Burning Glass (Burning Glass #1)(17)
Emperor Valko would not be the end of me.
Anton, for all his determination, could not stay awake to drive the troika through the second night. The third time he nodded off and tugged the reins askew, I demanded to drive the sleigh myself. The idea was abhorrent to him, even when I explained my experience with horses. The livelihood of the Romska caravans depended on their horse trade, and with my ability to sense auras, I had an uncanny skill for taming a wild horse. If I could ride bareback, surely steering a sleigh couldn’t be so difficult.
None of that mattered to the prince. Perhaps he thought I would drive the troika along a cliff and kick him into oblivion. The idea had crossed my mind.
At last he resolved to spend the remainder of the night at a small inn between villages. Removing his cape, he pulled a woolen cap over his royal head and wrapped his mother’s blanket around his shoulders, taking care to conceal its finely embroidered edges. He handed the innkeeper three coins and asked for one room to share with his wife. I blanched at that and the small bed the innkeeper revealed when he opened our door.
I needn’t have worried. As soon as the innkeeper left, Anton gruffly muttered, “Get some sleep,” and nodded to the bed while he rolled up his mother’s blanket for use as a pillow on the floor. I watched him a moment, deliberating on whether or not I could take the bed when he was more sleep deprived and of nobler blood. But when I saw him settle onto the floor planks to barricade the door, I flopped down on the bed and stretched out, giving an exaggerated sigh of pleasure. He hadn’t given me the bed out of kindness. He didn’t trust me. I hoped the floor worked knots into his back.
Something jostled me at the shoulder and wakened me when the room was gray and hazy in the light before sun. “What is it, Yuliya?” I asked, my arm thrown over my face in the position I always slept in.
“We need to be going,” came the deep rumbling voice of the prince of Riaznin.
The loss of my friend crashed down over me, fresh and acute. My heart squeezed from the weight of it. I didn’t move my arm. I didn’t want Anton to see the tears clouding my eyes. “I just need a moment,” I whispered.
His warm hand, still on my shoulder, lifted away. His footsteps receded until he stood by the doorway. I took measured breaths as I fought to exhale all my grief. Either that or trap it back inside. Now wasn’t the time to lose myself. Once I reached the palace, I would have my own room, my own place to mourn in solitude.
Anton didn’t say a word, not even when my emotions got the better of me and a quiet sob escaped my labored breathing. He kept his back to me and his head bowed during the several minutes it took me to collect myself. His finger twisted around a loose thread of embroidery on his mother’s blanket.
At length I sat up, matted down my tangled braid, and crossed to the door. Anton’s chest expanded as if he was about to say something, but I couldn’t bear to listen. He’d told me I needed to control my emotions if I wanted to succeed as sovereign Auraseer. I couldn’t endure another lecture. I opened the door and left the room.
We walked silently to the stables. I sat in the troika while he hitched up the three horses. The sun emerged above the rolling, snowy horizon as we set off on the last leg of our journey. Because we had traveled through a good portion of the nights, we would arrive earlier than I’d anticipated.
“We’ll reach Torchev by the afternoon,” Anton said.
Those were the last words he uttered until the massive walls of Riaznin’s capital towered over us, and the troika, with its three tired horses and two heart-heavy passengers, crossed into the city of the emperor.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AS I BEHELD THE GREAT CITY, MY EYES WIDENED LIKE A CHILD’S. I hadn’t felt such wonder since the first time the Romska had performed their strange and mysterious dance around a campfire when I was a little girl. How is it I have come to live among these people? I’d asked myself then. How will I be one of them?
The same questions overwhelmed me now as we passed a sleigh with a nobleman wearing a tall fox-fur hat and a silver embroidered cloak. A lady sat beside him, pearls dangling from her headdress and connected in deep scalloped rows beneath her chin. Beyond the couple, the magnificent palace glimmered in the late-afternoon sun. My belly ached for something more substantial to eat than the hard cheese and bread Anton had given me from his satchel. Perhaps it was my hunger that made the palace appear like an enormous confection.
The tall arched windows had a candied effect, their edges rimmed with multicolored tiles and brightly painted stonework. An intricate network of engravings trimmed the various curving walls like icing on spiced cookies, and topping each tower were what looked like giant dollops of gold-plated cream.
Everything I’d ever seen in the vast countryside of Riaznin looked dim and dull in comparison. Several moments passed before I could tear my gaze away. Only then did I glimpse my closer surroundings and what lay beyond the beauty of the quaint shops, their carved wooden awnings, and the streets lined with cheerfully painted houses. Worse, I began to sense it. The ravenous craving of the barefoot boy dodging into a shabby alleyway. The resentment kindling within a sunken-cheeked man as he tossed the contents of his chamber pot outside and turned his glare on the palace. The weariness of a pregnant woman as she strung her dingy laundry on a line. The apprehension of the nobleman who had passed us in his sleigh, the way his eyes leveled on the road and angled away from the steely looks of the peasants.