Read Online The Hidden Queen by Alma Alexander - Free Book Online

creating a new self, something she would do far better than trying to live up to whatever artificial biography Rima had prepared. March would simply warn Chella in advance of the slight change in plans.
    Anghara came to him again when they reached Halas Han, only a day or two’s travel from Cascin, and gave the seeds of her new life into his keeping. She had sensibly made Brynna from Miranei. March initially thought it dangerous, pointing an unerring finger to the place from which Anghara had fled; but then he saw the wisdom of it. It would have been nice to have made Brynna an exotic from Shaymir or from some seafaring family of Calabra, but Anghara knew little about either place, and her hesitations would have shown her as a fake within minutes to anyone who cared to probe the disguise. This way, nobody could trip her up on her story; she knew Miranei too well, even for one who had spent most of her short life immured within castle walls. She explained away her knowledge of the court by making Brynna a minor aristocrat, one of the dozens Anghara had observed around the palace, with enough access to the court to have first-hand information of what she “knew.” It would also account for the clothes she was bringing in her trunks, rich enough for someone of standing, although Catlin had been warned to pack the simpler gowns and to leave the richest ones behind. Although only nine, Anghara was proving to have a gift for subtle intrigue; she was creating an effective camouflage, allowing just enough truth to shine through to make the lie convincing.
    “Very good,” March had said approvingly, once it had all been told. “You’ve done all the right things.”
    “Then call me Brynna from now on. I suppose I’d better get used to it. You should,” she said with a faint air of admonishment, “have done that from the beginning.”
    This was entirely true and March had already berated himself for not thinking of it before. He agreed immediately, and found it remarkably easy to think of her as Brynna—already she was no longer the Anghara he had known. Catlin was worse. She kept slipping, and Anghara would turn instinctively at the sound of the old name, then a strange closed look would come into her eyes as she caught herself doing it. But she trained herself until it became second nature to respond only to Brynna. At the last, March felt his hackles rise as he watched her raise her head on one occasion at the sound of Catlin’s voice, and then glance behind her with a motion as natural as breathing to see who it was that Catlin wanted. It was as though she had turned to look for her own lost soul. But in that moment she had achieved a total victory over herself; she had lived through a moment during which she had truly thought of Anghara as “other.” It was what was needed; but March had turned away with something suspiciously like tears prickling at the back of his eyes. He caught himself wondering whether they could ever really give back what had been taken from her on this journey.
    Halas Han was one of the bigger hans, more of a small trading town than a simple wayside inn. It had small quays poking out into three different rivers, and there was a constant coming and going as porters bearing mysteriously wrapped bales staggered from quay to warehouse, or from the storerooms to the river boats waiting on the water.
    The stables did a brisk trade, and half a dozen grooms were kept on the hop, saddling one horse, unsaddling and boxing another. Glancing into the cavernous depths of the han’s stable as he passed his horse into the grooms’ custody, March glimpsed two desert horses from Kheldrin. These were rare, usually fabulously expensive, and a badge of someone very highly born or very rich, someone who wanted to flaunt their wealth. He had only seen seven others in his life, and four of those had belonged to Red Dynan’s own stables. He felt an abrupt pang of misgiving at the sight of desert horses deep in the