Page 17 of A Kiss of Hammer and Flame

‘I shall stay here, until I am certain that you are safe,’ Terryl told her.

Cahra shook her head, gaze flashing to the wagon. ‘No, I need those doors open. Could you pretend to inspect your cargo?’

Understanding shone in Terryl’s eyes. He nodded, leaving to step onto the busy street. A twist of her head and she watched the lord signal to Queran, then approach his carriage. The second, plainer coach, hitched to a wagon of its own, stood dutifully alongside the first with a handful of saddled horses, shifting as they awaited their riders.

With Terryl in play, Cahra focused her attention on the problem of the goods wagon. The scarf she’d stolen covered most of her face, so she comfortably slipped between the two buildings closest to the wagon, where the light was weakest, and began her gruelling ascent.

It was a delicate balance of agility and strength, and she paused to catch her breath, hovering ten feet off the ground as she waited for a break in the crowd. Counting the seconds, Cahra inhaled. It was now or not at all.

From her spot between buildings, the toes of each boot digging into a different wall, Cahra shimmied from her vertical split and leapt for the beams under the shop’s awning, clinging tightly to its wooden frame. Then she crept rung by rung along the roof’s underside. Looking down, she spotted Terryl, circling his goods wagon and scanning the street for her. She smiled, knowing he’d never think to look up. No one ever did.

The wagon doors were open. Hanging directly above them, she breathed deeply and released her grip, dropping between the doors, hands catching the lip of the roof to swing herself inside and out of view.

It was dark in Terryl’s wagon, but somehow Cahra managed to sneak between the overflowing baskets and boxes of goods to the enclosure’s end. In the rush of their escape, Terryl hadn’t told her anything about how to get inside the wagon’s secret compartment. Now, engulfed in darkness, she had to figure it out herself. She ran her hands across the wooden surface, feeling left and right for a smooth hollow, a loose board, a hidden handle, anything to suggest an access point. Sighing, she finally leaned against the wagon’s wall. Wood clicked and sprang, pressing back against her shoulder blade and she gratefully leapt to pry free a narrow panel – a door in front of her – and slipped inside.

Silently shutting the door behind her, Cahra waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark, then looked around. The compartment was lighter than the rest of the wagon, with daylight cracking in places above her head. She could just make out the outline of a seat affixed to the wagon’s end like a bookcase with one low shelf in the small, oblong room. She quickly sat, rapping her hand against the wall and listening. The cracks in the wood aided her hearing, and she caught what sounded like Raiden’s voice, before doors banging and horses’ hooves. With a jolt, the wagon began moving. The hardest part was over.

But deep down, she knew it wasn’t.

It was the beginning of a fight Cahra couldn’t afford to lose.

CHAPTER 8

Cahra perched inside Terryl’s cramped wagon, her back straight against the aged hardwood.

She tried to chase away the quiet and ease her racing mind, counting each inhale and exhale of musty air. Cahra couldn’t see much in the dimness of the hidden compartment, but listening for trouble was second nature to her, the grating creak of the wagon’s wheels the only sound. Unfortunately, the noise just intensified the familiar unease tightening inside her.

She didn’t know how Terryl’s people were going to get through Kolyath’s gatehouse, she realised. The realmwide war made every kingdom, including hers, a stronghold against spies and insurgents, so breaching its security should be impossible. And yet here she was, drawing ever-shallower breaths in the secret compartment of some high-born’s wagon of wares, a man she’d met three times, trying to flee the only home she’d ever known and its evil ruler. All because she’d unwittingly set a few gems into some kind of ancient sigil.

How had she done it? Cahra sighed, folding her arms. The whole thing made no sense. She was a low-born, she knew so little of the prophecy or the omens that foretold the rise of Hael’stromia. She hadn’t even known what those omens were. Which was exactly the point – she didn’t know anything! Now things were so crazed she was running from the Steward, a feat she’d never in her wildest dreams considered, let alone attempted.

If Terryl’s carriages even made it to the kingdom’s gate.

Doing her best to calm down, she tried to inhale the illusion of security the little compartment gave her, stashed away inside. But Cahra was in more trouble than ever before, and she had no idea what came next for her whether Terryl’s people escaped Kolyath or not. What if by some miracle, she really did break free?

Then what?

She’d be surviving day to day, moment to moment, always on the lookout for someone ready to stab her in the back. Her old life as a beggar, all over again.

Cahra peeled the damp strands of hair from the nape of her neck, fanning her face with both hands as she sat and waited in the dark. She felt too hot, and sweat-slick from running, though she should have been cooling down by now. Pulling at her itching collar, she stripped her shirt and coat off down to her smithing vest, then leaned forward and pressed her clammy palms against the holed knees of her trousers.

She felt strange again, like she had outside the tavern. Like she had when she’d awoken this morning. Only, it was worse.

Cahra swallowed, her tongue odd, prickly in her mouth. The wagon’s compartment loomed before her, small and dark. A wooden cell she couldn’t escape. Her vision skewed, the sweat from her brow painting hot slashes, and she threw her hands out to the wagon’s sides. Gulping stale air, she squeezed her eyes shut, and from behind her eyelids, white dots danced as she battled to get breath into her lungs, her old self’s instinct to hold her breath and hide barrelling through her. Cahra clenched her teeth, biting down on a strangled sob that clawed its way from the back of her throat. She would not give herself away.

Her eyes snapped open, spying splinters of light seeping in near the ceiling, and she stared and stared at those cracks, willing the rays to fill her vision and ease the dizziness, the high-pitched ringing invading her ears, her mind.

Breathe. Don’t think about the dungeons. Think about gems.The survivor’s voice inside her head appeared at last. Kolyath’s gate wouldn’t be far now.

But it wasn’t working. She shook her head in frustration, dropping her hands to the bench, gripping it. No matter how she tried to wrench control of her anxiety, it wasn’t enough. Cahra slid from the seat to the ground, curling into a ball.

She grimaced, hugging her knees as she lay on the floor of Terryl’s darkened wagon, bile pooling in her stomach and inching up her windpipe. The panic was dragging her under, drowning her, and all she could do was ride the ebb and flow of weakness that wracked her, trapped in this coffin. The dots of light circled like wolves in her periphery.

Then she froze, her vision whirling, nausea crashing, as the dots behind her eyelids… vanished. The specks swaying in her vision had faded, into what? Squinting in the haze, the air now stagnant, she hacked a cough into her clenched fists.

The rusty tang of blood spilled from her mouth into her hand.

Cahra sat up as her eyes made out a tall crack of vertical white light, large as a spire. She leaned her arms back, palms to the floor, and recoiled at the sting of freezing stone. Yelping and leaping to her feet, she braced herself against the impending wave of dizziness, but none came.

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