Escape to the Sea (Tangled Hearts #1)

Chapter 5 A Simple Knock-Over Job

Ephraim

Not even the riveting adventurers of Lord Aneas and Count Drakon can keep me from looking out the window every few minutes.

While I was always scheduled to leave a little early from court, I didn’t expect it to be so nauseating. I’m not sure if it’s my anxiousness or the adrenaline of stealing my mother’s heirloom out from under my uncle’s nose.

I wish I could work through some of my forms again, the slow, dedicated movements connecting me to nature, allowing my mind to fall silent and rest. Instead, I’m checking behind our carriage every fifteen minutes to make sure my uncle hasn’t sent a contingent of the crownsguard after me, like some… cloak-wearing villain in the night.

I’m sure he will be furious and I will have to endure his scorn, but I don’t care. Once I have the necklace back where it belongs, within my family’s vaults, he can give all the disdainful looks and lectures he wants.

This does absolutely nothing to help my anxiety, but it’s worth the attempt. With a sigh, I return to my book; however, I barely get another sentence or two down before the carriage lurches to a stop.

I set the book down and look up. “Simon? Martin? What’s happened?”

“A tree in the road, sir. Looks like a branch has fallen!”

I frown, stepping out of the carriage to take a better look. Sure enough, there is a large bough that has crossed the path—too large for the horses to safely clear.

“This is preposterous,” I say, stepping down.

Martin is already starting to mess with the large branch, but it will take lashing the horses to it and pulling it out of the way to truly move it.

“Isn’t this curious, Simon? Weren’t these trees cut back last fall?” Martin asks.

A pit starts to form in the bottom of my stomach, and I reach back into our belongings to grab my quarterstaff.

I know a few things about this forest, the Great Thatch. It separates my castle, Vetro Di Mare, and my hamlet of Vinitore from the outer villages surrounding Yaventown. That means the Ringed Road is well traveled. If a branch this size was really felled overnight, there should be a whole slew of merchants backed up here with us.

There are no other signs of the sort of storm that could cause a branch of this size to come apart, and no unhealthy trees nearby that could have shed a branch this size, which means—

Martin falls over like a sack of bricks, a crossbow bolt through his shoulder. Simon yelps as a bolt hits him next and he falls to the ground.

—which means we’re being robbed.

The adrenaline from stealing the necklace kicks in and I move quickly around the carriage to drag Simon to safety. Suddenly, too many figures in cloaks and domino masks appear from behind the trees. I can hear Arlen’s voice in my head, instructing me: deep breath in, deep breath out. Calm down, assess, then act decisively.

There are six of them altogether, and one of them is kneeling next to Martin, checking for something as the others descend on the carriage. One of them points to me through the wheels. I shift forward to obscure myself using the wheel’s rigging and ready my quarterstaff.

As someone darts around the back I move up into Rolling Sea, pulling back, up, and forward with my staff. The bandit spins, but they’re too slow; I disarm them, separating the bandit from their crossbow and sending it into the undergrowth. I do a sweeping cross and send them reeling backwards.

I hear the snap and pull of a crossbow bolt being loaded and duck as another bolt fires over my head. The first bandit shakes off their shock quickly and tries to lunge at me. Amateur move.

I crack the staff hard against the side of their head and they drop to the ground like a stone. One down.

The second bandit abandons their crossbow and withdraws a dagger. They move faster, coming into close range.

This is more dangerous, for both of us. I drop the quarterstaff and shift my hands into Rushing Tide. Side-stepping their attack, I grab their wrist and slam my forearm hard into their arm. They instinctively lean forward, trying to avoid me dislocating their elbow. It’s quick after that. A leg over their arm, and locking them in place, sending them down to the floor. I pull up and grab the dagger, tossing it even further into the woods. Then I deliver blow after blow until they flag under my attacks.

When they collapse into the earth, I stand up, my breath shaky. That’s two.

I grab my quarterstaff and turn on the other three. All of them hang back, staring at each other. I’m not sure what they expected, but they probably thought it’d be easier than this.

“You! Get over there and take him, now!”

One of the bandits in front of me calls to the one kneeling next to Martin. He’s cloaked and masked like the others, but as he stands, it’s clear he’s bigger and taller than the others. Oddly, instead of the confidence larger opponents normally have, he instead seems less hesitant to join the fight. As he rises, I notice there’s a bandage over Martin’s shoulder. He healed him? Why would he do that?

“I’m sure you all can handle him. Just don’t do what the last two did,” he replies.

“We’ll tell the boss!”

His broad shoulders slump. “All right, all right.”

He walks over to me, red eyes sizing me up. While I am a perfectly reasonable height, he has nearly half a foot on me, which is a bit intimidating. He has a shortsword at his side, but doesn’t go for it, instead flexing his hands once before curling them into fists. “Come over here and let’s get this over with. You know how this works.”

I take the opportunity to turn and run, breaking for the woods. I know these woods; if I can slip away then I can go get help and—

“Oh no you don’t!”

Big Bandit catches up to me much more quickly than I expected, grabbing my arm and ripping my staff away. His strength is surprising, but it doesn’t matter. I remember all of Arlen’s training: go low with larger opponents. But when I lean down, he releases me and moves backwards faster than I can think. Is he magically enhanced?

“This would be easier if you stopped.”

“Oh, I’m sure it would be,” I retort.

He chuckles. Seriously? He has the audacity to knock over my carriage and then tell me it’d be easier if I stopped resisting? “It would have been even easier if you hadn’t tried to rob me!”

“Yeah, that’s definitely true, cutie.”

What?

But before I can make sense of what Big Bandit said, he closes the distance between us and moves to strike. I get my arms up in time to block, but his fist is like a sledgehammer and I stagger backwards. He takes the opportunity and reaches out to grab me.

In a few moves, he wraps me in a complicated hold and no matter how hard I try, I can’t get my arms free. His strength is unlike anyone I’ve ever met and it’s positively infuriating. I move to kick him once, cracking against his knee. If he goes down I can reassess, try again with a different form.

But he doesn’t go down, and he doesn’t let go. Big Bandit simply groans, a mixture of pain and annoyance. Then, he picks me up and heaves me over his shoulder.

“Put me down!” I demand.

“Are you going to kick me again?”

“Why on earth would I tell you that?”

“Then no,” he says, his tone way too light for the situation. As we return to the other three bandits, he says, “Am I going to have to hold him all day, or did any of you bother to bring rope?”

“I got it, I got it!” One of the bandits comes up and wraps my arms behind my back, tight enough to chafe if I try to pull myself free.

Big Bandit sighs. “His legs too, idiot. Didn’t you see how he took down Gully-guts over there?”

“Oh, yeah, right.”

Soon I am trussed up like a game hen for the Feast of Gratzio. The brute carrying me sets me down ungracefully on a dry patch of road, the bite from the landing stinging my knees. My hands clench into fists, the frustration in me mounting.

“We should tie up the other two and heal the footman,” he adds. “We don’t want them bleeding out here in the woods.”

Well, at least one of these bandits has a heart, as if that helps. I’d been hearing rumors that the Trunk was getting more dangerous, but to be surprised by these termites is simply embarrassing as it is frustrating.

Another bandit scoffs. “Oh, I’m sorry—when did we put you in charge?”

I’m close enough that I can hear Big Bandit’s irritated sigh. The only competent one seems like he’s at the bottom of the pecking order. Fantastic.

“Don’t worry, sir, this won’t take long. Sorry for all the trouble,” Big Bandit shrugs. He’s standing at ease, leaning back on his heels, arms crossed, as if he hadn’t picked me up like a naughty child. On closer inspection, even with the mask on, white freckles dot his charcoal black skin. A Karstian? They’re so rare on the surface, which will make tracking him down all that much easier.

“Not as sorry as you will be,” I retort.

“Oh, I know,” he says, and then starts humming a tune to pass the time. Like he’s out for a stroll while running errands. This is absurd!

I twist against the bonds, frustrated to be so helpless. “If you want gold, I can tell you where it is. I need to know that my men are safe.”

“I already healed one. The other one didn’t take a lethal bolt. He’ll be uncomfortable but fine. This ugly business will all be done in a second, and then you all can go on your merry way and I can get the fuck out of here,” he replied.

Resigned, I watch as they start pulling crates and trunks off the back of the carriage. As the bandits haphazardly toss them onto the ground, my freshly laundered clothes tumble out and into the mud. I can only hope that they’re distracted by my now-soiled shirts and don’t find the necklace.

But watching them rifle through my things is difficult, an acute invasion of privacy. Unable to help myself, needing to do something, I ask, “So, do all of you bandits use the same large branch to conduct your criminal activity? Or does some poor sop draw the short straw every time?”

Big Bandit chuckles, his shoulders shaking slightly. “Only the dumb ones use the branch. Everyone knows that one by now, yeah?”

“Yes,” I sigh, annoyed that my footmen fell for it.

One of them goes to my livery, grabbing a tunic, and stops, pulling it close to inspect it. “Hey, what’s this?”

The trio of idiots stop rifling through my things, all now focused on the royal Echtarch sigil with the crab and three interlaced annulets stitched on one of my coats. “He’s a noble?”

Oh no. They honestly don’t even know who they’re stealing from? Panic bubbles in my gut: this could go sideways very quickly. I’ve never been one to lie well, especially not under duress. What would I even tell them? Silence is better at this point, I hope.

“You’re an Aurelian?” Big Bandit says, soft enough that the others can’t hear. “Fuck me running.”

He glances between me and the trio of bandits gawking over my clothes, now going through the chests with greedy glints in their eyes.

“How much d’you think we could get for a noble? A thousand gold florets? More?” one asks eagerly.

“That’s not the play,” Big Bandit says, shaking his head. “We take what we’re supposed to take, and then send them on their way.”

“He barely has anything on him, just some clothes and a pouch of coin or two!” complains another bandit. “But if we sell him back to those fancy flowery folk, we’ll be able to get real nice coin. The boss’ll be thrilled!”

Flatly, Big Bandit retorts, “The boss’ll not be fucking thrilled.”

“Well, throw them all in the carriage and we’ll run them to our rendezvous point, let the boss know. One of us can take the horses and ride over to the other group further back,” one of the other bandits says. “If he starts trying that fancy hand stuff again then we’ll have to show him why that’s not a good idea!”

“You’ll all be hanged,” I say, shaking my head. “You should let me go and let us go back to Yaventown. You can take almost everything here, coin pouches, my clothes, if you let us go.”

“Shut up!” one of the trio snaps. He points at Big Bandit. “Get him and the others in the carriage.”

He steps forward lightly, gaze level on the other bandit. “I’ll need to have his legs free. I’m not carrying him all the way to the carriage.”

“Whatever you gotta do, make it quick,” one of the other bandits says, and starts rifling through the crates again. She pockets one of my turquoise scarves, which will do absolutely nothing for her complexion.

He leans down and uses his shortsword to cut my legs free. Oh gods, this is actually happening. I’m being kidnapped. Horror and fear seizes me and I don’t move, even with my legs free. The bandit in front of me is still crouched down and he glances up, our gazes locking.

His eyes are so… bright. There's an energy, a lightness that’s mesmerizing. For a moment, the fear in me quiets under his soft gaze.

“Oi! We should send a note, to show we mean business!” The chatter of the bandits behind him draws my attention, the spell broken.

“No, no, letters can get wet! Or burned! We should take a finger!” The second bandit wags her pointer finger for emphasis.

“What about an ear?”

“Ears are a druid thing!”

“That’s not true,” I mutter. “They do no such thing.”

Big Bandit doesn’t look at me as he grabs the bonds and hauls me to my feet with seemingly little effort. Fear seizes in my throat as he holds the ropes tightly, standing behind me and pushing me forward towards the carriage. Two of the bandits are still arguing as he shoves me forward.

I stumble but he holds me upright, his hot breath suddenly against my ear. “How fast can you run?”

His voice is a rumble in my ear that makes me fidget against him. I swallow hard. What sort of sadistic game does he want to play? “Fast enough,” I mutter back, keeping an eye on the bandit prying open the one crate I hoped they wouldn’t touch.

“Good,” he says, voice still low. Far too low. Low in a way that is somehow pleasant, like I imagined Aneas speaking to Drakon and… erm… oh, for gods’ sakes, I’m being kidnapped!

Thankfully, I’m distracted from such nonsense when the bonds around my arms loosen with a surprisingly deft touch as he undoes the knot around my wrists in one go. He then pushes me forwards towards the carriage. “On my mark, we’ll take them out and run.”

“What?” I hiss back but he doesn’t respond, intent on keeping us moving towards the carriage.

As we move, a bandit pulls out a light gray silk pouch and tosses it into the heap with everything else that looks useful or valuable, including some of my books and journals, and some artwork that I’d purchased before I left town.

Big Bandit pushes me forwards until we’re both at uncomfortably close range with the other three bandits that are still standing.

He slows to a stop, still holding my arms back. The other two are still bickering but the third bandit pulls out my mother’s necklace with wide eyes. “Oh, look at this!” He looks up at us. “I told you to put him in the carriage!”

“No!” I cry out. “Give that to me and you all can go, take whatever you want, I don’t care, I’ll walk!” The ropes are undone around my wrists, but Big Bandit still has a surprisingly strong hold on them.

Big Bandit doesn’t move and calmly says, “You guys want to kidnap him, yeah?”

“Yes! And—” with a glare to the other two, the bandit adds “—we’ll cut off his pinky finger, the one with the signet ring, to show them fancy folk we mean business.”

There’s a beat of silence before Big Bandit sighs, “Well, no one can say I didn’t try.”

Then, he literally shoves me into the bandit to my left and both of us hurtle to the ground.

Well, that’s certainly one way to cause a distraction. I don’t care much for being used as a decoy, but I can work with this. I slam my fist down into a pressure point, and the bandit beneath me lags, his head lolling back as he attempts to recover—that will give us a little time.

I turn back to see if my bandit needs aid to find he clearly has it handled. He throws an absolutely massive haymaker at one of the others, knocking him out cold.

“You fucking trait—” is all the last one can get out before Big Bandit makes a quick overhand right punch and then cuts across with another strike under the jaw, nearly picking the woman who stole my scarf up and off her feet. I feel the blow from where I am, and I can only imagine what it’s like for her. She staggers and sways once before collapsing into a heap near the front wheels.

I look back down as the one underneath me starts to struggle. Big Bandit, who I suppose now is my rescuer, spins his hand in a ‘hurry it along gesture’.

“Oh, right,” I mutter and turn around, pulling the man I landed on into a quick chokehold.

My rescuer turns back to my chests, tossing my britches out of the way to grab my quarterstaff and stuffing some things into a sack. By the time he stands back up, the bandit underneath me has joined his other two friends in unconsciousness.

“Good, you done? That took for-fucking-ever. We need to run now,” he says, and motions to the first two bandits I laid out earlier, who are beginning to stir.

“Wait, my men!”

My rescuer sighs, and sprints into action, handling the two footmen like sacks of flour and tossing them into the carriage. He wheels the horses around, back towards Yaventown, and gives a hard enough smack to the rear of one of the horses to get them moving back to the city. They’ll probably run the path until another merchant sees them traveling without a driver and stops them.

“Good? Happy?”

I watch the carriage disappear in despair. “Why can’t I go with them? I can assure they get seen to, and—”

“Because there’s probably another group of idiots a half-day back looking for the same carriage. Unless you’re in a hurry to get kidnapped for real, we need to go!” He takes my arm and drags me into the woods as the bandits start to wake up.

What choice do I have? Either stay here and potentially lose a finger or worse, or go into the woods with this brute, who laid out two men faster than I can think?

Nyman be good, I hope following him isn’t a mistake.

I dart through the underbrush, weak shouts behind me. We keep moving, running further and further into the forest. Normally I’d take stock of my surroundings, but the fear is too overpowering and I’m running on adrenaline from the fight. Now, I am in good shape, and I practice my martial arts and exercise on a regular basis. But I don’t think I am prepared to be sprinting through the woods for any significant period of time. But Big Bandit doesn’t stop, barreling through the woods for a good fifteen minutes before he slows down into a comfortable jog.

“Do we… have to go this fast?” I pant.

“You wanna keep all your fingers?” he says, turning to face me with a lazy grin. “Then keep running, cutie.”

“Stop calling me cutie!” I snap, irritated.

He lets out a short burst of laughter and keeps running. It’s maybe another half an hour of this before I finally make him stop, hands on my knees as I try to catch my breath. He waits, breathing hard but not winded.

“I’m not… running another step until you tell me… what in the gods’ names is going on!” I rasp.

Big Bandit nods and holds up a hand. “Sorry, I can’t see in this bloody thing,” he says, ripping his domino mask off and tossing it away. “Besides, I don’t think secrecy matters that much now.”

He is indeed a Karstian elf, but he’s broader and stockier than most elves I know. Without the cloak, I get my first glimpse of the hard-earned muscle of his arms, shoulders, and chest. He crosses his arms over his chest and it leads my gaze down, down to his trim waist and athletic legs and—

“Eyes up here, cutie,” he says. I focus my attention back up on his face and his smug grin. He runs a hand through his damp hair and pulls it up and off his forehead.

I flush at my blatant ogling and tear my eyes away from him completely. It’s not that I haven’t had relations with men before; there were a few lazy summer afternoons in my youth with some of the other nobles my age. But I have never seen anyone like my rescuer.

It takes me a few moments to regain my composure. “Who are you? And why did you take out your own men?”

“Oh, I’m, hah. Well, It’s complicated, cu—”

“No!” I snap, shaking my head. “Stop it. Call me E.”

“Sure, I can do that.” He sits back on his heels again, at ease, as he explains. “Okay, E, I’m not with them. I got hired to help with a knock-over job. A merchant will be coming across the Ringed Road in a day or two and we were supposed to knock over his carriage, take the goods and make a break for it back to the city, easy as pie. Obviously, nothing about this job was easy as fucking pie. I’m supposed to be extra muscle, but those five idiots couldn’t find one hand if the other was holding it.” Annoyed, and more to himself, he adds, “Of course they’d get some harebrained idea to try and kidnap an Aurelian.”

“So, you thought it prudent to kidnap me first?” I ask, and then gesture for my quarterstaff.

He tosses it to me, clearly not the slightest bit worried that I could incapacitate him with it. Does he really think so little of me?

“I thought it prudent to make sure you’re returned to the rest of your family with all your fingers, toes, and anything else that hangs off, intact,” he says, gesturing to said body parts. He wiggles his hips a little as he does it and I most certainly do not look down at the gesture.

Focusing on his face, I raise my chin and reply, “Well, I’m not going to thank you, because you helped ambush me in the first place. But I am grateful. At least you managed to recover a few things. Give me the bag.”

He doesn’t protest and hands it over. I give a sigh of relief; he has managed to recover the sling for my quarterstaff, my voting cards, and my hand-written notebooks and journals. But my mother’s jewelry is nowhere to be found.

“Where’s the other bag, the gray one?”

He shrugs. “I didn’t have time to get everything. I didn’t want to kill any of them, so we didn’t have the luxury of time. I’m sure that stuff’ll come up on the black market soon enough and you can get your people to buy it back.”

I shake my head, double-checking the sack again. “No. I need that bag. It’s the most important thing.”

“Well, it’ll have to wait. There’s not a doubt in my mind that they’ll be chasing us all the way to wherever the hell we go next.”

I tie the bag to my belt with some annoyance. “I don’t have time for that. I need those belongings back. And they wouldn’t have left it lying on the ground either. Without that… I need it.”

“That’s a bad idea, E. Better to cut your losses. I’m sure there’s no such thing as priceless for you lot, yeah?”

I take a steadying breath. I have to remember he’s currently my best bet to getting through this for now. “What’s your name?”

The elf thinks for a moment, probably trying to come up with a decent cover name. “Uh, you can call me Tommy.”

“Okay, Tommy. That heirloom is irreplaceable. It’s one of a kind, and I need it back. And if you want to escape the hangman’s noose, you are going to help me go back and get it. Do you understand?”

The elf pales as he nods. “I think it’s a shit plan, but you’re the noble. I know where they would hole up.”

I nod, put the quarterstaff sling over my shoulder, and test that I can pull out my staff quickly. It will have to be good enough for now. “You lead, then. Maybe we can even cut them off before they get there if we’re smart.”

“Yeah, sure,” he replies, but he doesn’t seem sure. But what choice do I have? “I guess I’ll lead?”

With that, he looks around at the trees, centers himself in a vaguely southwestern direction, and starts walking.

I only hope that that carriage runs straight into the crownsguard.