Page 69 of Shadow Throne King
“What do you think Vostop meant?” I asked.
Tallu briefly turned his head, and I couldn’t see his expression with my face still pressed to his back, but I could hear the confusion in his words. “When?”
“Vostop said that General Maki didn’t come up the mountain path like we did.”
“I took that to mean that he had a prior relationship with King Inor, so his route to Inor’s throne room was already smoothed for him.” Tallu pulled on the reins of his horse, guiding it around the boulder. “But you think he meant something more literal.”
“I think he meant that there is a way into the palace that bypasses the mountain roads.” I looked out. The moon was reflecting on the lake, and now that we were closer, I could see the water, choppy with a breeze. “I think he was telling us how toget back to the palace, if we wanted to enter without alerting the Shadow King or anyone in his guild.”
Tallu hummed. “Where, though?”
“I don’t know. It would be somewhere Maki was familiar with. The servants didn’t mention him ever leaving the palace to walk the countryside. And I would hope they would have mentioned if he left by boat.” The thought occurred to me. “Did they actually say theysawhim leave?”
“Quuri said that he left.” Tallu spoke slowly, considering. “But she thought he left with the two men he had killed.”
“So maybe he didn’t leave at all. Maybe he disappeared, and they assumed he left in the night.” I let the words linger, let myself wonder what it meant that Tallu’s steward was lying to him. What else might she have lied about?
“If he didn’t leave through the front door, then that means there is another way from the Lakeshore Palace to Mountain Thrown City.” Tallu considered each word. “We need to check Maki’s workshop again.”
“After a full night’s sleep.” I inhaled deeply, the scent of Tallu’s sweat and the warmth I could feel through his clothes reassuring. “I worry for Asahi.”
For a moment, Tallu didn’t speak, then he turned his head just slightly, his voice a low rumble on my palm. We both kept our words to a whisper. “I noticed him in the throne room. He tried to take off his mask?”
“I don’t understand it either.” I hesitated, wanting so badly to speak of the voice I heard in lieu of Asahi’s own. The nastiness it spewed. But what if that wasmymadness, like hearing the voice in the dark that even Tallu could not? Ihadto tell him, and the fact that we were sharing a saddle, galloping hard and so noisy I could barely hear the pounding hooves of Asahi and Sagam’s mount, meant that we finally had adequate privacy for me to do so. “I hear his voice in my head also. I worry thateither the poison drew me to madness, or it is letting me hear his innermost thoughts, and they are not kind to me. To us.”
Tallu squeezed my hand, and I saw his head turn toward the horse Asahi and Sagam were on up ahead. “We must watch him carefully.”
“You are not afraid it is merely the insect’s bites poisoning my mind against my own allies?” I asked.
“It is notyourbehavior that has changed,” Tallu pointed out.
We turned to navigate a bend on the path, the trees opening to reveal the wide plain that had been cleared around the Lakeshore Palace. Up ahead, there was a shout as the guards saw us.
Our horse followed Sagam and Asahi’s, and I let my eyes drift over the ground. It glowed. At first, I thought I was seeing things. But even after several blinks, the path around us was littered with rocks clearly from the Krustavian mountains. Just like the ones that had led our way through the caves, these stones guided us straight to the drawbridge.
On top of the palace wall, I heard a croak in the darkness. Terror turned his head, his profile visible in the electric light held by one of the archers on the wall.
As we got closer, I could hear the raven’s grumbling. But every time I tried to understand what he was saying, the words fell away, like water through my fingers.
The drawbridge lowered as we approached, and our horses crossed it, heads drooping from exhaustion. As soon as we were over the bridge, the guards yelled to lift it, and the shriek of metal and stone cogs grinding together filled the courtyard as they raised the bridge.
Stable hands came for the horses, and they winced at the lamed mount. Quuri and the Kennelmaster stood in the center of the courtyard. She directed a phalanx of servants, and soon we had water and warm cloaks.
“Did you get what you needed?” the Kennelmaster asked.
Tallu’s lips thinned, but he didn’t nod or shake his head. Instead, he said, “We believe there is a route from Maki’s workshop to Mountain Thrown City. We need the door to Maki’s workshop guarded.”
“I already have a man on it,” the Kennelmaster said.
“Send two or three more. We were guarding it against anyone trying to lookinside. We need to make sure nothing comesoutof it.” Tallu waited until the Kennelmaster nodded, then allowed himself to be swept up by his servants, taken back to his room, where they assured him the bath was ready.
As the chaos of movement around us subsided, the Kennelmaster looked at me out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t have to ask.
“We didn’t see the prince. But we know he is there.”
“Even if we arm every servant in the Lakeshore Palace, we will not have enough to fight against the armies of Krustau,” the Kennelmaster said carefully.
“Tallu does not want to fight the armies of Krustau. He wants hisbrotherback.” Even to me, the difference was minimal.