Seven Ways to Kill a King

by Melissa Wright

  Cass led her to the door, but carefully moved Miri aside before he let go to open the sturdy affair. His glance was sharp and met briefly by the barkeep, then it softened as it returned to Miri. They walked in quietly, took a table by the wall, and were met immediately by a middle-aged waitress with warm amber skin.

  “Welcome to the Silverton Inn. What’ll you have?”

  “Food and a room,” Cass answered.

  A clatter and thud came at the back entrance, followed by a curse in a young boy’s tone. The waitress didn’t even glance over her shoulder. “That’ll be your bags, then. I’ll be sure to have them settled carefully into your room.”

  The woman turned from the table and made a comment to another patron as Miri’s gaze slid over the room. The place was large and open, poorly lit for the late afternoon but stocked with candles and lanterns that would likely be burned come suppertime. They’d made good time, probably because of Miri’s insistence that they need not stop for regular breaks, and had beat the evening crowd. Cass had assured her the inn was not usually full, but Miri could tell the space had held its share of travelers. Empty tankards, stacked upside down and right-side up, lined the back bar. The tables were dark wood, thick, heavy planks stained with age and scarred from use. Chairs and stools scattered the space, and a large fireplace filled half of the back wall, charred marks crawling away from it toward the ceiling and across the floor.

  “Someplace you’ve been often?” Miri asked.

  “On occasion.”

  Her gaze snapped to his at the evasion she heard behind the words.

  He sighed. “I’ve been working for the harbormaster, on and off. Sometimes his business takes me north.”

  He’d had a job. She kept forgetting that, losing the idea that the few who were left of the queensguard, like her, had to hide as well and pretend.

  “It wasn’t that bad.” His voice was low, the words an apology, and Miri tried to clear her face of whatever it showed.

  “Of course,” she said. Of course.

  The waitress returned with two mugs and a carafe of water. “We’ve a spring out back,” she said. “Or, if you’d like, warm mead. At supper, the boys’ll be bringing in some brandy sharp enough to shave your face.”

  Cass smiled at her. “Water for now. But maybe we’ll be down for a late dinner to partake in the brandy.”

  The woman wiggled her eyebrows at Miri while wiping a hand on her apron. “It burns, but don’t I recommend it, though. Stuff’ll make you forget your manners and shout at the rafters.” The woman gave Miri a solid pat on her shoulder as she turned and whooped a call toward the ceiling. Somehow, it made Miri feel more at ease.

  “Do you drink, Cass?”

  His eyes moved to the barkeep, a barrel-chested man with gray streaking his beard. “Not when I’m working.” Cass leaned back, drawing his hands from the table as the waitress settled a platter of food on it.

  “Thank you,” Miri offered, but the woman was already headed toward the muffled shouting in the back room. It sounded like a delivery of some sort.

  Cass purposefully picked up his knife to spear a hunk of meat. “Eat, Bean,” he said.

  The reminder immediately drew Miri back, and she settled her shoulders into the casual posture of a trader. It wasn’t difficult after a long day’s ride. They’d spent the previous night huddled against a low embankment. Cass had forgone a fire because of their proximity to the town, and though it was well past spring, Miri had felt the chill of the earth through her thin blanket. She’d slept fitfully most of her life, so that was nothing new, but she was certainly ready for rest in a real bed.

  When they finally climbed the narrow stairs to their room, Miri had the sinking feeling the inn was built more for drinking than for rest. Cass turned sideways to pass through the hallway, his palm resting against the handle of a blade at his hip. They ducked through the door into a room that was a few yards wide and held little more than a cot, a side table, and a wash basin. Miri stepped past Cass as he bolted the door, then she climbed onto the bed to peer out the small window into the darkening trees. A few figures shifted between the stable and the inn, and Miri made out the form of a tall, slender man in a dark cloak. She wondered if it was the queensguard who’d yanked her out of the barrel only days before and how many were left. Six? Ten? The kingsmen had been sniffing them out for years, rabid dogs in search of the last scraps of meat.

  Miri turned to ask Cass whether her mother’s men had followed and if more were at watch, but Cass had drawn a cloak from their packs and was settling it onto the floor. Miri glanced beneath her at the muddy boots that stood in her bed, and her lips went tight. She was fairly certain the bed was only wide enough for one in any case, but when Cass lay flat on the uneven wood planks between the bed and the wall, she said, “You’ve slept far less than me. Take the bed for now, and we’ll switch later.”

  He’d been staying up watching her. She knew full well that it had not been as safe in the woods as it felt.

  Cass stared up at her, his expression disproportionately harried. He was in need of a good shave but otherwise did not appear to weather the outdoors as poorly as she did. His clothes did not look especially well made but were not as rumpled and stained as hers. She’d been a mess since she’d met him, and his mouth had been twisted into similar expressions nearly the entire time.

  Miri squatted on the bed, coming closer to hear muffled words. Cass wasn’t preparing to sleep. He was eavesdropping. “What is it?” she whispered.

  He frowned at her, and she closed her lips, sliding farther down to lie on her stomach, her hair spilling over the side of the bed. The mattress smelled faintly of hay and sweat beneath a hefty dose of lavender. Miri pressed her chin into her shirt, lifting the material to cover her nose.

  Cass snorted quietly. Their faces were close as they both listened to the voices rising from below.

  “Sixteen strong, they was, sorcerers demanding blood for the kings.”

  “No, I tell you, they took the miller’s daughter and three from the orphanage outside of Pirn.”

  They were stealing women and children for blood rites to pay for the magic the kings spent like water from a spring. Blood was blood. It didn’t matter whether it came from a child or an elder, a woman or a man. The sorcerers chose by fetish, not need. There was only one person whose blood was stronger, and that was the queen. Her fate was tied to her people’s and to long-ago bindings.

  Someone with a lower voice made mention of the kingsmen in Smithsport, but the sound was overtaken by the rattle of carriage wheels outside. Miri’s eyes met Cass’s in the dim light from the window. She wasn’t entirely certain how much danger they were truly in.

  She lowered the material from her face and whispered, “Why now?”

  Cass’s expression betrayed nothing, which meant there must be something hidden beneath. If there’d been no talk of the kingsmen’s plans, he could have said.

  The why now echoed in her thoughts because it had not just been the kings who’d decided to move. Miri had left as well. She meant to save Thom and Nan from danger, of course, but they’d been in danger before. They’d had close calls and near misses many times over the years. This time had been different. Miri knew why, in a place locked deep within her heart. She’d only been avoiding it and denying the truth.

  It was the festival of moons. It was her sister’s name day. She would be turning the age that an heir could take command of her own guard, and she could be free to choose a husband, should she wish, to begin her duties of a second-in-command. It was Lettie.

  Miri’s fingers curled into a ball against her chest. She felt the pain as if she’d been stabbed, as if summoning the name had drawn a dagger from thin air and plunged it through her heart, or as if a sorcerer had stolen her blood.

  Miri tucked her chin and rolled to her back, unable to breathe. Lettie would be celebrating her twentieth name day in a dungeon or a cell—or however they held her. Miri could not be brought to imagine
the things her sister’s captors had done. She could not know because the kings who had exploited every weakness in the queen’s defenses had taken great pains to avoid information getting out about how the queen’s heir was held. As king, Nicholas had gone as far as to lock his servants in the keep to prevent a single secret from escaping. And at the festival of moons, Leticia Alexander, tall and thin, stunning in her beauty even as a child, would turn from princess to active member of her royal line, and the kings who had slaughtered their mother would be forced to kill her too—to remove her from succession and quell any last supporters who still held to the old ways.

  “They’ll do it at the festival,” Miri whispered to the air above her bed. “They’ll drag her into the square dressed in Lion silks. They’ll draw her braid behind her shoulder and wrap her wrists in leather and chains.”

  She felt the stillness of Cass and that he did not seem to even draw breath. She wished she’d never spoken, but she couldn’t seem to stop. The kings were only holding Lettie hostage to use as leverage against the sorcerers who were tied to queen’s blood. Once she rose into her full power as heir, Lettie would have to be removed from their game.

  “They’ll kill the others first to make her watch as her people—our people—are tortured for their crimes. For being loyal to a true heir. For being loyal to the throne.” Miri swallowed against the lump in her throat, unable to keep the images at bay. She could imagine the unhealed lash marks, the torn fabric, and the open wounds, festering from too long being untreated and from the filth of a prison cell. She could hear their screams and the rage in her sister’s tone. Leticia was a Lion, regardless of her caramel hair and sharp features. But ferocity would not save her against the seven kings—not against sorcery and deceit. “They’ll wait for her and leave her until the festival’s dawn. As the sun rises on the square, when the revelers are slow with drink and no longer care, they’ll drive a spike into her neck. They will let her bleed out and let her life drain slowly onto the marble steps that honor the queens before.” Miri closed her eyes. “Did you know that? Did you realize that by that day’s dawn, Lettie will be queen?”

  She would no longer be a princess or an heir.

  Their mother had been murdered. Lettie was next.

  Chapter 6

  Miri’s words had finally ceased, and she’d fallen asleep with the sound of Cass’s sharp intake of breath echoing through her mind. Cass had known her family. He had been raised as a bloodsworn, highest of the queensguard, taken in as a boy, and situated nearer to her family than anyone else. Henry, head of that guard, would have felt like a father to Cass, and the Lion Queen was the most vital part of his life.

  Duty, honor, and reverence—Cass would have been taught that his life was forfeit for that queen and for any of them. Her mother’s word was law. The queensguard motto swam in Miri’s memory: Ever faithful.

  It was true, even now. The Lion Queen was dead, one daughter was in chains, and the other was in hiding, and the queensguard still stood by their oath. She would remember that and remember that Cass had lost too.

  Miri and Cass had been trained in the art of cunning and war, but it had not prepared them for the torment of grief, trauma, and true loss. Lettie had been trained to be queen, her skills more specific to negotiation and strategy, but she had not had Nan to watch over her since their mother’s death. She did not have the guard. Lettie would have no one.

  Miri opened her eyes to the narrow room at the Silverton inn. A faint orange glow was just beginning to tint the glass. She would not leave her sister to die at the hands of those kings or be strung out on the Stormskeep square. She might not have had the power to reach Lettie while she was trapped inside the secure walls of the castle keep with the sorcerers’ bindings in place for the past several years, but the moment they brought her out, Miri would set her sister free, even if it caused the death of them both and even if those deaths had to be by her own hand.

  She turned to find Cass leaned against the wall on the floor beside her, his knee drawn up and knife in hand. He was spinning the blade between his fingers, mindlessly shifting the pattern in which it spun. His fingers stilled at Miri’s attention, and Cass slid the dagger into a sheath near his boot.

  “You don’t have to wait for me,” she said, minding the level of her voice. If they’d heard the others below the night before, surely their own conversation would carry. “You can wake me anytime. I’m not a queen.”

  His expression was flat, but a reply waited beneath.

  “Say it,” she told him. “I’ll not have you biting your tongue to spare my feelings.”

  He shook his head. Miri lifted to an elbow, giving him a level stare. Cass sighed.

  “What are you playing at, Miri? You know we’ll never get past the guards. You know we can’t just waltz into the nearest castle and—” He made a vague gesture Miri supposed meant kill a king then shrugged a shoulder. “We should return to Smithsport. You should get on that ship and sail to somewhere safe.”

  Any grace he’d earned by his pained breath the night before was forgotten. Miri leaned close. “My sister is captive to those murderous bastard kings. If you think, for one moment, I prize my safety over hers—” Her words cut off at his look, because Miri knew all too well the sacrifice Cass was willing to make. He’d only wanted to save her and make her see that the path she was taking would be the death of them all. “I release you from your duty,” she said.

  Cass’s brow lowered dangerously.

  “If you don’t want to help me, then go. It’s better to find out here and be done with it. I’m more than willing to do this alone.”

  He shifted so near that his breath brushed her skin. His words were a quiet vow. “I do not answer to you, Princess. My duty is to the queen. Her word is my law.”

  The way he’d said “princess” felt like a slap—or worse, like he’d been calling her Bean, like she was nothing and she had no control of what he would do.

  He was right, and she knew it, and the notion made searing heat fill her chest. She wanted to roar like her sister and scream and tear. His eyes flicked over her face and caught the flare of her nostrils and the color in her cheeks. She hated him for it. She hated everything.

  Her fingers curled into her palms, and voice cold, she said, “I have traveled the seven kingdoms since the year I was born. I know every palace. I know every route. I have insight and reason, and I’m good with a sword.” She knew those kings—the men who’d killed her mother—with a familiarity that hurt. Her eyes cut into Cass’s, and the room took on an eerie early-morning glow. “I will tell you what else, Cassius of Stormskeep. I will die with my hands covered in king’s blood. And I will die more satisfied than any fool who escapes to the sea.”

  His jaw went tight at the way she’d said his name, but Cass only inclined his head. “As you say,” he whispered. His dark eyes grazed hers as he made to stand. “And so we ride into death together.”

  Cass had not returned to their rooms for nearly an hour, so long that Miri had begun to wonder if he’d abandoned her. Maybe he’d decided she was a fool after all. She wasn’t surprised. It did seem like a daunting affair, even to her. But Miri could do nothing else. She had no other option.

  A light knock came at the door, and she hesitated, wondering whether she should hide or answer. The room was small, and quite suddenly, she felt trapped. Her hand settled on the dagger at her belt, but the voice of the person that called through the door was soft and feminine.

  “Good morning, miss. Your husband asked that I should offer you breakfast. Would you like to come down or sup in your room?”

  Miri stood to cross the room, which took fewer than half a dozen steps, and drew the door open a crack. At first glance, she thought her visitor was the waitress from the night before, but the woman’s hair was a bit lighter and a bit shorter, and she wore a large brass ring through her ear.

  “Thank you,” Miri said, opening the door wider to take a cake from the plate. “This is plenty,
but I would like a bath.”

  The woman smiled, and a mischievous twinkle lit her eye. “Of course you do.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “You go on down. Bathing room is by the kitchen—second door—and I’ll wrap some of these cakes up for you to go. The boy’s readying your horses.”

  “Thank you,” Miri said again, and the woman winked as she turned.

  Miri stared after her for a moment then gathered her things to go below. The inn felt empty, and Miri wondered if Cass had chosen it because of that or if his surreptitious glances at the barkeep had kicked off an elaborate scheme. She remembered traveling as a child and how the guard would arrange for places to be emptied of staff, citizens, and anyone the guard might not be able to easily control. She didn’t think Cass had that kind of power, but the new kings had been brutal, and Miri knew that many more secret loyalists were about than anyone would willingly admit. The kings who had been lords had not garnered love and support from the territories they’d once been tasked with overseeing.

  Miri’s bare feet were quiet on the narrow stair. The only sounds were the muffled horse calls from the stables and a clatter from the kitchen. She crossed in front of the doorway to the kitchen, glancing in to see a massive, window-filled space, a wide iron stove, and counters covered in flour, pots, and bowls. Two women stood before a counter, backs to the door, as they kneaded dough, and the barrel-chested man stood by the windows, a steaming cup on the sill before him. None of them seemed to notice her. Soon the inn would be filled with the inviting scent of freshly baked bread and the sting of lye.

  Miri turned into the next doorway and glanced toward the hallway behind her as she followed the thin wooden door into the room. When she pushed it closed behind her, she heard the sound of something small being dropped into water. She spun, abruptly aware she was not alone.