Crown of Smoke

Chapter 8

        It was around midday and the wind had subsided. Hayden had hardly spoken since they had left, leaving Gwen to her own thoughts. She couldn’t decide if she was pleased about that or not. Either way she knew she would have been annoyed with him. If Hayden has decided to be talkative, then Gwen doubted she would have reciprocated his mindless chatter but at the same time, his silence was driving her grating at her.

            Annabelle huffed, her breath making a small cloud in front of her. Gwen smiled, patting the pony on the head between her ears and sneaking her a sugar cube from the pocket of her cloak. At least she had one friend, even if she couldn’t talk. Annabelle had proven to be much better company than Hayden.

            “We should stop for a little while, eat and let the pony rest up for the final length.” Hayden declared.

            “Her name is Annabelle.”

            “Naming animals is ridiculous and pointless,” Hayden snapped. “Now I remember a pub being not too far from here that does a decent meal. We have enough funds for something for us and some oats for her.”

            Gwen furrowed her brow, confused as to how Hayden had gotten any funds at all, but she decided it would be best not to argue. He wouldn’t tell her anyway and she didn’t have the energy’ Perhaps after the pie, she would manage to find a new motivation to fight it out with him.

            Hayden was right, there was a pub just off of a fork in the road towards Sillin. It was a quaint place with the roof thatched together with straw and ceilings covered in dark wooden beams. It was warm in there, and that was the most important thing. It wasn’t until Gwen sat on a bench that she realized just how much her feet ached after spending hours walking. 

            Hayden seemed to feel the same, unable to stop himself from releasing a sigh of relief as he took his seat opposite her. This was the most disheveled she had seen him, his hair a mess from being under his traveling hood, sticking up at the front in little tufts, and she hadn’t noticed earlier than he had swapped his usual crisp clothing for a commoner’s traveling set, soft but sturdy leather boots and all. She raised a single eyebrow, looking his attire up and do and he chuckled under his breath.

            “Well I didn’t want us attracting too much-unprecedented attention at an inconvenient moment now, did I?” He said, the glint which accompanied his schemes returning to his eyes. “We’d look an awfully odd pair if I was seen strutting down the paths in my finery whilst you wore that.”

“Thank you for that assessment of my dress, but I believe we came here to eat,” Gwen said, averting her attention from Hayden to the board with that day’s options written on there.

Meat pie with onion gravy

Rabbit stew

Or pork and dumpling soup.

“Are you sure we can afford this?” Gwen whispered to Hayden, but his only response was to shoot her a look before the barmaid came over and took Hayden’s order of meat pie and Gwen’s rabbit stew.

            Hayden didn’t answer Gwen’s question, even after the barmaid had left, and so she took it upon herself to examine the other people in the bar. Despite the cozy atmosphere, everyone felt just a little terrifying to Gwen, like they knew who she was better than she did. Hayden had mentioned the royalists who had loved the Cavenairs before the fire, sometimes even resorting to stalking the king and queen. Gwen had been watching her back ever since, even though she knew most did not even know who she was.

            “You look like a deer who’s just had an arrow fly past its head,” Hayden whispered to her. “If you could look a little less small-town-girl-afraid-of-everything then perhaps it might help you to look like less of a target.”

            Gwen’s eyes went from wide to slits in less than a second, taking the time to glare at Hayden, but he only sniggered in response, making her blood boil.

            “I won’t hesitate to start screaming that you kidn*pped me from my home and bought me here against my will.” She threatened.

            “And what good will that do us?” Hayden asked, his voice low in volume, but matching Gwen’s threatening tone.

            “It would get me the hell away from you.” She spat.

            “Wow if you let the cat out of the cage they really do begin to draw their claws.” He laughed. “You need me, Guinevere. And I need you. Do you want this war Kaleb is suggesting? Do you want Blaine to march out into battle, front line, and center?” She flinched. “Do you want this country to fall to ruin?”

            “That’s not what I said.”

            “If I thought I could do this without you, then I would have. I don’t care who sits on that throne, just as long as it’s not Kaleb, okay?” He sighed, sitting back, the fire replaced by a tired look in his eyes. “I don’t want to be your enemy.”

            “Then why do you act like it?” Her eyes were pleading now, begging for some kind of explanation, but Hayden just shook his head. “Look, we don’t have to get along perfectly but if you stopped acting like such an arse all the time it would be a hell of a lot easier.”

            Hayden laughed, but his wandered to a group of men who had just entered the pub. They were some boys from the royal army, probably sent to do patrols and make sure that people were not already deserting after the sudden announcement the day before. They looked around the place.

            “Lay low,” Hayden murmured, “it’s not likely but they could have heard word of what occurred yesterday in Eldun.” Gwen’s eyes widened but she kept her mouth shut. The waitress bought over their food and they ate in silence, trying to attract as little attention as possible. They listened to the guards, but they spoke mostly of idle chatter and making their own way to the capital where the existing army members who got there early would be selected to train the new recruits rather than fight out in the fields for themselves. Gwen felt a hot burn of anger rise in her at the thought that these men, despite their search for deserters, were taking their own cowardly way out, but Hayden’s eyes kept her seated and her mouth shut.

            When Gwen finally dropped her knife and fork with a loud clatter, Hayden stood up, extending his hand out to her to help her from the bench. She took it gratefully, trying to stop her gaze from wandering to the band of army men who had already gone through three rounds of drinks whilst they had been eating through a multitude of drinking games Gwen had never heard of. She held tight onto Hayden, her grip admitting to him a fear she could never have said out loud.

            With a start, she felt a man grab onto her. A gasp escaped her, alerting Hayden who turned, his face like thunder. He pulled Gwen closer to him as the heat rose to her face in embarrassment.

            “Who do you think you are taking a pretty girl like this?” One of the men stood up. Hayden was tall, but this man stood an inch taller than him, his build wider and more muscular than Hayden’s. His hair was cropped where Hayden’s fell into his eyes. The man stood, looking down upon Hayden and assessing him, mentally calculating if he could take Hayden in a fight for Gwen.

            “I’m taking her out of here,” Hayden replied firmly. “No one deserves to be in the presence of people like you.” Gwen almost rolled her eyes, she supposed there was no longer a fear of keeping their heads down.

            The man’s face turned a deep shade of purple, balling his hands into quick fists and aiming a punch towards Hayden who dodged out of the way whilst pulling Gwen with him and pushing her towards the door. As his fist hit the empty air, the man’s face grew more enraged, his friends in their equally drunken state digging into him. He lunged at Hayden who ducked, kicking the man’s feet out from underneath him, leaving him to fall into a pile of brawn on the floor with a hard thud that seemed to echo off the walls.

            There was a single moment of silence where the army men decided to weigh up their options, before deciding to target the pair of them. One grabbed Gwen’s cloak hood, pulling her back towards the middle of the tavern just as she turned to flee. He picked her up small frame up with ease despite her kicking and screaming. Hayden was fighting off two of the guards, disarming them with a small dagger Gwen hadn’t seen him hide inside of his walking boots. He had anticipated a fight, for what reason she did not know, but she was too relieved that he was holding them off to be questioning it. She went to scream out Hayden’s name, but the guard holding her pressed his hand to her mouth before she could get any of the words out. She opened her mouth and bit down on his finger, delighted as he dropped her to the floor, and she realized she had the copper taste of his blood in her mouth.

            The men fighting Hayden had been too focused on him to notice her coming around behind them, taking the sword from the guard who had fallen onto the floor, too intoxicated to get up. She ran up behind one of the guards, her newfound sword pointing into his back. She had no idea what she was doing with a sword in all honesty, but she had seen a few boys play with them when growing up and she had used sickles in the field when she had visited the farm with her father. It was all just about slashing and hoping for the best.

            By taking the attention of one guard, Hayden was able to quickly disarm the one which he was fighting and take his dagger to the one fighting Gwen’s throat, stopping him from bringing his sword any closer to her chest where it was aimed.

            “Touch her with that and I slit your throat,” Hayden growled. “Drop it.”

            The sword fell to the floor with a crash. Hayden dropped the dagger from the man’s throat slowly, gesturing for Gwen to follow him.

            The bright outside air was welcome after the pub, and the breeze seemed to whip away the tension from Gwen’s shoulders. Hayden walked wordlessly over to Annabelle, who was less than impressed that her rest was over.

            “We need to give you some lessons for fights, I think,” Hayden smirked. “Your swordsmanship is rather…”

            “Sloppy? Amateur?” Gwen suggested.

            “Clumsy,” Hayden almost let himself smile, “but not as bad as I thought. Thank you for distracting him.”

            “Well, I suppose I can’t get you killed yet,” Gwen sighed, “but perhaps we should stay a bit further from the path?”

            It turned out that with a full stomach and Hayden having had kicked a lot of people’s arses to protect her, it was possible for the pair of them to get along. Although Gwen was fairly certain that Hayden remained pompous and annoying, he was actually quite amusing in the right light. The final stretch of the walk to Sillin was actually quite pleasant, with Hayden avoiding all subjects of Gwen and her destiny and instead focussing on his specialist subject: himself. He told Gwen about his sister, Maia, and of her friends who often came to the house to stare at him in wonder as he studied.

            Gwen soon learned that Hayden was a somewhat normal brother and even seemed to get on Maia’s nerves a lot of the time. Blaine and Gwen hadn’t had a perfectly smooth relationship, no siblings ever did and if they claimed that they did they were lying. Hayden liked to make out that his relationship with Maia was close to perfect, but there were stories that included him waiting outside of her door when she locked it with a cake that told Gwen otherwise. No one did that out of the kindness of their heart, and definitely not Hayden.

            He also had an older brother, Topher, who was at university in the middle of the capital and kept to himself mostly these days. He was studying to be a doctor much like Hayden eventually would, both following in their father’s footsteps.

            A feeling of sympathy washed over Gwen for him. His whole life was planned out whilst until the last week or so, she had no plans at all. Her parents had never pushed her to be anything she was not. Hayden spoke about his life as though the world had been mapped out for him, the life of a doctor at the palace or at least in high society, but Gwen couldn’t see him as a doctor. He had proven himself as much more of a politician or a teacher, at least to her. She could just see him, doing interviews in front of crowds, ones who would care far more than she had. He was a captivating leader; people wouldn’t be able to tear their eyes away from him.

            “Gwen? Did you hear me?” He asked, his mouth a tight line of repressed annoyance.

            “Sorry, I was just…thinking.” She sighed, flashing him a smile to try and appease him. He ignored it.

            “Well, that makes a change.” He scoffed, but he cringed under Gwen’s glare. “Sorry, old habits and all that. I was just saying that tonight it’s important to follow the etiquette training as much as you can.”

            Gwen sighed but nodded.

            “Shoulders back, using all the right forks, curtsey and smile daintily. I imagine it’ll become a routine soon enough.”

            “I know it doesn’t seem like it makes a difference, but a lot of the people who will want to support you will be traditionalists, particularly the ones of nobility, even lesser nobility admires the traditions of Colvine. They expect certain things and when we’re with them then I’m afraid you will simply have to live up to them.”

            Gwen continued to nod. She pushed her shoulders back and fixed her cloak which had been thrown askew by the winds. She pulled her hair from the bun and braided it down her back in an attempt to tame it. Hayden’s eyes watched her approvingly. She flashed him a smile and he raised a brow but Gwen could see through the façade that he was a least a little proud of her.

            “Don’t get so carried away.” Hayden chuckled as Gwen thrust her chin high up into the air in the way she imagined nobles were supposed to. “You now just look like you’re trying to figure out where the strange smell is coming from.”

            “Well considering the fact that Astere lives on a farm I don’t think that’s implausible.” Gwen quipped back.

            They continued down the path that Hayden swore was the right one, with fields of cows and sheep beginning to surround them. The smell was enough to make Gwen pinch her face together. She may have grown up near plenty of farms, but that stench was not something which she would ever get used to. Hayden joined her, his nostrils flaring in disgust before he took the edges of his cloak and covered his face as much as he could.

            Eventually, after what felt like an eternity of holding her breath to avoid breathing through her nose, the estate of Harrison Astere appeared on the horizon. It was unlike any farmhouse Gwen had ever seen before, used to quaint cottages with chickens in the front yard. The Astere household, however, was more comparable to how Gwen had spent her whole life imagining the palace. It was the biggest house she had ever seen, four floors, painted in a corn-flower blue color so that it blended in with the cloudy evening sky. The high brick chimney was emitting a gentle stream of smoke and Gwen smiled to herself at the comforting thought of a warm fire. The closer they got, the cleaner and more beautiful the farmhouse was, with perfectly trimmed shrubbery in front and picturesque horses grazing on the field next to it.

            A man was waiting at the door, in stiff servant’s uniform in deep emerald green, along with a stable boy armed with apples to drag Annabelle into her own accommodations for the evening.

            “Master Cliffe, good to see you again,” the servant man said. He must have been quite a few years older than Hayden, a tidy little goatee sandwiching his lips and wise eyes that when they looked at Gwen, it felt like he was reading her like a book.

            “Potter, old chap,” Hayden leaned forward and shook the servant's hand, Gwen behind him with her hands wringing together under her cloak. “Might I introduce you to Miss Guinevere Cox.”

            Hayden had told her that he would continue using her family in Eldun’s name until the word got out about her true identity and things would be less dangerous. She would have a real security team to guard her when she was able to be more public, not just him and his dagger against the trained army. It was better a secret for now, more protected, but he still insisted on calling her Guinevere. Gwen stepped forward, her eyes remaining on the ground as the man Hayden called Potter stared her up and down.

            “A pleasure, Miss Cox.” Potter said with a slight bow and a knowing look. If Hayden and Harrison had discussed her situation, it was likely that Potter had heard about who she really was, but servants were trusted for their discretion in the houses of nobility.

            Gwen awkwardly curtsied and Potter led the pair inside to a small but respectable foyer with a perfectly shined wooden floor and a few maids teetering around. It simultaneously felt as though the place was beautiful and daunting at the same time, as though it was trying too hard to be something more than it was. She knew the feeling well.

            “Took your time didn’t you?” A voice from the top of the stairs said.

A young man, the same age as Hayden, stood at the top of the stairs in casual but clearly very expensive attire. His long blonde hair was slicked back into a low ponytail at the nape of his neck using a silk bow that shone even from where Gwen was standing on the bottom of the stairs. As he sauntered down the stairs to greet them, Gwen could see his high cheekbones which were just slightly flushed with color from the warmth of the house. He was pale for a farmer, Gwen thought, but there were freckles dotted across his cheeks from his time in the sun.

“Honestly, Hayden I thought I was going to have to postpone dinner.”

            “Well consider yourself lucky that the storm held off and we didn’t get here any later,” Hayden said, his face breaking into a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes as the man shook his hand. “Harrison, this is Guinevere.”

            “Your highness.” He said, dipping himself in a mock bow. “You’ll have to excuse my appearance, I’m afraid today’s harvest took a little longer than usual and I haven’t yet had the time to get into the attire which is suited to greet such a lovely lady as yourself.”

            Gwen’s cheeks burned. She searched for a reply, something humble yet witty, but nothing came to her mind. Harrison was ridiculously beautiful and the way his blue-green eyes were studying her made it hard to think about much else.

            “Would you mind greatly if we actually change ourselves, Harry?” Hayden asked, tugging his cloak off to once again reveal his traveling clothes. His simple cotton get-up with dirty leather boots was very lacking next to Harrison’s velvet trousers and pristinely shiny shoes. Harrison looked Hayden slowly up and down and nodded approvingly, signaling for Potter to take the trunks from the steps and escort them upstairs.

Upstairs was just as grand as the downstairs had been. The guest room Gwen was taken into, one of seven in the house, was covered in green wallpaper with dainty roses all around like a fairy tale forest all around her. Her trunk sat at the end of the bed. She could hear the wind outside beginning to pick up, so she furrowed under the piles of dresses and found something suitably warm in gold color, trimmed with ruby lace.

She had never seen it before. her mother must have snuck it into her trunk without her seeing it that morning. Gwen smiled to herself at the gesture before she searched through the piles and found three more dresses she had never seen in rich beautiful colors that were more awe-inspiring than any of even the fanciest dresses Gwen had ever tried on.

She looked suitably royal when she examined herself in the looking glass. The fabric sat just on her shoulders in the perfect place, her sleeves tight and down to her wrists with a piece of deep red lace in a halo around her hand. The skirt was separated by the same lace wrapped around her waist into a bow around her back above the gold skirt that flowed underneath her before once again ending in the red lace. Her hair was still in a braid and she let it fall over her shoulders in tight brown waves. She liked it down, it was surprisingly shiny and it gave her the little push of confidence she so desperately needed.