The Road
The streets of the Citadel were confusing, long and winding. In stead of being square and on a grid, all the buildings were round or oval, white, tall and imposing. I had wandered for hours. I was lost.
It was dark, and everyone had gone inside. I was all alone on the clean white streets. I heard something rustle behind me. My heart jumped. I turned around.
Nothing was there.
I turned back to where I had been heading, I had no proof that this was the right direction to go, but I had to try going somewhere. I walked forwards for a few minutes until I came by a statue I had seen before. The Mother of Mercy. I was walking in circles. I turned around again.
I was staring straight into the scarred face of Titius, the man who had killed my father. His eyes were wild and wide open. His red hair stood on ends. In his hand he held a dagger, already dripping with blood. Whose?
His throat emitted a terrible gurgling groan and he lunged at me.
I screamed.
A warm, rough hand held my arm.
“Ria, hush,” a deep voice whispered softly in my ear.
It was Cato.
I opened my eyes, to see only darkness. I smelled the rank smell of sweaty bodies, and heard the grumbling of the other travellers who I had woken up with my screams.
I was lying on my side in the big row of mattresses of the floor on the roadside inn. My pounding heartbeat started to slow down.
“You were having nightmares again,” Cato whispered. “But everything is fine. You’re safe.”
Prince Cato lightly draped his arm over my body, but didn’t move any closer. I could feel the heat of his body behind me, so close but not touching.
We had been on the road for five days now. Although we had been able to get our hands over a considerable amount of money before we left the capital Medolina, we travelled like common people to avoid his parents finding us.
We told people that we were servants from the king’s castle in Medora, and that we had been offered jobs as palace staff in the Citadel.
I had only seen illustrations of the Citadel, the administrative city for the religion of the Five Fathers and Five mothers. They looked like the nightmare I just had, everything white and round and looming. I dreaded to go there, but I had to.
The Citadel was the place where they had taken the man I once loved, and the place where I could get revenge on my father’s murderer.
I thought of revenge as I drifted back to sleep.
***
“Is it a living thing?” I asked.
“No,” Cato replied.
The cart tumbled over the rough country roads, the cold winter sun shone brightly in our faces as we sat on the uncomfortable floor of the open cart.
“Is it larger or smaller than me?” I asked.
“It has to be a yes or no question,” Cato said grinning.
I sighed and looked wearily at his tanned face.
He was wearing a simple linen outfit. His hair was messy and on his cheeks a patchy black beard was starting to grow. Still, he didn’t really look like a common man, at least not to me. There was something different about the confidence with which he carried himself.
“Is it smaller than me?” I asked.
The cart hit a large bump, and Cato fell over, and on top of me, pushing me onto the end of his bow. I had often cursed Cato for wanting to bring the bulky weapon with him, and did so again as it bruised my ribs. His strong, warm body pressed against me for a second before he clambered off.
“Oops, sorry!” the merchant called back from his seat steering the mules.
“It’s fine,” Cato called back, smiling.
I frowned at Cato. My big white bonnet had been knocked to the side, and now I would have to push all my hair back under it. It would be a terrible mess when I took it off in the evening.
“He could drive a little more carefully,” I mumbled to Cato.
“Yes, but remember, we are in a hurry,” Cato whispered back.
“Fine.”
The carriage rolled on for a little bit. Then we hit an even bigger bump. The carriage jostled and fell over. The world spun around as Cato and I spilled out onto the meadow next to the road.
“Ria, are you all right?” Cato hovered over me.
I blinked as I stared up at the sky. I wondered how Cato had even gotten to me so quickly after the fall.
“Yes, I’m fine. What about you, Cay?”
We had decided to call Cato Cay, because his parents the king and queen would be sending people to look for him. They did not approve of our plan to rescue his half-brother Jarion from the religious fanatics at the Citadel in Perova. They thought if we went and stole him back before his trial it would start a war. Maybe they were right.
I continued to call myself Ria, the fake name I had taken when I went to Medora to look for my fathers killer.
“Yeah, I’m all right.”
His curly hair tumbled over in front of his face. Concern marred his handsome face.
“Damn it!” we heard the merchant shouting from elsewhere.
“Sir!” Cato called. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, but the wagon wheel is broken!” the Merchant called back. “I’ll have to go all the way back to the tavern for assistance.”
“We could go for you,” Cato offered as he helped me stand up.
I frowned. I didn’t want to do that.
“No, you kids guard the things, I’ll go!” the old merchant replied.
***
The sunset coloured the sky a luminous orange. The chilly day was turning into a freezing night. The merchant was set to come back in an hour or two. We had sadly been almost perfectly halfway between the tavern we had stayed at the night before and the farmhouse we intended to stay at the following night, so even though the merchant had taken the horse, he needed a long time.
“Do you want my blanket as well?” Cato asked.
We had wrapped our blankets around us, and sat huddled next to each other. I was starting to shiver and Cato felt it.
I couldn’t help but think that we would be much better off if he would just wrap his arms around me and we could share the warmth of our bodies.
“No thank you, Cato,” I replied. “Then you’ll get cold.”
“It’s fine, really I’m used to the cold. When I go sailing it gets really chilly, and after all my mother is from Havermark.”
“My father was from Havermark, Cay,” I said sternly.
“Right,” Cato said guiltily.
There was a brief silence.
“Do you miss him?” Cato finally said.
“Of course,” I replied. “What sort of question even is that?”
“Right, sorry,” Cato said. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant more like… Now that we’re alone and I finally know the truth, do you want to talk about it?”
I looked over at Cato, who gazed at me with his soft brown eyes. I had been unable to fully talk to anyone in Medora about my father’s murder. I had had to keep the secret of my birth and family from everyone in the country. In Medora, everyone believed my father to be a traitor and a murderer. Through a long sequence of circumstances, Cato had found out the truth about me.
“Maybe… I…” I stammered.
We heard hoof beats approaching. They came from the opposite direction from where the merchant had gone. A couple of travellers
They were two men on big horses. They grinned down at us where we sat in the open wagon.
“Trouble with the wagon?” one of them said.
He had greasy blonde hair, which slicked down on his head. He had a jutting lower jaw and a thick looming brow. He wore a cruel grin on his face.
“Yeah,” Cato said in a friendly tone. “But the merchant we’re with will be back any minute now with a new wheel.”
“Oh you’re travelling with a merchant are you?” the other man asked. “Coming back from selling some wares in Medolina?”
He had brown hair, and was actually quite handsome.
I shot Cato a warning look. I didn’t trust these men. Cato didn’t notice.
“Yeah, he was selling fabrics and now he’s returning home to the lower areas of Trakkatt, us on the other hand we’re going to take jobs at a palace in the Citadel.”
“Oh, a palace,” the handsome man said. “Quite a lot of money to be earned there.”
“Yes,” Cato continued, reciting the backstory we had decided on together. “We were working for the castle in Medolina, but we were offered higher and better paid positions in a palace in the Citadel.”
I elbowed him in the ribs to try and make him stop talking, but it was already too late.
The handsome man pulled out a crossbow.
“Then you won’t mind if we take all the money you have now.”
***
Author’s note: Just a reminder that likes and comments are so important to authors. I’m still a small author so I get really excited every time I see someone liking or reacting to my story <3
Getting a nice review would be absolutely amazing but I understand that they take a lot more time and effort than just pressing the like button or making a short comment.
