"Excellent."

She smiles.

They're reaching the town properly, now. Most people are inside at this hour, but they could still run into someone if they're not careful. Presumably Alanaer can sneak her to his home.

Yes. There are very few people about and it's not hard to avoid them if you know the town.

He gets her to his house and knocks on the door, quietly but urgently.

The door opens. "Alle, what--" the woman begins, then stops short when she sees the princess standing beside him.

"Hello, I'm Crown Princess Aliveth Vaslinue of Kivenne, I apologize for the trouble. Your lord kidnapped me and your brother stabbed him for it, may I come inside?"

"--Yes of course."

"I don't know how long it's going to take before the other guards realize what happened."

Sigh. "I'll rouse Mom and Dad and Sissy."

Aliveth smiles an apologetic smile, then starts systematically removing her jewelry and placing it into a neat pile on a table. This will be useful for them later, and it's best if she doesn't have it immediately on her person right now. Since she's presumably going to change into something less ostentatious soon.

"You'll want to borrow something of mine, I'm guessing?"

"Yes, please. I appreciate the help."

"Eh, not your fault some noble guy decided to be a jerk. Do you want to go pick something out while I wake the others?"

"No, but I'd understand if you found a kidnapped princess on your doorstep pretty upsetting. Yes, please."

"My room's over there, don't take the blue dress or the green one but anything else is fine," she says, gesturing to indicate direction, and then retreats into a different room to wake her parents.

"Thank you," she says, and then she hurries off to change. She does not take the blue dress or the green dress, and picks what she assesses to be the most mundane dress available. ... She leaves her leggings on. At some point in the future she might have to fly.

Soon the whole family is bustling about, packing up as much as they can.

The youngest daughter does pause to stare a little the first time she sees Aliveth, though.

She doesn't actually look as aggressively like a princess anymore in an ordinary dress, with her makeup and jewelry removed and her hair down. Still pretty, though, and sort of ladylike in mannerisms if not in dress. (She'll have to work on that.)

"Hello," she says, smiling back. "Can I help pack?"

"Sure," she says. "...I was expecting you to look less like a regular person."

"A lot of the princess look is having a lot of clever tricks to look pretty, all stacked on top of each other to make a cake, then covered in princessly mannerism icing. With optional haughtiness sprinkled on top. Remove all that, and I'm basically a regular person."

She helps pack! She doesn't know where anything in this house is, but she can grab things when pointed to them and can carefully organize the things they've gathered into things that can be easily carried. She's pretty good at it, actually.

"We have a wagon, by the way, you don't need to optimize everything to be carried by hand."

"Oh, that's useful, all right."

She stops doing that in favor of helping more directly with frantic packing, then! Hooray, frantic packing.

Once some stuff has been packed she can also help load it onto the wagon. Larassa feeds the horse an apple in apology for waking her at this hour.

Aliveth is pretty happy to help with whatever they point her at! Soon enough the wagon is packed and they can go.

She eyes the estate once everything's packed. It doesn't look like half a dozen guards are filing out of it to come slaughter them all to avenge their employer. Maybe he gave a stupid order like 'do not disturb me' or something, and no one's found the body yet. Or perhaps they think the perpetrator's still inside. Either way, they do not have half a dozen guards coming after them with sharp objects. Yet.

Yet.

Cissere gets into the back of the wagon for first shift sleeping, and then Larassa climbs up into the driver's seat and urges the horse to go, and they're off, with a minimum of difficult-to-replace items left behind.

The princess doesn't mind walking. Alanaer's parents seem slightly intimidated by her, and Larassa's a bit busy, so she will make Alanaer himself the target of her questions.

"Where actually are we, anyway?"