Sienna Du’for's Arc

Chapter 20 of 30

They left the mill at dawn and rode north through country Sienna had crossed once before, running the other way. She had counted every mile then. Now she counted them again. Almost a year gone. Her father would have been told a hundred lies about where she was and why. She pictured him thin in a chair by a window, waiting for a daughter who had not written once. Her chest tightened around the thought and would not loosen. By the second town, someone knew her face. A woman at a well set down her bucket and stared. A boy tugged his mother's sleeve and pointed. Sienna pulled the hood lower, then stopped. She had spent a year pulling hoods lower. It had not saved her father a single hour of worry. She pushed the hood back. Her dark hair fell loose. She turned the horse toward the square and rode at a walk so anyone who wanted to look could look. "Sienna," Clementine said, low. "They will send word ahead." "Let them." Caspian drew his book from the satchel without speaking and began to write. A man in a dyer's apron stepped into the road. "Princess?" His voice cracked on the word. "Princess Du'for?" "I am," Sienna said. She made her voice carry the way her mother had taught her when she was six. "I am returning to Lorimar. Of my own will. Tell anyone who asks." The man dropped to one knee in the dust. Behind him a woman crossed herself. Someone shouted her name down a side lane and the shout was picked up and passed on. By the time Sienna reached the far side of the square, a dozen people walked behind her horse. A few wept openly. One old man in Lorimar colors called out that he had served her grandfather and would walk with her to the border. She did not tell him to stop. The crowd thickened at the edge of the next village and thinned only when the road narrowed. Sienna rode at the front and did not look back often. When she did, she saw faces she had never met speaking her name like it belonged to them. It should have frightened her more. Instead her hands steadied on the reins for the first time since dawn. Clementine brought her horse up beside her. "Your sister will hear of this before nightfall." "I know." "She will meet you at the gate with an answer ready." "Let her." Sienna kept her eyes on the road. "He will hear it too. That is what I came for today." Caspian wrote without lifting his head. The line of followers stretched behind them into the dust. By dusk the news of Princess Du'for's open return was riding ahead of her on faster horses than her own. Sienna had chosen to be seen, and the choice could not be taken back.