The Rogue Lady

Chapter Twenty Five

     It was easy to catch up with William and the others. It only took a few hours as they hadn’t gotten that far ahead of us. Convincing the rebel leader to let me go to Starryfield was a whole other matter, in fact, I was still working on that. The long line of rebels was slowly walking south, Darrick had been sent ahead with another horseman as scouts, Eric was on William’s other side and my archers had dispersed into the crowd. William was doing several things at the same time, how he managed to keep track of everything was a mystery to me. It was admirable though, that he was concentrated on me enough to not just concede to my wishes.

     “Look Svana,” he started again after yet another person ran off with orders and disappeared between all the people behind us. “I don’t understand what you want to do in Starryfield. So the Queen is going to be there; I doubt she’ll be left unprotected. And if you can’t kill her, why would you go?”

     “I know that I won’t be able to kill her, I wouldn’t even try, especially knowing that I could never get out if I did. But imagine, if you were the Lord of a city and a few thousand outlaws marched on your city, wouldn’t you be afraid? Wouldn’t you want to know what the Queen, whom you swore alliance too, is planning to do to protect you? Honestly, I would.”

     William looked in front of him, thinking over my words. I knew I had a point; I just needed him to see it too and agree with me that this was the best thing to do. When he still didn’t reply after five minutes, I started to give up hope a little. Leaning forward until I was resting on my mare’s neck, I ran a finger through her mane the best I could; she needed to be brushed, I decided, and she wasn’t the only one, my hair was full of tangles, flying around my face in the slight breeze. Brightburn was barely a day behind us and I was already missing the city; the cool temperatures of the castle, the hot water in a bathtub, the delicious food. The weather was getting hotter as we moved further south, adding to that that the summer was rapidly approaching. I wasn’t bothered by it as much as those from the north, who would soon be finding the temperatures too hot to do anything. It didn’t help that the water of Lake Mistlyn looked really inviting; too bad there were sirens living under the surface. Had I known, I would have never dived in.

     “If I let you go to Starryfield, and I do say if, how long will it take you to get back to us?”

     “I’m not sure. From here it’s a three-day ride, the ball is in four days or so, I think, but the general refused to give us any more information before he got on my nerves so much that I killed him,” I frowned. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that, maybe we could have gotten some more information out of him. Who was I kidding? Even with Eric’s magic he would have never said more.

     “Wait, who do you mean when you say ‘us’?”

     “Uh, I mean Eric and me.”

     “Svana, we don’t kill prisoners, you know that don’t you? And Eric knows it too.”

     “He wasn’t a prisoner then. When we attacked Brightburn I found him and I managed to get him in a corner. Believe me, before I knocked his sword out of his hand, it could have been either me or him. I was asking him a question when Eric found us but since he wasn’t really being very helpful, and very rude, I decided he wasn’t going to be any good for anyone.” William stared at me before quickly looking away. Did that really just come out of my mouth? I hadn’t meant to, it slipped. I kept forgetting that not everyone had the same outlook on killing as I did. To a double-blader, it was the most normal thing there was. Besides, that general had gotten on my nerves then and even now, while he was dead and burned, he still annoyed me. And he lied to me, although I hadn’t believed what he had told me, it was good to have Ralph confirm it.