MTLNOVEL Chapter 249: Don't Look Back
Bai Yuyan hated winter roads, but she refused to dwell on it.
Sure, it made the land stretch out further. Sure, it made everything more dangerous as the ice hid beneath the fresh snow, promising injury if you put a single foot wrong, or death if that person was really unlucky.
The entire world around her was bleak and grey, but she had to press forward. She wasn't going to leave her husband alone in Daiyu… not with the look on his face when he talked about that bitch.
Her captain of the guards rode half a length ahead of her, his cloak pulled tight around him as his eyes moved from ditch to treeline and back again. Six riders formed a moving shell around her palanquin: another eight scouted in sweeps, making sure that there was nothing even remotely dangerous around them.
The rest of her entourage…pack mules, wagon with provisions, three maids, a physician, a scribe… just the bare essentials…moved at her command, never too fast and never in a blind line. They wore traveling greys, a neutral color that didn't denote any specific country, with Baiguang's green hidden underneath.
Even the banners stayed rolled and tied.
She had left the capital at dawn two days ago with a single intention: reach Daiyu and her husband before something happened to change the story, yet again.
She didn't think much of it when her husband first started talking about the Crown Princess, the Witch. She had assumed that everything was going to go her way, that her man would make sure that Daiyu was destroyed and would recreate the continent in her image.
After all, she was the protagonist in this novel. And if Zhu Mingyu wouldn't be the villainous crown prince, then she would just create another one.
But then that bitch Xinying went off script again. She, with magical powers that didn't belong in either the story or this world, killed off villagers and guards.
It wasn't like those people really mattered, but it was the point of it. And then Li Xuejian got curious about her.
And then ever time he spoke about her, he got this look in his eyes like he wasn't really seeing anything but the outline of a body whose name he knew but nothing else.
And then he left her to go personally to Daiyu.
That was a threat that she would not allow to come. Yuyan refused to let her man, her husband fall for anyone else.
With renewed determination, she tapped the palanquin wall twice. The litter slowed, and she pushed the curtain aside, stepping down herself rather than waiting for the maid's hand. Snow crushed beneath her felted boots as the air bit into her lungs.
"Report," she demanded, her eyes narrowing on the emptiness of everything around her.
The captain bowed from the saddle. "Three li to the old stone marker. From there, the road divides: west toward the ferry, south toward the pass. The scouts have returned to say that the pass is clear; the ferry is slow."
"Slow is safer when we want everyone to know who we are," Yuyan said mildly, her mind racing through all the options. "But for this trip, we don't need anyone to know who we are or where we are going."
The captain's mouth twitched in irritation. "Then we'll go through the pass."
She lifted a gloved hand. "Not yet."
From the east, the wind carried a faint, wrong sweetness.
Yuyan had never smelled it before, but stories made themselves into knowledge even when you pretended not to listen. Cinnamon and apples, someone's boy had said after a border raid. A festival scent. A kitchen scent. Except it meant death.
"Off the road," she said, wrinkling her nose. "Now."
They obeyed without asking why. Riders fanned to block sight from either direction. The palanquin slid between two hawthorn bushes, its silk curtains replaced by a coarser wool sheet. Her maids pulled out vinegar flasks; the physician tore linen strips and soaked them until they dripped.
"Cover your faces," Yuyan said, tying one over her own mouth and nose with quick, practiced fingers. "Even if the threat is fake, we will play our roles to the last."
The breeze shifted again. The sweetness sharpened. Birds, clustered in the bare poplars across the ditch, lifted all at once, a black ribbon against the gray. Half a breath later they fell—some to branches, some to ground—without a sound.
The guard captain swore under his breath, old soldier words from a life before uniforms. "Your Highness—"
"Not a shout," Yuyan said softly. "A whisper you can hear."
He leaned closer. "If the witch is hunting in the capital, then the roads will begin to get congested with those who are trying to run away."
"Then we won't be on the roads," Yuyan simply shrugged.
Just as they pushed their way into one of the side routes, the sound of a bell echoed around them.
"What was that?" one of the scouts whispered, as though the air might punish a louder question.
"An ending," the captain of the guard grunted. "That was the death bell. Someone in the palace as died."
"Or everyone has," reminded Yuyan.
"What should we do then?" asked the captain, turning to look at the Crown Princess. "Do you want to return or move on to Daiyu?"
"To return is to seek death," sneered Yuyan. "Is that what you want? To die? Maybe you should be grateful that we were already on the road before the death bell rang instead of meeting your end with everyone else. Tell me captain, do you want to return to your death or move on and keep your life?"
The captain didn't reply and Yuyan sneered. "I thought so."
With a flick of his finger the captain got everyone to their place.
They moved on.
The first refugees appeared an hour later—a knot of peasants stumbling down a goat track, their faces wrapped in damp cloths that weren't enough to cover their red eyes.
A woman carried a child under her cloak; a man carried nothing at all; an old grandmother held a chicken like a prayer as they slipped on the icy paths. They saw the palanquin, saw the riders, and tried to kneel, then thought better of it and tried to run.
Yuyan lifted a hand. The riders halted; the physician dismounted. He was a practical man, long past illusions about the usefulness of his skills in a world of mists and monsters, but he still checked pulses and looked into eyes.
"Alive," he said after a moment. "Shocked. The little one's breathing is shallow."
Yuyan stepped forward and crouched so the woman didn't have to look up as far. "From where?" she asked, her voice as gentle as she made it when calming skittish horses. After all, she did have an image to maintain.
"Inside the walls of the Capital," the woman breathed through wet cloth. "They locked the gates, then opened one. We ran when someone fell standing up." Her eyes darted toward the capital and away again in the same motion. "Forgive me."
"For surviving?" Yuyan said. "No one owes the dead that kind of sacrifice."
She handed the woman a strip of cloth folded into a neat square—clean, dry, unmarked. "South is going to be just as bad," she said, her voice soft like an angel's. "After all, that is where the Witch lives. Unfortunately, the west will be worse by afternoon. Go east. Take the gullies. Keep low. When the wind sweetens, lie face down and draw breath through the cloth. If you feel a hand on your ankle, kick and keep crawling."
The woman nodded hard, tears bleeding through linen to make darker marks. Yuyan pressed two copper coins into the old grandmother's hand and said nothing about the chicken. It was already dead, and the peasants would need to believe they had chosen to eat it.
They moved in the direction that she pointed, and Yuyan didn't look back as she climbed back in to her palanquin.
Her guard captain fell in beside the palanquin. "Your Highness was not in the city," he said carefully.
"No," Yuyan said.
"By luck."
"Sure," she purred, looking up at the man from underneath her lashes. "Let's go with that."
The captain stiffened before nodding his head and signaling for everyone to get moving again.
Did Yuyan really know what was going to happen? Not at all.
But sounding like a Priestess that could see the future was a lot better than sounding like a jealous wife who hated the idea of sharing her husband.
The road bent around a stand of black pines. The sweetness in the air receded slightly. It wasn't gone, but at this distance, it was thinner. The more it retreated the tightness between Yuyan's shoulder blades loosened enough that she could think in layers again. She considered the map she had memorized last night, added a handful of new scratches and a dead bell, and drew a line to Daiyu.
"The pass," she said. "We take it now."
The captain hesitated. "Refugees will take it too. If the Daiyu patrols see a column with supply and guards—"
"Then they will do the math," Yuyan interjected. "Which is why we will make the numbers all that much harder. The refugees will provide us with a better cover than simply moving on our own."
She ordered the wagons to be left where they were. Everyone, even the maids, needed to start bundling the supplies so that they could be carried on their backs. She took one of the pack mules, and, wrinkling her nose, she ordered someone to saddle it like any traveling widow's.
"You think Daiyu will swallow such a small deception?" the scribe asked, more curious than defiant. "We don't look like the others."
"I don't," Yuyan replied as she got up on the mule. "I think they will recognize that we are capable of and simply let us pass through."
The guards looked at each other, but didn't bother to respond.
The borders between Baiguang and Daiyu weren't the easiest to pass, but now with the war? It would take more than getting off the horses to get through.