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He laughed again, hearing the manic tone in his voice but unable to stop it.
Teigra didn’t smile. There was something equally manic in the way she went over the luggage, again and again. Eventually, he had to take her shaking hand and pull her up into the carriage—shushing her protests about Jaspar not being fit to drive yet. After all, the mid envoy assured them he was fine, and the sooner they got out of here, the better.
After just a few minutes, they were back underway.
“Goodbye Mestibes; hello Ardora, eh?” he said with a faint smile, using a spare bit of the shredded roof to clean the worst of the foul-smelling blood from his hair and ears. His beautiful cloak was ruined. Although, in this moment, with the pulse of fear still thumping through his blood, even he knew this was a less-than-pressing concern. “And did you see? They had pegasi. I thought you said they didn’t have any of those up here?”
Teigra just gazed at him in remnant shock, her face as white as a freshly laundered toga.
22
TEIGRA
The oil lamp cast long shadows through the stable. It smelled nothing like home. Back home, only the cheapest olive oil was used in lamps, still stinking of the vegetables or meat it had been carefully strained from after cooking. But the smoke here carried the scent of rich, green olives. Sweet and earthy.
Carrying so much promise.
A promise I’ve already wasted...
It was well past midnight now. Aurelius and Jaspar had already drifted off. She knew this because she’d stood at their doors for what felt like an age, her ear pressed against the splinters, waiting, begging, for the sounds of sleep.
But Teigra couldn’t sleep. Not until she’d found it.
It will be in some weird part of the carriage, she reassured herself, tiptoeing around the corner of the stable yards, the unfamiliar softness of green grass underfoot.
She froze, ducking back behind the wall.
Their carriage was indeed in the stables, but it wasn’t alone! From the yards came the sound of two people working. Their accents were the same sonorous tones that woman’d had.
She snuck a careful peek around the corner. One man was replacing the wooden frame of the roof, the other was scrubbing out the blood and remnants of the beasts from inside.
No! Stop it! I need to look there! Don’t take anything away! Don’t touch anything!
She stayed in that spot until the sun was just cresting over the tree-lined horizon and the workers had completed their tasks—with Teigra cursing every minute of their labor.
As soon as the men had returned to the inn, she dashed over, rummaging through the possessions that had been returned to the netting.
The first look revealed nothing, so she went over it again, turning over every box and bag, ducking to the ground in case it had somehow fallen out during the repairs. She’d already checked her own bag a dozen times in her room in the inn. Over and over, as if it might suddenly fall out of the folds of some tunic.
There was still nothing!
Desperately, she jumped into the carriage itself, running her hands into every nook and cranny of the newly polished pine.
And there was still nothing...
She slumped back into the cold wooden seat, staring blankly at the rising dawn across the tree line. Everything had survived the attack unscathed. Everything that was, except one thing.
The most important thing in the entire carriage.
The most important thing in the entire country!
Urosina’s folio was gone.
Gods! She... she must have taken it!
Teigra’s whole body shook. The culprit’s face flashed before her—rivers of black hair and cruel eyes. A face that Teigra had seen described before.
“Mesti,” she muttered under her breath. “I’ve ruined Aurelius’s mission.”
