War of the Princes 03: Monarch

by A. R. Ivanovich

  “And had I not been your friend, you would have tried to kill me like all the rest. It doesn't exactly exonerate you, does it?” He studied me, like a hawk looking down on its prey.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Enter,” Varion called out. When he broke eye contact with me, I felt as though a smothering weight had been lifted off of me.

  Lord Deasun strode into the room wearing a red and gold doublet befitting his noble station. “Your Highness, I– good day Miss Kestrel.” Two Hussars were with him, and one of them was Prie. She smiled at me, and I hoped that meant I wasn't in imminent danger. “Sir, I'm sorry to intrude, but I need your order on the matter of our prisoners. The gallows are full to the brim and it won’t be long before the Dragoons regain enough energy to attempt escape.”

  “If Raserion didn't drain all of the men I lose to him, I'd attempt a barter,” he said more to himself than to Deasun. “Execute the Dragoons. Remove the thumbs of the infantry and see to it that they're properly healed. They can be loaded on to the next trade ship and returned to the West to attest to the mercy of the North.”

  My nausea grew but I choked down my discomfort.

  “That is very generous of you, Highness. What shall I do with Headly?”

  “Deliver him a fine meal and a glass of poison. Be sure to include a warning label. I want him to remember what he did to Estra and Powel. On second thought, bring him here.”

  Deasun looked at his prince quizzically, but bowed anyway. “Yes, your Highness.” With his Hussars in tow, he left the room.

  When the door closed, it echoed across the marble floor.

  “You're going to cut off their thumbs?” I was appalled.

  “I have no other choice. If I set them free, they'll return to attack me again. There is no hope for the Dragoons. Execution is a mercy compared to what would await them, should their betters not promote them. Without thumbs, the infantry can at least return to their homes and families. They'll never lift a weapon again, but they'll be alive.”

  “Without thumbs they won’t be able to work either,” I pointed out.

  He raised an eyebrow. “So you'd sooner have them killed?”

  I searched for a middle ground but couldn't find one. “No.”

  The prince nodded and returned to his seat. “I knew Headly when he was a boy.” He spoke quietly, almost to himself. “I knew his father before him. I can hardly even fault him for his actions. I saw his ambitions grow. I could have tried to curb them, but I chose to trust him. I should have known better. People are helpless to the call to power. It latches on to them. Taints them.

  “There's a secret that you must never forget. Plant a seed of power and it will grow with or without you. It will take on its own life, catching onto your family, your friends, your peers– poisoning them against you. Everyone thinks that they'll be different when they have a chance to take your power for themselves; they'll be the first to do some good, but it never happens. Power will grind them up, one after the other, using the fallen as the fertilizer of its unending growth. Headly was my friend once, and for a longer period than I've known you. Friendship didn't stop him from attempting to steal my throne, just as it didn't stop Carmine from selling us to Raserion... or Dylan from giving you to Commander Stakes. Prince Raserion was my brother. The more powerful you are, the fewer people you can trust.”

  I knew why he was saying all of those things. He was still trying to determine whose side I was on. The attack on my sense of right and wrong offended me. “I didn't know what I'd do if I met Varion. He was nothing more than a frightening legend to me. I told myself it would depend on the kind of person he was. What I did know beyond reasonable doubt is that I would never do anything to hurt Kyle. Raserion could do his worst and I would never budge. Now go ahead, Prince, tell me if I'm lying.”

  He didn't accuse me, but he inclined his head. “I am Kyle.”

  “No, you're not. Kyle died at the red tavern.”

  His expression softened and he slid his hands into his pockets. “I'm the same person you knew, now there is simply... more.”

  “So, you're not going to execute me for treason?” I asked warily.

  “No.”

  He could call himself Kyle all day, but aside from his physical appearance, I just didn't see it. Those eyes weren't human.

  “Can I go now? I'd like to see Rune.”

  “I'm afraid that isn't possible.”

  “Why not? The Gateling took him over but you helped him after you helped me, didn't you?” Uneasiness began to burn my insides. “Didn't you?”

  “I never saw him. He must have left before I revived. My men combed the city but we were unable to find Carmine either. Since her ship had already been impounded, she was forced to flee without it.”

  “Rune is... is gone? That thing took him and he's gone?”

  “The invading force retreated before we could destroy their ships. We found no sign of him, or a Gateling. He's in Raserion's hands now.”

  Chapter 54: Epilogue

  Raining, raining, always raining. Sitting cross-legged on the smooth wooden floor, I stared blankly out of the pointed glass nose of the Flying Fish. Carmine wasn't at the helm shouting at us to remove Sadie from the forward cabins. Kyle wasn't below-deck, tinkering away at the engine. Sterling wasn't sitting on a cot, trying to forget about the rocking motion. Dylan wasn't playing cards and starting arguments. Rune wasn't painting in the cargo hold, or attempting a dozen other activities that he was unforgivably horrible at.

  It was just me.

  Now I knew why Carmine had been so afraid of Sadie. The Lurcher was the only one of us that she couldn't manipulate or control. That was why she'd shot her first. At least Sadie was alive. Unlike Kyle, she seemed no different following her resurrection. A second death had rekindled his memories, restoring him to the venerable prince that he was. Was it wrong for me to wish that he'd never remembered his former life? Was that selfish?

  My scarf was an orange swirl of battered thread draped over my lap. One end was jagged and frayed where Rune had cut it to bind my leg. How could I have ever been afraid of him? I’d wasted days lingering on the negative when I could have been appreciating him for all that he’d done for me.

  I drummed my fingers on the deck, idly directing the Pull to find Carmine and Rune in turns. They both pointed me seaward, out onto gray water that was dimpled by trillions of needles of rain. What good was my Ability if I was stranded?

  Through the Fish's walls, I listened to the tap of hammers as carpenters repaired the harbor district. The faint toll of ship's bells was intermittently musical. The gentle creek of the ship would have been soothing if it weren't so lonely.

  “Thank you for coming to find me,” a certain sarcastic voice said from the doorway.

  “Dylan!” Pushing myself up off the floor, I ran to him and threw my arms around his shoulders. “Gravity, I'm so glad you're alive.”

  He returned the embrace reluctantly and practically shoved me off of him. “Please get off me, you're embarrassing yourself… and wrinkling my shirt!” He paused to brush out the creases. “That was the warmest reception I've gotten from you in years. Makes it almost forgivable that you didn't go looking for me.”

  “I did. You were being treated. I told the nurses to tell you I'd be here. Prince Varion lifted the impound and said I could have it. Not much good it's doing me.”

  “Ah. Where else would you be than on the deck of the ship belonging to the treacherous hag that poisoned me?”

  “I didn’t know where else to go.” I paused, lost in a void of my own thoughts. What had happened between Kyle, Rune, Carmine and even Sadie was more than I could process. I felt as empty as the gray soldiers in Caraway. Somehow, I managed to return to the present. “I was sick too.”

  Dylan studied my face as though he was deciding whether to sympathize with me or not. “What a nice thing to have in common.”

  “What happened?”

  “I just told you, Carmi
ne poisoned me. What else matters?” He was being short with me, as usual.

  “Everything matters,” I hissed. The world was too dangerous, things were never as they seemed. I had to pay attention– I couldn’t take anything for granted ever again. “Every single detail.”

  He sighed like I’d asked him to perform some miserable chore. “I was walking down the hall night before last, when I noticed Carmine speaking to some men I'd never seen.”

  “You weren’t suspicious of that?”

  “I’ve always been suspicious of her,” he said sharply. “But I’m not exactly familiar with the people of Caraway and she is a Northerner. I doubt you would have done any better.”

  I frowned, knowing that he was right.

  “They concluded their business and left. I thought I'd compare her to a common streetwalker, you know, our usual variety of discourse, when she scratched me on the neck like a deranged hellcat.”

  “Then what happened?”

  He crossed his arms. “I’d rather spare you the details of my less than graceful reaction to a slow-killing poison, thank you very much.”

  “Yeah, that’s okay,” I agreed, unwilling to relive my own recent sickness.

  His eyes narrowed and he spoke with a quiet anger. “That aside, the next thing I knew, I was trussed up like a pig on a spit and dumped in a filthy storage closet. I would have died in the dark if someone hadn't come in the following day to search for weapons. Is that enough detail for you?”

  “You know,” I said, walking back toward the helm. “She told us you were the one speaking to suspicious strangers, then the West invaded and you were still missing. It sounded incriminating.”

  “And you believed her?” he sounded utterly disgusted with me.

  “I didn't know what to believe.” I took a moment to explain the details of the past thirty-six hours.

  Crossing his arms over his chest, Dylan gave me a look that could kill canaries. “What did I tell you about her?”

  I sighed. “You hate everyone, Dylan.”

  “What did I tell you? Come on, now. I want to hear you say it.”

  My shoulders slumped and I rolled my head back. “You were right about her.”

  Scarcely after the words had come out of my mouth, he sternly repeated the very same thing. “I was right about her. Tried to tell you, but no one wanted to listen. I play cards, dear Katelyn, I may not win often, but I play them. Believe me, I've used my looks to distract people to my own benefit on more than one occasion.”

  I had a feeling that was an understatement.

  “And she escaped,” he said through his teeth. “Unforgivable. None of this would have happened if I had been there, and you know it. Actually, in a way I'm flattered. I was the greatest danger, so she singled me out first.”

  “Greatest danger to yourself,” I mumbled.

  “Cheeky now are we?” He sat down in the pilot's chair and ran a thumb across the console. There was not so much as a speck of dust, and he nodded appreciatively. “So Kyle is the prince after all. I'm not certain I like the sound of that.”

  “Why?”

  “He's seen and heard everything we have. He's been where we've been. That's quite a bit of intelligence he's collected.”

  “He hasn't called back the ships to Breakwater.”

  Dylan looked relieved. “So some good came of all of this after all.”

  I looked out at the rain. “I'm sorry, Dylan.”

  “Apology accepted. What are you sorry about?”

  “I'm sorry that I thought that you could be the traitor. In the end, I figured out that it wasn’t you, but I wasted so much time considering it.”

  He pulled back his head in amazement and sat there blinking at me. The long quiet that followed suggested what I'd said had meant something to him. “It's alright. A year ago, I might have been.”

  Holding my arms at the elbows, I took another step toward the window and the endless gray that separated me from the person who I cared most for in the world. “Back at the tavern, Rune wouldn't let Carmine convince us to leave you behind. He said he would keep his promise.”

  “The Gateling might have tainted him,” Dylan said with more delicacy than he was known for. “He may not be the same person we knew.”

  “He was worried about that back in Breakwater before we left. He thought Margrave Hest had turned him into a Commander. I think his greatest fear was that the power would change him.”

  Power grows with or without you… just like Varion had said.

  “Like me,” he snorted.

  “The Gateling took him over, but there’s a chance he’s still in there. Just like there was a chance that you hadn’t turned against us and fled Caraway.”

  And now there’s nothing we can do for him.

  “Not so long ago, he despised me. I didn’t give him any reasons not to. What changed?”

  “He did. He doesn’t want to have enemies anymore. He’s tired of fighting.”

  Dylan brushed a long strand of blond hair out of his eyes and tapped his fist against his chin. “Alright. That settles that.”

  “What settles what?”

  Straightening himself out in the chair, he began flipping switches and turning knobs at the ship's controls. The Flying Fish's engine roared to life, and we bobbed on the water.

  “What are you doing?”

  Easing out of the slip, Dylan guided our hovership toward an open lane.

  “We're going to get Thayer.”

  I looked at him, waiting for him to announce that it was all a cruel joke at my expense, but he didn't. His hazel eyes were focused on the controls and he recited piloting rules under his breath. Steadily, he used his palm to push up the lever that controlled the power of the hover turbines. The floor hummed with vibration as we rose from the surface of the water.

  The harbor was a hazardous ruin of crumbled wharf-side buildings and half sunken ships, but Dylan picked the safest paths even as the rain obscured his view. We glided over every obstacle and raced down the canal of the Seagate. The moment we touched open sea, he flipped the switches that extended the Flying Fish's yardarms and unfurled the wing-like sails. As we sped swiftly away from land, my hope grew and my determination set my inner Spark abuzz with anticipation. We were going to find Rune.

  Dylan grinned. “I told you I was a good pilot.”

  A Note from the Author

  Firstly, I must take a moment to thank you for reading MONARCH, book three in the War of the Princes series! If you have a free moment or two, please leave a review for this book on Amazon.com. Reading, commenting, and reviewing really keeps indie-authors like me rolling! Your exuberant support means the world to me. With your help, Dragoon became Amazon.com’s #1 Best-selling Steampunk novel in the summer and fall of 2013. Thank you so much for sharing in this dream with me!

  Secondly, I know I’ve left you with a bit of a cliff-hanger, but rest assured, Katelyn’s journey is not over. There will be a fourth book!

  A. R. IVANOVICH enjoys being swallowed by forests, sleeping on lakes, and watching the sky. Her passion for writing is accompanied by a love of video games, painting, horseback riding and the subtle craft of nacho-making. A. R. regularly encourages those around her to follow their dreams no matter the obstacles, because, as she can attest, the rewards are more than worth the effort. She was raised in Hawaii, where she once again resides, with her husband and their extensive family of rescue pets.