The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(87)
“I thought you two were staying here,” I said, frowning when I saw that both of them were packed for travel.
Antonia just shrugged and nodded at Neferet. “Where she goes, I go.”
I looked at Neferet. “You hate the cold.”
“Yes. But I want to talk to druids,” Neferet said matter-of-factly. “About their healing magic. And Antonia promised she would find the thickest cloak ever woven for me, and furlined boots. I’ll brave the cold for druids. And for you.”
“Thank you, Neferet—”
She put up a hand. “Mostly druids. Don’t get misty on me, Fallon.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” I shook my head. “As it happens, I know where one of the druiddyn lives. And I also know a woman in Durovernum who weaves the most extraordinary cloaks.”
“And boots?”
“I’ll scour the kingdom.”
She nodded, very seriously, and then dropped to her knee to go through her bags and do a gear check. Again.
“It’s the fourth time she’s done that,” Antonia said. “This hour.”
She looked down at Neferet with an expression of patient exasperation and absolute adoration. Neferet might not have been able to keep Sorcha from journeying to the Blessed Isle, I thought, but she’d kept Antonia in this world long enough for them to become the world for each other. And that, in itself, was more than a wonder. Now she wanted to learn from the druids. If she continued on her path, I suspected, Neferet might just save us all one day with her skills. One way or another.
XXIII
THIRTY DAYS. WE would be in Massilia within thirty days of leaving the Great Harbor at Alexandria. Depending entirely, of course, on the changeable moods of Neptune, the great trident-wielding god of the Mare Nostrum. It was a fast ship. There was time. That’s what I kept telling myself.
There was time . . . There had to be.
We put in at Lepsis Magna and Carthage and smaller scattered ports of call in between, sailing west and then north, and as the days passed, I had to admit—even if only to myself—that it was strange being on a sea voyage without Charon. I kept glancing toward the bow rail to see if he was standing there. Every time we made port, I wanted to ask him questions about the people and places—and, mostly, how to keep from getting in trouble—but, of course, he wasn’t there.
He was with my sister.
That ache—that emptiness—went deeper, of course. And yet, in a way, it was so familiar to me I could almost ignore it. After all, I’d spent years of my life, growing up, doing just that. For the first few days after Sorcha’s death, back in Cleopatra’s palace on Antirhodos, I’d feared that I might fall into a black despair, having found my sister again only to lose her. But, instead, I decided that the time I’d spent with her once I had found her again had been a gift. She’d been right when she’d said she was still with me. She always had been, really, and now I knew she always would be.
And I could finally tell our father all about her.
I only hoped that he would understand.
Both her disappearance . . . and my own. Not that it mattered whether he understood or not, I supposed, until such time as we—my friends and I—made sure that his kingdom was safe from Pontius Aquila and his Sons of Dis and the treacherous Coritani. Once we’d done that, then Virico could accept me, reject me, or cast me out altogether. First, we had a job to do.
And, thanks to Cleopatra, we had the means to accomplish it in high style.
After we’d left her shores, I wondered if the queen might not have propitiated her own gods for our safe passage on the sea. The weather stayed mild and the waves calm. And our equine charges were better behaved than most people I’d ever traveled with. They were housed in specially built stalls belowdecks equipped with slings that loosely cradled them beneath their bellies to support the animals and keep them from falling with the movement of the waves. The chariots had been stowed securely, and the rest of the cargo hold had been stocked with abundant feed. Whenever we made port, some of the horse boys walked and watered them while the others mucked out the stalls with impressive efficiency. I was told by the ship’s captain that the court of Aegypt had been in the business of providing horse troops to other lands for generations and had somewhat perfected the methods of transporting them. As far as such things could be perfected, at least.
I spent a great deal of time with the horses on the journey, down in the hold with Cai, the two of us grooming them or just sitting with them. He and I would make a nest of the loose hay and our cloaks and curl up together, telling the horses—and each other—stories. It made the journey fly by on swifter wings. And it helped take my mind off the prospect of what we would find once we reached our ultimate destination. While we were down in the hold, at least. Up on deck, it was a different story. The horizon and our next port always seemed too far away. I drilled every morning and every afternoon with the girls, but the constant fear that Aquila’d had too much of a head start on us gnawed at my nerves, even as I imagined his head rolling on the ground at my feet.
“If Durovernum and the Cantii really are his target,” Cai said, when he and Quint caught me pacing the deck after a drill session one late afternoon, “and not just any of the Prydain tribes he thinks might provide him with easy pickings, then Aquila would not only have had to gather what forces and resources he had in Rome, he also would’ve had to secure passage and travel to Britannia . . .”