Kings of the Wyld

by Nicholas Eames

  Besides Clay and his bandmates, there were several others in the hall as well. Servants bustled in and out of an arched doorway, clearing away dishes and setting down more as fast as the king and his guests could finish them. Soldiers stood at attention between the tall windows on one side of the room, and the queen’s personal guard cut an impressive figure standing a few feet behind her. A northman by the look of him, the same one who had appeared shirtless in the king’s bedchamber the night before. He was younger than Clay had first perceived, but seemed a capable sort, if a touch too handsome for his own good. His nose, like those of a great many Kaskars Clay had met, was hooked like a falcon’s beak, and his eyes had been rapturously fixed on Lilith all morning.

  Clay was fairly certain he was fucking the queen, which made her declaration just now all the more interesting.

  Moog broke the silence with a slow clap that left an even more uncomfortable silence in its wake.

  By then, at least, the king had managed to swallow both his pride and his pancake. “That’s … wonderful news, honey.”

  “Isn’t it?” Lilith’s grin was frosted with spite. “The augurs tell me it will be a boy. You’re going to have a new little brother,” she said, addressing the quintet of children seated along one side of the table.

  Clay watched each of them react in turn. The twin boys were the youngest; they simply giggled at each other and kept on eating. Lillian, whose nut-brown skin contrasted the vibrant blue of her eyes, looked unimpressed, probably dreading the prospect of yet another brother to harass her. The fat one, Kerrick, wore a look of surprise. His jaw had dropped so low Clay could see the food still in his mouth. The oldest, Danigan, red-haired and freckled, simply nodded without looking up.

  “But I don’t want another brother,” said Kerrick.

  “Neither do I,” Lillian added her voice in protest.

  Their mother regarded them coolly. “Well I didn’t want to give birth to a twelve-pound monstrosity, or to a girl at all, for that matter. But life isn’t fair, is it? Kerrick, share some of those peas with your sister. You’ve had more than enough, I think, and she’s skinny as an urchin boy, I swear.”

  Clay felt his own mouth sag open. Needless to say, both Kerrick and Lillian began crying at once, which in turn set the twins to bawling. Only the eldest remained silent, spooning eggs into his mouth with evident disinterest.

  Matrick swiped a hand through his thinning hair. “Now, children, your mother didn’t mean to upset you. She just …” He looked despairingly down the length of the table. “It’s the baby,” he said. “It just makes her cranky, is all. Isn’t that right, dear?”

  “That must be it,” said Lilith. “And dreadfully tired. I think I’ll have a quick … nap before we leave for the Council. Lokan, would you be so kind as to escort me to my room?”

  “With pleasure,” said her guardsman, in a tone that all but confirmed Clay’s earlier suspicion.

  The two of them left arm in arm, but if it bothered Matrick at all he didn’t let it show, concerning himself instead with placating the children. “Go ahead and finish your peas, Kerrick, they’re good for you. Lil, can you please pass your little brother his juice before he knocks it over? That’s a good girl.”

  He managed to cajole the kids into cleaning their plates, and Clay watched throughout with utter fascination. The Matrick he’d used to know had been devious, foul-mouthed, and drunk more often than sober. He’d had a different woman on his arm every night—or on either arm, if he was feeling especially ambitious. He’d been a master thief and a vicious killer, wielding Roxy and Grace (the knives he’d named for the prostitutes to whom he’d lost his virginity) as though they were a pair of bloodthirsty fangs and the entire world his prey.

  Who’d have thought he’d make a good father? Or a competent king for that matter? By all accounts, Agria was a flourishing kingdom, and even without Lilith’s help he seemed to be raising some half-decent children. Each one of them asked to be excused and kissed him good-bye before being trundled off to their tutors.

  Matrick asked the guards to leave as well, and after the servants refilled the coffee he dismissed them as well. Clay looked on in horror as Moog upended half a bowl of sugar into his.

  “I like it sweet!” said the wizard.

  Matrick produced a flask from somewhere and spiked his own drink, and for a while just stirred it idly and stared at nothing. Moog finished his cup and began transferring sugar from the bowl directly to his mouth with a saliva-dampened finger.

  “Well Matty,” said the wizard, “I sure wish—”

  “Shhh!” The king cut him off with a raised finger, glancing quickly back at the kitchen door before leaning across the table and whispering, “Get me the fuck out of here.”

  Gabriel blinked. “What?”

  The king mouthed the words again with exaggerated slowness. “Get me. The fuck. Out of here.”

  Moog looked puzzled. “Why? Matrick, you’re the king! You said yourself you had lots on your plate. The kids—”

  “—aren’t mine!” finished Matrick. “Did you get a look at them? I love the little bastards like I love free cake, but I sure as hell had no hand in making them!”

  “Are you,” Clay began, and then lowered his voice. “Are you saying—”

  “I am saying I was fishing in Phantra when the twins were conceived. I’m saying that Lillian has her father’s eyes—and mine aren’t fucking blue! I’m saying Kerrick is bigger at ten than I was at twenty, and Danigan, well …” Matrick made a frantic gesture that encompassed his head in general. “You’d think the red hair would tip me off, wouldn’t you? But oh no, it took me four more kids to realize they all looked a bit like Lilith and a little like the castle librarian, or the ambassador from Narmeer, or the bloody rose gardener—who I thought was gay, by the way. No offense, Moog.”

  The wizard popped the finger out of his mouth. “Why would I—”

  “And now she’s pregnant again?” Matrick’s laugh was a bitter thing. “I’ll bet my kingdom that boy comes out tall as a tree and as hungry for his mothers’ tits as noble Sir Lokan, that flea-bitten Kaskar whoreson!” Matrick was fairly screaming by now, unconcerned whether anyone lingering in the kitchen might hear.

  “Then why don’t you just leave?” asked Gabriel.

  “I’ve tried!” Matrick moaned. “The guards won’t let me. They’re fiercely loyal to Lilith—I have no idea why.”

  Clay had some idea why. “What’s the point of keeping you here?” he asked.

  “She’s worried I’ll go off and father a legitimate heir. She said she’d kill me if I ever managed to get away, and now it looks like she wants me out of the picture for good. Remember that man in my room last night—the one you kicked when you came through the mirror? Well, that was one of her assassins. It wasn’t the first one she’s sent after me, and as sure as Hell is cold it won’t be the last if I stick around this place. I need to escape, and I need your help to do it. No way Lilith’ll find someone stupid enough to follow me into the Heartwyld.”

  Moog beamed. “Wait, so does this mean you’ll come to Castia?”

  “Of course I’ll come,” said Matrick. “You shits are the only real family I’ve got.”

  There it is, thought Clay, that warm, fuzzy feeling again …

  “The problem is getting away. It will have to be after the council, obviously.”

  “We could use the mirror,” suggested Gabriel, but the king shook his head.

  “Lilith had it confiscated. She claims it’s a threat to castle security. Which it is, I suppose. By the Unholy Dead, I’d forgot the thing was a portal at all, or I’d have jumped through it long ago.”

  “So we can’t leave out the front gate,” Moog reasoned. “And doubtless she’ll have the rest under guard …”

  “Believe it,” said the king.

  “What about that bag of yours, Moog?” asked Gabriel. “You can fit anything in there, right? Matrick could hide inside and we could smuggle him out of th
e castle.”

  The wizard shook his head. “It’s a vacuum.”

  Gabe frowned. “A what?”

  “A void. There’s no air. He wouldn’t survive longer than he could hold his breath. Trust me. I had a cat once that—” He broke off. “Just … no.”

  “You could kidnap me,” Matrick suggested. “Disguise yourselves, knock me out, fight your way past the guards. We could leave a ransom note …”

  “Lilith would assume it was us,” said Clay. “Also, I’d rather not kill anyone if we don’t have to.”

  Their cups rattled as Moog slammed his hand on the table. “I have it!” he shouted. All eyes turned toward him. The wizard grinned and spared Clay a rueful wink. “It is risky, though.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The Council of Courts

  It was something like four hundred years since the Company of Kings had defeated the last of the Heartwyld Hordes at Lindmoor and brought an end to the War of Reclamation, but the place still looked like a battlefield. Each spring the groundwater surged up and transformed it into a stinking fen. By summer’s end it had mostly dried out, save for a few fetid pools here and there, and the muddy ground was littered with dredged-up relics: shattered arms and rusted armour, the mould-sheathed bones of monsters great and small. It was bordered, distantly, by spruce forests east and west, farmlands to the north, and the broad, slow-flowing river to the south. Beyond the river, on a clear day like today, you could see the squat blue shadow of Matrick’s castle in Brycliffe.

  At the centre of the broad peatland rose a grassy hillock known as the Isle of Wights. It was upon this rise (or so Matrick informed them as the king’s mounted entourage made its meandering way toward it) that Agar the Bald did battle with something called an Infernal, which, as Clay understood it, was akin to a champion among the Hordes of old. He’d never seen one except in paintings or tapestries, and though no two artists rendered an Infernal quite the same, they all tended to agree that it stood on a giant pile of corpses and looked like the worst, most terrifying monster imaginable.

  “Agar managed to kill the demon,” Matrick explained, “but died of his wounds. His grandson, Agar the Beardless, went on to become the first king of Agria. Ever since then, whenever the five courts meet to discuss something of great importance, they meet right here on the Isle.”

  Lilith, wrapped in an ermine-trimmed cloak and mounted on a brilliant white mare beside him, affected a loud and lasting yawn.

  “Why isle?” asked Moog. “Looks like a hill to me.”

  Matrick glanced over at his wife before answering. “In the spring this whole place floods—the isle’s the only dry spot for miles. And as for the rest of the name, Agar the Bald was buried beneath the hill, and each night the spirits of those who fell here at Lindmoor come to pay him homage.”

  “Really?” Gabriel sounded skeptical.

  “Really!” Matrick said proudly.

  “Really …?” Moog stroked his chin, intrigued.

  “Really?” snapped the queen. “I swear by the Summer Lord’s beard, I have laundry maids who talk less than you three.” She gestured at Clay with a white-gloved hand. “Kale, at least, knows when to keep his mouth shut.”

  “It’s Clay, actually.”

  Lilith pouted haughtily. “And you were doing so well.”

  The hill was surrounded by a crowd of gawkers gathered in hope of laying eyes on a real live druin. They’d laid out blankets, unpacked picnic baskets, and were generally making a day of it. Someone was selling skewers of roasted chestnuts, and one enterprising woman was hawking what she referred to as “authentic druin dolls.” Moog bought one for five coppers, and the thing turned out to be little more than a stuffed sock puppet with buttons for eyes and a pair of flimsy cloth rabbit ears sewn on top. The wizard seemed pleased with his purchase nonetheless.

  Upon reaching the Isle and climbing its gentle slope they found two delegations already waiting by the wind-scoured monument up top. The king’s retainers set about erecting an open-walled tent around a massive cedar table they’d hauled by wagon all the way from Brycliffe, while Matrick and his clutch of Agrian nobles mingled with their foreign guests.

  The company from Phantra was entirely female. The Salt Queen’s kingdom was matriarchal: the sailors, soldiers, and laborers were commonly men, while women formed the core of the merchant class and held most of the senior positions in both the government and the military. Though their country was a fractious one—rival merchant houses rose and fell near as often as the tide—the easterners liked to remind the rest of Grandual that they had never lost a war against a neighbouring realm.

  Their delegation was led by a young woman who introduced herself as Etna Doshi. She was short, stocky, and walked with the telltale Phantran swagger that was one-quarter useful for staying balanced on a ship’s deck and three-quarters cocky bravado. Her skin was sun bronzed, her face weathered as sailcloth, and her garish attire—bright scarves, draping sashes, an abundance of gaudy jewels—reminded Clay of the brigand “Lady” Jain, who had robbed them on the road to Conthas. She bound her black hair in a silver net adorned with sparkling sapphires and bright blue seashells. A puckered scar at the corner of her mouth made it look as though she were constantly sneering.

  “Doshi?” Matrick asked as he clasped her hand. “Any relation to—”

  “My mother,” she said before he could finish.

  “Ah, splendid! How is that blind old bat?”

  Etna seemed momentarily taken aback by the king’s frankness, but her scar-torn sneer stretched into a grin. “Still blind,” she said with a wink. “And still the finest Admiral in the Salt Queen’s illustrious navy.”

  “Did she ever find that lost island she was always on about?”

  “Antica, you mean?” Etna shook her head. “She’s still searching, the old fool, though I told her she’d have better luck finding an honest man in Low Tide.”

  Matrick laughed, bracing his belly with a steadying hand. The rogue-turned-king had always felt right at home on the Phantran coast, where even the grandmothers could be charitably described as gutter-tongued swindlers. He’d gotten along especially well with Etna’s mother, who Matty used to claim had taught him everything he knew about ships and most of what he knew about women and knives.

  “Slowhand.”

  Clay turned and found himself eye to eye with Maladan Pike, the First Shield of Kaskar. Pike had been a mercenary once, the frontman of a band called the Raiders. He’d had a pair of older brothers—twins—destined to rival each other for the right to inherit their father’s throne, but both had died at the hands of an especially mean (and prodigiously ugly) ogre chieftain named Ikko Umpa. Pike had begged his father for the opportunity to avenge his fallen siblings, but the northern king, unwilling to risk the life of his only remaining heir, refused and hired Saga to kill the ogre instead. They’d done so, and ever since, the reluctant prince of Kaskar had treated Clay and his bandmates with an admixture of mild resentment and grudging respect.

  “Pike,” Clay said by way of greeting.

  “Heard you were dead.”

  “Close. Married.”

  The First Shield snorted. “Kids?”

  “One. You?”

  “Seven.” Pike’s chest swelled a little. “The oldest is near tall as me already and could strangle a yethik with his bare hands. And yours? I’ll bet my horse he’s a stone-cold killer, same as his father.”

  Clay stifled a shudder while plastering on a smile of his own. “A girl, actually. She collects frogs.”

  “Oh.” The northman looked troubled as he smoothed his grey-shot beard against the six-fingered bear-claw embossed on his studded leather cuirass. “I was just kidding about betting my horse, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” said Clay.

  The First Shield’s gaffe was overshadowed—literally—by the arrival of a rapidly descending skyship.

  Clay tried to hide his astonishment from those around him as the galleon dropped out of the g
rey sky. He and the band had discovered the wreckage of many such vessels during their touring years—most often amidst the ruin of Dominion cities—but those had been derelict, their sails torn and their hulls reduced to splinters. He’d heard rumours these past few years of skyships being found more or less intact, but had dismissed them as false until the day he’d glimpsed one sailing the clouds above Coverdale. Even still, Clay had never thought to see one up close.

  “The Second Sun,” said Moog, sidling up beside him. “The flagship of the Sultana herself.”

  It looked to Clay like any other ship, except the sails were shaped a bit like leaves and braced with spanning metal struts that crackled with blue electricity. Also, it was flying.

  “Flagship?” he asked. “You mean Narmeer has a whole fleet of those?”

  The wizard laughed. “Well, no. They might have one or two more, actually, but I’d be surprised if there were thirty skyships in the whole world that are actually airworthy. The Second Sun was found buried in the sand near Xanses. The Salt Queen of Phantra has one as well, I hear. All the really cool monarchs have them.”

  “I can hear you, you know,” said Matrick. He was gazing covetously at the hovering galleon, which had cast a pair of huge anchors to the ground. Narmeeri soldiers scrambled deftly down nets draping the hull, and there was a curtained palanquin being lowered over one rail.

  Clay’s eyes were nailed to the ship as well. “How?” was all he managed to say.

  Moog scratched the bald crown of his head. “How does it fly, you mean? You see those metal-looking orbs on either side?”

  Clay nodded. There were two near the prow of the ship, and two near the stern, each one surrounded by a haze of fine mist. “Sure.”

  “Tidal engines,” said the wizard. “They’re actually a series of spinning gyres made of pure duramantium and powered by static electricity trapped by the sails.”