman, we have not yet breakfasted. Though we did sup—by my Lady Roane’s good will.” She nodded to Roane. “Roane, this is my good kinsman and dear friend, Colonel Nelis Imfry, of whom I have already told you.” The Colonel bowed, perhaps not quite as low as he had to Ludorica, but with that same amazing grace. Somehow Roane found her tongue—though as she was not quite sure of the formal terms of address in Reveny she fell back on those of her own civilization.
“I am honored, Colonel—”
“The delight is mine, my lady.” t
“It is by her hands alone I am found again, kinsman. And now —Captain Mykop says there is no ill news.”
The Captain himself had disappeared.
“You expected some?” the Colonel asked.
“Because of my adventure, yes. Nelis, he would not have dared such a move had he not had some private news which led him to believe the King was near his end.”
“But I will wager nothing can be proved against your charming cousin,” the Colonel returned, the adjective in that speech made an epithet by his tone.
“Naturally not. But, Nelis, there is something else—a secret. You must hear it, and perhaps also others, those you can well trust. May we speak openly here?”
“Yes. Let them bring refreshment. Then you can talk. It cannot be so immediate that you must go fasting to tell me, can it?”
But the Princess did not echo his smile. “It may be, Nelis, it may just be.”
He frowned. But just then the Captain entered, behind him a soldier with a laden tray, the burden of which he set out on the table while the Colonel poured yellow liquid from the bottle the Captain had produced.
“You also, Nelis, and Captain Mykop.” Ludorica motioned to the waiting goblets.
“I give you a toast,” said the Princess when they each held one of those, “and that is the King’s good health!”
Roane let the slightly tart, refreshing liquid fill her mouth. She read meaning into what might be a conventional toast. Ludorica indeed had need for the continued health of her grandfather, unless she could gain her long-lost crown.
7
Roane glanced from the Princess to the Colonel and back again, wondering what lay between the two, who seemed to have forgotten her existence. Though the Princess made an obvious point of addressing him with warmth, yet he in return appeared to set some barrier of formality between them. They faced each other now across the table where the remains of the best meal Roane had yet had on Clio still lay.
Ludorica had told her story in terse language—of the loss of the Crown, of where she now believed that it lay. And when she finished, the Colonel made no comment, but instead looked to Roane.
“And how does the Lady Roane come into the matter, beyond the fact that she has been of great service to Reveny in her actions toward Your Highness?”
Since the Princess made no answer, Roane spoke for herself. Again she must say more than she wished to. Always she plunged deeper and deeper into disaster for an off-worlder.
She told the edited story she had given Ludorica—of the hunt for ancient remains which had brought her people here. But when she had done the Colonel looked far from satisfied.
“You do not, Lady, say from whence you come, you and these other treasure seekers—”
Roane hesitated a long moment. “Colonel, have you never served under orders given to you in confidence, which you cannot disclose to others? Or, if you have not done this, are not such cases known to you?”