Tyra is behind them.

Lerant and Lianne are days into Tusaine, the miles marked by grit and wind and the nights by mosquitoes in their bedrolls and silence so thick they're likely to choke. It's penetrated only by whispers of their deepest fears: "What if we die — what if we can't do this — what if they find out—" and the words treason&duty whirl in their heads like dust storms.

She counts the days, but nothing happens, because she doesn't know how long they have and neither does Lerant. Lianne thinks he's still angry, biting her with silence and stiff shoulders. It can't — won't — affect her mission.

(But when it's all over, Lianne, where will the two of you be?)

"Lerant," she says one night. "Don't you think we can do this?"

"Do what?'

She looks at him incredulously. "Save Vania."

"How are we going to do that?"

And she doesn't really know.

The road follows closely to Tortall's border, and it makes her nervous, even though it shouldn't. She's been gone for months (what are the odds they are still looking for her so far out from Corus?).

They stop at an inn for the night when they approach one of the bigger towns on the border. When Lianne goes to stable their horses, Lerant grabs her arm to stop her.

"Lianne," he whispers, "is this — is it safe?"

"Of course," she says, giving him a bright (fake) smile. "Of course it is."

But the manager of the inn looks a little too long at them, and neither Lerant nor Lianne sleeps easily.

They almost make it out with an incident but unfortunately, almost isn't enough.

"Excuse me," the innkeeper says, and Lianne turns to face him with Heiress' reins already in her hand.

"Yes?" she says (don't let them hear that tremble in your voice).

"I know who you are," the innkeeper says. "The missing princess — the one from Tortall. Aren't you?"

She can hear her heart thudding in her ears thump thump thump and she's very aware that the wideness of her distinguishing eyes isn't helping anything and she has to speak but she can't say a word.

Lerant comes up behind her with his own horse. "Is everything all right?"

She looks back at him thump thump thump and she thinks he can probably see the panic in her eyes so she tries to calm down (breathe, breathe, remember who you are, as if you had any chance of forgetting).

"I don't suppose you can keep this to yourself?" Lianne says.

The innkeeper's eyes dart from Lianne to Lerant and back again. "No," he says, and there's just a trace of regret. "I got kids and a wife, and there's a hefty reward for news about your whereabouts, princess. Would change our whole lives, it would."

Lianne winces — there's a reward out for her?— and takes a step back, her hand on Heiress' neck. "I can hardly ask you to give that up," she says.

Lerant looks at her like she's gone insane (maybe she has).

"But," she continues, "surely there's a reward for just information about me, too?"

The innkeeper slowly nods.

"And," and now she shrugs, "if you didn't happen to catch me before I left — why, that wouldn't be your fault, would it? You'd still be entitled to that reward."

Both of the men look stupefied. She smiles and swings onto Heiress' back.

"Here." She digs in her pack momentarily and her fingers close on her signet ring (and it feels like so very long ago that she stood in her bedroom in Corus preparing to run away, but it really hasn't been so long at all).

"Lianne—" Lerant starts to say, but she's already tossed the ring to the stunned innkeeper.

"Proof," she says. She salutes the man before kicking Heiress into a trot. Behind her, Lerant quickly mounts and follows, his mouth still slightly agape.

"Gods," he says as they ride northeast from the inn, "I never knew you could think on your feet like that."

"Neither did I."

-:-

"Okay," she says the next night, unrolling her maps on the ground by the fire (when this is over, she will never look at a map again). "We'll keep going through Tusaine, meet up with the Great Road East near Maren's border, follow it to Sarain, and head for the capital."

"And throw a party?" he drawls from his recline beside her.

"I don't appreciate the sarcasm," she says, pursing her lips. "We'll save my sister. And maybe Sarain, while we're at it."

"Now who's sarcastic?"

Lianne's sapphire eyes widen and her brows arch. "I'm serious."

"You can't be," he says. "Save Sarain? It's a country, Lianne. A country. Who do you think you are?"

"I'm Lianne of Conte," she says, glaring at him in the firelight. "And I'm sure that a little diplomacy will do Sarain wonders—"

"Diplomacy?" He's shouting now, and leaps to his feet to look down at her (she hates that, being beneath someone — a vestige of her noble days). "You think diplomacy will help Sarain? Thousands have died there, Lianne! You don't know..."

And his eyes, his eyes (those eyes that have seen things nobody should see) are dark with fury and she's just a little bit afraid — those are her family's eyes, staring into her from Corus, and even though she knows that can't be true, she can't speak.

Lerant continues, after a pause. "...you don't know, Lianne, what war is like. You watch from your castle and maybe you ride with the Ladies, but you haven't seen people when they're dying for their freedom, and they're losing.

You can't change that with a curtsey, or a smile, or a flicker of your Gift. You can't. Sarain was lost when zhir Anduo overthrew their savior — Mithros, Sarain was lost when your sister's namesake killed herself, and all that work Ganadhar did to patch it together — nothing in the end."

Her eyes shine with tears now (it's too much, it's too much). "Lerant, I — I know. I know, of course I know, but nothing can be hopeless. It's not impossible, it can't be—"

"But it is!" he shouts. "It is. It doesn't matter if you're a princess, or a Conte, or just a gods-cursed seamstress. It's impossible, and you're a fool to try. Keeping your sister from marrying a dictator? Brave, noble even. Don't cross that line between brave and stupid."

He's right, of course he's right. She doesn't want to look at the maps anymore.

"Yeah," she says quietly. "I know."

And that's all they say that night.

-:-

A few more days, and they're deep into Tusaine.

Lerant is asleep each night at dusk, as soon as they spread out their bedrolls, but Lianne sits awake for a much longer time, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. This particular night, she cannot sleep at all.

(Is she doing the right thing?)

She's thought it over, sure, she's thought it over so many times that it makes her sick just to imagine thinking it over more. She opens her pack from where she sits and stares at the hollow where her signet ring had rested, and she doubts.

The saddest part is that she has never wanted that ring, that she would have thrown it away in a heartbeat for freedom, for choice, for the chance to control her own life. But now she has and it's different than she thought it would be (everything always is, oh Lianne) and Lerant is right beside her but she is more alone than ever.

Maybe, she thinks, maybe duty is different too. Maybe she's supposed to think of herself first- but no, that's the opposite of duty. She doesn't know.

Lianne lies back again, the stars swimming in her vision — she won't cry, she won't, she hates to cry —and takes a shaky breath.

"Lianne?" Lerant whispers from her left.

"Yes," she says flatly.

There's a horrible, awkward silence and then Lerant sits up and touches her shoulder. "Are you all right?"

She shakes her head but it's dark so he probably he can't see it. "No," she says.

More silence much too much silence and the dark swallows them.

"I love you, Lia," he says.

She reaches up and squeezes his hand at an awkward angle. "I love you too."

"We'll be okay, you know," he whispers, and she doesn't believe him, but she's not as alone.

-:-

A few more days (1, 2, 3) and they meet up with the Great Road East, crossing right into Maren at dawn.

Lianne can't shake her bad feeling — she's messed up somewhere, something is wrongwrongwrong, it's all going to come crashing down — but nothing has stopped them yet and nothing will, because everything is riding on this.

"Lerant?"

He's walked over to the river to refill their waterskins, and he's been gone a while, and her heart is starting to beat faster.

"Lerant," she calls again, a pinch of desperation entering her voice. "What's going on?"

There is no answer and she leads Heiress in the direction of the river as the sun starts to peek over the hills. "Lerant!" she yells even more desperately.

She tugs Heiress into a trot as she starts to run, her boots digging into the damp grass. She reaches the riverbank and skids to a stop just in time, with Heiress just behind her.

"Where are you?" Lianne screams and drops to her knees.

She sees a flash of movement in the trees, but even as she rises, a horse steps out.

It's Lerant's.

His saddle and pack are gone.

"No," she says. "No! Goddess, why me?" Her voice rises to a scream again (this can't be happening, not after everything, and oh it's ironic that he's disappeared on her after she's disappeared on everyone else).

But she has been trained for this, for disaster, for everything falling apart, since birth. She's Lianne, and whether she's of Conte or not doesn't matter because she's still that perfectpolitemodestdutiful girl deep down.

Her duty right now is to find Lerant, and she's going to do that.

She gives a sharp nod to no one and swings back onto Heiress, struggling valiantly to school her thoughts (oh gods gods I'm alone so alone he said he wouldn't leave that he loved me where is he oh gods is this how my mother feels right now). There's a town near here, Mutare, right on the river — Lianne (and Lerant, but she's trying to keep her thoughts together still) passed it on the way. She just has to double back, ask around, find Lerant, save him, and this can't be impossible because it's been done.

Her father saved the Lioness, didn't he?

Didn't he?