Outside, men were shouting and torches flared all through the gardens and along the gates. They made their way, careful but swift. Around a long hedge and then over a wall and into the street beyond. As she helped the Lord Regent crawl over the rough stone, Cithrin wondered how many times Prince Aster had used this route to escape his tutors.
In the gloom of the night street, Cithrin paused. The shouting was both louder and more distant, the riot of swords and voices still rising. The prince wore a robe of white sewn with threads of gold and a ceremonial crown. His sleeves were sewn with pearls, and gems studded his cuffs. He’d stand out in the darkness like a candleflame. The Lord Regent was somewhat better. His garnet-colored tunic wouldn’t grab the torchlight. He was a round-faced man, not much older than her true age. His build said he’d been strong not long ago, but was well on his way back to soft.
“We’ll get to the Division,” Cithrin said. “And then move south to the Autumn Bridge. I think the house we’re looking for is on the far side, but I’m not sure of that.”
“What if they’re holding the bridge?” the Lord Regent asked in a high, tight voice.
“We have enough trouble right now,” Cithrin said. “Let’s not borrow more.”
They set out, trotting through the dim streets. Once, when a half dozen horsemen pelted down the road, Cithrin had to haul them all into the shadows of a great marble statue of a Firstblood man putting the sword to a particularly bestial-looking Yemmu woman. Another time, the square she’d hoped to cross was filled with men shouting at each other and brandishing swords. They hadn’t come to blows yet, but she heard the violence in the timbre of their voices. Cithrin pulled the prince by the hand, and the Lord Regent followed them both down into the darkness, searching for another path.
Cithrin felt the fear, breathed it, but it seemed almost to be happening to some other woman. Her footsteps didn’t falter, her decisions were swift and unhesitating. The men and women who saw them only looked confused, not alarmed. They were running ahead of the violence like a seabird out-pacing a wave. Even if they were seen now, the citizens of Camnipol didn’t know what it meant, a man, a woman, and a child all dressed in the clothing of wealth and running through the night. They tacked through the dark and treacherous sea of alleyways and courtyards, aiming—she hoped—for the bridge she’d been pointed to once, and in daylight.
It stood at the edge of the cliff face, arching slightly upward as it leaped the wide air. Ancient trees had given their bodies to the making of the bridge. It was wide enough that two carts could pass each other and a man still walk between them. The upward curve meant she couldn’t see the other side, hiding it like the arch of a hill. There could have been a dozen men charging at them, swords bared, and she wouldn’t have known it until they met in the center.
Beside her, Lord Geder Palliako was panting. She turned slowly, looking for something that might have been a tap-room or a wayhouse. All she saw was a thick flicker of smoke to the north.
“All right,” she said. “We have to cross.”
“We can’t do that,” Palliako said. “We’ll be seen. We’ll be
recognized.”
“We can stay here and see who finds us,” she said. As if to punctuate her words, the sound of shouting floated across the broad, empty air and echoed against the Division’s walls.
“It’ll be all right,” the prince said.
“Wait,” Cithrin said. She plucked the thin crown off the boy’s head. From the weight, it was silver throughout. She heaved it over the edge, sailing it out through the wide air. “Lie down. Help me rub muck over this. Do it quickly.”
It was a long, breathless minute, but the white formal robes of the Prince of Antea was reduced to rags. The pearls and gems were sewn on too tightly to pull free, but their glitter was at least dimmed. It would have to do.
Cithrin led the way, and at the top of the bridge she paused. In the north, the Kingspire was alive with hundreds of torches, and also larger flames. A building was burning, the column of rising smoke lit by the fire at its foot. Cithrin didn’t know the city well enough to guess what it might be. There were lights along the Silver Bridge too—the torches and lanterns of riders spreading fast from the battle. The news would be all through the city soon. She didn’t know what that would mean except that the time left to find shelter was fading. Lights were also spreading along the edge of the Division, flowing along the top of its eastern face. Coming closer to her. On the west, visible now, was the steady glow of glass lanterns and even, in a courtyard with its back to the precipice, something that might be a theatrical troupe’s cart silhouetted by the lights of the stage.