Fatal Heir

by L. C. Ireland

  “You know, I was supposed to be executed this morning. On your grandpap’s orders, as it turns out.”

  The child leaned his head against my side. At his same age, my sister Lark had been a blossoming socialite. She talked nonstop, jabbering an amusing combination of nonsense and surprising bouts of wisdom to anyone who would listen. But this child hadn’t said a word. He had only screamed and cried, and now he sat in grave silence. He was probably in shock. He had, after all, just witnessed a group of over a dozen people die brutal deaths by poison, including his own mother. And to put a pretty cherry on top of his bad-day pie, he had watched them turn into monsters and attack other people. That was a lot for a child to take in all at once.

  I needed to one-up this child’s tragedies with my own. He couldn’t have all the pity. He was the enemy, after all.

  “Then, after narrowly escaping my own execution,” I said, “I had to flee my home and cause trouble somewhere else so your grandpap wouldn’t murder my family.” Aleksander buried his face in my coat. “I guess I don’t have to worry about that any more, huh? I think this disaster,” I waved the salve bottle at the overturned carriage, “is going to be more than enough to convince your grandpap to chase me down. Yeah, that’s right. I’m going to be blamed for this. Isn’t that just divine?”

  I settled into a grouchy silence. I was lonely. I missed my family. I missed being tackled by Marcus and Ken and tickled by Lark. I missed teasing my elder sisters and dodging the soiled rags they tossed at me. I had the sinking apprehension that I would never see any of them again. As I mused, depressed, on all that I had left behind, I unwrapped the rags from my hands and used them to cover my arm instead, applying pressure to stop the stubborn bleeding.

  “Cracker?” Aleksander asked. He had wriggled his little hand into the pocket of my coat and found a biscuit I hadn’t had a chance to throw at a deadman. I lifted my arm so he could pull the biscuit out. His little face fell with obvious disappointment when he saw it was only a biscuit and not whatever royal snack he was expecting.

  “It’s food,” I said, “and it’s delicious.” I had to defend my mum’s cooking. No royal brat would imply that my mum’s biscuits weren’t good enough for him. “You can eat it.”

  The little boy sniffed the biscuit suspiciously.

  “It won’t turn you purple,” I promised him.

  He nibbled the biscuit and found it acceptable. He took his next bite with savage hunger. As he chewed contentedly, I leaned back against the tree trunk and watched Rath, Mel, Zarra, and Martha pile the bodies on top of the carriage. They worked in grim silence, only occasionally calling out to each other if they needed assistance with some of the bigger folks.

  I watched as Martha fell on her knees beside the body that had been the princess, Lana. Gently, she tucked the woman’s hair behind her ear and closed her wide-open eyes. With great ceremony, the maid took a few items from her mistress’s body. The ring from her hand. Her necklace. The handkerchief she kept tucked up her sleeve.

  When Mel and Zarra came to take the princess’s body, they did so with the utmost care. Zarra took the shoulders while Mel took her legs, and together, they lifted the body into the air. The nursemaid remained where she was, kneeling on the ground and staring into space.

  It occurred to me that I ought to distract the boy, but when I turned to him, I saw that he was already staring intently at his mother’s body.

  “Mam?” he said. His body tensed. And then, just like that, he took off. I tried to grab him, but he dodged my hand and ran toward his mother, screaming for her. My heart twisted with pity. I looked around for his mother’s spirit, but then I remembered that she had gone inside the herald’s body. Who knew what had become of her now?

  Martha caught the screaming child and held him back as Mel dumped some oil from a pouch on top of the bodies. She jumped off the carriage and docked her last arrow. Even from a distance, I could see that her mouth was set in a somber line. She lit the tip of the arrow, drew back, and fired at the carriage. The whole carriage went up in flames as if it was made of dry hay. Aleksander shrieked and fought to get away from his maid, but Martha held on tight.

  I closed my eyes to shut out the sight of Aleksander’s heartbreak. I clenched my fists so hard that my nails bit into my palms.

  I had always imagined how glorious — even glamorous — it would be to fight the deadmen. I had built it up in my mind to be a magnificent adventure. But now I understood what the deadmen truly were. These once-human creatures had taken Mel’s parents and countless other folks. They were slow, but strong, and the mist they spewed was powerful enough to turn a person’s mind against them. They were absolutely deadly.

  Why was King Safford more concerned with me than with protecting his people from these monsters?

  The fire burned bright and welcoming, but I remained by my tree. I didn’t want to get close enough to see what was actually burning beneath those cheery flames.

  Mel broke away from the others and stood next to me.

  “Well,” she said, “it’s done.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Mel held out her hand and helped me to my feet.

  “You’re cold.” She rubbed my uninjured arm. “Let’s get you closer to the fire.”

  “Mel,” I said.

  Mel ignored me. She was talking too fast, interrupting herself with a high-pitched, false laugh. She was faking it, trying to act as though something utterly traumatizing had not just happened to us all.

  “Mel,” I said again.

  “And he just looked so — what?” Mel stumbled a little when I dug my heels in, forcing her to stop.

  “Mel, stop,” I said. “Just stop.”

  She stared at me, her brow furrowed. “Stop what? Don, you get so weird when—”

  Mel’s words ended in an oomph when I grabbed her and wrapped her in a giant hug. She squirmed for a second and then relaxed, looping her arms around my waist and leaning her head on my chest. I rested my chin on the top of her head and just held her.

  Neither of us spoke for a while. What were we supposed to talk about? My execution? My imposter, the evil man who poisoned a dozen people? Should we talk about the people he murdered, who then came back to life and tried to kill us?

  “I hate this,” I whispered at last.

  “I know, Don,” Mel said, squeezing me tight. And for just a second, everything was just a little better.

  We gathered around the fire. Young Aleksander had finally cried himself to sleep. He was passed out from sheer exhaustion in Martha’s arms. Zarra and Mel had salvaged food, blankets, and other supplies from the carriage before lighting it up (but had avoided anything near the wine), so we had bits and pieces of a meal laid out and blankets to curl up in.

  Gruesome as it was to spend our night around the fire made up of human bodies, we couldn’t leave the flame out of fear that it would spread. So we stayed, mesmerized and disgusted by the flames that kept us warm.

  “So,” Rath said. “That was fun.”

  We all groaned.

  Under normal circumstances, I would have been delighted by the experience of new foods. But I ate my roll and cheese and dried meats without tasting any of it, my gaze fixated on the fire. If I looked too long, I could make out the shapes of people crumbling into ash. I shuddered and forced my gaze away. Instead, I looked at the young prince. His life of luxury was one I might have had. This little kid had everything. And now he had lost everything.

  No, that wasn’t true. He had a father. He had a father named Bernard, a man who loved him enough to send him away when he thought danger was coming. I remembered with sorrow the way Lana had denied her husband the chance to hold his son before their journey. I could restore what was left of this family.

  “We have to take him home,” I declared.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Rath asked. “Safford would kill you the moment he saw you.”

  “But he doesn’t know what I look like,” I argued. “If we didn’
t make a fuss, we—”

  “We could use the child to get closer to the king!” Zarra said, leaning forward in excitement. “We could sneak in right under his guard!”

  “Shh.” I pressed a finger to my lips and indicated the sleeping nursemaid with my eyes. “She doesn’t know who I am. I don’t think she would be so comfortable if she realized she was in the company of the supposed bringer of darkness.”

  “Bringer of darkness?” Rath laughed. “I know today has been rough, Izzy, but that’s a little melodramatic.”

  I started to argue, but fell silent. I didn’t know how to explain what I saw or how I saw it. Instead, I cleared my throat and changed the subject back to the little prince. “Safford doesn’t know what I look like. We can take the kid home and not cause any trouble.”

  “Or we can cause a lot of trouble,” Zarra suggested, her eyes gleaming mischievously.

  “What if we use the kid as a bargaining chip?” Mel suggested. “We may be able to trade him for a pardon for Lord Brenden.”

  Rath steepled his fingers together and leaned his nose against his fingertips. “How could we convince him to release Lord Brenden without giving away who we are?”

  “We’ll tell him that we’re refugees fleeing Hazeldown after the riot. We can say that we don’t want anything to do with the zealots who declared liberty from the king and that we came across the carriage on our way to the capital, seeking asylum.” Mel rummaged through the blankets. “Martha kept some tokens from the princess’s body.”

  She held up the ring, the traveling cloak, and a little velvet token bag the princess must have worn around her neck.

  “We can use these to prove that we found her — that she was dead when we came upon her — but that we had to burn her to keep her from rising.”

  “How are we going to convince the king that we didn’t kill her?” I asked. “Certainly, he would be eager to blame us.”

  “Martha will back us up,” Mel said. “She knows what happened. She knows it was the wine. We saved her life — she at least owes us her testimony.”

  This could work. We could return Aleksander and free Lord Brenden, and Safford wouldn’t even know to kill us.

  “How far are we from the capital?” I asked Rath.

  “New Capital or Old Capital?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “The New Capital is where the king lives and is full of people. The Old Capital is where you were born and is now full of deadmen.”

  “New Capital. Definitely New Capital.”

  Rath hovered to his feet and moved out from beneath the trees. He gazed up at the sky for several moments, then said, “Traveling with a child? About two days’ walk.”

  “Will we get there in time to save Lord Brenden?” Mel asked.

  Rath shrugged. “Likely, we’ll get there in the midst of his trial. A trial for a Lord lasts a while, unless King Safford is feeling particularly excited to use the guillotine.” He returned to his place beneath the trees. “Izzy, you haven’t slept in days. Get some rest. I will stand look out in case any more deadmen wander by.”

  Mel needed no further encouraging. She leaned against my shoulder and fell instantly to sleep. Zarra curled up in a pile of blankets and soon was snoring peacefully. I was amazed by how quickly they both fell asleep. But they were mainlanders. Perhaps they were used to falling asleep quickly and sleeping lightly, always ready for the next attack.

  I couldn’t sleep. I was bone tired, but my mind was too busy.

  My pa had this one illustration that he loved. Using a knife, he lovingly cut it all up into little pieces and liked to challenge himself to put the picture back together. On winter evenings, when the snow was too thick to go outside, we would sit around the table together and put the pieces in the right order by the light of Mum’s cooking fire. I felt like I was sitting at the table now, with an illustration I had never seen before and only a few of the pieces, trying desperately to fit them together.

  I settled back against the tree and did my best to sleep, but I couldn’t. Every time I nearly drifted off, I would jerk awake, terrified at the prospect of finding another deadman with his hands around my throat. In my nightmares, all the deadmen were people I knew. At last, my dreams consumed me, and I fell into a troubled sleep.

  In my dreams, I wandered through a forest made of clouds. I followed the sounds of Banash’s music until I found her sitting on a cloud-rock. Her eyes were obscured by a metal visor. Before her was a pool of beautifully clear water with rainbow-hued fish swimming serenely through it.

  When Banash noticed me, she stopped playing and smiled in my direction. The fife floated beside her, its haunting melody continuing to pour over the grove.

  “Izayik,” she said. Her tone was warm and inviting. She seemed friendly enough. Why did Rath dislike her so?

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  Banash ignored my question. “Look at this pool,” she said. “Though the fish move, the surface is always still. They say this pool is made of the tears of the seraphim.” She gestured me forward. “Take a look.”

  I anxiously approached the water. The surface was smooth as ice. One of the fish stuck its lips above the surface, but not a single ripple distorted the perfect reflection. Curious, I crept nearer.

  In the pool, I saw a beautiful woman with long dark hair. She wore a delicate silver circlet on her head. As I watched, her image faded and was replaced with my own. Now I wore the circlet.

  “That circlet is the key,” Banash said.

  “The key to what?” I asked.

  Banash pointed at the pool. I saw myself standing, pitchfork in hand, before a large set of doors. The doors shimmered with a bluish energy.

  “The answers you seek lie beyond those doors,” Banash said. “You must obtain your mother’s circlet if you are ever to fulfill your true potential. Only you have the power to retrieve it.”

  In the pool, I handed my pitchfork away and approached the doors. I traced a circle in the air. Inside the circle, I traced three intersecting lines. I clapped my hands, and the symbol appeared on each of my palms. The symbol I had drawn appeared on the door. It began to spin. First slowly, then faster. I placed my palms on the doors. My body glowed with a silver light. The energy over the doors dissipated, and I swooned.

  “Why me?” I asked, looking up from the pool.

  “You possess a rare and powerful energy called sys. The seal on these doors is made of that same energy,” Banash explained. “You can remove the seal. Anyone else who touches it will die.”

  Banash plucked the fife from the air. Its haunting music stopped. “You have a dangerous journey ahead of you,” she said. “Many are counting on your success. I want you to take this with you.” She held the fife out to me. “If you ever find yourself in danger, play a single note on this instrument, and I will come to your aid.”

  I took the fife from her. “I already have a guardian,” I said.

  “There may come a time when Roth-Scheen will not be able to save you,” she said. Roth-Scheen? There was that name again, the one my father and Shyronn used for Rath.

  “Rath won’t abandon me,” I said. “He can’t. He has to protect me. Unless—” I looked up at Banash with alarm.

  “Everyone dies, Izayik,” she said.

  I awoke with a start when Mel shifted beside me. It had only been a dream. How strange. It felt so real.

  I lifted my hand to rub my eyes — and froze.

  I still held Banash’s fife in my hand.

  I stared in disbelief at the fife. Where had it come from? I looked up and around, but there was no sign of Banash anywhere. Frowning, I stowed the fife in a deep pocket of my jacket and joined Rath by the fire.

  He sat with his one leg bent in front of him, holding a small mirror in one hand. He had wiped away the blood and dirty makeup with a rag. Now he held what looked like white chalk, which he was using to draw on his face.

  I sat on the ground next to him and watched the shadows the
fire cast upon the ground. They were like gyrating spirits with their arms flung in the air. Were these shadows dancing with joy or writhing in agony?

  “Rath?” I asked after a moment. “What is sys?” I hoped he would just talk to me instead of keeping a tally of my questions.

  Rath traced the bottom of his eye with the chalk, then dragged it down onto his dark cheek. I watched with fascination. Rath barely needed the mirror. He worked with quick precision, then stowed the mirror and makeup away and turned his attention to me.

  “Once, long ago,” he said, “the world was full of reapers. They preyed on the weak and devoured the souls of the dying. The world lived in fear.”

  With a stick, he drew a figure in the sand. It wore a cloak and carried a scythe and had two wings sprouting from its back. It looked just like the man I had seen in the pool’s reflection.

  “These reapers used a power called sys. With it, they were able to draw a spirit from a dying body and devour it. Your mother had sys.”

  “And you think I have this power?” I asked, horrified.

  Maybe I hadn’t wanted to know this.

  “I have already seen you draw a spirit from its body.”

  “But I didn’t eat it!”

  “Good,” Rath said. “Let’s keep it that way.”

  I couldn’t tell whether or not he was joking.

  “The opposite of sys is vala, the power of life.” Rath drew another figure, a simple drawing of a man that I recognized immediately. Seraph Alaudrin. There was a statue of him in the town square in Hazeldown. My mum kept a carving of him by the hearth. It was one of her most prized possessions. He was a tall figure dressed in robes, usually depicted holding a gilded egg in his cupped hands. But his most striking feature was the six white wings that sprouted from his back.

  “Seraph Alaudrin,” I said.

  Rath nodded, his gaze lingering on the crude drawing. “The seraphim were the protectors of mankind. They were miracle workers, wish granters, peace bringers. The power they used was called vala. Vala can heal, soothe, make desires manifest. When they disappeared from this world, mankind inherited a portion of their abilities through the Insurgent’s Armor. And through my people. I suppose the same goes for the reapers and their sys, though your gift is much rarer.”