by Nick Martell
“How else would God learn what perfection is?”
“As we all do. With practice.”
Gwen attacked again. But this time she spun right before he caught her blade and then kicked the prince in the backs of his knees. He toppled, his size and weight working against him for the first time in his life, and crunched to the tiles, the tip of Gwen’s sword against his throat. She was tenser than I had ever seen her, and her hand was shaking. I knew what she was considering, and I hoped she didn’t do it.
Not with every noble in Hollow watching.
Punching the prince had been foolish of me and would only create problems in the future. What Gwen was doing… it was as if a true Kingman from the stories had returned to put her Royal in his rightful place. It was a feat no one had seen in a decade.
How long had I been underestimating her for?
“Adreann, I am bound to serve you by law, which includes calling you out for your monstrous behavior.”
“Clearly I underestimated you, Gwen. That won’t happen again. But do you truly think a dated law will save you? My father will hear of what you two Kingman did tonight.”
“Given how you turned out,” she began, “I don’t imagine he’ll care. If he did, you would have become a better person. But do tell him what happened here. Explain how you instigated a gun duel at his birthday celebrations, shot one woman out of jealousy, and how another half your size put you on your ass in front of the nobility. I’m sure he’ll find that befits a man who wants to be king.”
The prince’s face was as red as his hair, and he was breathing short and shallowly, eyes focused on my sister. He pushed the blade away from his neck and rose to his feet, scraping Naomi’s blood off his soles once he was standing. “I’ll remember this, Gwen.”
“As you should.”
Without another word, the Corrupt Prince stormed away. Whatever Throne Seekers remained at the party trailed behind him. It was only after he was out of sight that the nobility finally began to disperse, eager to get away from the Kingman children.
I wanted to get to Gwen. But, because my life was an endless joke, Domet intercepted me before I could. “You and your sister both assaulted the prince—incredibly stupid, both times, and there will likely be consequences—but—”
“I didn’t find the king’s memories, Domet. Someone interfered before I could, and then all this happened.”
“Maybe there will be another chance to—”
“No,” I said. “No more deals with you or any of the nobility. I’ll tell you who burned down the shrine, you’ll free Sirash, and that’ll be the end of our relationship. I don’t care about your money or your help with my mother. I’ll do it on my own.”
“That’s not what—”
“What’s more important to you, dying or revenge?”
There was no hesitation. “Who was it? And why?”
At least I knew what he valued over everything else. “Dark, the Mercenary. He was hired by King Isaac, who worried you might make a play for the throne.”
Dark might be trying to save Naomi now, but I couldn’t be sure what he would do once he had his documents. Giving his name to Domet was a countermeasure, in case he came after my friends and family. Because if anyone stood a chance against a Mercenary, it was an immortal High Noble.
Screwing the king over in the process was more personal: a decade’s worth of anger finally getting an outlet.
“Well, Michael, thank you. Your friend will be released tomorrow after the Emperor’s trial.”
“Thank you.” I left Domet after that, no longer interested in speaking to him anymore and uncertain why I had been in the first place. He had promised so much—Fabrication training, a place at court, answers about my father, and a cure for my mother—and delivered none of it. My head was beginning to ache and my lips felt cracked as I joined Gwen and High Noble Margaux sitting at a table together. High Noble Margaux was clearly in pain as she sat down, and I didn’t know why, but that didn’t feel odd. “What happened?”
Gwen was drinking wine, the slender sword in front of her on the table. “I’m not sure. She was fine and then the next moment she fell. A servant caught her, but I think I heard something break—”
“I’m fine, it happens,” she said through gritted teeth. Obviously, she wasn’t, but neither of us knew why. “More importantly, are both of you well?”
“I don’t know,” I said. And I didn’t.
“Not surprising. You did punch the prince in front of dozens of nobles,” Gwen said.
“You put a blade to his neck.”
“I’m not scared of him. I know him too well to be.”
“I’m aware. But it was still stupid. What if the king does retaliate?”
Gwen continued to drink her wine. “I don’t know. But I had to do it, Michael. I couldn’t stay silent any longer. Someone had to stop him, and I’m the only one that could. I just hope I did enough.”
“You definitely did—”
Yet another interruption. This time it was a blond-haired man carrying a bottle of whiskey and two empty glasses. He was dressed in yellow and black and had an ugly scar over the bridge of his nose. Age hadn’t been kind to him, but it rarely was for anyone. “Michael, join me. We should talk. And drink.”
Gwen spoke for me. “No. I don’t care who you are or why you would think otherwise, but we’re going home.”
High Noble Margaux put a hand on her shoulder. “Gwen, let me introduce Kai’s father, High Noble Alexander Ryder. He’s a Kingman sympathizer. No harm will come to Michael, and after punching the prince, Michael is going to need all the help he can get. He doesn’t have the protection of being bound to him, as you do.”
“Oh,” Gwen said. “High Noble Alexander, I’m so—”
Alexander Ryder seemed amused. “Do not fear, Gwendolyn. Your father would have been proud to see you defending your brother and standing up to the prince.”
“Thank you, sir.” For Gwen, there was no greater compliment.
Alexander Ryder bowed slightly. “You are welcome. But I do ask that you allow me to talk to Michael. We have a lot to discuss.”
“I apologize, sir. I do need to escort my sister home after—”
“She will stay with me tonight as a guest,” High Noble Margaux declared. “Prince Adreann will not disturb us. That I can promise you.”
I looked to Gwen and she nodded in approval, and that was that.
I said my goodbyes, then followed Alexander Ryder to an empty table in the corner of the room. Once we were seated, he slid me an empty glass and poured some whiskey into it. “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” I said, and drank. I had never relished that burn in my throat more than in that moment. The first sip was always the worst, but then it was like lemon water.
“Long night?” he asked. His coat was unbuttoned, and he looked comfortably disheveled. Leaning back in his seat, he looked less like a High Noble and more like a soldier who had finished a night shift.
“Long night,” I agreed. “Longer night than I’ve had in a long time.”
“I’d imagine so. Despite punching the prince, I don’t think you have much to be worried about… so long as you don’t go around boasting about it.”
We drank to that.
“That girl the prince shot… was she your friend?”
“No, she was a…,” but I didn’t know how to finish the sentence anymore. Neither “acquaintance” nor “friend” felt right, and I couldn’t think of a word that did. Because even if she had been playing both sides, I was still partly responsible for her getting shot.
“Complicated, then,” he said. “I get it. Your father used to talk to me about your mother. The man was madly in love with her—never so much as looked at another. He would talk, and I would drink, and sometimes I would even talk back. It was a good relationship. I miss that man every day.” He paused. “Your father was one of my best friends, and now one of his sons will marry my daughter. God has an interesting sense of
humor.”
“You knew my father well?”
“I did. We grew up together, and we fought together most of our lives from the Day of Crowning to the Gunpowder War.”
“The Day of Crowning?”
“Yes,” he said, swirling his drink in its glass. “You’ve probably heard of it before. It was the first major battle your father ever led. We were Hollow Academy students when Tosburg Mercenary Company attacked and killed all the teachers. We were forced to lead the students against them, and your father led us to victory himself. Of course, it changed him. It changed all of us. You don’t know what conflict is like until you’re trying to put pressure on your friends’ wounds as they’re bleeding out and screaming for help. I killed three people that day—all Mercenaries.” He stared into his glass. “I still remember their faces.”
Alexander Ryder paused and took a deeper drink. “The entire country praised your father for his actions… for his heroics and tactical brilliance. He got scared that war would be his business for the rest of his life and ran away. Disappeared without a trace for… five years, I think. Then, when he came back to Hollow with your mother, he discovered his parents, his older sister, and his queen had been murdered and a war had broken out. Not a single person blinked when he took his father’s seat as the right hand of the king and the rest, well… there’s enough history about that.”
The Day of Crowning. He was right, I had heard of it but had never heard the details. If Alexander Ryder was telling the truth, then the account I had read in Dark’s envelope had been written by my father.
He had been worried he would be forgotten, and now…
“Why are you telling me all of this?”
“Because I miss my friend,” he said. “He ruined everything by dying young… and stuck me with a lot of his civic duties. I cannot say that I enjoy them, either, no matter how much they aid the country. Your father was supposed to be the one who talked, and I was the one who drank. Instead, I’ve been forced to do both. My family is wise enough to not ask me any questions once I start doing either.”
“You’re the only person I’ve ever heard talk about my father in a favorable light since his execution.”
“That is because I know he did not murder Davey Hollow.”
What? I must’ve heard that wrong.
“He had no reason to. People said he was grief-stricken about your mother. Yes, he was bitter about it. And, yes, it changed him drastically. But he loved you, Lyon, and Gwen more than anything in the entire world. He would never have risked your lives—not for revenge, justice, money, or power. He wasn’t that kind of man. He was the best of us.”
My heart started beating rapidly. This wasn’t happening. No. No. No. It was one thing for Domet—crazy, immortal Domet—to make that claim, but if someone else was, too, then there was a chance Domet was right. Was my father truly innocent? With a lump in my throat, I asked, “What was the official motive, then?”
“David Kingman’s motive was never revealed,” he said. “No one knows but the king, the judge, and the members of the council who decided his fate. I always suspected it was done to protect someone else and that he pleaded guilty so the truth was never revealed.”
I felt nauseous as I held my glass. “Do you… Do you think someone might have… framed him for the murder?”
“There’s no doubt in my mind. Hollow executed an innocent man.”
“Then why did—”
“Didn’t I say anything? I ask the king for the truth every chance I get.”
I took a deep breath. There was too much information for me to process at once. I had to ask the right questions. I didn’t know if an opportunity like this would come up again.
“Who would have wanted to frame him? And how would you narrow the suspects down? If he disappeared for five years, could he have made an enemy abroad? Countries have fallen in less time.”
“In my opinion, there are three options. First, it was someone from Hollow,” Alexander Ryder said. He reached for the bottle and refilled his glass with amber liquid. “The prince was killed and the king’s best friend was blamed. As both the Royals and the Kingman family struggled to remain a family, others began rising in power, unchecked. Ten years later the ideals that our country was founded on have been forgotten or desecrated. What happened back then was more than a royal assassination: it was the assassination of our country from within.”
He continued, “The second option is that it was a Cobbler trying to destabilize the country so New Dracon City could have a bigger role on the world stage. I find that less likely, since New Dracon City would’ve made a move against us if they were responsible.”
That all made sense to me. Before my family fell, it was hard for upstarts to rise in Hollow. The old families never wanted to relinquish power, a tentative balance between all of them for generations. But now new families sprang up regularly, and some of the High Noble families I had grown up with had fallen. The Endless Waltz itself was completely different.
“Who could’ve done it, then?” I asked.
He chuckled to himself. “Probably someone ambitious who’s gained a lot of power recently.”
Power. It always came back to power. Who wanted power and had enough patience to wait years to get it? Domet didn’t want power—he already had more than enough—so that eliminated him. Adreann wanted more power, but patience wasn’t one of his strongest qualities. And he had been a child at the time of Davey’s death.
The only person I knew who was that dedicated and reeked of new power was Dark. He had hounded me for his documents and he would have come after me for years if I had continued to evade him. Had the same thing happened to my father? Wait… Was it that obvious? Could my father and I have had similar problems?
“What about the Day of Crowning?” I asked. “The leader of Tosburg Company got away, right?”
“I have no idea. Your father was the only one who saw his face when they met during negotiations. After, he claimed the leader’s body wasn’t among the dead. We never heard from Tosburg Company again, so we never pursued it. There was always something more important to deal with.”
“Could they have framed him?”
Alexander Ryder leaned back in his seat. He seemed so old sitting there. His blond hair thin and wispy. Dark circles under his eyes from not sleeping well and wrinkles etched into his face. I wondered how he’d looked when he was my age. Like Kai? After a few moments he said, “There’s no information on Tosburg Company besides the few mentions of it in the history books. I can barely even remember their symbol. What was it…?”
I rubbed my eyes and shook my head. This was just another wild hunt for a truth that didn’t exist. Why was I listening to another drunk? Especially after the last one. Maybe because he claimed he was my father’s friend and believed in his innocence. Domet did, too, but Domet had other priorities.
“It was in direct opposition to the Kingman symbol.”
I looked up at Alexander Ryder with a start. “What?”
“Tosburg Company’s symbol was in direct opposition to the Kingman symbol. I can’t remember anything else. Just that thought from when I saw it for the first time. Right before the vanguard charged.”
That wasn’t anything tangible. “If you were such good friends with my father, and you even thought he was innocent… where were you when we were kicked out of Kingman Keep, alone and scared? Why didn’t you take us in?”
He breathed in through his nose and closed his eyes for a moment. “Because I had a family to protect. In those early days, directly after your father’s trial, anyone who questioned the king might as well have been a traitor, too. I hope your father would’ve forgiven me. He loved you three more than his own life, and I feel the same toward my children. I’d burn down the city to protect them.”
“So, what is this, then? Having made it this far on my own, you’re going to—”
“I’ve always looked out for you and your siblings, Michael. Even if it didn’t appe
ar so. Your foster father chose to isolate you from the court, but I was there whenever I could be. Did you really think it was luck that your foster father would happen upon new clothes when you were young and growing? Or wonder how your sister got a job in an asylum and your brother got a glowing recommendation to join Scales? Or how you got a private room for your mother in the asylum so easily? A traitor’s family would never be that fortunate.”
I stared at him for a moment, gulped, and then said, “How… how long did you…?”
“Only when it was needed, Michael. I only guided, misdirected, and schemed when I was concerned for one of my closest friend’s children. Just because the king, his Ravens, and most of the nobility have forgotten the Old Words doesn’t mean my family has. We remember where our loyalties lie, Michael. And always will.”
I nodded and watched as he raised his glass to his mouth, fully aware I had no way to thank him for protecting my family in the past.
“You said there was a third option. What was it?”
Alexander Ryder filled my glass to the brim. “Your father. He could have framed himself, taking the blame for an accident.”
“An accident? Why would my father take the blame for an—”
“He would have if it was caused by one of his children.”
It was one of those world-shattering moments when time slows down and nothing seems real. If Alexander Ryder was implying what I thought…
“Does the king think one of us killed his son? Is that why the motive was never revealed to the public? Is that why there are inconsistencies in his trial and the witnesses’ memories were altered? Did my father trade his life for one of ours?”
Alexander Ryder didn’t speak until his glass was empty. “Enough with the questions. We need to drink. We’ve been lacking on that part.”
Kai’s father never answered my last questions as we finished the bottle together. Instead he told me stories of my father from his earliest days to some of his last. I barely spoke the entire time, as I began to see my father as my hero again. Eventually, when we were both drunk and alone in the Grand Ballroom, two guardsmen took High Noble Ryder home. I sat by myself at that table for a while, staring through the windows at the stars, wondering what my father had endured, what choices he’d had to make, and whether he had known the same dull pain I felt in my heart.