Part 49 (2/2)
”You're a sight for sore eyes,” he lied, smiling, and bowed.
”Did my father send you?”
Straightening, he still smiled. ”No. Care to go anyway?”
”Yes!”
”Get warm clothes. d.a.m.n cold out.”
She dressed. Dewar stood by Gaston's door, just in case. Gaston slumbered on. Dewar pitied him in the morning. Out of favor. He'd probably better leave town.
”Get a cloak.”
”I don't-”
”Blanket.”
She pulled two off the bed and stood by the window, clutching them to her chest. Her whole body was tense, expectant.
Dewar winked at her, decided to say nothing about the grating and the rope and the paved terrace three storeys below, and opened the curtains with a flourish.
”You first.”
”I . . .” Freia looked out the window, at the rope disappearing into wet darkness, and quailed. ”I can't-I can't. I can't.”
Dewar drew in his breath to argue about it and thought better of it. ”Very well. I will carry you down.”
He pulled on his gloves again to protect his hands from the coa.r.s.e rope, then climbed over the sill. She put a chair under the window and stood on it, crouched on the sill, and transferred herself gingerly, stiff-bodied, to his care.
”Don't look down,” he commanded her in an undertone.
”Trying,” she replied.
”Surely a woman who can drop off a cliff on a gryphon can manage this,” he muttered.
Sorcerer and a Qen.tie.man 409.
”I can't do heights,” she whispered back, and squeezed her eyes shut. ”I can't look.”
Dewar, exasperated, abandoned the topic. He had not expected her to be so damsellish. Fiery Lady Miranda wouldn't, he thought, and he said to Freia, ”Then don't look.”
She nodded.
With one arm hugging Freia's body against him, he descended without haste but without delay. She, trembling distractingly, clutched him around the neck, gripped him with her legs, and kept her eyes closed tightly. Dewar accustomed himself to the extra weight and odd balance, and then he inched them down, drawing on the Well to fortify his arms, bracing his feet on the rough wall. They rustled in the ivy and dislodged globs of slush. Once his boots slipped, and he and she dangled crookedly until he found footing again. Freia was inflexible as iron.
The window-grating gripped its sloppy masonry until they were just above the first storey. Dewar felt it go and dropped, landing solidly on his feet and putting Freia down lightly, even gracefully.
The grating hit the terrace with a thunderous clang a half-step away from them. Dewar swore softly in the shocked silence that followed.
Light blazed up in Gaston's room. Dewar grabbed her hand and, as the curtain opened, they scurried off the terrace. Gaston was shouting above them, and Dewar couldn't resist looking up and waving c.o.c.kily as they crossed the pale patch of light from his window.
The Marshal stared at him, yelled ”Dewar!” and was gone.
”Oh no!” Freia wailed.
”Think I'm stupid? The horse is this way.”
”No . . . magic . . .” she puffed beside him.
He thought she meant, Why not leave through a Way? ”Bounds in your room prevented it. Good job, who did it?”
”A lady-”
”Neyphile?”
410.
T&za&etfi ”No!”
”Oriana. Ah well. Here he is. Good fellow, Cinders! Hup I go-hup you come-and away.”
Back at the Palace rose alarums and shouts, burned lights in the rain.
Freia began ”Guards-”
”Forget them.”
The horse pounded into the Palace Gardens, leaving a clear trail for anyone to follow.
”Where-”
”Shh. Trust me.”
Freia clutched him hard around the waist, bouncing on the horse's rump behind him. Trust him, she thought. Trust him.
Later she could never remember exactly how they had gotten out of the Palace Gardens, though hanging by the ivied wall in the rain-flecked dark stayed in her nightmares for years. Dewar sent the horse on without them, Cinders galloping away wildly in the freezing rain and digging up the turf so that the guards would follow the animal awhile longer. Beyond that she wasn't sure. She remembered a fire in a temple-like place, and being sodden, wet through, and very cold so that her body ached.
Dewar liked the rain; he lifted his face to it and pushed his hood back. Freia absorbed it, growing heavier and slower, its coldness penetrating her skin and its wetness smothering her.
The night was a kaleidoscope of darkness, water, and uncertainty. The fire was leaping and alive, defiant against the weather, and Dewar crouched by it trying to talk to her.
”Where, Freia?”
”Home,” she said, and began to cry, his questions like all the others she could not answer.
”But where? Just a name, Freia! Teli me a name of a place. It would help.”
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