Chapter 401: A Return to Mercer’s Row I

Chapter 400: A Return to Mercer’s Row I

Lyria’s POV

The moment we stepped beyond the palace walls, Duke Thorncrest paused.

For several seconds, he said nothing.

He merely stood beneath the faint glow of a distant lantern, his altered features appearing almost unfamiliar in the dimness. His rustic brown hair had been arranged so naturally that, had I not known him, I might not have suspected the man before me was the same Duke Thorncrest who had entered my chamber that morning.

It was strange to see him like this.

Perhaps because I knew his face well enough, I found myself searching for familiar details beneath the disguise.

His eyes gave him away.

"What is your name to be?" he asked me quietly.

I tilted my head.

"P-pardon?"

"We are no longer within the palace," he explained. "If we are to move through the city without attracting notice, we cannot refer to one another by our proper titles. You require a name. Something ordinary enough to belong to the world we have left the palace to enter."

"Iria," I said immediately.

It was the name I had always used when I came here before.

"Iria." He repeated it as though testing how naturally it rested upon his tongue. "It suits you."

"W-what of you?" I asked.

"Xander," he replied without hesitation.

I gave him a look.

"Y-you have thought about t-this."

"I have."

He appeared entirely unashamed by the admission.

He reached up and lowered the hood of my cloak from my head, then did the same with his own.

"Now that we are outside the palace," he continued, "and since you know this part of the capital considerably better than I do, where should we go first?"

I looked around, taking in the familiar scene.

Lanterns flickered from windows and doorways, their amber light falling unevenly across the cobblestones. Carriages passed through the streets, wheels rattling over worn stone. Voices drifted from taverns and public houses. Some accompanied by laughter, others by arguments conducted with considerably less restraint than the hour perhaps warranted.

A pair of gentlemen emerged from a tavern several streets away, their conversation loud enough to carry.

A woman stood beneath an awning, selling small parcels of food wrapped in cloth.

Children who ought by any reasonable measure to have been asleep were still darting between doorways.

And there were beggars, considerably more than I remembered.

Figures sat against walls and huddled beneath shopfronts, wrapped in garments far too thin for the night air. Some watched passing pedestrians with dull resignation. Others held out their hands without speaking.

There were more shadows in the alleys too.

Men who did not appear to have any respectable business to conduct at such an hour.

Thieves.

And like the beggars, there seemed to be more of them than before.

It seemed the kingdom or perhaps the capital itself was growing worse.

I turned toward Xander, choosing not to dwell upon what I could not yet change.

"I h-have just the p-place," I said. "Follow m-me."

I moved through the capital as though the streets were an extension of myself.

These roads were familiar to me. I knew which streets narrowed suddenly and without warning. Which corners offered shelter when the rain came sideways off the river. Which alleys connected two roads that appeared, to anyone unfamiliar, to be entirely separate.

I knew where the merchants kept their stalls and which public houses remained open well into the night.

Most importantly, I knew how to reach Mercer’s Row without taking the roads where we were most likely to draw attention.

Bridget followed close behind us.

She had insisted upon accompanying me, and Brayden had apparently decided that Bridget alone was insufficient and had appointed himself an additional guard for the night without being asked.

The further we moved from the palace district, the narrower the streets became.

The grander buildings of the central district fell away behind us, replaced gradually by cramped houses and businesses whose upper floors seemed almost to lean over the streets as though straining to meet one another across the gap. The cobblestones were uneven beneath our feet. The air smelled of smoke and damp stone, of horses and ale and the lingering scent of supper still drifting through windows left open despite the hour.

Here the capital felt less polished.

Less concerned with appearances.

And somehow, considerably more alive for it.

The Tallow and Tide stood halfway down the street on the left, exactly where I remembered it — tucked between a cooperage and a narrow building whose purpose I had never quite determined, its warm light spilling through the windows and the muffled sound of conversation coming steadily from within.

I heard laughter.

Glasses striking tables.

Someone calling for another round in a voice that suggested it was not their first request of the evening.

A familiar warmth settled over me.

I had not realised, until this moment, quite how much I had missed it.

I walked toward the narrow door set slightly back from the street, easily overlooked by anyone who did not know it was there. It was the entrance I had always used. I placed my hand upon the handle and found, to my surprise, that it was still unlocked. Left exactly as it always had been, as though it had simply been waiting.

We stepped inside.

We had barely taken three steps when a voice came sharply from the bottom of the narrow stairs.

"Oi! ’Oo’re you lot?"

I stopped immediately.

Helen stood at the foot of the stairs with her arms folded firmly across her chest, her eyes narrowed with the particular expression of a woman who had seen every variety of nonsense this establishment had to offer and was not disposed to tolerate any further examples of it tonight.

"Ye’d better ’ave a good reason fer sneakin’ in through the side," she said, "’cause I ain’t in the mood fer it. Not tonight."

Her gaze landed on me and she froze, staring at me.

I held the expression of a bewildered young woman who had perhaps entered the wrong establishment entirely by accident, and I held it as steadily as I could manage.

Helen continued staring.

Then her eyes narrowed further.

"’Ang on," she said.

She crossed the remaining distance in three quick strides and pulled me into an embrace before I had time to step back.

"My dear child."

I blinked in surprise.

"I-I am not s-sure I know w-who you are," I said carefully.

Helen pulled back.

She gave me an unimpressed loom.

"Don’t give me that, luv."

She tapped my cheek lightly with two fingers.

"Ye can paint freckles on yer nose, blacken yer ’air, and muck about wiv yer face all ye like." She said. "I know ye."