Chapter 51

She smiled wryly at her childish, unreasonable wish. And then, it happened. Good job! Her eyes widened as a cheerful voice flew to her ears. I knew you would do it, Cici! There was no way she could mistake that lively, confident voice. Ahhh. Cecilia’s face crumpled in overwhelming relief. Ahhh, I could hear her after all. If only I’d listened, I could have heard her whenever I wanted. Far away, she saw the smiling faces of the people she loved. What a roundabout path she had taken to reach them. Cecilia—Cici—smiled and closed her eyes as if falling asleep. Krishna checked to make sure Cecilia was dead in the pool of her own blood, then stood up. “Withdraw. We search for the prince now.” He spun on his heels. Then he groaned. “Good day, Honorable Assistant to the Vice-Comptroller-General.” Krishna was all too familiar with the even-featured face smiling cheerfully at him from behind the muzzle of a gun. “…You.” Ranks of military police with rifles at the ready stood behind the man. And that wasn’t all. Footsteps were approaching from every direction, cutting off all possibility of escape. Krishna ground his molars. “Oh, or are you vice-comptroller-general now? Anyhow, it doesn’t matter.” “Why are you here?” “Divine guidance, as they say. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a lovely goddess who showed me the way but a middle-aged porker,” the man joked. His eyes did not smile. “I’ll give you a choice,” Kyle Hughes announced with profound amusement. “Die now, or die later? Of course, either way, your time is up.” Gunfire rang out in the distance. Ulysses froze as the metallic sound echoed cruelly through the cavern. He couldn’t help glancing over his shoulder. Lucia squeezed his hand. “Don’t look back.” He turned to her in surprise. Her solemn expression was far beyond her years. “Look ahead, Uly.” Her voice was soft, but it had a force he could not resist. “We have to live. We have to survive. If we don’t, she’ll have died for nothing.” Ulysses hesitated for a second, then he nodded and began walking again. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d walked so far. His wasted muscles made his legs unsteady, and his heart was pounding. The door to the surface felt impossibly far away. Somehow, though, they made it. Bright sunlight assaulted his eyes. He reflexively shaded his face with his hand. Where were they? He squinted and looked around. They seemed to be in a woodland surrounded by low hills. He could see Saint Mark’s Bell Tower in the distance. That meant they weren’t too far from the square. He was thinking they had better head for a main road, when a surprised voice called to them from behind. “What are you two doing here?” Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a girl with a deep hood hiding in the shade of the trees. It was Shoshanna. Her eyes looked about ready to pop out as she stared at them. “What in the world…,” she began. But as she spoke, she seemed to guess the answer, because she grew steadily paler. Ulysses was equally upset. What if there were armed enemies nearby? Would she bring them back to that dark, scary dungeon? The moment the thought entered his mind, he froze. As the two of them stared at one another warily, Lucia broke in. “Someone’s coming.” Ulysses followed her gaze and saw a large woman trotting down the hill toward them, a huge sword on her back. Ulysses gasped at the familiar face. “A friend of yours?” Lucia asked. He nodded, holding back his excitement. Lucia nodded in return, turned to Shoshanna, and said as casually as if she were greeting a friend, “Anyway, if you’re going to run, you’d better do it now.” “Huh?” Shoshanna blurted out. Ulysses stared at Lucia in equal surprise. “…You’re going to let me escape?” their kidnapper mumbled in a daze. Lucia gave her a troubled smile, paused for a moment, and then said, “The crown princess wasn’t a good person, was she?” Shoshanna frowned suspiciously at the abrupt question. Naturally, she had no idea what Lucia was talking about. “But that doesn’t mean I think she ought to die. I don’t know her well enough to think that.” Of course, since the princess was one of them, she might have been a really cruel person. She might have hurt or even killed some people. And to her victims, her death might have seemed right. But like Lucia, Ulysses didn’t know anything about her. Maybe he would learn more one day, but at the very least, the reason they were here right now was because a woman named Cecilia had saved them. “You helped us, Shoshanna.”