I threw my arms up. “Glamors will not hold long against people closely acquainted with your true faces.” The High Counselor, for example.
“Which is why the Commander’s instructions are to send us into the lower villages. Marek is from the military towns and my mother is a noble, so there will not be a risk of recognition in Nizahl’s southern provinces.”
Arin exited the palace, his guards in tow. He nodded at Felix and exchanged a few words with Queen Hanan. My cousin and paternal grandmother watched him walk toward us. Felix’s dark glare delighted me. He had been effectively neutered. He would not attack me in Arin’s own kingdom, and after the debacle with the dolls, Vaida would not trust Felix to pour water into a cup. All his hopes for retribution rested on the outcome of the third trial.
My gaze crossed Queen Hanan’s. I searched for the features of a father I had never known in the older woman’s face. The perpetually weary look in the Omal Queen’s eyes flickered. Her brows furrowed. I quickly looked away.
Reaching the carriage, Arin took in my thunderous expression and glanced at my companions.
“I did not force them,” he said, guessing the source of my ire. “Jeru, ready the horses. We will take the southern route. Tell the soldiers to keep within our radius, but not to converge on the path. Sefa and Marek, your carriage will go ahead of us.”
“Wait, I have—” My objections were drowned out by the flurry of activity as riders leapt to their horses, and the thirty Nizahl soldiers began a procession from the palace.
“He didn’t call you the boy!” Sefa said in a loud whisper, hopping into the carriage. Marek followed her with an eye roll.
Swearing, I shoved into the carriage. I wouldn’t have an opportunity to speak to Marek and Sefa until we stopped at the first cabin. By then, it would be too late to change anything.
The sun rose in the east, a palm of blushing light unfurling behind the Omal palace. We rode past the crystalline gates. Their contours gleamed in the nascent morning.
“You knew they would come if you said it was for me,” I accused an hour into the ride. We had finally rumbled into Essam Woods. The sight of gnarled trees threatened to catapult me into reliving last night’s hike with Dawoud in my arms. I swallowed, fighting the instinct to shove the memory aside. An instinct as natural to me as breathing. He deserved to be remembered, even if it made me wish I had died with him.
We are who we come from. Dawoud was Jasad to me. He was love and warmth and free compassion. I anchored his memory, fixing it to the inhospitable soil of my mind, and some piece of me sighed in relief.
“I did not ask.” Arin had spread his parchment around as soon as the carriage lurched out of the palace, making meticulous marks every here and there. “I relayed my intention to draw out the groups and told them they were free to decide their course.”
The plan had formed in the madness of our last evening in Omal.
Instead of waiting for the Mufsids, Urabi, or Soraya to move first, Arin intended to lure them out during the third trial. The guards would spread rumors about the Orban Champion’s declining health, which would spread among the soldiers, who would spread it through the upper towns. Sefa and Marek would ride into the lower villages with a few disguised soldiers, pretending to be beleaguered organizers for the Alcalah. They would drink in various taverns, and under the guise of inebriation, complain about the weak security the third trial offered compared to Omal and Orban.
With Diya’s supposedly failing health increasing my likelihood of becoming Victor, and therefore being assigned personal guards for the rest of my days, the groups would see their window of opportunity closing. Sefa and Marek maligning the protections around the third trial would provide further incentive to attack.
“Wouldn’t the groups suspect something was amiss? If they have managed to evade you this long, I struggle to believe a hefty amount of trickery is what will move them to act,” I had said.
“Oh, they will almost certainly see through the ploy.” Arin had deftly buttoned his coat, observing the servants rushing between the fountain and my burning room. “But none of them will be willing to risk that another might take the bait and succeed in catching you first.”
The trip to Nizahl passed in a blur of arguments and cold cabin rooms. Sefa hummed every time I tried to talk sense into her. Marek would dip his hands in mud and chase me around the cabin. Idiots, both of them.
We were due in Nizahl today. To distract from my churning dread, I plucked one of Arin’s maps and smoothed it open on my legs. I studied the map for long moments, trying to decipher the unintelligible markings.