At the same time he realized something troubling. Over the years he and Daniel had built a great many false identities between them, papers and names and faces that could be put on like coats — and none of it was going to make this easy. Not now. Not with soldiers on every road out.
They fought their way clear. There was no other word for it; they went through enemies to get to the gates and through more of them on the road beyond.
The plan had been to run for Anant and ask help of Daniel's childhood friend, Paul. The two princes had been extremely close since they were boys, and there was nowhere safer to go. But as they travelled they were attacked again, and then again.
The enemy knew their route. The enemy knew their plans.
Royal worked it through and did not like where it came out. They needed a different strategy entirely, and — he suspected, though he said nothing — they might well have a spy among their own people. A great many had escaped the palace together at the start.
Only three of them were still alive now.
So Royal changed the destination. They would go to another empire instead.
The moment he decided it, Daniel came into his mind, and he laughed bitterly to himself, because he could hear it perfectly: Why? Why that kingdom, of all the kingdoms on the map?
Still, Royal admitted to himself, Lenhard had always been kind to him. Perhaps he could be asked for help. He knew exactly what kind of emotional danger he was walking into by going there, and he weighed it against the alternative, which was dying in a ditch on the road to Anant.
Eventually they reached Lenhard's empire safely.
"You made the right call," one of the subordinates said, looking back at the road behind them. "Nobody has come at us since we crossed the border. Not once."
Royal said nothing, but he understood something now that he had been circling for days. If he truly wanted to take his kingdom back, he was going to need Lenhard's help to do it.
He looked out at the empire spread in front of them, at the roofs and the smoke and the roads full of people, and thought: meeting him now means seeing him again after an entire year.
The whole group was struck by how peaceful the place looked. Nothing here had been touched by any of it.
Royal considered gathering information before making any move at all. But the three of them were exhausted from the road, and there was a limit to what exhausted men could plan.
"We eat first," he said. "Then we think."
While they were eating, one of the men asked, "So how exactly do you intend to meet the emperor?"
"I don't have a plan yet," Royal admitted cheerfully. "But I'll think of something."
The other two looked at him with open shock, because Prince Daniel had never in his life moved before he had planned. One of them leaned to the other and whispered that perhaps everything that had happened lately had marked His Highness more deeply than any of them realized, and changed him.
Royal went on innocently eating and thought that they were absolutely right, and that he really did need a proper strategy, because he no longer had any power or authority left anywhere in the world.
How was he supposed to meet an emperor now? Walk up to the gates and introduce himself as a prince? Nobody would believe a word of it, not looking the way he currently looked, not arriving the way he had arrived.
So for the moment there was nothing to do except smile and behave as though everything were fine.
And when the other two saw that familiar smile of his, they became quietly emotional, and told themselves that this truly was still their prince.
Later, Royal went down to gather information around the marketplace. The talk there was all of one thing: the emperor would soon be visiting the temple during the harvest festival, to receive the blessing of the gods. A great many people would get the chance to see him there, they said. Anyone could go.
"And where have you come from?" someone asked him.
"Anant," Royal said. "A friend's kingdom."
The woman welcomed him warmly and insisted that he eat more, since he had travelled such a long way to get here.
That night he sat down with his companions again.
"Do you truly intend to go and meet the emperor?"
"I do," Royal said. "If he recognizes me, we ask him for help. If he doesn't recognize me —" he shrugged, "— or if he does and decides to pretend otherwise, then we leave this kingdom quietly and we never mention it again."
He laughed while he said it. It did not have the effect he wanted; both of the others sank into an even deeper gloom.
"Trust me," Royal told them. "I'll find some kind of solution. I always do."
Later he stood outside the temple, studying it. The emperor spent a great deal of his time here, he had learned. His subordinates had wanted to come with him and he had refused them, because three strangers moving together would attract exactly the sort of attention that had nearly killed them twice already.
The temple grounds were overflowing. Royal looked out across a crowd that had no visible edge to it and regretted the entire idea. There was no chance — none — that a man standing in the middle of this would be noticed by anyone at all, let alone by an emperor.
He decided to leave and think of another plan.
At that exact moment, the crowd erupted, because the emperor had arrived.
Royal turned and looked, and was undone.
Lenhard was still unbelievably beautiful. He came through that ordinary crowd of ordinary people like something sent down rather than born, and Royal stood in the crush and stared at him and forgot, for a few seconds, what he had come here to do.
And then he noticed how different this man was from the one who had stayed in his palace, taking meals in his garden and apologizing over a flower petal. The distance between them opened up under his feet, enormous, and he became painfully aware of exactly where he was standing in it.
Leave, he told himself. Leave now.
The crowd surged and pressed him from every direction at once and he could not get out. He fought it, half-panicking, elbows and shoulders and no ground gained.
In that instant, Lenhard looked directly at him.
Royal froze. Did we just — did he — and then Lenhard turned away again, and the moment closed.
It was my imagination, Royal told himself, with a disappointment out of all proportion to the thing. He gave up on the whole plan and resolved to leave the empire.
Behind him, unhurried, entirely unbothered, Lenhard went on watching him with a faint smile.
He had recognized him instantly.