CHAPTER 446: 446: PERMISSION BECOMES ACTION

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Thea smiled back with exactly the right amount of teeth and moved her small army through three doors and a shadow and then out into the city like any other set of men going to do their job.

No one saw the sixth tail that left half an hour later with a satchel of meat and two casks of water. It took a wrong turn on purpose and then a right one on accident and ended up where Thea had told it to be all along: at the edge of the old east waste where no one went except men who did not like being watched.

Somewhere Hoorius signed the writ with the iron rod because that was the ritual for expeditions that might not come home: the rod taps the lacquer; the lacquer gets rubbed in circles until it shines; the regent says a word that binds the wax to more than wax. She kept the writ long enough to press a thumbprint under her sign. Then she handed it to Om without looking at Mia.

"Bring my glass back clean," she said.

"Yes," Om said.

"Bring our princess back safe," she added.

Mia came forward and bowed, deep enough to make a point to the whisperers who would log the depth in their small books. Hoorius did not reach down to touch her. She did not have to. The iron rod ticked once on the stone. It sounded like a door latch. She had her own plans.

They walked out together: Mia with her twenty, Thea with her smile, Hoorius with her unreadable mouth, the court with its long memory.

The South Gate did not shout. It opened.

The first stretch of road was smooth because the city was good at pretending it would always be fine. Vendors hawked flatbread and jars of pickled gourds and the little blue scarves girls liked to tie to spear shafts because it made a bright line against the day. Om rode with his knees loose, pan lid down. Serit counted shadow lengths and clicked his tongue when one of the carts hit a stone too square. Kiva tested the wind with her senses and let her jaw loosen because tension wastes water.

Mia sat on a beast horse like she had been born on one. She had not. She had been born in the palace with its even floors and its deep bowls and its baths you could float in. She had learned to ride the beast horse the way she had learned the spear: by falling, by bleeding, by doing it again and again. The horse knew. It got tamed by her. It carried her with that little extra pride horses get when people around them are pretending not to stare.

They reached the turn where the road splits: one way to the caravan cut, one to the ant farmer ridges, one to the short pass where rocks pretend they were not made by someone with a chisel. Mia lifted her hand. The team turned to the obvious road because you never hide by hiding first. You walk where men expect you to walk until their eyes get bored. Then you bend away when the country bends away and leave them staring at a dust line that means nothing.

They did that.

Two spans out, they stepped off the stone into reed and water shadow. It swallowed sound the way a good friend swallows a foolish word to keep it from biting you. Leather went quiet. Boots breathed differently. A wild non-intelligent frog complained once and then thought better of it. A crane lifted and moved three strides of wing to the next pool because sometimes you should not make a scene even if someone startles you.

Kiva set a pace that would not break anyone in the first hours and would not let anyone get lazy either. Bren marked the edges of the safe path with little knots of grass that you could miss if you weren’t looking for them and couldn’t lose if you were.

Om whispered to his lens — short, straight notes that would become a line in an archive later: Departure under Regent’s leave. Twenty person team. Princess in good condition. South Gate cordial. No protests. Turned off the cut at reed bend. Marsh line taken. No pursuit visible. No hawks above.

Mia did not talk. She watched. The world tells the truth when you don’t force it to.

Back in the city, Thea did not go back to her rooms. She went to a low gate in the east wall that men used when they wanted to run meat to the poorer blocks without hauling it through the fruit market. Her fifty were pieces of other things: a squad that used to guard a noble’s wine cellar and hated thieves; a knot of younger men and women who had not yet picked whether they were better with rope or short blades and were in the sweet spot where they listened because they did not want to get yelled at by both kinds of captains; three men from the night watch who had learned how to sleep while walking and could still see when lines went wrong. They all are loyal to Thea. They only obeyed her.

"Simple mission," she told them. "We travel in her shadow. We do not stand on it. We do not touch her team. We count. We write. If she turns right, we turn right. If she pisses, we hold it. If she makes tea, we drink air. If someone moves toward her with a hand I don’t like, we cut the hand off and feed it to wild beasts. If someone decides to be clever with our Kingdom’s secrets, we put a rope around clever and bring it home for the court to admire."

Her people nodded the way people do when they have signed on for a job they think will be boring and are smart enough to know that boring is a prayer.

Thea set a second leash even the court did not see: three glass moths bred in the Whisper-Archivist’s rooms and "borrowed" in a way that would make Pell grind her teeth for a week.

They fluttered more like ash than insects, drifting in lazy circles that were nothing at all to an eye that was not trained to pick the rules of motion out of the messy air. A pinch of honey on a reed kept them pleased; a pinch of iron powder in the reed kept them obedient.

"Go," Thea said, and the moths did what moths always do when a flame has trained them to love it. They circled and followed and became part of the day.

Thea thought by herself, "Nobody gets with their evil plans. Only I can bully her. She is too naive to know the real danger that awaits her. My stupid and dumb little sister... only I can harm you... without killing you. Nobody can take your life."