War of the Bastards

by Andrew Shvarts

  Lyriana flicked her hand through the air, and the chains binding the girl’s wrists burst apart. She stood up, pulled the hood off her head, and tossed it to the side. The first thing I noticed was her hair: long and straight, cut jagged above her shoulders, and a color that didn’t make any sense, the darkest lushest black interrupted by streaks of vibrant radiant blue, like a sapphire flame. She looked young, my age, and her face was lean and angular, high cheekbones and a sharp chin, a spattering of brown freckles across her nose. And then there were her eyes: sharp and bold, with heavy black lashes and irises that burned a vivid orange.

  “A Red Waster,” Lyriana said softly. That explained the girl’s accent, and why I couldn’t place it. The Red Wasters were some of the most reclusive people in Noveris, a culture who lived, against all odds, in the impassable deserts south of the Southlands. I’d seen only a few in my whole time at Lightspire, travelers clad in ochre robes, their faces hidden behind featureless white masks. I’d never been so close to one, much less heard one speak.

  “Who are you?” Galen demanded, but she didn’t even acknowledge him, which, okay, was pretty cool. She just walked out of the cell, bare feet padding silently over the cold metal floor. I could see now that she was tall, a good head taller than me or Lyriana, and she walked with a measured pace that seemed totally wrong for our desperate situation. She went straight to the torture tools table, where she threw aside the daggers and hooks and left the only things I couldn’t identify: a pair of stone orbs, maybe the size of oranges, their midpoint lined with what looked like a ribbon of razor-sharp metal.

  “Um…” I said.

  The girl didn’t move. She didn’t raise her hands or arch her fingers or anything else that I associated with magic. But all the same, the orbs moved, rising up from the table to hover at her shoulders, spinning slowly beside her like levitating tops, their sharp edges sparkling in the light.

  Lyriana let out a gasp, and even Galen looked rattled. The only people who could naturally do magic were natives of Lightspire, those born close enough to the Heartstone that they’d been steeped in its raw energy. That meant she had to be a bloodmage. But that didn’t seem right either. For one thing, her slender arms were bruise-free, no marks of injection anywhere on them. And there was something else, something fundamentally different about what she was doing, about the energy around her…

  “How…how are you doing that?” Lyriana asked, mouth agape with wonder, and I realized what it was. There was no hum in the air, no pulse, no shimmering lights or rush of smells and tastes. The weird thing about the energy around her was that there was no energy, no trace of magic, none of the telltale sensations or feelings that came from being near someone working an Art. She just…was.

  Horns sounded from above us, and I could hear more and more footsteps now. Definitely more than fifteen men, which meant that Miles’s soldiers and bloodmages had returned. Time was running out.

  The girl’s dark eyebrows furrowed in concentration. The orbs whistled forward, spinning so fast they were just a blur, carving a rectangle the size of a brick into the room’s wall. That shape, that section of the wall, glowed for a minute and then…

  It didn’t fall out or turn into smoke or anything. It just vanished in a blink, like it had never been there. Sunlight streaked in through the little slit, and I could see the dusty fields stretching out beyond the Skywhale, the faint blue shadows of the mountains in the distance.

  “So now we have a window?” Galen asked. The pounding on the door had stopped, and the footsteps had grown oddly silent. That couldn’t be a good sign.

  “I need to see where we’re going to take us there,” the girl replied, which helpfully explained nothing. She stared out that little window intently, arms stiff at her sides, and her orbs whirled around her now, spinning around her body in diagonal orbits that seemed like they ought to collide. “I must concentrate. Please.”

  The pounding outside the door stopped abruptly, and the soldiers’ shouting went silent. There was a chill in the air, not like a breeze, but more like the warmth itself had been swallowed, sucked away by something cold and terrible.

  “Archmagus Jacobi,” my father said. “He’s here.”

  Manos made a face that was somehow a grin and a grimace at the same time. “Always wanted to kill him.” He stepped in front of our group, meaty hands wrapped tight around his warhammer’s shaft. “You lot want to take your chances with mystery magic girl? Be my guest. I’m going down fighting.”

  I glanced back at, uh, mystery magic girl. Her expression was more intense than ever, teeth gritted, breath quick, sweat streaking down her brow. The orbs were spinning faster and faster now, weaving around her in increasingly complicated spirals. I tried to steady my breath, to channel the khel zhan, to steel my nerves. At my side, Zell closed his eyes and whispered in Zitochi, a prayer that I knew was the Grayfather’s Oath: I fear not pain, that I may serve you. I fear not death, that I may sit by your side.

  Something was happening to the sealed door. It stiffened and shook, almost like it was freezing. Inky black tendrils hissed around, prying through the cracks like eels, wrapping around the metal frame. It buckled and trembled, and the bolts binding it popped and creaked.

  “Almost there,” the Red Waster girl choked out. The orbs around her were whistling so fast I couldn’t even see them anymore, just streaks of sparkling light. “Just…a little more…”

  The door shuddered again, and this time the whole thing bent inward, away from us, the metal itself crumpling. Lyriana raised her hands, and I could feel flames crackling around her. “May the True Queen reign,” Galen growled.

  Then the tendrils tightened all the way and the door flew off its hinges, pulled back into the hallway, and there he was, Archmagus Jacobi, glaring at us with those sick pulsing eyes and a look of dry bemusement, like a cat about to pounce.

  Manos let out the loudest, angriest war cry I’d ever heard and rushed toward him. He swung his hammer in a broad arc, his huge muscles clenched tight, and the big metal head swung right down towards Jacobi’s skull.

  But before it could hit, Jacobi flicked one hand in its direction, and the hammerhead dissolved in midair, the thick metal sloshing down in a torrent of water that hit the floor with a wet splash. Manos stumbled forward, uselessly, and Jacobi shoved his hands forward, and jagged black tendrils, sharp as blades, shot out of them, tearing clean through Manos and out his back like he was made of paper. Lyriana screamed. My stomach turned. And Manos Vore, general of the Kingdom, strongest warrior I’d ever known, howled as Jacobi lifted him up into the air and tore him clean in half.

  “No!” Galen roared, but before he could rush forward, something happened behind us. There was a rush of air and a wrenching feeling, like an invisible hand had reached out and grabbed me and jerked me back. The Red Waster’s orbs streaked out in front of us and then they cut through not just the air but through reality itself, two jagged lines that formed an X in the skin of the world. Time seemed to slow down, to stretch for an unbearable eternity. That pulling feeling, that wrenching, grew deeper, harder, like my bones were being ripped out of my skin, like my every molecule was being sucked into that impossible X. I couldn’t even scream, couldn’t even gasp, couldn’t even breathe.

  There was darkness.

  There was pain.

  And then suddenly there was dirt rushing at my face.

  I had just enough time to realize I was falling before I hit the ground. Dusty earth flooded my mouth and stung at my eyes, but that barely mattered because what in the frozen hell had just happened?

  I scrambled up to my hands and knees, gasping for air like I’d just been drowning. I was outside now, somewhere up high, I think, a clearing by a cliff on the edge of a forest. I could smell fresh air and see the sky overhead. The others lay around me, gasping and writhing, Zell and Lyriana and Galen and my father. My brain felt like it was on fire, and my heart like it had burst. What…Where…How…?

  I lurched towar
d the edge of the cliff, and then I saw it. The dusty windswept plains of the Fallowfields. The rocky outcropping where we’d lain hidden. And there, just beyond it, the distant towers of the Dragonsmaw and a little gray shape that had to be the Skywhale resting right in front of it.

  We were in the mountains. The mountains miles away from the castle, the mountains that had been a faint blue silhouette through the window.

  “Impossible…” Lyriana choked out, her voice tiny and awestruck. “No one could…no one has ever…but she…”

  I followed her gaze and there she was, the Red Waster girl, standing barefoot among the trees just a few feet away from us. Her eyes were bleary, her face slick with sweat, her breath short and ragged. Her orbs jerked around her in twitchy spurts. She looked ready to collapse. Whatever that had been, whatever magic she’d worked, it had taken everything out of her.

  Our eyes met, and then her orbs whistled up, forming another rectangle of light around her. “Wait!” I screamed, but it was too late. There was another rush, another hiss of air, and she was gone.

  Zell came over and helped me up. Galen slumped against a tree, clenching and unclenching his fists. I looked around instinctively for Manos before remembering what had happened.

  “Well,” my father said, pushing himself up to one knee. “I have to say, that—” and I never got to find out what he was going to say next because Galen walked over and punched him in the face.

  ONCE WE’D ALL RECOVERED FROM whatever had just happened to us, Galen and Zell sneaked off through the forest and came back with four horses. I didn’t ask where they got them, but given that they all had Western army saddles, I doubt they were wandering a meadow. Galen and Lyriana took one each. My father got one of his own, but only after Galen bound his hands and gave him a long and involved threat on what would happen if he tried to run. Zell and I shared the last horse. I loved riding like this, my chest pressed to his back, my hands around his waist, his shoulder so conveniently located for me to bury my face in. Even out here, there were seconds where I could lose myself in him. Those seconds were what I lived for.

  We rode quietly, in shadow, avoiding all roads and traveling instead along the rocky banks of the rushing Yagmaw River. We slept under the stars and ate roasted rabbit and took turns sitting by the fire, keeping watch. I don’t know what happened back in the Skywhale after we disappeared, but I’m pretty sure it involved Miles being extremely pissed. Knowing him, he probably had every soldier under his command tearing across the countryside looking for us. Luckily, he had no idea where we’d gone or where we were heading or if we even existed anymore. After a full day on the road, with no sign of him, I was pretty sure we were safe. Still, every time a cloud passed in front of the sun and a heavy shadow fell over us, I found myself panicking, just a little, searching the sky for that massive metal ship.

  I woke up early on the morning of our second day to find Lyriana sitting by the embers of our cooking pit, staring at them with a troubled look. Around us, the camp was still; Zell was off hunting, Galen on watch, and my father sat silently against a tree, his wrists still bound with a thick rope. I hadn’t spoken to him since the rescue, but he hadn’t spoken to anyone; he was a prisoner, plain and simple, and right now we were all just focused on making it back to camp safely. Once we got there, we’d interrogate him. We’d figure out how to use him. And we’d almost certainly execute him, the way we executed everyone else who’d played a part in his regime.

  I didn’t want to deal with any of that. So I yawned and made my way over to Lyriana’s side. “Hey,” I said, and she barely nodded, lost in her own musings. “Thinking about that Red Waster girl?”

  Lyriana sighed. “Am I that obvious?”

  “Only to me.” I smiled. “I’m guessing her magic didn’t make sense to you, either.”

  “No. Not at all. Nothing about her did,” Lyriana said. “Back in Lightspire, Ellarion showed you the Heartstone, didn’t he? He told you how it worked?”

  I nodded, remembering that trip to the very top of the Godsblade, that last peaceful day before everything had gone to hell. The Heartstone was an enormous, writhing, iridescent boulder made of pure energy, sealed in a shimmersteel dome on the tower’s highest floor. It was also, apparently, the source of all magic in the world. The Titans had left it behind when they Ascended, just like they’d left behind the tower itself, and its leaking power had altered the citizens of Lightspire, turned some of them, over time, into mages. The Rings they wore were just tiny shards of it; their blood, now stolen by Miles’s creatures, was just a conduit of its energy. Everything magical always came back to the Heartstone.

  Which is why a mage from all the way out in the Red Wastes didn’t make any sense. “Could she be a bloodmage?” I asked.

  “I doubt it,” Lyriana said. “There were no marks on her arms, no scent of corrupted blood. When bloodmages work their Arts, it feels sick, rotten, a perversion of energy, a literal blasphemy. She didn’t feel that way. She didn’t feel like…anything.”

  “Another of Miles’s creations, then. Like the Skywhale.”

  “Maybe, but…that doesn’t feel right, either.” Lyriana shook her head. “The way she moved, the way she used those orbs, it was so graceful, so precise, so disciplined. It was like something you’d expect from a master, from someone who’d been doing it for years.”

  “You sound impressed.”

  “I am,” Lyriana said. “What she did, transporting five people to a location miles away, unharmed, all on her own? No one’s ever done anything like it. No one’s even attempted it. It’s magic on a scale I’ve never seen before. And I know there are more important things happening, I know we need to figure out what to do with Lord Kent. But I just can’t stop trying to figure her out. I can’t figure any of this out.” She sighed. “I miss when the world made sense. It was flawed and broken and unfair, and it needed a lot of work, but at least it made sense.”

  “I know what you mean.” I hugged her close with one arm. “It feels like every time we get our bearings, the earth shifts under our feet.”

  Lyriana rested her head on my shoulder. “Everything changes so fast, so often. Every day brings some new horror, some new calamity, some new reality we just have to accept and live with. And I don’t know what’s worse: feeling perpetually lost…or just growing numb to it all.”

  “Not all change is bad,” I tried. “I mean, look, we have King Kent as prisoner. That’s a huge win for us. The biggest we’ve had.”

  “I know it is in theory,” Lyriana said. “And yet I don’t feel any more certain, any more sure, of what lies ahead.” She let out a deep, shuddering breath. “Let’s imagine that this actually works. That we take back the Kingdom, that we defeat Miles, that I sit once more on the throne. What then?”

  “I don’t follow. Isn’t getting the throne back the goal?”

  “For you, maybe. For Galen and all those others out there. But for me? It’s just the beginning. I still have to rule. To mend this Kingdom. To right all the wrongs and restore justice and rebuild everything that’s been broken. And it’s not just that, it’s also…it’s also…” She hesitated a moment, like this was something she was struggling to admit. “I keep thinking about the Undercity.”

  I blinked. The Undercity had been the hidden hideout of the Ragged Disciples, a village of the destitute and desperate built in the Catacombs beneath Lightspire. “What about it?”

  “Those people were my citizens, Tilla. We drove them there, beneath our very streets, drove them there with oppression and injustice. They would never have taken up arms against us, would never have become pawns of your father, if it hadn’t been for the way my family had ruled.”

  “You can’t blame yourself,” I said, partially because I meant it and partially because that was an emotional rabbit hole I had to avoid at all costs. “My father and Miles, all of them, they chose their own path. They chose to kill all those people.”

  “I’m not making excuses for them. I’ll never
forgive what they did,” Lyriana said, that hard edge back in her voice. “But they would never have been able to pull it off if there hadn’t been hundreds, thousands, of people willing to support them. And those people were there because of the choices my family made. The oppression, the inequality, the culture of fear and war and conquest…I feel like this was the only plausible outcome. It’s like every generation of Volaris ruler was raising the temperature on a pot of water, one degree at a time. Sooner or later, it had to boil over.” She craned her head up, golden eyes looking right into mine. “We can’t just go back to the way things were. But we can’t keep living like this either. How are we supposed to do this, Tilla? How do we fix a broken world?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “But I feel like all we can do is try.”

  It was easy enough to say, especially because it made Lyriana smile. But my thoughts were just as preoccupied as hers. Every day as we rode on, I found myself staring at my father, trying to read some meaning into his distant scowl, wanting him to look my way and see just how I felt. Except how I felt was all over the place. Some moments, I felt anger, so much anger, a burning fury that made my hands tremble and my eyes burn. I’d think of Markiska and those people in the Godsblade ballroom and Jax, of every innocent person who’d died because of him, and I’d feel so livid that it took real restraint not to just run over there and start kicking him, punching him, hurting him for all the pain he’d caused me.

  But then there were other, rarer moments when I’d feel something else, something closer to pity. For the first sixteen years of my life, I’d looked at my father like a god, a man who never felt fear or worry or regret, a High Lord of the West driven by the noblest of principles, dedicated to his people above all else. I’d never seen him cry or beg, never seen him show a moment of weakness. But here, dragged along by Galen, his hair tousled, his face messy with dirt and bruises, his clothes ragged…he just looked so pathetic. He wasn’t the King or the High Lord or even My Great Amazing Father. He was just a broken man coming up on what was almost certainly the end of his life. And it was hard not to feel bad for him.