Wicked As You Wish

by Rin Chupeco

  “I’ve seen him fight many times before,” Zoe admitted grudgingly. “He didn’t summon any nightwalkers, but he’s just as good as Tristan.”

  “Zoe’s fiancé,” West reminded Tala.

  “He’s not my fiancé.”

  Ken snorted. “They say the Nottinghams can talk to wolves almost from birth too. He’s always been a prat, and Dad says William Nottingham’s the same way. Always looking down his nose at everyone else. Zoe starts screeching like a barn owl every time she’s forced to share a class with him.”

  Zoe glared at him.

  “With good reason,” Ken hastily amended. “Nottingham being her fiancé’s mortal enemy and all.”

  “For the last time, he is not my fiancé.”

  “Father said the Nottinghams dabble in the darker magicks,” West said. “But Uncle Hiram seems to think they’re all right.”

  “His castle’s pretty isolated,” Ken pointed out. “Heck, the whole country’s been isolated. I don’t think he knows much about what goes on beyond his borders anymore.”

  “Well, I’d rather not start pointing fingers,” Zoe said. “Not without evidence, and no matter what the Dame said.”

  “I want to go faster,” Alex said abruptly. They had left the woods and were now riding across wide plains, the snow piled nearly as high as their horses’ knees. He pointed at something in the distance. “That’s a village, isn’t it?”

  “We need to be careful, Your Highness,” Zoe cautioned. “We don’t know what’s in there.”

  “Of course I know what’s in there!” Alex exploded. “It’s a damn village! There’ll be people in it!”

  “Alex!” Tala admonished.

  “We’ll take a look if you’d like,” Zoe agreed. “But be careful where you put your horse’s hooves down. Loki told me earlier that they’d seen evidence of tra—”

  Alex leaned forward and dug his heels into his horse’s sides. The startled stallion bolted forward, straight on toward the hill.

  Ken swore furiously and took off after him, Loki close behind. “Stop!” the boy commanded, in a loud strident voice, and Alex’s steed obeyed, halting abruptly in its tracks and remaining perfectly still.

  “That fool!” Zoe burst out furiously.

  Both Ken’s and Loki’s horses had caught up to Alex; after a minute, Ken was leading them back to the group. Alex’s horse was obedient, but its rider was fuming. He tugged hard at the reins, trying to turn back, but the stallion refused to listen.

  “What are you doing?” Zoe snapped.

  “Don’t take that tone with me,” Alex shot back. “I’m your liege! You’re supposed to obey me!”

  “Sure. But until we reach Lyonesse, we’re in charge. Your safety is our responsibility, and that includes deciding where and when to move. Look around you, Your Highness. What do you see?”

  “An open field. Snow on the ground isn’t going to kill me.”

  “No, but what’s been lying underneath the snow will. Loki found baited traps near the woods. There’s not a lot of animals here anymore, but that doesn’t mean people have retrieved their snares. Your horse could have stumbled onto one and broken its leg. Worse, it could have thrown you off, or even trampled you to death if it was spooked enough.”

  “The villagers are my subjects,” Alex seethed. “They’ve waited twelve years for me to push back this winter.”

  “Your High—”

  “They’re my subjects!” the prince shouted. “I’m supposed to protect them! We were all supposed to protect them! I’m not going to let them wait another hour more!”

  “Alex!” Tala yelled.

  The boy stopped; his breath came in rapid bursts, his eyes dilated. “I can’t do this,” he spat out around gritted teeth. “I can’t… Being here in Avalon, seeing what she did to my kingdom. The destruction, the complete apathy of nearly everyone else outside of it, the absence of everything that I remember…I can’t.”

  “Your Highness,” Zoe tried again. “I understand, but we have to make sure you—”

  “Maybe if you’d used the time you spent dating a Locksley to come up with a better escape plan instead, we wouldn’t even be in this mess,” Alex snapped.

  “That was uncalled for, Alex!” Tala burst out while Zoe looked shocked.

  Alex turned away, stalking toward a nearby withered tree. The firebird poked its head out of the bag, watching him leave before turning beseeching eyes toward the group.

  “He’s still not taking being in Avalon well, I’m guessing,” West said.

  “I’m sorry,” Tala said. “I don’t know why he’s being an idiot.”

  “It’s okay,” Zoe said quietly. “He hasn’t set foot here since he was a child, and it’s giving rise to a lot of emotions he might not be ready for yet.”

  From the direction of the tree came a long howl of frustration and anger, followed swiftly by a loud bone-cracking thump.

  Tala groaned, struggling to get off her horse. “Look, let me talk to him. I’ve known him longer, and he’ll listen to me. I hope.”

  “Thanks,” Ken said. “But you’re staying,” he informed the firebird, who looked primed to follow.

  The firebird scowled and bleated.

  “Hey, don’t take that tone with me. You might be some legendary creature of myth, but you gotta learn to give people their privacy.”

  Alex was still nursing his hand, glaring at the tree like it had punched him first when Tala approached. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I lost my head back there.”

  “Yeah, and you’ll be losing more things if you don’t rein in your temper. Let me see if you broke it.”

  “It’s not,” he muttered, but allowed her a look. The knuckles were tinged blue, the rest of his fist reddened, but that seemed the extent of it. Alex was still staring out into the distance, at the faint silhouette of the village up ahead.

  “Do you really want to go and see what’s happened to it?” Tala asked gently.

  Alex’s lips twisted. “I do and I don’t. The count’s right. I…don’t know what I’m going to find there. I don’t want to be here, Tally.”

  “But I thought the whole purpose was to come back?”

  “Not like this. I wanted to come back as a liberator, leading an army with a bag full of spells that could beat back the frost and lift the curse. Not like this. Not like some vagabond who got past the barrier because of some unexpected fluke.” Alex’s tone was desperate. “How can I face any survivors here and tell them I still don’t have the answers?”

  Tala squeezed his arm. “I don’t know as much about this as you or my parents or Lola Urduja do, but they’re a lot cleverer than us. If they or the Cheshire had gone years without knowing how to break the curse, then I think liberation is gonna take a lot longer than you think. It could be decades before we would have found a way in. Maybe the firebird brought us here for a reason. Maybe this is how we get to free them.”

  Alex looked down at his hand. “Wanna know the irony? I’ve never met the Cheshire. All our communications have been through encrypted, untraceable software he’s given me. He’s been responsible for keeping me alive for this long. I don’t know if I can do this on my own without his advice.”

  “We’re not exactly the Cheshire, but if it’s any consolation, you’ve got us.”

  “Yeah. I’ve got you. I want to get to Maidenkeep. That’s it. Once we get to Maidenkeep, I can fix everything.”

  “How?”

  “Just trust me on this, okay?” A pause. “You know, there was an ancestor of mine, Queen Talia, that was hit by a death curse once. Her priestesses couldn’t undo it, so they mitigated it instead, changed it into a sleeping curse to buy them enough time to find a cure. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do, trying to mitigate all the damage here that I can see.”

  “You also have to accept that you might no
t be able to, though.”

  “I know.” He hesitated again. “Sorry. I’m gonna go apologize. But we’re going to that village. If I have to be here, then at least let me see with my own eyes what the people here had suffered through for my family.”

  * * *

  They didn’t stay long. What few houses had survived the storm were locked inside blocks of ice, frozen completely solid.

  It was so cold that it looked like the people were only sleeping. The frost had come upon them almost a dozen years ago, Tala thought, but it could have just been yesterday.

  Zoe stifled a sob. “She’s going to pay,” Ken said tersely, fiercely. “She has to.”

  Carefully, Alex stepped past the fallen bodies. He stopped before a young girl who couldn’t have been more than three years old, layers of snow piling around her like a shroud. He bent down and gently brushed a wayward lock of hair from her forehead. When he took his hand away and stood again, something sparkled down his fingers and traced their way down the young girl’s face, like tiny snowflakes.

  “Is there anything around,” he said, “that could be used as a shovel?”

  It took a few hours. Alex had refused to bury them completely, insisted on leaving their faces and chests exposed. It was an odd request, but as it wouldn’t change anything, nobody protested. When Cole was done hefting the last of the snow into place, Alex glanced wearily at the unmoving figures on the ground, carefully tucked into the layers of snow. The firebird folded itself onto his shoulder and watched him, cooing softly. Alex reached up without thinking and patted it on the neck.

  “It was quick,” Loki said somberly. “No pain. They didn’t spend years slowly starving to death.”

  “It’s something, right?” Ken asked. “Guys, tell me it’s at least something.”

  Loki bowed their head, tears unashamedly falling. Zoe was still crying, and Tala dashed angrily at her eyes with the back of her hand.

  West sat beside one of the small graves, lifted his head to the sky, and sang mournfully for a while, in a language Tala didn’t need to understand. He had a beautiful voice and it seemed, if only for a moment, that the falling snow around them was tempered, halting long enough to listen.

  When the song ended, Alex turned. His face was wet with tears.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  20

  In Which Ice Wolves Are a Literal Concept

  They were moving at a quicker pace by midafternoon, stopping only for a quick snack of bread, cheese, and several slices of ham from their food packs. The mood was somber after they’d left the village, and nobody talked much.

  “It’s different, seeing it for yourself, isn’t it?” Ken asked, finally breaking the silence. “They don’t teach us to deal with stuff like this.”

  “We have to keep following the map until we reach Lyonesse,” Zoe said, her eyes still red. “It’s the only thing we can do.”

  They saddled up again, and Tala clung to Lass’s neck as if her life depended on it. The mare never lost her steady pace, though, and Ken rode closely beside her to head off unexpected accidents. Gradually, Tala grew accustomed to the speed and sat up straighter in her saddle as time passed.

  The snow went on for miles and by the time they stopped for the night several hours later, Tala felt like every inch of skin on her legs above the knee had been sanded off.

  “Chin up,” Zoe said kindly, as she helped her off Lass. Tala’s feet felt strange and rubbery, and the best she could manage was an irritated penguin’s waddle as they steered her toward the campsite the others were setting up, the firebird burning through the layers of snow on the ground to provide a small clearing for them. Loki and Ken were hard at work, gathering the tree branches they’d accumulated during the journey and stacking them up for a campfire. “Loki says it’s only a couple more days to reach the nearest village.”

  “You must all travel a lot,” Tala said, trying to take her mind off the stinging.

  “Not really,” West admitted. “We’re not a target like Alex, but we can’t go ’round attracting attention either.”

  “West,” Zoe warned.

  “Oh. Is this what you said was a foe paw? Am I doing a foe paw again?”

  “West.”

  “It’s all right,” Alex said, watching the firebird clear out more space. “I am a target.” He managed a brief smile. “At least most of them can’t get to me from inside Avalon, right? How’s that for ironic?”

  Alex had been subdued ever since they started riding again, and Tala had decided to leave him be, knowing very little could bring him out of his low spirits at this point. That he was attempting a joke was a good sign.

  Loki drew out their staff. A quick flick and it extended dozens of feet up, knocking off snow in the overhead branches.

  “That’s a useful weapon,” Tala noted.

  “My dad thought so too,” they said, expertly clearing the next few branches. “The Suns have had it for years.”

  “They’re gonna be a ranger like both their fathers too,” Ken said. “The Sun-Wagners are the best scouts in the business. They probably know the trails of every national park in Canada like the back of their hands.”

  Loki shot Ken a startled glance, and then looked down at their own hands.

  “Never mind, Loki.”

  “I’m guessing it wouldn’t work if I wielded it?” Tala asked curiously.

  “It wouldn’t work for anyone not a Sun-Wagner,” they admitted. “But this one’s different. The legends around it say the Ruyi Jingu Bang has a sentience of its own and may occasionally allow someone they like to wield it.” They gave a few experimental swipes with the staff and grinned. “Guess it likes me.”

  “That’s the exception more than the rule, though.” Ken drew his bright sword. “See for yourself. Here, swing it around.”

  The weight nearly sent Tala through the ground. It felt like carrying Lass would have been the easier option. Ken swiftly retrieved the sword, helping her back to her feet with a sheepish grin.

  “How can you even carry that?” she sputtered.

  “Because it feels light in my hands, but damn heavy in anyone else’s. Only someone with Inoue blood can carry them, and sometimes that doesn’t even work. Dad was the first Inoue in a long while to be able to use the Yawarakai-te, and I’m the same. Swords from other families will be too cold for me to touch, or too hot or, I dunno, poison me if I’m not from their lineage. You practically can’t make segen like these anymore. Takes too much sacrifice nowadays for anyone to willingly give up.” Ken slid the sword back into the scabbard strapped to his back. “This other sword, though, the Juuchi Yosamu, is a curse that I gotta carry around, because only the people who can use the Yawarakai-te can use the Juuchi safely, so don’t touch it.”

  “Why?”

  “Remember that dude who went wild on his fellow ICE agents on the way to the sanctuary? The last dude before him to pick up that sword wound up killing seven people. He said it told him to.”

  Tala stared at him.

  “You’d think that’s enough of a deterrent for others not to seek it out, but somehow it’s not. Weird, huh?”

  “And…you’re supposed to carry them both around?”

  “The Inoues are immune to whatever malicious thrall the sword casts on people, so we gotta keep it close by. Every now and then we use it to cut down things the Yawarakai-te can’t. But some ancestors have been known to succumb to the curse if they use it too often.”

  “The Yawarakai-te looks pretty sharp to me.”

  “Really? Watch this.” Nonchalantly, Ken drew out the bright sword again.

  “Ken,” Zoe said, “don’t you dare start that up again with—”

  The boy stuck his leg out and cheerfully swung the blade at it.

  “What are you doing?!” Tala shrieked, but the sword glanced harmlessly off his knee.<
br />
  “The Yawarakai-te won’t cut any living thing. Well, any living thing that isn’t a nightwalker, but—”

  “Couldn’t you have shown me some another way?”

  “Sorry, he’s a butthole,” Zoe said sourly. “He’s pulled that stunt on everyone here too.”

  They built their shelter underneath a thin copse of trees as night set in. Loki dragged over several large leaves for bedding, while Cole and Ken set up tents for the girls. Zoe took out the cornucopia. “You guys don’t mind me coming up with the menu tonight?”

  “Depends on what you’re gonna be bringing out of that,” Ken disagreed.

  “Let’s see.” Zoe reached in and came out with a plate of varying cheeses. “Oh, damn,” she said.

  “This is not the time for haute cuisine, Zoe.”

  “I wasn’t trying to bring up cheeses. I was thinking about sandwiches.”

  “Won’t work,” West said cheerfully. “Uncle told me that the cornucopia only produces its user’s favorite food.”

  “Would have appreciated learning about this earlier, West.”

  “Your favorite food is cheese?” Ken edged closer and then blanched, holding a hand up to his nose. “Your favorite food is stinky cheese?”

  “It’s called Époisses de Bourgogne,” Zoe said testily.

  “It smells like used diapers!”

  “You grew up on a farm. How is this any worse?”

  “I didn’t have to eat anything that contributed to barnyard stench until after it’d been properly washed and cooked!”

  “It tastes better than it smells! Besides, we can’t let this go to waste. Cheese is cheese.”

  “It’s also not very nourishing, and we’re only a day out. Look, give it to me.” Ken dug his hand down into the cornucopia and began rooting around like there were ingredients inside it to find. “You want good food, I’ll show you good food.”