I was seven plus a few months. It would have been difficult to track except that the Sisters kept a calendar in the dining hall.

  Every day was just like the last.

  I was a hard-bodied little show off, excelling at all the obstacles. I had even counted 27 ways I could escape the compound if I wanted to.

  I didn’t want to escape. This is where my parents would look when they were safe enough.

  The convent school wasn’t all workouts and roses.

  My goal of reading to learn everything there was to know about this world was stymied here, although I did have my journals to study. The convent did have a library, and I was usually allowed to roam the grounds during the limited free time I had.

  However, the convent library was not a source of magical theory. It was separated into two sections: books on war, strategy and tactics which I could access; and explicit erotica and sexual manuals which I could not access.

  Well, except for the tiny stash of slender volumes which had been shimmied through the grate by hooligans past.

  Access to that half of the library was exclusively through the Sister’s dormitory.

  The Sisters (they were priestesses not nuns) were mostly old. This was something they had chosen to do after a lifetime of war and adventure.

  I had skimmed through the purloined volumes and was gratified to see as many homoerotic tales and paintings as heteroerotic ones. I still didn’t know the prevailing attitudes about orientation, but this was hopeful.

  I do suspect that the Sisters knew about the stash since there was a big clinical looking volume of anatomy and period stuff. It also had some interesting drawings that would be of interest to a midwife.

  It was a particularly average late spring day. We were in the yard for morning training. We had just finished what I thought of as the warmup- an entire hour of stretches and held poses.

  The Sisters were bringing the water pails around to us.

  We heard a clatter of hooves that came to a sudden halt outside.

  “The Tenth Prince has been coronated without interruption in Parian. His might and vigor are unopposed. All hail Emperor Horace!”

  This was the third such coronation message.

  The messenger shouted his news from just outside the convent gate using a town crier spell.

  “He’s barely five years old.” I muttered. Usually I would have been called out or censured for speaking out of turn on the training yard. Lucky for me I was just one in a chorus of slightly disgruntled voices.

  “Hail Emperor Horace.” Our instructor said with weary sarcasm.

  “Hail Emperor Horace.” We chorused, like the good little soldiers we were.

  Sister Amelia pulled me out of line on our way to lunch and waited until we were completely alone.

  “The crisis is coming. I can feel it.” She whispered gruffly. “The emperor’s mother is not a friend of your aunt. You must not be captured. When it is your only option, run. Can you scale the walls? There is a spot just like the indoor wall.”

  “There are 27 routes based on the obstacles in the indoor training hall.” I said in the clipped tone the Sisters fostered. “I also still have the supplies my aunt gave me.”

  “Good girl. In two or three days I will be taking the decoys on pilgrimage to bathe in the salt springs in Parian. Somewhere outside the city I will dress them appropriately and bring them to the palace as concubine candidates for the new emperor. Most of them will end up as servants in the lower halls of the palace, which is where they were found to become decoys.”

  I nodded.

  “When you leave the convent, go in the direction of the rising sun until you reach a river. Follow the main branch of the river upstream until you reach a waterfall. There is a cave under falls. Use the stairs to get inside the gates of Melanor. Say I sent you if it’s guarded. Use your wits and supplies to survive the streets as a vagrant child. Join a group of thieves if you can. There is security there for a child, but do not be a criminal once you have your system. I have a few things for you. Map to the location. Letter to open once you’re in Melanor, a metal version of the training weapon you’ve trained with these three years.”

  I took the papers and checked my sight-lines before I pretended to put the letters in my shirt but made them disappear instead.

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  The weapon surprised me, mostly because we trained with two lengths of painted sticks. The longer length was like a quarter staff with red paint we were never supposed to touch on each end. The shorter length was a pair of batons that seemed like single sticks. These had the same size of red paint at the ends. The green area was where we were supposed to keep our hands. The blue area was allowable but you were supposed to get your hands back to the proper position as soon as possible.

  The weapon I was handed was basically what I expected from the fighting style, a glaive, a staff with blades on both ends. However, what I didn’t expect but should have was the button at the center of the staff which allowed the pieces to be twisted a half turn and separated.

  “Technically a fighter in this style carries both the staff and twin blades, but this is easier for your stature.”

  I nodded. I put the weapon in my ring.

  Amelia grasped my shoulder. “When you’re in the forest, keep it in your hands. This sheath is for when it’s separated, but keep it whole for the reach and keep it at hand.”

  I nodded. We had been given lectures on local geography and the forest abutting the compound was one of those high mana zones where the animals had levels and ranks just like system humans.

  Going into these places was the purview of adventurers and madmen.

  “Here. Put these on as soon as possible once you’re outside.”

  Chainmail shirt and cowl sized for me, padded leather tunic and pants. The mithril mail was bound, which means someone had woven threads through it to make it quiet. My boots were already suitable and well broken in.

  The armor was heavy but I was strong. I had never been this strong in my former life.

  I stowed everything in the hidden nose ring and we went to lunch.

  As I ate I tried to think of everything I ever read about Melanor, but except for something vague about tariffs and a note that the name meant Sky Town in Old Melakarik, I had nothing.

  Old Melakarik was an Eyerik language, the winged bird people who had all died out in some ancient war. There was a rumor in an old book that there were still Eyeriks on another continent, but that nobody knew where.

  That was all the trivia I knew. Oh. And the city was landlocked and at the top of a mountain and it had never been successfully defended. Every army that ever tried rolled right over any defenses. Seemed like an odd choice of location for a political fugitive.

  On the other hand it also wasn’t an imperial seat. It tried to proclaim liberty every few centuries.

  It turned out that Sir Amelia did not have the time to organize her decoys into an obvious pilgrimage trail. In fact she was in the quartermaster’s office during outside training the next morning when there was a knock at the gate.

  “Open in the name of the Emperor.”

  “The First and Fourth Princes are still fighting.” The abbess called. She was that young woman from the first day. A leg injury that Magic could not mend completely had caused her early retirement. “By order of the Succession Accords of 17,213 I will not open my doors.”

  “Emperor Horace has been legally coronated.”

  “There are no princesses here. Every child sent to us was a decoy.”

  “That’s what you would say if you had the Princess.” Then in a quieter voice, “Break it down.”

  The Abbess turned to the oldest girls. “Go.” Was all she said. The line of ten and eleven year olds ran to the row of seven year olds- coincidentally the youngest girls in the yard, the convent had closed their doors to new students when the Emperor died.

  Seven older girls each took one of my cohort by the hand and ran with us in seven directions to the wall facing away from the gate. The rest of the girls followed.

  I was unaware the older girls had an evacuation plan.

  The girl with me stopped just inside the tree line. “I know you’re the real lady, I know you’re not the princess. You have your own orders?”

  I just nodded.

  “Good. Go. Don’t look back. Our job is to make it impossible to follow your tracks.”

  I nodded again and moved. I almost immediately stumbled on a game trail, covered in leaf litter and twigs. I moved slowly, confidently and carefully. I had no training in not leaving a trail, but slow, light steps, no snagged clothes and no lost hairs seemed a good start. No broken branches.

  If they had spells to track a scent… I froze, thinking. I had gotten the washing talisman to work plenty of times, and it would obliterate the trace of blood I used for ink.

  If they were using scent from the princess any dogs wouldn’t hit on me anyway. If their tracker had good smell perception I might be able to change my scent enough…

  I decided to lay a few false trails too.

  I turned several times, as if headed back home. I walked on stones and in a stream.

  I deliberately left one or more footprints going in a direction I was not going.

  Just as I believed I was past where they would look I found a muddy boggy bit of ground, made tracks that ended at a tree and deliberately snagged my sweater on the bark in an upwards direction.

  I had spotted a large boulder behind the tree. I got to the top by using the tree as an assist. I took off all my clothes, including shoes. I drew a wash talisman on a leaf and drenched myself with it. I put on the armor Sir Amelia gave me with a large green shirt over top.

  Her highness would have filled it out properly. On me it was a dress.

  There was a pair of boot sole covers that turned your footprints into those of a large cat. A skilled tracker would probably know the difference.

  I had to tie the covers around my ankles to keep them on. I was still quite a bit smaller than Aunt Glory.

  I kept the sun at my back and kept walking until the light was so dim I couldn’t see clearly. It was still well before dusk.

  I should have been terrified. Part of me probably was. Most of me was just trying to get through the night and hoping I didn’t have a tail.

  I found a pile of boulders that somewhat resembled a wall and climbed up until I could see the sunset. I checked all corners and crevices with the point of my glaive before pitching her highness’s smallest tent in a hollow spot.

  It was an interesting tent, part hammock, part sleeping bag, part tent, all hanging from a sturdy but adjustable set of poles meant for uneven terrain. I could just as easily set it up in the branches of a tree.

  I drew the ward Carter taught me on one of the many leaves I had collected and went to sleep.