3

Though she knew she'd slept, it felt like no time had passed before Dalibor was shaking her awake. "It's time to go," he said.

"I can't, Dalibor," she mumbled, draping an arm over her eyes. "I'm so tired."

For a moment, Dalibor didn't say anything, though Sabina could also hear that he hadn't moved. Then the jackal leaned closer and whispered in her ear. "I'm sure Gallius will give you plenty of time to sleep while he lugs you back home."

Her heart lurched, and she was suddenly no longer tired. "Fine," she said. "I'm awake."

"Good," Dalibor told her. He stood up and stretched. "Whoever owns this barn is going to be here soon to tend the animals, and we need to be gone by then. Look around to see if you can find any cloaks, packs, or food. I'm going to see about saddling one of their horses."

She managed to find a single hooded cloak and a few nesting chickens in the time it took Dalibor to prepare a horse. "They only have workhorses," he said in disappointment. Sabina knew nothing about horses, but the massive black beast Dalibor had saddled certainly looked like it could do plenty of work. "It'll have to do, though. I found a pair of saddlebags too, so put the eggs in there."

"We're not going to eat them raw, right?" Sabina asked. She didn't actually know what the beast people ate.

"No, of course not. You sound like Papa," Dalibor said. He tucked his tail inside his tunic, pulled the cloak over his shoulders, and raised the hood. "We'll find somewhere to steal fire on the way. There must be lanterns out somewhere. We'll need to find fresh water or wine too."

"Why do you get the cloak?" Sabina asked. "You have fur, and I'm freezing."

"Because the guards are looking for a jackal," he told her. "So they need to not see me."

"But I'm the princess," she retorted. "They're looking for me too."

"Princess," Dalibor sighed. "Does anybody out here know what you look like without your tiara and fancy stolas?"

"They should," she said.

"The answer is no, they don't," said Dalibor. "You're quite stunning by Homin standards, I'll give you that, but people have to be far closer than we want them to be to see that. From a distance, they're not going to look at you and think, 'My, Princess Augusta looks to rival the Lady of Love herself today.' They're going to look at you and think, 'Hey! That urchin is stealing my horse!' So I get the cloak."

"I do not look like an urchin!" Sabina protested, knowing full well that Dalibor was correct. Again.

"Then you need to rub more dirt on your face, because that is exactly the disguise we need," Dalibor said. "However, you're wrong, because you look like you crawled out of the Tiber and spent the night in a pile of hay."

"I feel so disgusting," she moaned. "I can still smell the cloaca."

"You and me both," Dalibor told her. "Now mount up."

Sabina hesitated, eyeing the gargantuan horse Dalibor had prepared. "Is this a bad time to tell you I've never ridden a horse before?" she asked.

"It really is, yes," Dalibor said. The jackal covered his eyes and took several deep breaths. "I've run through all of our options, and heading north is the only chance we have of getting away from the Emperor's Six at all. They will absolutely catch us any other direction we go." Dalibor uncovered his face and held a hand out for Sabina. "I'll help you up. We have to put distance between ourselves and New Rome as quickly as possible, and we're not going to make enough progress on foot."

"Do we really have to steal a horse?" she asked.

"Look," Dalibor said. "I will tell you this again. I am happy to leave you here to fend for yourself. I can probably still get out of this clean if I disappear and let your father have you. But if you want my help and you want us to survive this, then yes, we're going to need to steal some things. Because we have no money and no time to earn any."

"You wouldn't leave me," Sabina said. "I know what I would do if I got caught after you abandoned me, and since you're a Verdant warlord, I know you know what I would do too."

Dalibor's ears folded back against his head and his eyes narrowed. "And what is that, Princess?" he asked.

There was an obvious threat in that question, but Sabina just crossed her arms. She would not be cowed by this jackal. "You're the Verdant warlord," she said. "You tell me."

"I will tell you what I know you could do if you get on this horse so we can be gone before anybody finds us here," he said.

"Fine," she said. "Help me up."

Dalibor muttered something in a language she didn't recognize before holding out his hand to help her into the saddle. "Try not to move too much," he said. "This horse seems pretty placid, but I don't know her, she doesn't know us, and I have no idea if she's used to riders or a plow." He climbed into the saddle in front of her and took the reins. "Lean against me and hold on. Try not to move your legs or feet."

"Can I get under your cloak?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "It's plenty big enough for the two of us." Sabina hid beneath the stolen cloak and hugged Dalibor from behind. She couldn't see much, but she was warm. The air under the cloak also smelled strongly of Dalibor, and Dalibor currently smelled quite strong. It was a wild mix of smells. The river had washed away the worst of the filth from the cloaca, but the stench lingered beneath the scents of stale river and fresh hay. She could also pick out what she thought was Dalibor himself, a smell of sweat and sand and wet fur.

The ride started slowly. Dalibor remained careful as he got acquainted with the horse and while he guided them away from the farm without being seen. Their pace soon picked up, an easy trot through what must have been the empty streets of the suburbs at the summer sunrise. Sabina felt it was safer to not peek out from under the cloak to see for certain. "You were going to tell me what I would do if you abandoned me," she said once she felt they were well clear of the site of their theft.

"Not what you would do," Dalibor said. His soft voice rumbled through his chest. She could feel it through the cheek she had pressed against his back. "What you could do."

"What's the difference?" she asked.

"The Verdant Blade teaches us that we have to focus on the worst possible outcome, not the most likely outcome," Dalibor said. "We also need to identify the most likely and hope for the best possible, of course, but we have to anticipate the worst because that's the only way to make an accurate risk assessment. So while I don't think you actually would go through with that worst possible option, it's possible that you could, so I need to do what I can to mitigate it."

"So what's the worst thing I could do?" Sabina asked.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Well," Dalibor said. "If you get caught, you're going to die. That's a given. But you won't die immediately. Your father wants you sacrificed at the temple in Cibalae for whatever reason. Otherwise, he'd have had you killed back in the villa." Sabina shivered, even in the warmth under the cloak. It was still hard for her to wrap her head around the fact that her father wanted her dead, and Dalibor's unemotional recounting of the facts was beyond unsettling. "So there would be a period of time where you were held before you died. If, rather than fighting back when you were taken, you instead claimed that you had been kidnapped, you would ensure that you would continue to be treated like a princess instead of like a captive, opening potential future avenues for escape during the trip to Cibalae. Additionally, you know who I am and where I'm from, so you could point the entirety of the Emperor's Six straight to my home, where I could expect a quick assassination at best and torture and the destruction of everything I hold dear at worst."

Sabina shivered again. That was somewhat more detailed than she'd planned or expected to hear. She had been planning to tell people she'd been kidnapped. It hadn't occurred to her that she could indeed condemn Dalibor and his entire family to being tortured to death by doing so. If the jackal hadn't thought she'd do that before, he was certainly correct now. She wouldn't wish that on him, even if he did abandon her. "Why don't you think I'd do that?" she asked.

Dalibor chuckled. "Are you expecting me to say I think you're too good a person to do that to me?" he asked. "Because I don't really know you, Princess. We've been together for less than a day, and you've not given me much indication of your moral leanings beyond your willingness to rope others into your problems to save your own skin. Which, just so we're clear, is very rational. I don't hold that against you at all. But what you have shown me is that you act before thinking through all the consequences of your actions and then panic when things don't go the way you expect."

"I don't do that!" Sabina protested, her face buried in his back.

She felt him shift to look at her over his shoulder. "I also know you're not stupid," he said. "So you can't possibly believe anybody was going to think a Sabwa was allowed to be alone with the imperial princess, toga or no." Sabina grimaced. He was right, as always. Her father would crucify any guard that let a beast person anywhere near her unsupervised. Especially an attractive male one. Dalibor continued. "Anyway, if you panic like you did under the aqueduct when the Enforcers catch you, you're going to fight back. Since kidnapping victims don't generally fight their rescuers, that destroys your ability to use that excuse pretty handily."

"Wow," Sabina said. "You're really smart, aren't you?"

"I've been told I have a good mind for tactics, yes," Dalibor said. "Also, I had a lot of time to think while we were skulking around yesterday. On the subject of tactics, though, I have a couple questions for you."

"Oh?" Sabina asked.

"I'm going to ask you the easy one first, since I expect you'll need time to consider the hard one," Dalibor said. "I can't keep calling you Princess, or even Sabina. People will notice. So what should I call you instead?"

Sabina considered. "Can I use my mother's name?" she asked.

"Depends on what it is," Dalibor told her.

"It's Sara."

Dalibor took his own turn to consider. "That's common enough," he said eventually. "And it's close enough to your own name that it should catch your attention while you're still getting used to it. So yes, Sara will do nicely."

"What's your other question?" Sabina asked, proud that she'd answered the first question correctly on her first try.

"You can't go home again. Ever," Dalibor said, and the pride drained straight back out of her, replaced by an icy chill beside her heart where she was used to feeling a warm glow. "So what are you going to do instead?"

The jackal had said that she might need some time to answer his second question, and he was correct. He was correct very often, Sabina noted with some irritation. But she was indeed going to need a good bit of time to figure out what she was going to do next. She hadn't thought that far ahead. During all their time skulking about yesterday, as Dalibor had put it, while he was planning their next steps or looking further ahead to what she might or might not do if they got caught, she had been reveling in the excitement of new experiences, both good and bad. Her mind had not wandered to the future. Even now, when she tried to cast her thoughts forward, all she could find was darkness and confusion.

Instead, seemingly of their own volition, her thoughts wandered backwards. Had she ever had to plan for the future? Her entire life had been orchestrated and arranged and scheduled without her input. The future had always been something that was done to her. Even when she did things that were her own idea, such as finding and training with a veteran of the Sanguine Song, it wasn't out of any sort of overarching plan for her life. It was because the present had become unbearably boring, and she would do anything to interrupt it. And now, hiding beneath the cloak of a stranger who seemed to be able to predict her actions better than she herself could, she let herself wonder if she'd ever actually done anything without somebody noticing. Could she really expect, given what she had seen the past day, that her father or his Enforcers didn't know she was sneaking training sessions with the Sanguine veterans? She tried again to think about what she would do without a home, but every path away from now was stalked by Gallius and Malia and Lucilius. Especially Lucilius. She could see no future for herself, no path that did not lead to captivity and death. "I don't know," she said at last. She could not hold back her tears, but she managed at least to hold back the sobs.

She felt Dalibor sigh, but the jackal said nothing. They continued their ride in silence for long enough that her tears soaked through the back of Dalibor's tunic. She wondered if the jackal would feel the wet spot growing between his shoulder blades through his fur. Eventually, as the day continued to get warmer, she ducked out from beneath the cloak. The sun was high behind the Remnants, and they were traveling alongside wheat fields on an open stretch of the Old Roads. She looked back and could not see the marble buildings of New Rome. There were only the tall trees and wide fields and unfamiliar suburbs that littered the countryside around her home, and she felt even more lost.

"We've been riding for hours at this point," Dalibor said. "There's probably twenty or more miles between us and the city. How are your legs?"

She hadn't even noticed how sore she was until he called her mind back out of its own darkness and into the present. "Poor," she said.

Dalibor nodded. "It looks like there's a stream ahead," he said. "We'll stop there for a bit to stretch and get a drink." The jackal said nothing else until he'd led their stolen horse to the water and Sabina had collapsed into the grass beside the road. She was never going to be able to walk again. Her eyelids closed of their own volition. And she was going to sleep forever. "I have an idea for what you can do if you'd like to hear it," Dalibor said while she drowsed on the riverbank.

"Please tell me," she said with a yawn. "I can't figure out anything."

"I'm going to take you home with me," Dalibor said. "I know it's not particularly regal or imperial or anything, but Papa and I could keep you safe and hidden. For a while, at least. Until you…"

Dalibor trailed off, but Sabina knew how the sentence ended. "Until I find a husband," she finished.

"What?" the jackal said. "No, I was going to say find your own way. I just don't know what you're good at or even what you enjoy. You don't have to get married. Though if you'd prefer that, I do know a rancher who's looking for a wife." Sabina's heart leapt. The two of them had only just met! Besides, he had always been so gruff with her, and though she couldn't tell how old he was, he had to be a good deal older than she was if he owned his own ranch. He couldn't really be thinking about marrying her, could he? The answer, she quickly realized, was no, of course he wasn't. "Horace isn't that much older than you, and it'd get the man to leave me alone if I could marry him off to you. I hope that'd stop him pestering me, at least."

"Are you married?" Sabina asked.

"Gods no," Dalibor said. "I've never found anybody who I'd want to spend my life with like that. I thought I had once, but…" His voice trailed off again, and he stared across the stream and into the trees. He took a deep breath. "Well, it ended badly, and I haven't felt the urge to go through anything like that again."

"Is that why you murdered somebody?" Sabina asked.

Dalibor's breath caught, and for the brief moment that his lips peeled back into a snarl and his tail bristled, Sabina worried that he would kill her there. But the moment passed, and everything about him—his ears, his mouth, his shoulders, his tail—seemed to droop. He sighed and fixed his lip where it'd gotten caught on his fang. "That is when that happened, yes," Dalibor said, still not looking at her. "I was probably about your age at the time. I had to leave home and disappear too. So I know what you're going through. And it's… I mean, it's awful, yes, absolutely, but it's not the end either. Life goes on."

Sabina looked at Dalibor, really looked at him for what felt like the first time since she picked him out of the crowd yesterday. Just yesterday? Had she still been an innocent princess just yesterday? Regardless, now she was here with this jackal. This jackal with the trim, athletic body, the sharp, canine features, and the mussed, sandy fur that shone where it caught the noonday sun. This jackal that had left his life behind, this jackal that had risked his own survival, this jackal that had crawled through ancient shit, all to keep her alive. Who was now inviting her into his life permanently. Who was willing to stand beside her while she tried to find what her own life would be when her entire past had been reduced to ash and rubble. "Thank you," she said. What else could she say?

Dalibor turned away from the woods to look at her and, for the first time she could remember, he smiled, his cloak swaying with the wagging of his hidden tail.

It was beautiful.