Free The Blood Curse by Emily Gee

Fithians.
    Gunvald was the last armsman to return. He crossed the square, his steps fast, almost running, his face alight with excitement.
    “What?” Karel demanded.
    “I found it, sir! The cart. They sold it to a cartwright.”
    “Sold it?” Karel blinked, frowned. “Why?”
    “Said they didn’t need it any more.”
    “But the princess—”
    “The man who sold it asked where he could buy a horse.”
    “And?”
    “The cartwright sent him to one of the inns. Where he bought a piebald mare. The hostler said it was a woman’s mount.”
    Silence followed these words. Prince Tomas turned to Karel. “She’s riding?”
    “She’s riding.” Elation filled his chest. He hadn’t lost her. “Gunvald, did you get a description of the man who sold the cart?”
    “He was armed. Looked like a soldier. The cartwright was scared of him.”
    “Fithian,” Tomas said.
    Karel took a deep breath, felt his ribcage expand. They’d lost a whole morning, but they hadn’t lost the princess.
    He strode to his horse and swung up into the saddle. “We need to find which gate that piebald mare left by.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
     
    T HEY CRESTED A muddy hill and looked down on a settlement. Rand brought his mount alongside Harkeld’s. “Hansgrohe. On the border with Sault.”
    Harkeld looked past the town to the wide, bare sweep of highlands beyond. No forest cloaked that broad slope, just tussock and lone trees sculpted by the wind.
    Sault. Where the curse already had a grip. Where bloodlust walked the land and people died.
    Harkeld shivered, an involuntary reaction, and glanced sideways to see whether Rand had noticed. He hadn’t.
    “How far to the curse?”
    Rand shrugged. “A hundred leagues, at a guess, but it could be closer than that. Depends how fast it’s advancing.”
    The healer studied the town, frowning. Harkeld followed his gaze. “You think there’re assassins down there?”
    “It’s possible. Keep your face covered. Lag behind; the shapeshifters will guard you. Thayer’ll ride up front with me.”
    “No,” Harkeld said. “I won’t have him used as bait. If there are Fithians—”
    “Of all of us, you are the one who must survive.”
    “I don’t want any more mages dead because of me.”
    “I know.” There was compassion on Rand’s face. “The sooner we cross into Sault, the sooner we end this. Stay at the back.”
     
     
    H ANSGROHE HAD A frantic, desperate edge to it. The town was small, shabby, with muddy streets and sagging wooden buildings, and refugees, hundreds of refugees, heading for Roubos’s ports. Harkeld rode near the back of the mages, picking his way through the throngs of people and wagons and carts and donkeys. They halted at a crowded tavern, where the desperation seemed to have reached fever-pitch. Harkeld’s gaze skipped from face to face: the distraught mother, the grim-faced father, the screaming child.
    He looked down at his hands, resting on the saddle pommel. Only I can stop this. My hands, my blood.
    “We need to buy a wagon here. And barrels for water.”
    Harkeld glanced to his left. Rand was there, astride his horse.
    “We’ll be half an hour, an hour at the most. Try to look unimportant.”
    Harkeld grunted a faint laugh.
    “Wander off with Adel. Visit the market. Buy yourself lunch.” Rand held out some coins. “The shapeshifters will guard you.”
    Harkeld took the coins and dismounted. He glanced around for Adel. The journeyman water mage sidled diffidently towards him.
    Harkeld made himself smile at Adel. He deserved the hesitancy, the diffidence; he’d made no attempts at friendship during the voyage from Ankeny, had kept to himself, aloof, seldom speaking to anyone.
    Adel cautiously returned the smile.
    They left the tavern stableyard. Harkeld glanced back once. Thayer was in the midst of a circle of mages, pretending to be a prince, the most important person on the continent. Harkeld lifted his eyes to the gray sky and prayed to the All-Mother. Let