Rowan Sable's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The map bought Rowan his freedom, but freedom without direction is just a longer cage. No guard saw him now. He walked the halls like smoke. Still, the paper showed him a hundred doors and never once told him which one pointed toward Embermere. He picked a servant's stair at dawn, followed it down and out, and told himself any road beyond the walls was better than the ones inside them. He was wrong. The path split, then split again. He chose left, then right, guessing by the angle of the sun. By midday the palace was gone behind him. So were the roads he knew. The land turned to marsh and thornscrub. He had walked himself deep into country that did not belong to his court, and every mile made the mistake harder to undo. That was where he saw the deer. It stood white against the dark trees, tall and still, its antlers catching a light that had no source. It watched him without fear. When he stepped closer, it turned and walked, then paused, as if waiting. A voice stopped him. "You'll follow it into a bog." He knew the coat before the face. Deep blue, silver crest on the lapel. Lira Vane, the foreign envoy who lived in the guest tower, who smiled at every lord and wrote down what they let slip. She had smiled at him too, weeks ago, over wine. She was not smiling now. "You see me," Rowan said. "I see you." She looked him over, flat and careful. "Others don't. I noticed that days ago. Interesting." He should have run. But she stood between him and the only living thing that seemed to know these woods. "That animal is leading me somewhere." "It leads lovers to lovers. Not lords to home." She tilted her head. "You're lost. You're far from any court that wants you. And you're worth something. Both of those things." Rowan weighed it. He had no name to prove who he was, no road he trusted, no ally within a day's walk. She had the crest of her own court and, he guessed, the maps to reach it. "You know the way out of this country," he said. "I know three ways." She started walking, not toward the deer. "Follow. Or don't. I don't beg." He followed. The deer watched him go, then faded back into the trees. By dusk Lira brought him to a hard road, dry and marked with cart ruts, running east. Solid ground. A direction he could trust. "This joins the border trade route," she said. "From here you could reach half the courts in the region." Then she looked at him, steady. "I helped you. Now tell me what you traded to become a man no guard can see." Rowan had his road home at last. He had bought it by owing his secret to a woman who sold secrets for a living.