War of the Bastards

by Andrew Shvarts

  “Well, of course.” Cal reached down into his robe and drew out a little paring knife. Its handle was jade, its blade not even two inches long, but there was something menacing about it all the same. “Now perhaps you’d like to tell me what you’re doing skulking about my Kingdom?”

  “We came to seek an alliance with you, Great Dyn,” Ellarion tried again. “Together, we can stand against our common enemy, the Inquisitor Hampstedt.”

  “And you sought to do that by sneaking into my city?” Cal sliced off a strip of the pear’s skin. “Another lie which makes you officially more trouble than you’re worth.” He jabbed his knife in the air at Ellarion. “Kill him.”

  The soldiers drew back their spears and I lunged forward, bolting up to my feet, the words bursting out of my mouth. “No! Wait! I’ll tell you the truth! We’re just passing through to get to the Red Wastes!”

  Cal raised his hand, and the guards stopped, the points just a few inches from the base of Ellarion’s spine. “And why, pray tell, would you possibly be going there?”

  Ellarion shot me a glare and Syan dropped her head, but we were past the point of trying anything clever. “They have mages. Really powerful ones, like Syan here. We’re hoping we can convince them to join our cause.”

  Cal stopped, considering, his eyes boring a hole clear through me. “Well, that must be the truth, because I can’t imagine anyone would come up with that ridiculous a lie.” He cut the pear again, slicing off a long strip of skin. “So the brutal little Inquisitor sits alone on the throne, and the great fallen royals come to beg the help of the Red Waster mages. Things truly have gotten desperate up north.”

  “You know of our mages?” Syan asked.

  “It appears everyone on this continent thinks me a fool.” Cal rolled his eyes. “Your people have a whole neighborhood in my city. Of course I’ve heard rumors of your mages, capable of great and terrible things. And every spy I sent south to look into it never came back, which all but confirms it as true.”

  “Then you understand why we’re here!” Lyriana exclaimed. “You can help us.”

  Cal didn’t seem to be in a helping mood. “I understand that you seek to reclaim your throne without even considering the army actually fighting the usurper who sits in it. And I find myself wondering why that is.”

  “Your army needs every bit of help they can get,” Ellarion growled. “Or do you not know what’s happening out on your border? Miles’s soldiers have pushed into your Province and are making their way here right now.”

  “It’s my Kingdom, not my Province,” Cal sharply corrected. “And I know exactly where Miles’s army is. They get exactly as far as I let them. Given that they’re only fighting a third of my forces, I consider it impressive how we’ve held them thus far.”

  “Only a third of your forces…” Ellarion repeated with dawning understanding. “Then the rest are…”

  “Marching on Lightspire.” Cal smiled. “They crossed the Western Branch of the Adelphus three weeks ago. While Miles squanders his men slogging through desert and hunting your little rebellion, the real threat flies toward him like a spear. By the end of the month, they’ll be setting Lightspire to siege.” He flicked his wrist, sending the last strip of pear skin onto the floor. “Didn’t see that coming, did you? No, you never could.”

  Lyriana stood there, struggling for words, and Ellarion looked toward the floor. A part of me was thrilled, because uh, a full-blown army attacking Miles was unquestionably a good thing. But that left the six of us here with even less to offer.

  None of us seemed to know what to say, so my father rose up. “Great Dyn, if I may…”

  Cal had been doing a great job seeming cool and indifferent, but my father’s voice cracked that facade. His jaw clenched and his nostrils flared, just a tiny bit. I could see it now, the hate and fury, burning with him. “I ought to slit your throat here and now, Kent,” he said. “But I’m feeling generous. Speak.”

  “Your army might catch Miles by surprise, but they’ll never take the city,” he said bluntly. “When you declared war, Miles and I spent weeks preparing the city for every eventuality. Including a full-scale siege by all of your forces, much less two-thirds.” I could see Cal wanting to contradict him, but my father just kept going. “The walls have been reinforced with shimmersteel. Every gate secured. A hundred bloodmages sit at the riverfront, ready to set it ablaze in a second’s notice. The Skywhale circles above, ready to unleash hell. And even if you somehow managed to breach the city, you’d find yourself riding straight into a slaughter. For every bloodmage Miles has out, three sit waiting within.” My father stared Cal down. “With all due respect? You’ve sent your men to their deaths.”

  “But imagine if you had an army of mages backing you,” Lyriana cut in before Cal could reply (or, you know, stab). “Dozens and dozens of them, mages that can move your army miles in the blink of an eye, mages that make Miles’s most powerful soldiers look like children at their first lesson. We could get you that.”

  Cal’s eyes flitted to Syan. “Is that true?”

  She glanced away with…what was that? Uncertainty? “It is.”

  “So you propose an alliance after all, just in the most roundabout way.” Cal set his pear down by the fruit bowl. “And suppose I agreed? Suppose we fought together, your mages and my soldiers, and we took the city back and mounted that whelp’s head on the wall. What then? Your people would cheer for the return of their Queen. You’d take back the throne. And I would…what? Head back down here with what remains of my army to serve as High Lord? Grovel as I bend the knee?” He shook his head. “No. No. Hampstedt and Kent may have killed my kin, but it was your family, Queen Lyriana, that enslaved my people. It was your family that slaughtered their way through these lands and destroyed the great empire of my ancestors. It was your family that got us in this fucking mess to begin with!” He lunged up out of his throne, knocking over the fruit bowl, and there was the emotion, the passion, that fury bursting out. He stalked toward Lyriana, so close she jerked back, and jabbed that paring knife through the air to emphasize his words. “I will never bow again. I will be a King, or I will die trying. Nothing less.”

  Lyriana had nothing to say to that, so Cal turned away. “Take Queen Lyriana to the dungeons. Kill the others.”

  I looked to Lyriana and Ellarion, like, Please get us out of this mess, but they gave me nothing, just fear. This was really happening. I braced myself, waiting for the guard to grab me, because if nothing else I was going down fighting.

  And then my father spoke. “Great Dyn!” he yelled, even as the guard jerked him back. “There is another way!”

  The guards looked at Cal, who raised a weary hand to stop them. “Speak.”

  “I understand how you feel. Believe me, no one knows it more than I do,” my father said. “I was the first to raise arms against the Volaris. I risked everything so that my people could live free. I vowed to never bow again. I took my crown by force, and I lost it the same way. But…” His gaze flitted toward Lyriana knowingly. “There are other ways to become a King.”

  A long moment of silence lingered over us, as the words set in (and also as I tried to figure out what he meant). Lyriana, though, she got it. I saw a gamut of emotions run across her face: shock, dismissal, then, a weary sigh of resignation. “Great Dyn,” she said, eyes closed. “Kent speaks the truth. If you honor this alliance…if you help me take back my throne…I shall reward you with a place by my side.” She swallowed. “As my husband.”

  “No—” Ellarion gasped, but the rest of the room was silent. I don’t know why, but hearing her say that was somehow even more shocking than, you know, being sentenced to death. Even Zell looked stunned.

  “Your husband,” Cal repeated, staring at Lyriana with his head cocked to the side.

  “You’d be King.”

  “A puppet King,” he said, but he was clearly considering it. “Everyone knows the real power would sit with you.”

  “But you’d sti
ll be King,” Lyriana insisted, and was she really pushing for this? For marrying this guy? “You’d be there, guiding me, helping me, speaking for your people. And one day, your child would sit on the shimmersteel throne.”

  Cal was silent for a long time. I could see the struggle playing out in his head. And I felt it. I desperately wanted him to say yes for my sake, and I just as badly wanted him to say no, for Lyriana’s. “And in exchange?” he said at last. “What would you ask of me?”

  “Only that you let us go,” Lyriana replied. “If we die in the Wastes, then nothing changes for you. And if we succeed, then you get everything you ever wanted.”

  Cal took a bold step toward Lyriana. “And how do I know you aren’t lying? That you won’t betray me the second you have power?”

  Lyriana’s eyes narrowed. “I swear by the Titans above, by the Ascension, by the souls of my murdered father and mother. I give you my word.”

  Cal looked at her for a long time, an unfathomable series of emotions flitting across his face. Finally, he nodded. “All right. I may live to regret this, but all right. I accept your bargain. I will let you go, and fight alongside these mages of yours. And when we win, I’ll rule Noveris with you.” He reached down to Lyriana’s bound hands, and with one flick of his knife, cut through the ropes. Then he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it, tenderly. “My Queen.”

  “My King,” Lyriana replied, her gaze distant, her voice flat.

  Cal stepped back from her, nodding at his guards. “New plan. Put them up in the guest chambers. Make sure they have everything they need for their journey.”

  “That’s it?” Ellarion asked. “We’re good?”

  “Almost,” Cal said, and I really didn’t like the way he said that. “There’s still the matter of Kent here. The debt I owe him.” He paced over to my father, who stood, grim and resolute, unblinking. “I said I would let you all go, after all. I didn’t say what I’d do before then.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lyriana demanded.

  Cal shot her a smile as gentle as it was cruel, as he laid one hand on my father’s shoulder. “Consider this me claiming my dowry.”

  Then he leaned forward and drove his paring knife into my father’s side, just below his ribs. My father let out a choked grunt, and I fought back a scream. “That’s for my father,” Cal said, then he jerked out his knife and stabbed again. “For my mother.” Another stab. “For my brother.”

  He took a step back. My father was still standing, teeth clenched, sweat streaking down his forehead. The side of his shirt turned a deep red, and I could see blood running down his side. The wounds weren’t deep, and they weren’t mortal, but they must have hurt like hell. He stood all the same, breathing hard, refusing to back down.

  “And you know what? This is for everyone else,” Cal said, and then he drove the knife into my father’s right eye.

  Now my father screamed, a horrible pained wail, and dropped down to his knees. Lyriana clutched a hand over her mouth, and the guards closed in tight around us, spears leveled, practically daring us to try something. Cal held my father there, grinning, and then he jerked the knife out, sending rivulets of blood and globs of eye streaking across the floor. My father collapsed, clutching his face, and crimson seeped out through his fingers. “Now we’re good,” Cal said, wiping his blade on his shirt. “Take them away.”

  THEY PUT US UP IN some rooms on one of the upper levels of the Greatest Ziggurat. They were nice enough: spacious and well-furnished, with bowls of fruit and bottles of chilled wine. That morning, I would’ve given anything to flop down in a place like that, but I found myself a little distracted by my father, sprawled out on one of the beds, bleeding out of the gaping hole that had been his right eye.

  The guards just dropped us there and left, not even bothering to get a medic, so it fell to Lyriana. And even though she hated my father as much as Cal did, even though she would’ve been totally justified in letting him bleed, she pulled up a chair to his bedside and worked her Healing Arts, pressing her hands to his wounds, cupping a palm around his eye, whispering under her breath as her Rings glowed green and the air filled with the smell of fresh dew and budding flowers. I sat there, watching as the ragged cuts clotted and healed, as the skin refolded itself into white scars, as the horrible crater in his head mended itself into a sunken fleshy patch.

  There was only so much she could do, of course. Healing Arts hastened the body’s natural healing processes, but they couldn’t do anything your body wouldn’t do on its own. So that eye was like Ellarion’s hands. Gone for good.

  It must have been at least an hour (and a bottle of wine), before she finished. Finally, she stepped away, leaving him lying there, his remaining eye shut, breath slow and deep. I kind of thought he was knocked out, but when Lyriana got out of her chair, he spoke, just once, in a voice barely above a whisper. “Thank you.”

  “You saved all of us with that marriage idea,” Lyriana replied, refusing to look at him. “Consider us even.”

  She stepped out of our room onto the balcony. Zell, Syan, and Ellarion had all headed down into the Izterosi neighborhood to get us the supplies we’d need for the journey, which meant my options were joining her or staying in the room with my father and his heavy breathing and the bubbling patch of mottled flesh slowly forming over his eye.

  I hit that balcony like no one’s business.

  Lyriana stood by the railing, gazing out, and I walked over to join her. Tau Lorren was beautiful from above, a sprawling maze of little houses and shops and taverns, lit up by thousands of lanterns, alive with bustle and noise. It looked like most of the fires had been put out, like the worst of the earthquake’s damage had been cleared away. The sky overhead was a lush turquoise, and the moon a perfect silver crescent, reflecting like a current of magic on the surface of the Adelphus.

  I smiled a little, because damn it was pretty, but Lyriana just gazed out with a distant, troubled look. Given her day, I didn’t blame her. “So,” I said, trying to think of the least awkward way to broach the topic. “You’re engaged now.”

  Lyriana turned to me with a weary shrug, like, was that really the best I could do? “I suppose so. Not that I feel any different.”

  “Are you really going to go through with it? Marry him, I mean?”

  “I made a vow, Tilla. I keep my promises.” Lyriana nodded. “When we win this war…if we win this war…I shall take Rulys Cal as my husband.”

  “And…you’re okay with that?”

  “I understand how marriage works,” Lyriana said with just a tiny hint of annoyance. “And I’ve known since I was a little girl that my marriage would be one of political convenience. I’d always assumed it would be to bring some powerful family into the Volaris fold or resolve some growing tension among Lightspire nobility. If my marriage secures the alliance to save the Kingdom…well, that’s better than I could have ever expected.”

  “Well, okay, yeah,” I said. “But you must have some personal feelings about it, right? We’re talking about the man you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. The man you’re gonna…you know…” Why was I suddenly feeling bashful? “You know.”

  “Yes. I know.” Lyriana rolled her eyes. “I’ve known what love feels like, Tilla. I’ve known heartbreak. And for that matter, I’ve known a fair bit of random pleasure as well. I don’t need any of that in my life.” She turned back to the city sprawled out below. “What I need is a Kingdom at peace. What I need is the will, the strength, and the wisdom to be a good ruler. If Rulys Cal can help me find that…I’ll be happy to call him husband.”

  “Huh. Right.” I paused, then couldn’t help myself. “On the bright side, you guys are going to make some cute-ass babies.”

  Lyriana turned to me gravely, then cracked a smile. “I suppose he is…somewhat attractive. When he’s not gouging people’s eyes out, anyway.”

  “If we ruled out every guy who’s gouged out an eye, who’d we be left with, right?”

 
I was mostly joking, but Lyriana looked at me thoughtfully. “What about you and Zell?” she asked. “When this is all over, are you two planning to get married?”

  “Are we…I…well…I mean,” I stammered, because I didn’t actually know the answer. It’s not that I hadn’t thought about it. Being real, I’d imagined every single detail of our wedding (and more than a few of our wedding nights). It’s just that those thoughts felt like whimsical daydreams, filed in my brain alongside childhood fantasies like “riding a dragon” and “being a Princess.” I couldn’t bring myself to think of them as things that could really happen. “I don’t know,” I said at last. “I mean, I want to. I love with him all my heart, and I can’t ever imagine being with someone else. But it just doesn’t feel like that day will ever come.”

  “The war will end,” Lyriana insisted.

  I shook my head. “This one will. But what about the next one? And the one after that?” I don’t know why I was telling her all this, but it was spilling out now and there was no stopping it. “I just don’t know that he’ll ever let go, that he’ll ever stop fighting. He’s got this pain inside him, Lyriana, at his core, this feeling like he’s just so guilty and awful, like he has to personally carry the weight of the world’s problems on his shoulders. And I don’t know if he’s going to let go of that.” I dabbed at my eyes with the inside of my wrist. “I don’t know if he even can.”

  Lyriana leaned over and hugged me, and I buried my face into her shoulder. “He’ll grow. He’ll change. We all will.”

  “I hope so,” a voice said from behind us, and I turned to see Ellarion, leaning against the door frame. “Sorry. Hope I’m not interrupting private…girl…time.”

  “You are, but it’s fine.” Lyriana stepped away from me. “I thought you were going with the others to secure provisions.”