A Song for Orphans. Морган Райс

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      “It won’t come to that,” Sebastian said as his horse thundered onward. “And even if it does, Sophia is worth it.”

      He knew what he was giving up by doing this. When he found her, when he married her, they wouldn’t just be able to walk back into Ashton in triumph, take up residence in the palace, and assume that everyone would be happy. If they were able to return at all, it would be under a cloud of disgrace.

      “I don’t care,” Sebastian told his horse. Worrying about disgrace and honor had been what had gotten him into this mess in the first place. He’d put Sophia aside because of what he’d assumed people would think about her. He hadn’t even made them raise their voices in disapproval; he’d just acted, knowing what they would say.

      It had been a weak, cowardly thing to do, and now he was going to undo it, if he could.

      Sophia was worth a dozen of the nobles he’d spent his time around growing up. A hundred. It didn’t matter if she had the Masked Goddess’s mark tattooed on her calf to claim her, she was the only woman Sebastian could even begin to dream of marrying.

      Certainly not Milady d’Angelica. She was everything that the court represented: vain, shallow, manipulative, focused on her own wealth and success rather than anyone else. It didn’t matter that she was beautiful, or from the right family, that she was intelligent or the sealing of an alliance within the country. She wasn’t the woman Sebastian wanted.

      “I was still harsh with her when I left,” Sebastian said. He wondered what anyone watching would think, with him talking to his horse like this. Yet the truth was that he didn’t care now what people thought, and in a lot of ways, the horse was a better listener than most of the people around him had been at the palace.

      He knew how things worked there. Angelica hadn’t been trying to trick him; she’d simply been trying to put something she knew he would find unpleasant in the best way possible. Looked at through the eyes of a world where the two of them had no choice about whom they were married to, it could even be seen as a kindness.

      It was just that Sebastian didn’t want to think that way anymore.

      “I don’t want to be stuck in a place where my only duty is to keep breathing in case Rupert dies,” he told his horse. “I don’t want to be somewhere my value is as breeding stock, or as something to be sold on to promote the right connections.”

      Looked at like that, the horse probably understood his predicament as well as any noble could. Weren’t the finest horses sold on for their breeding potential? Didn’t those nobles who liked to race the length of country lanes or ride to the hunt keep records of every line, every foal? Wouldn’t every one of them kill their own prize stallions before they allowed a single drop of the wrong blood to enter the bloodlines?

      “I’ll find her, and I’ll find a priest to marry us,” Sebastian said. “Even if Mother wants to charge us with treason over it, she’ll still need to persuade the Assembly of Nobles.”

      They wouldn’t just kill a prince on a whim. Probably, some of them would be sympathetic, given enough time. Failing that, he and Sophia could always elope into the mountain lands of the north, or slip over the Knifewater together unseen, or even just retire to the lands Sebastian was supposed to be a duke of. They would find a way to make it work.

      “I just have to find her first,” Sebastian said, as his horse took him out of the city, into the open countryside.

      He felt confident that he would catch up to her, even with how far ahead she had to be by now. He’d found people who had seen what had happened when she ran from the palace, asking guards for their reports, then listening to stories from the people of the city. Most of them had been cautious about talking to him, but he’d managed to get enough fragments together to at least get a general sense of the direction Sophia had been moving in.

      From what he’d heard, she was in a cart, which meant that she would be moving faster than a walking pace, but nowhere near as fast as Sebastian could move on horseback. He would find a way to catch up to her, even if it meant riding without rest until he did it. Perhaps that was part of his penance for pushing her out in the first place.

      Sebastian pressed forward until he saw the crossroads, finally slowing his horse to a walk as he tried to work out which way to go.

      There was a man asleep against the post of the crossroads, a straw hat pulled down over his eyes. A cider jug beside him suggested the reason he was snoring like a donkey. Sebastian let him sleep for now, looking up at the sign. East would lead to the coast, but Sebastian doubted that Sophia had the means to take a ship, or anywhere to go if she did. South would lead back to Ashton, so that was out.

      That left the road leading north, and the one leading west. Without any additional information, Sebastian had no idea about which route to take. He could try looking for cart tracks on one of the dirt sections of the road, he guessed, but that implied that he had the skills to know what he was looking for, or to pick out Sophia’s cart from the hundreds of others that might have gone past in the days since then.

      That left asking for help, and hoping.

      Gently, using the toe of his boot, Sebastian nudged the foot of the sleeping man. He stepped back as the man spluttered and came awake, because he didn’t know how someone that drunk might react to the sight of him there.

      “Whaddizit?” the man managed. He also managed to pull himself up to his feet, which seemed quite impressive under the circumstances. “Who are you? What do you want?”

      Even now, he seemed to have to hold onto the post to steady himself. Sebastian was starting to wonder if this was such a good idea.

      “Are you here regularly?” he asked. He both needed the answer to be yes and hoped that it would be no, because what would that say about the man’s life.

      “Why do you want to know?” the drunk shot back.

      Sebastian was starting to realize that he wasn’t going to find what he wanted here. Even if this man spent most of his time by the crossroads, Sebastian doubted that he would be sober often enough to notice much.

      “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I was looking for someone who might have come by here, but I doubt you can help me. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

      He turned back toward his horse.

      “Wait,” the man said. “You… you’re Sebastian, aren’t you?”

      Sebastian stopped at the sound of his name, turning back toward the man with a frown.

      “How do you know my name?” he asked.

      The man staggered a little. “What name?”

      “My name,” Sebastian said. “You just called me Sebastian.”

      “Wait, you’re Sebastian?”

      Sebastian did his best to be patient. This man was obviously looking for him, and Sebastian could only think of a few reasons why that might be the case.

      “Yes, I am,” he said. “What I want to know is why you’re looking for me.”

      “I was…” The man paused for a moment, his brow crinkling. “I was supposed to give you a message.”

      “A message?” Sebastian СКАЧАТЬ