The seat of the carriage is velvet, the wood-paneled walls lined with leather, the floor plush with woven carpet. The entire thing is luxurious and golden, though I’m sure after being stuck inside of it for the long journey, it’ll start to feel cramped.
For now, I’m content looking out through the window and feeling the chilled air pass through the gap in the frame as our procession moves away from Highbell Castle.
A dozen other saddles are traveling in separate carriages, all of us called to join Midas in Fifth Kingdom, while the guards on horseback escort us down the long winding road along the rim of the frozen mountain. It’s achingly slow, but I don’t mind the pace right now. I relish in the peace of the night, in the steady steps of the horses as they pull me forward, away from the cage in the palace, toward something new.
As we get further away, the clouds begin to gather, the weather ending its short reprieve. Rain starts to come down like strings, the iridescent lines freezing as they fall.
But our group travels on, the guards simply pulling up their hoods, the horses long since adapted to Sixth Kingdom’s cold, not even balking at being made to travel downhill on a snowy, slick road in the dead of night.
When the carriage slides from a patch of ice or jolts over a rock in the road, my heart jumps into my throat, but my escorts trek on, and I do my best not to imagine that I’m one bad step away from careening right off the side of the mountain.
Fortunately, the guards and horses slog through the snow with competence. We’ll be traveling all night, just like Midas ordered. We’ll sleep during the day, giving the scouts the best advantage when keeping watch.
It will be slow going, two weeks, one and a half at the very best, and that’s if the weather holds—and the weather never holds. Not here. Definitely slower than Midas and his men, but our party isn’t used to travel or being exposed to the elements, so the going will be slower, more cautious.
As I watch our painstaking way down the mountain, my breath fogs up the glass of the window, forcing me to wipe the condensation away with my gloved hand. Gloves that I’m going to become very familiar with, that I probably won’t ever take off until I’m tucked inside Fifth Kingdom’s castle. A small concession when I’m out here in this frigid world, so exposed.
By the time our caravan makes it down the winding mountain road, it’s fully dark. No hint of moon or stars behind the thick canopy of clouds, only the lanterns hanging from the carriages offering light to guide our way.
We cross Highbell’s bridge, hewn from the shale hollowed out from the mountain behind us. Hooves clop over the sturdy bricks as we make our way across, the bridge built over the chasm between mountain and valley.
And at the other end of it, Highbell City. Built in front of the forest of the Pitching Pines—trees so tall that you can’t see their tops when you look up, so large that it would take several men with outstretched arms to span the width of a trunk. The trees stand proud, growing pine needles of blue and white, shedding down like teeth of icicles, dripping with sap at the tips to grow longer, sharper.
But those trees, hundreds of years old—maybe even thousands—they offer the city a break from the wind that comes in down from the mountains, the branches taking on the brunt of the wintry gusts and brutal blizzards, shielding the buildings behind them.
The city itself is dwarfed by them, looking almost comical next to each other. Even in the dark, I can see the light of even the tallest buildings completely dominated by the trees at their backs.
And all at once, I’m too far, too closed off. Maybe it’s just now really hitting me that I’m out, I’m truly out of my cage. No Midas, no expectations, no role to play. I’m out of the palace, off the mountain, and I just want to see it, see everything. And not behind a pane of glass like always, but in the wide open, with the outside all around me, and me on the outside with it.
The moment the carriage wheels start rolling easily over the paved city road, I rap my knuckle against the window. Digby is riding next to me, of course, and his head whips to the side when he hears my knock. But I don’t wait or give him a moment to stop me. Instead, I open the carriage door while it’s still moving—albeit slowly—and I jump.
Digby swears and calls for my carriage to stop, but it’s too late. I’ve already landed on the ground with a spring in my step as my boots hit the ground. Digby pulls his horse over to me, a scowl curling down his weathered face. The sight makes me smile.
“Glaring so soon, Dig?” I tease. “This isn’t a good sign for our journey, is it?”
“Back inside, my lady.”
Digby doesn’t look amused. Not at all. But of course, that just makes my smile stretch wider.
“Glaring it is, then,” I say with a nod. “But scowl or no, I want to stretch my legs. I feel cooped up.”
He narrows his eyes, giving me a look like, Really? You’ve lived in a cage for the past ten years, but now you feel cooped up?
I shrug at his silent challenge. “Can I ride a horse for a while?”
He shakes his head. “It’s sleeting.”
I wave it off. “Barely. Besides, the sky is always doing something here. But I have a hood, and I’m not cold,” I assure him. “I want to feel the air on my face. Just for a little while.”
His gray eyebrows pull together as he looks down at me from his spot on his horse, but I wave my hand ahead of us, toward the city’s buildings where people are walking around. “It’s safe in Highbell, isn’t it?” I ask him.
Of course it is, which is why I asked.
“Fine,” Digby finally says. “But if the weather gets worse, or if you get too cold, you’ll have to return to the carriage.”
I nod, trying not to visibly gloat.
“You know how to ride?” he presses, looking unconvinced.
Another quick nod. “Of course. I’m an excellent horse rider.”
He regards me dubiously, seeing right through my smile, but he doesn’t question me further. Truth be told, I’m not sure that I do still know how to ride a horse, but I guess we’re all about to find out.
Digby whistles, and a pure white horse is brought forward by another guard holding the reins. I walk over to it, running my eyes over the animal, noting the long, shaggy hair all over his body.
Sixth Kingdom horses were specifically bred to withstand the cold. They have long, thick hair all over their bodies, the longest at their chests and right above their hooves. But even so, they’ve still been equipped with heavy woolen blankets draped over their backs beneath their saddles, along with thick leg warmers.
I walk up to the horse, crooning a soft hello as he blinks at me. I lift a gloved hand to his nose and pet him slowly, noting how his braided tail flicks. The Highbell emblem on the front leather harness hanging around his neck sits proudly against his chest, gleaming in gold.
When he nudges my hand for daring to slow my strokes, I smile and continue to rub his nose affectionately. “What’s his name?”
“Crisp,” the other guard answers me, hood over his head, matching cloak and gloves to keep the cold out.
I hum and look again into the horse’s eye. “Help me out here, okay, Crisp?” I murmur to him before I circle around to the saddle.
Luckily, he’s not too tall, so I easily slip my foot into the stirrup and then stand, praying that I don’t embarrass myself and go falling on my ass.
Gritting my teeth, I swing my leg over the other side, my grasp slipping slightly on the saddle before I manage to hoist myself up. I beam as soon as I get settled on top of Crisp, shooting a pleased look at Digby, only to find all of the guards staring openly at me with something akin to horror.
My smile drops. “What?”
Digby scowls at the others. “Move out!” His words snap everyone to attention, and the other riders face forward before the procession starts moving once more.
I look over at Digby as I fix the hood over my head to keep the icy rain off my face.
Digby nudges his horse forward, staying to my right, and clearly not going to tell me what that was all about. Looking over, I meet the eye of another guard who comes up to ride on my left. “Why were they looking at me like that?” I ask.
The guard looks at me sheepishly, a blush crawling over his pale cheeks that I can see even beneath his hood. “Well…it’s just that ladies don’t normally sit astride.”
I look down at my legs straddling the horse. “Oh.” I forgot that. I always rode this way before, but I wasn’t worried about propriety then.
Behind me, in one of the carriages holding the other saddles, I hear feminine snickers at my expense. “So she does like to spread her legs after all,” I hear one of them say—Polly. That’s Polly’s voice.
My cheeks heat. “Should I…”
But the guard shakes his head. “You’ll be more secure this way, and it’s better for long distances. Don’t worry about them,” he says, tipping his head at the carriage.
Nodding, I gently tug the right reins while pressing my left leg against Crisp to get him to turn a bit, to get him to move ahead, where I don’t have to hear the saddles’ taunts.
My horse maneuvers us with ease, and I breathe a sigh of relief that I seem to remember what the hell I’m doing. The longer I ride, the more relaxed I become, not even caring if the other saddles have anything more to say.
As we move steadily forward, I bask in the open air, glad to be out of the carriage. The rain, while light, is still cold and wet, but I’m too excited about being out in the open to care.
Crisp moves steadily beneath me, his hair helping to keep my bottom half warm. I’m glad that I’m wearing such thick stockings beneath my dress and that my boots are so well insulated.
Highbell City is pretty at night, though, and that distracts me from the dropping temperature. Most of the buildings are three stories tall, all made of the same gray rock that the mountain is made of.
The streets are cobbled and slightly uneven in places, but I like the sound of the horses’ hooves clomping over them. The street lamps create a flickering path for us along the winding road, and it’s all so picturesque that it brings a smile to my face.
People come out to view us, eyeing the royal procession with avid interest, but I’m careful to keep my hood up so that it covers most of my face and all of my golden hair. Even the saddles in the brothel pop out of the windows, waving topless at the guards and blowing kisses as we go.
The guard to my left clears his throat and snaps his head forward when one of the women purrs out a rather generous offer to him. I don’t blame them. He’s handsome, with an open, friendly face. The sort of face that probably always looks kind, even when he’s angry. He has ashy blond hair and deep sea blue eyes, a patchy line of hair across his jaw that tells me he can’t quite grow in a full beard.
“What’s your name?”
He looks over at me, and I notice how young he looks. Maybe only twenty years or so. “My name’s Sail, miss.”
“Well, Sail, you seem to be popular with the ladies,” I note, nodding to the saddles hanging out the windows who are still beckoning to him more than any other.
That pink hue on his cheeks deepens, and it’s not from the brisk air. “My mum would wallop me if I ever disrespected a woman enough to force her to sleep with me for a few coins.”
I decide I like Sail right then and there.
“You know, some could argue that it’s one of the few jobs we women can have to earn a decent wage and manage to stay independent,” I tell him.
Sail blanches, like he just realized what he’d said—just remembered who I am. “I didn’t—I…I didn’t mean to imply that being a saddle isn’t respectable. I’m sure plenty of saddles are respectable. Or, I mean, I just—”
“Relax,” I say, cutting through his stuttering. His eyes nervously look back at the royal saddles’ carriages, as if they might be listening in. “So long as you don’t look down on saddles, I have no issue.”
“Of course not,” he insists. “The saddles in this city are probably tougher than the whole of the army, for all they have to put up with.”
I eye some of the sneering people on the streets who are openly staring up at the brothel, their faces not filled with lust, but with violent, carnal hunger and bitter jealousy. I nod slowly before I can look away. “On that, we can agree.”
