Saving Thanehaven by Catherine Jinks Read Free Book Online Page A

without Smite. There would have been too many obstacles. Too many tricks. And then Lorellina would have spat in his face at the end of it all.
    It wouldn’t have been a rescue. It would have been an abduction.
    “Is this some kind of prison cell?” Rufus asks Lorellina as they tramp through one of the smaller, damper, murkier guardrooms. It’s full of chains and wet straw. “Or is it where your garrison hangs out?”
    “Some of the guards sleep here,” the princess replies. “Not all of them.”
    “Homey,” drawls Rufus. Then he addresses the guards behind him. “How much do you guys get paid for this gig?”
    There’s no response from the guards, perhaps because they can’t hear Rufus over the noise that they’re making as they march along.
    It’s Lorellina who finally answers.
    “We give them bed and board and clothes and firewood,” she says, lifting her skirt to cross an oily black puddle. “That is their payment.”
    “No money?” Rufus inquires.
    “Money? You mean—gold? Silver?” Lorellina sounds genuinely surprised. “Why would they need money?”
    “Oh, I dunno. For the app store?” Rufus shrugs,not explaining this odd term. “Now that they can actually get out of here, don’t you think a bit of money would be nice for them?”
    “But they are our vassals. Our liegemen,” says the princess. That is all she needs to say, as far as Noble is concerned.
    Rufus, however, doesn’t seem to understand.
    “Maybe some of them don’t want to be guards,” he speculates, not bothering even to hunch his shoulders as he passes beneath an archway so low that it forces Noble to duck. “Have you thought of that? Have
they
thought of that? This whole world’s opening up, now—you might have to offer a few more incentives if you want ’em to stay.”
    “They belong with the fortress,” Lorellina insists. No matter how much Rufus argues, he can’t seem to get through to her. And he stops trying when they reach the front gate.
    “The gate!” she cries. “The gate is open!”
    “Yes,” says Noble, who’s just behind her.
    “And the bridge is down!” Her voice trembles. “Is that the sky? Is that the
open sky
?” She points at a patch of cloud framed by the dark, jagged mouth of the entranceway.
    “Yes,” Noble says again.
    A new platoon of guards is waiting for Lorellina in the gatehouse. She edges past them until she has an unobstructed view of the drawbridge, the river, the bare trees, the gray sky, and the matched pairs ofgargoyles facing each other across a ribbon of white road.
    “Oh!” she exclaims, her voice catching on a sob. “No roof! No walls!”
    “No enemy agents,” mutters Noble, who’s scanning the vicinity of the fortress for possible threats.
    “Come!” The princess squares her shoulders. “Advance, Liegemen of Harrow!” she commands, with a grand sweep of her slender arm. “Let us go forth and reclaim what is ours!”
    Then she strides out of the fortress into the full light of day.
    Falling in behind her, Noble feels a slight sense of discomfort. It may be because he’s unarmed and barefoot at the head of a military procession. It may be because he can hear Rufus chattering away in the rear, asking a couple of guards called Flummocks and Sooterkin if they really want to be soldiers. Or it may be because there are plans that need making—and Noble doesn’t quite know how to make them.
    As Lorellina lifts her face to the sky, he realizes that he, too, is about to confront something vast and free and formless: namely, the future. Once his existence was a series of on-the-spot decisions, with life or death at the end of each one. Now his choices are less clear. It’s all so new, he doesn’t know what to think.
    Maybe Rufus will be able to help him.
    “Where is the sun?” asks Lorellina, halting in the center of the drawbridge. The troops at herheels also stop, blinking in the unaccustomed glare.
    “The sun’s behind those clouds,” Noble