The Beast Prince

by Marian Perera

  Unless I… Kat had no idea how to reply to that. For the Princes, sex with humans was probably like a farmer’s routine milking of goats: the farmer got some benefit out of the livestock, and perhaps the animals preferred it to being made into meat.

  No, it didn’t matter how he looked. She would never want to. Unless there was no other way to save the town.

  “Thank you,” she said tonelessly. She didn’t want to call him Marus and couldn’t call him Highness. “I—I’d like to make breakfast.”

  “Of course.” He gestured at the outpost as if to say, go ahead. “In fact, I’ll join you.”

  Slumming, she thought again, but it was his place; she couldn’t deny him the right to be there. And if she was busy making breakfast, she wouldn’t need to speak to him.

  So she filled the kettle and put four eggs inside when the water boiled. Some meat would have been delicious, and the thought of bacon made her mouth water, but it was almost fall; stores were running low and butchering time was still a few months away.

  Marus sat on a bench and watched her so silently that she nearly dropped the kettle when he spoke. “If it helps,” he said, “I don’t expect you to turn this into a residence fit for cattle, let alone a Prince. You’re one person and you have enough responsibilities already without having to make dozens of repairs. As long as you keep yourself fed well, and do everything we spoke of yesterday, that’s fine by me.”

  She didn’t know what to make of that. As duties went, his requirements were reasonable—hell, from everything she’d heard of the Princes, he was damn near lenient—but she had no idea what to expect from him. It was a relief that he knew she couldn’t single-handedly patch up the outpost, but surely he couldn’t be satisfied living in squalor.

  Still, best not to question her unexpected release from hard labor, so she murmured a thanks and served their breakfast. He watched her hands while she cracked her first egg, and he did the same for his.

  She bit and chewed and swallowed, one mouthful after another. He made her intensely conscious of the simple act of eating, and she wondered if the people who’d served him before hadn’t given him eggs. Or maybe there had been no such people. Some of the Princes enjoyed having humans wait on them, leaping to anticipate their every wish, but some were more like their mother and hated anything weaker than themselves.

  “These taste better cooked.” He’d eaten his first egg in three bites and now started on the second.

  They’d given him raw eggs? She’d eaten clams and mussels fresh out of the shell, fish eggs too. But she’d imagined anyone presenting food to a Prince would prepare it carefully beforehand—with salt and pepper, cooked to perfection.

  Oh well, it wasn’t any of her concern, except to make a mental note of his preferences. If she made sure he had everything he wanted, it might put him in a good mood and she might get some concessions out of him.

  “Now tell me,” he said. “How many people in your town?”

  She hadn’t been expecting the question and she tensed, her last bite swelling to fill her throat. Choking it down, she reached for a tin mug of water and drank.

  “Perhaps five hundred,” she said.

  “Good. Give me your knife.”

  Her body felt as cold and hollow as if she’d handed over the knife and he’d gutted her with it, because she had lied. Technically, the population of the town was about five hundred. If Marus abducted anyone from the town for questioning, the answer would confirm what she’d said. Technically, she had answered his question with the truth.

  But a splintertown was growing steadily near the mines, and so was a fishing village on an island offshore. There were other settlements in the plains that traded with them, and although it was likely to be a rumor, she’d heard a city was hidden in an extinct volcano—Mountaindeep, it was called. The Princes had destroyed most of the existing cities and decimated the population, but they hadn’t yet unraveled every last knot of human life from the land.

  She handed her knife over, and he reached for the half-loaf of bread. “How do you feed yourselves?” he asked as he hacked off part of it.

  Thankfully he didn’t mean to hurt her. “We fish. Grow vegetables. There’s enough grazing for goats, so we have milk and butter sometimes. A few people fatten pigs on scraps, and the eggs come from seabird colonies.”

  He handed her the hunk of bread, cut another for himself and gave the knife back. “You sound very self-sufficient.”

  “We have to be.”

  “Promising.” Difficult to see anything in his eyes other than the liquid slosh of mud, but she could tell he was studying her closely, with something like speculation. “And you were the captain of the town guard, though you’ll suit my service better.”

  She couldn’t think of anything more useless; it would be like a shrimp guarding a shark. Or did he have some other service in mind? She didn’t want to imagine what that could be.

  “As you wish.” She tried to sound acquiescent. Dancing attendance on a monster, just what I always dreamed of! “But may I request something in return?”

  “Of course.” He sounded mildly surprised she’d needed to ask. “I look on this as a trade, not a favor.”

  Since he held all the power, he could look on it any way he liked, and change a trade to a favor at any point in the process. “You’ve made it clear that you don’t want anyone from the town here unless it’s to deliver tribute or necessary word, and when I return there, I’ll make sure everyone’s aware of this. But may I also ask that you—let us know in advance if, for any reason, you wish to enter our town?”

  He frowned, though it looked more like an expression of curiosity than annoyance. “Why would I do that? Enter the town, I mean, not let you know beforehand.”

  “To inspect your holdings.” Or to take his pick of the town’s women, or simply to intimidate everyone, making his sheer physical might so obvious even the Farlanders might think twice before trying another assassination attempt. Not that she would say any of that. It didn’t matter if she’d resigned her position and was forced into servitude; she’d protected her people all her life and had no intention of stopping now.

  He gave her one of those cool, assessing looks that always made her feel as though he saw a lot more than he should have. “I won’t need to visit your town for any reason. But when you return here with more supplies, bring clothes too.”

  She felt self-conscious; she’d been aware how grubby she was, but she hadn’t realized he’d noticed her condition. “I will. I don’t want to wear the same things for days on end.”

  “I meant for me.”

  “Oh.” Her gaze dropped to his bare chest before she caught herself. Clothes for him. Why did he suddenly want to wear clothes?

  “You’re not sure what will fit me?”

  Remembering what he’d said about wanting to see the faces of the people he spoke to, she looked up. “No, I could estimate, uh, sizes. But those clothes might be someone else’s. I mean, we might not have time before I return to sew new clothes that would be worn by you alone.” It would be a huge gaffe to give a Prince clothes a human had previously owned, but better for him to know about it beforehand.

  He looked puzzled. “As long as these clothes are clean and well-made and fit me, that’s what matters. Shirts and trousers, no embroidered robes. I appreciate finery very much, but for now, we’ll be realistic.”

  If there was anything realistic about a Prince living in a neglected outpost, refusing all but a single servant and being willing to wear humans’ clothes, she didn’t see it. She wondered if his claim that he wouldn’t visit the town was a lie, and he actually planned to sneak in for some reason. He might pass himself off as human as long as no one saw his eyes, but if he walked naked through Solstice Harbor, that would be noticeable from, well, from any angle.

  She’d never heard of the Princes indulging themselves
with clothes before. They had no shame—and if their flesh forms looked like Marus’s, they didn’t have any reason to cover up either. The silks had not been intended as garments: they’d been gifted as tribute because of their vivid colors, and because they were cool and smooth to the touch as a basket of winter plums. They had been meant to appeal to a Prince’s vain hedonistic streak rather than any kind of practical purpose, yet he now wore one, as best he could.

  “May I ask why you need clothes?” She spoke with careful courtesy, wishing she were a little shorter so she’d look more humble. “If I might be so bold as to point this out, you seemed comfortable unclothed yesterday, and won’t the clothes be ruined when you take your other form?”

  “That’s my concern, Katsumi Ito.” His voice was even. “Not yours.”

  “I beg your pardon.” She lowered her gaze, putting as much subservience into the gesture as she could, but secretly she felt anything other than browbeaten. He wasn’t bending an inch, but neither did he fly into a rage when she openly questioned him. Maybe he wouldn’t be too unbearable a master.

  Though David Farlander might have been right in his theory that Marus was hiding here from two or more of his own kind. What else to make of a Prince staying in a place that looked deserted, wanting human clothes? Even if one of his brothers felt there was something of interest in a ramshackle outpost, Marus would look human right up till he struck back with the advantage of surprise, his body whirling into a massive surge of granite or magma.

  Best not to risk him guessing what was going through her head. “I’ll make tea.”

  “That would be good.” For a moment there was no sound except water splashing into the kettle as she refilled it, and then he said, “Some sort of footwear as well. Like yours.”

  Her boots were battered and dusty, the leather split across one of the toes, but his gaze traveled slowly up the length of her leg as if he liked what he saw—and as if he had every right to look at her that way. Her mouth was dry again.

  “I’ll find some,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  Crouching self-consciously before the fireplace, she hung the kettle in place. His calm courtesy unnerved her, because it was so much at odds with his kind’s reputation, but perhaps it wasn’t that surprising. People with real power didn’t need to flaunt it.

  She had a feeling he still watched her, but she couldn’t stop herself glancing back to be sure of it. He watched the fire, and although he blinked from time to time as a human would have, the mud didn’t reflect so much as a spark of light.

  “There’s something I’ve always wondered.” His tone was detached, as if he was discussing a purely philosophical question. “Why do humans remain here?”

  “You mean in Avalon?”

  “In my mother’s land.”

  It didn’t surprise her that the Princes, despite ruling that continent for thirty years, hadn’t given it a name, something humans had done the moment they’d made landfall. And although he’d spoken as if gently correcting her, the land didn’t belong to the Queen Beneath the Earth any more than a prison belonged to a prisoner.

  She said none of that, of course, and he went on. “Or, for that matter, in some towns and villages that make no effort to be hidden, but which don’t try to place themselves under a Prince’s patronage. They must know such settlements are likely to be destroyed, and yet some humans seem willing for their houses to become their tombs. Is it simple stubbornness?”

  Kat had never felt so alone, or so trapped. When she’d decided to go to the outpost, she’d walked into her own grave for the same reason those people he so casually referred to had died, and it wasn’t a matter of being stubborn. It was that she’d had no other choice, any more than thousands of other people had.

  Trying to make him understand was a waste of time. But she couldn’t stop herself from answering, because if she was likely to die, she wouldn’t do so silently. The people of Solstice Harbor had buried written records that would exist after the town was wiped off the face of the land, but she couldn’t do the same because she’d never learned to read or write.

  She could speak, though, even if her words fell on the deafest of ears. “Here we are at the end of the land, the last safe place there might have been. We hid here, and what difference did it make? You found us. Maybe the people who once lived in Amber River or New Galveston realized that better than we did, and felt they might as well stay in their own homes. And maybe they didn’t believe the Princes could be so…”

  She stopped, realizing she had gone too far. Marus’s face was unreadable, but a brow arched.

  “Evil?” he said dryly.

  Watching him as she waited for punishment, she thought he was living proof evil wasn’t obvious, ugly and snarling. Evil sat before you, eating bread and talking with perfect composure, before it killed you as it would have swatted a fly on the table, because to it, that fly would have no right to be there. No right to exist.

  “So people didn’t believe the worst,” he said.

  Maybe he wasn’t angry, and she dared to breathe again. “From what I’ve heard, not at first, when the Princes were born.” That had been thirty years ago, only a third as long as humans had been in Avalon. “They do now. But a lot of people lived on farms or in towns that had been established by their grandparents. They didn’t want to abandon those.”

  He nodded slowly. “And as you said, now you have nowhere to go. Never thought of building ships? As far as I know, no Prince would risk crossing the sea.”

  True enough, because their power was over earth—but fleeing blindly over the ocean wasn’t any better a prospect. “Do you know where we came from?”

  He frowned. “I’ve heard humans are from not just another continent, but a different world altogether.”

  “Yes. And as far as we know, we’re on the only land in this world. So either way it’s suicide, whether we sail out into open water with no end, or we stay here.” What was more to the point, they didn’t have the resources to build a ship capable of lasting such a journey.

  Nowhere to run. The thought pressed down on her like a crushing weight, but she didn’t have to withstand it much longer. He’d said she could return to Solstice Harbor today, and she was already so homesick that thinking of it brought an ache to her chest. She’d be there soon, safe and surrounded by the people she cared about.

  She tried not to remember it was the last time she would see them, that she would never again be permitted to go back home. Maybe if she did everything Marus wanted, he’d relent and change his mind. He behaved so strangely that anything seemed possible, so she tried not to give in to despair.

  The kettle boiled, and moments later the scent of steeping leaves curled into the air like smoke. Unlike the previous night, she didn’t feel an urge to gulp down the scalding liquid so she could leave the room, though she still wished he would tell her what he was really doing there.

  This is a Prince. That he hadn’t pulped her under a boulder was a miracle; best not to push her luck. She finished her tea and rose.

  “I’ll take my leave of you, then.” She wondered whether to add some gesture like bending her knee, but it would be unnecessary and would look ridiculous into the bargain. “I’ll be back by dawn tomorrow.”

  “No, you won’t,” he said. “To do that you’ll have to travel in the night, and you might lose your footing in the dark. Tomorrow evening will do.”

  She was too taken aback to speak for a moment, because concern for her safety was the last thing she’d expected to hear from a Prince. “If you wish. And about the early-warning system you wanted, I thought of sentries positioned at vantage points in a half circle around us, perhaps a mile distant. That should give plenty of notice.”

  It wouldn’t be easy to build other outposts, because sentries had to be kept safe, and they’d have to spare people from the town for that thankless duty.
But she’d cross that bridge when she came to it, and the first priority was to show the Prince their obedience. Marus nodded, with what she hoped was approval.

  “And they’d fire a gun, with the number of shots indicating what they saw,” he said.

  She swallowed. “I don’t mean to contradict you, but a horn would serve better. To shoot would be a waste of ammunition. Besides, if any sentries see a Prince coming, they’ll want to keep the bullets for themselves.”

  He grimaced. “I understand. And speaking of which, there’s something I’d like you to do before you leave.”

  “Yes?”

  “Show me how good you are with that gun.”

  That was a harmless enough request—he wasn’t asking her to shoot another person—so she went outside, past the gate. He followed, watching as she took a shell from her trouser pocket and slipped it into the breech.

  She tucked the stock against her shoulder, sighting down the rifle’s length. Her finger curled around the trigger. “What do you want me to shoot?” A bird in the distance was little more than a speck, but its white feathers showed against the rock of a cliff face. “That bird?”

  “No, it has a nest. What about that tree? See the forked branch hanging—”

  The crack as the rifle fired cut him off. The stock jerked against Kat’s shoulder, but she was used to that. Even as a puff of smoke rose into the air, the branch split off from the rest of the tree as if an unseen axe had chopped through it. The sharp stench of burnt powder filled her nostrils as, three hundred yards away, the branch fell, bounced off a projecting rock and tumbled down the side of the cliff.

  She glanced sideways at Marus, only to find him looking at her rather than at the tree, an odd expression on his face. One corner of his mouth turned up in a half-smile.

  “Thank you, Katsumi Ito,” he said.

  “You don’t need to use my full name.” It was strange enough dealing with him without being addressed in that overly formal way—except he didn’t say it formally. He said it as if the syllables that made up her name were delicate and he had to pronounce them with care or else they would break. “People call me Kat.”