Page 9 of A Kiss of Hammer and Flame (Fated for Hael #1)

It was like the gates to Hael had opened.

Cahra sprinted down the kingdom’s main street, Kolyath now a living maze as she tore past manicured hedges and shot over flower beds in the wealthy district closest to the Steward’s castle.

The Kingdom Guards were a bend behind, armour clanking as they stormed towards her.

Terryl was somewhere behind her too, but Cahra didn’t dare to slow and check on him.

Terryl’s carriage was their destination, near the stables and Kolyath’s gatehouse. Access to the gate was strictly controlled by the Steward.

But as Cahra neared the stretch of road leading to the Haellium gate and their freedom, her stomach churned at the sight of the Kingdom Guards amassing. So she changed course, her legs burning, lungs screaming for air, barely noticing Queran’s arrows flying from above.

Suddenly, Terryl was beside her as she veered left. The guards struggled to mobilise, their hulking chainmail a hindrance for pursuits in Kolyath’s twisting, cobbled lanes.

‘The markets,’ Terryl puffed, his breathing surprisingly steady. He might be a lord, and more used to the Steward’s court than streaking through the kingdom’s streets, but he was keeping pace better than Cahra had expected.

She nodded, running for the marketplace.

The swarm of traders hawking wares, noisy haggling and the jostling, unruly crowd would always be a labyrinth, no matter the hour.

This route wouldn’t lead directly to the stables, but if they could weave their way through the thrumming market, using it as cover, they may have a chance to lose the guards.

Cahra skidded to a stop. The markets were just beyond a small alley intersection ahead, the perfect place to blend in, to disappear. But stationed outside were four of Jarett’s guards blocking the narrow entrance, their capes the colour of the blood they’d spill if she and Terryl got too close.

‘Damn it!’ Cahra swore.

Right before feeling a prod in the middle of her back. She whirled, grabbing a small arm belonging to a familiar face. The boy with the aquamarine eyes.

‘You!’

The boy pulled her and Terryl into the safety of a darkened doorway, flashing Cahra a lopsided smile. ‘You in trouble?’

‘You could say that.’ Cahra peered around the door frame at the four guards, weathered paint flaking onto her shoulder. ‘We need to get into the markets. Got a distraction?’

‘Maybe,’ the boy said. ‘How big?’

She pulled a gold coin from her satchel. ‘This big.’

‘Oughta do it,’ he said matter-of-factly, closing his fist around the coin.

Terryl eyed them both warily. ‘Do what?’

The boy picked up a rock, poked his head around the corner, then hurled it at a window diagonally opposite them. Glass shattered and people shrieked. Passers-by moved for the commotion, as did the guards.

‘Buy my help,’ the boy said, grinning. He turned to Cahra. ‘I would’ve helped you anyway.’

‘I know.’ She smiled. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Ellian,’ he said shyly.

‘Well, Ellian, I’m Cahra.’ She crouched next to the boy.

‘And you’ve done your job. Now I need you to stay low for a few days, okay?

’ His little fist looked like a rock itself as she gazed into his soulful blue eyes.

‘Be careful.’ He turned to go. ‘Hey, one more thing… In a week’s time, go to the Traders’ Quadrant and find the master blacksmith named Lumsden.

Tell him a friend said he’d have some work for you.

’ Lumsden would need a new apprentice, someone he could trust. Cahra swallowed.

He nodded, then stilled, casting her a final glance. ‘Bye,’ he said softly.

Then Ellian was gone again, flitting from doorway to doorway away from them, yelling at the guards, ‘I see them! Two grown-ups, running away. Hurry!’

Cahra watched the guards charge to Ellian. She took a steadying breath as the boy held the men’s attention, pointing away and down the street, before beaming back at her.

With any luck, Lumsden would be able to give the kid a home, a trade, a future. A life. Like the old man had done for her so long ago. Before she’d gone and screwed everything up.

Shakily, she exhaled. ‘Let’s go,’ she said to Terryl.

Cahra could feel the lord’s eyes on her as they entered the marketplace, the guards still searching the alley with the broken window.

Once Cahra and Terryl reached the trail of stalls and carts brimming with smoked meats, hard cheeses and root vegetables, old parts of her clicked into place like oiled keys amid the shouts of vendors.

Snaking her arm to brush against a sheet of brown linen, the flick of her wrist was nearly imperceptible.

She swung to Terryl’s far side a few strides later and wrapped the sheet around her head and neck as a scarf.

A similar trick and she’d swiped a hat for him.

From beneath the safety of her disguise, she slowed a little, gazing at the market’s Festival of Shadows decorations and the small, dark stalls selling rough chunks of tenebrite, a crimson substance mined from the craggy, snow-capped mountains north of Kolyath’s walls.

Tenebrite, known as the fire-keeper’s stone, radiated cosy warmth for an extremely long time, and was central to Veil’s Eve as it kept the fires in people’s homes burning during the vigil.

The mineral was a symbol of resilience in the kingdom and used for various things other than just warmth; the ink of Cahra’s Guild tattoo, for one.

Her thumb found the flame behind the hammer on her wrist, the red dotted with crushed tenebrite.

As they neared the end of the marketplace, Terryl whisked Cahra to one side and pressed her sidelong to his shoulder, their heads together. She swallowed, waiting for a gaggle of washerwomen to pass.

‘We are close,’ Terryl said. ‘This is where it becomes perilous.’

Like it hadn’t been already, she thought, holding back a snort.

Terryl continued, ‘Two carriages await. One plain, the other – mine – adorned with blue. I must board it as if nothing is the matter.’ Cahra tried to ignore the warmth of Terryl’s breath on her neck as he surveilled the road.

‘The goods wagon coupled to my carriage is your goal – enter via the rear doors, keep moving and you’ll come to a false back with space to hide where the wagon and carriage meet. Once you are inside, you will be safe.’

Despite the danger, Cahra raised a brow. ‘Do this often, do you?’

Terryl chuckled in response. ‘There are many things that you do not know about me.’ He grew serious. ‘We have but a few streets left.’ He turned from the women that had passed, pausing to look at her. ‘That boy could have turned us in, you know.’

Cahra shook her head. ‘He won’t.’

‘How do you know?’

She met his gaze. ‘I just do.’

Terryl’s eyes searched hers, the young lord nodding eventually. ‘All right. I trust you.’ Something in the way he said it stirred a soothing warmth in her.

They resumed their previous ruse, trying to look as unlike themselves as possible.

Terryl laughed, as if Cahra had just said something incredibly funny, before murmuring to her, ‘The next street.’ He drew her to a farmer’s horse-drawn cart stacked with bales of hay, a few shops from what was clearly Terryl’s carriage.

Evidently, his favourite colour really was blue, large swirls and tinier flourishes skittering over the cab’s polished hardwood. High-borns.

Cahra’s eyes darted from Terryl to the simple goods wagon, wondering if the lack of decoration was deliberate and a ploy to draw attention from the wagon to the stylish carriage.

The goods wagon looked like a big wooden box, with doors at the rear that faced the frontage of a shut shop, and it was right out in the open.

Cahra peered up at the surrounding buildings, eyeing the narrow gaps between the shop and those nestled on either side of it.

Maybe there was a less direct, less obvious approach.

Turning back, a slow smile spread across her face. ‘I’ve got an idea.’

‘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.