War of the Bastards

by Andrew Shvarts

  But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of admitting it. “I came to tell you how I really felt,” I replied. “Do you have any idea how much you hurt me, Miles? How much you took from me? Do you even understand what your betrayal did?” I shook my head. “I’ve been stabbed and cut and beaten. But nothing hurt me worse than what you did.” I gestured around me at the jail cell, at the table covered in bloodied torture tools. “Do you see this, Miles? Do you see what you’ve built, what you’ve become? Do you have any shame?”

  Miles breathed in sharply, nostrils flaring. I could see him struggling to temper his words. “Look. I’m not going to claim I always made the right decision. Obviously, I’m not happy with how things turned out. And believe it or not, I was crushed when I heard about Jax. Really. I know he and I didn’t always get along, but he was my friend too, Tilla.” I hated hearing him saying it, hated Jax’s name on his lips, but I had to admit he sounded sincere. “But you have to understand. When it comes to the Kingdom, the bloodmages, the war, all of it, I only did what I had to in order to survive. I never had a choice. Not really.”

  “Bullshit!” I almost-yelled. “You always had a choice. And you chose to kill so many people….”

  “Like you haven’t killed?” Miles replied. “Come on. I know you’ve got blood on your hands.”

  Fifty-eight, I thought, but didn’t say. “That’s different. That was in battle.”

  “But what put you in the battle? Was it your own choice? Or was it the path of life that had been set for you, forces beyond your control shoving you into that moment when all you could do was kill or be killed?” Miles argued. “Your father was the one who forced me to be his right hand. Your father was the one who forced me to lead men onto the front lines. Your father was the one who made me what I am!” He was getting louder now, his voice starting to crack. “While you were living it up in the fancy city, drinking and dancing and screwing around with the Zitochi, I was hiding in a trench, digging an arrowhead out of my thigh and holding a man as his guts spilled out of his stomach! If you want to blame anyone for this, blame your father. But no. He’s up there, a free man, and I’m the one rotting in a cell.”

  Miles had technically put my father in that very same cell, but this wasn’t the time to get into it. “My father did a lot of awful shit, and he’s going to pay for it,” I replied. “But at least he has the decency to own up to it and take responsibility. At least he doesn’t always try to blame someone else for his choices!”

  “Choices,” Miles repeated, closing his eyes. “What a weird word. Like I’d ever have chosen this for myself. Like I’d ever have chosen this mantle, this world, this fate.” He leaned back against the wall of his cell, chained wrists hitting the ground with a clank. “I never wanted to be a King, you know. Not even as a little kid. Ruling and making decisions and ordering armies and all of it…just the thought made me want to throw up.” There was a wistful quality to his tone, more earnest than I’d heard him since before the betrayal. Was his impending death breaking him down? “All I ever wanted was a big library to lose myself in, and good friends, and a nice safe home to come back to. All I ever wanted was…was…” He trailed off, lost in the thought.

  “It’s still not too late,” I said, and I don’t know why I was reasoning with him, why I somehow felt bad. Coming down here had been a mistake. “You can use the time you have left to try to make things right. You can fix all the damage you’ve done.”

  “No. It is too late. The minute your father demanded I create mages for him, my fate was sealed.” Miles looked up at me, right at me, his gray eyes meeting mine. “You know what I think about all the time, Tilla? Our journey through the West. When we were running from our parents, all together, just a scrappy band of bastards. You, me, Zell, Lyriana, Jax, all of us. Camping together under the stars and telling jokes by the riverside and relying on one another to survive. It’s hard to believe, right? We were in mortal danger, chased by horrible mercenaries, abandoned by our own families.” He smiled weakly. “But I think that’s the happiest I’ve ever been.”

  “You could have had that, Miles. That life. Those friendships. You could have kept all of it.”

  “Yeah. If you hadn’t chosen Zell.”

  There it was. The dodge. The blaming. The refusal, at every turn, to just own up to his choices. This was who Miles was, who he’d always be. Lyriana was right; there was no point talking to him.

  I got up, reaching for the door, ready to slam it in his face. “Well. This went about as well as it could. Time to get ready to land.”

  Something changed instantly in Miles’s manner. He stiffened, and that earnest emotion vanished from his eyes, replaced by a cold cunning. “So we’re landing, then? Sooner than I thought. I always suspected the Hands were holding out on me.” He cleared his throat and stretched out his bound wrists, fingers flexing. “Right, then. Let’s get this over with.”

  “What?” I asked, pushing back, even as the knot of unease in my stomach turned into plunging dread. We’d missed something. Something big. Something bad. I reached for the handle of the door to slam it…

  But before I could, the air curdled with the sickly pulse of bloodmagic. My skin tingled like someone was scraping it with a dull blade, and I fought back a gag as my mouth flooded with the taste of smoke and ash, as my ears filled with the sound of scraping metal. Miles’s eyes flickered, and that dull gray glowed brighter and brighter, hot and metallic, like sunshine on the edge of a blade.

  “No,” I whispered, but it was too late. Miles leaned back, and I could see it now, underneath him, a hidden compartment built into the floor of the cell…

  And a spent syringe lying within.

  Miles had just made himself a bloodmage.

  He flared out his pointer fingers, and the chain between his wrists snapped apart, whistling toward me through the air like a hurled dagger. I tried to duck, but it was too late; it caught me in the neck, hitting hard, and wrapped around my throat like a clenching fist. My vision flared red. Pain shot through me. I gasped and wheezed, begging for air.

  In front of me, Miles rose to his feet, a bemused look on his face. He twirled one hand in a lazy half circle, and the chain relaxed just the tiniest bit, enough for me to breathe. I collapsed down to my knees, rasping, panting. “You took the serum.”

  “I had to,” he said with a growl. “I’d hoped to avoid it. But the second you locked me in this cell, you left me no choice.” He waved his hands in the air, and the door’s hinges burst off. “It’s funny. I still haven’t figured out why the serum activates such different abilities in people. I suspect it’s tied into innate psychology somehow. I’d kind of hoped for fire or lightning but…well, controlling metal is kind of me, right?”

  On my hands and knees, the chain still tight around my throat, I fumbled toward him. On the one hand, I could barely breathe. On the other, I wanted to claw his eyes out. I gritted my teeth and strained to channel the Nightmother’s power, to pop Miles like the tumor he was…but there was nothing. I needed a Heartstone for it to work.

  “Try anything, and I will choke you out,” Miles said. “I don’t want to. But I will. You understand?”

  “Yes,” I wheezed, begging him to turn his back, to give me a chance.

  “Good. Then let’s go.”

  He ushered me up the spiral staircase, holding me out in front of him like a shield. “What’s your plan?” I managed to get out. “We still control the ship.”

  “You do. Which is why I’m taking it back,” Miles replied, shoving me through the door into the upper hallway.

  Lyriana was there, idly walking from one room to the other. “Tilla!” she yelled in shock at the sight of me, and jerked her hands up, preparing an Art…

  “Do it and she dies!” Miles barked. “I mean it! I’ll crush her throat!”

  “Do it, Lyriana!” I tried to say, but the chain squeezed tight so all I got out was a gurgle. It didn’t matter. At the sight of the chain, Lyriana dropped he
r hands. “Don’t hurt her!” she yelled, and even though she was saving my life, I wanted to smack her. You couldn’t give in to Miles. Not ever.

  “Into the captain’s quarters!” Miles bellowed, and Lyriana backed through the rounded doorway into the cozy padded study. The others were all in there, and they fumbled up out of their seats as Miles stepped into the doorway with me at his side. Zell whipped out a blade, and Ellarion raised his arms, his hands whistling into formation at his back.

  “What is this?” Syan demanded. “How is he free?”

  “Blood…mage…” I got out. My eyes met Zell’s, and I could see the murderous rage inside him, the whirring of his mind as he ran through every possible way to clear the room and save me. He was like a cat, poised, tense, ready to pounce. But the opening just wasn’t there. Not with a chain crushing my neck.

  “So you took the serum after all,” my father growled. He alone hadn’t gotten up, glaring at Miles from his chair. “You’re even more shortsighted than I thought.”

  “Oh, really?” Miles’s voice cracked. “Sure seems to have worked out pretty well for me.” Ellarion’s hands twitched, and Miles shot him a glare. “Try anything, and she dies. I’m serious.”

  “He won’t do it,” my father said to the others. “He’s in love with her.” That was a weird thing to bring up right now, even if it was true. “We can take him. We have to. Now!”

  The three mages didn’t move, but Zell did. I guess he trusted my father or he knew Miles or both. With a low hiss, he spun and threw his sword…

  Which Miles stopped effortlessly in midair with a single raised hand. “Idiot,” he said, and flicked it back, the blade clipping the side of Zell’s arm. He let out a grunt and toppled down, clutching it even as the blood seeped out.

  “No!” I screamed, pushing forward. This asshole. This miserable piece of shit. I would tear his face apart with my nails. I would bite open his throat. I would crush his skull with my bare hands. I would—

  Do nothing at the moment, because the chain held me tighter than ever. I could see the others backing away uneasily, glancing at each other, trying to come up with something. Lyriana streaked over to Zell’s side, pressing a single glowing hand to his wound.

  “What’s your plan, then?” Ellarion demanded. “You think you can take all of us?”

  “Oh, Archmagus. I already have.” Miles grinned. He had this voice he put on in these situations, this sneering cocky manner that he must have thought sounded cool. “I’m actually pretty proud of this one. You see, the captain’s quarters is a retrofit. It wasn’t part of the original Skywhale, which was conceived as a military ship. I had it installed when it became clear I’d be spending a lot of time on it.” He smiled, and there was none of that sweet boy there, no earnestness, just a sneering cruelty. “Do you see where this is going?”

  “No,” Syan gasped. “No!”

  “Yes.” From back in the doorway, Miles jerked up both hands, fingers clawed, and massive rifts cut through the metal of the walls, the metal holding the room in place. Lyriana let out a scream and the whole room tilted down at a rough angle, causing all of my friends to tumble backward. The hiss of the wind shot over us, and I could see the sky through the cracks, the clouds below. My heart leaped into my throat.

  He was cutting off the room. The whole room. He was going to rip it off and let it fall away. And he was going to keep me.

  “Do something!” my father screamed.

  But it was too late. Miles brought his hands together over his head, and the rifts connected, a clean cut that severed the captain’s quarters from the body of the Skywhale, leaving the doorway we were standing in a portal out the side of the ship. Lyriana threw up her hands. Syan sprang to her feet. Zell, still fallen, reached out. The room shuddered, hanging by just a few strands of metal, tilting down lower and lower.

  Miles grinned.

  And I did the one thing he didn’t expect. With all the force I had, with every ounce of strength in my body, I jerked forward, pulled myself out of his magic’s grasp, out and through the doorway. My foot touched the floor of the room just as it ripped off.

  “No!” Miles screamed, but there was nothing else he could do.

  Like a nest blown off a tree in a storm, the captain’s quarters tore away from the Skywhale and plummeted down to the world.

  With me in it.

  AS A KID, I’D ALWAYS been fearless when it came to heights. I would scale the parapets of Castle Waverly, run along the ramparts, and sit up in the watchtowers with my feet dangling over the edge. My stepmother, Lady Yrenwood, would tut-tut and shake her head, telling her precious daughters not to be like me, that one day I’d fall to my death.

  I guess she was right.

  One moment, I’d been standing in the doorway of the Skywhale with Miles. Now I was in the detached captain’s quarters, screaming and clutching a wall as we hurtled toward the ground from hundreds of miles up. The whole room had tilted at a 90 degree angle, so the far wall was now the floor and we’d all gone smashing down into it. At the top was the ragged hole where the room had connected to the ship, and through it I could see the sky above, bright and blue and beautiful, and the gray husk of the Skywhale, sailing harmlessly away. The wind howled around us, so loud it was deafening, and I felt a huge force holding me down, pinning me to the wall (floor?) like I had a hand on my chest. All the furniture had fallen down around us, so I could barely see anyone, just a tumble of chairs and tables, loose papers whistling wildly by us. I strained around, trying to find Zell, to make sure he was okay, to hold his hand in the end.

  How long did we have? Twenty seconds? Ten?

  “Lyri! Syan!” Ellarion’s voice screamed from somewhere beside me. “Air currents! Lift! Now!”

  “I’m trying!” Lyriana yelled, and I could see her now, standing upright, her hands soaked in Zell’s blood. Syan was next to her, fumbling for her new zaryas even as the ground lurched away beneath us. Lyriana jerked a hand up hard, and there was a sudden surge from below us, a jostling that sent us bouncing up. Our fall slowed, a little, into more of a float. She gritted her teeth, sweat streaking down her face, her whole body taut and trembling. Her eyes burned a furious gold, the pupils sinking away as she dove deeper and deeper into Heartmagic. “It’s heavy…so much…” she gasped.

  “You’ve got this!” I yelled, and there was another jolt as a second current swooped in to support us. This one caught us even more, but it also shoved the back of the falling room upright, tilting us sharply forward. The hole at the top swung down as the room re-leveled to be back at the side, and then it was shaking and tilting down. I could see the ground below, the stretch of amber field. We must have covered at least half the distance and were now just three hundred feet up or so. Still enough to dash us into little pieces when we hit the ground.

  Then the room tilted even more, and now the hole was below us, and we were all sliding toward it. Tables and chairs hurtled down into the void. I screamed and shot out a hand, grabbing onto a post in the wall. Ellarion wrapped his arms around one next to me, Syan clinging to him, and now I could see Zell too, his arm still bleeding, hanging on to a crack in the wall with one hand. And Lyriana…

  She was still standing upright, working her Lift! She slipped and fell forward with a shriek, plunging toward the abyss. “No!” I yelled, but I was too far, all of us were too far. She hurtled down toward the edge, even as her Lift wore off and we plunged down faster…

  A hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, catching her just before she went over. My father. He clutched her close, holding a railing with his free hand, teeth gritted, letting out a roar of exertion. He’d caught her, stopping her right before she went over, and threw her back, toward the far end of the room, toward Ellarion and Syan. Her eyes met Ellarion’s, even as we fell, and he yelled “Shields!”

  In that moment, that one critical moment, the three mages acted as one. Lyriana shot out one hand to grab Syan and another to grab Ellarion. Syan’s zaryas shot up into t
he air; Ellarion’s hands rose up above him. “Shields!” Lyriana roared, her eyes full gold, her voice thunder.

  And they appeared all around us, a spiraling band of rippling purple membranes surrounding the falling room. I’d seen a Shield before, of course, but the three mages threw up one after another, Shield after Shield, enveloping the room, nesting it in, wrapping it up like bandages, sealing it tight.

  Then we hit the ground. The Shields took the impact, or almost all of it, absorbing it, keeping us safe like a glass egg nestled within hundreds of pillows. I felt their energy as they took the shock, felt them buckle and strain and break. The Shields took the blow, but we still hit the ground hard.

  The room shuddered and shook. We all lifted up, flying from the floor to hit the ceiling and back to the floor. The walls shuddered and bent. What little furniture was left came crashing down. A cloud of dust billowed up around us. That surge of energy, that power, that whatever, vanished instantly, replaced only by incredible aching pain, flaring through what felt like every inch of my body.

  And yet…I was alive.

  I pulled myself up, coughing through the dust. We were on the ground now, all right, and through the hole in the side I could see the stretch of field where we’d landed, making a pretty decent little crater. The room itself was all banged up; the walls were cracked and shattered, twisting into jagged chunks, and a big sliver of the ceiling was hanging on by a thread. All the furniture was shattered, hunks of splintered wood.

  And yet…we were alive!

  I turned to look for the others. There was Lyriana on all fours, coughing as the glow left her eyes, and Syan, bleeding from a cut in her forehead, helping Ellarion to his feet. Zell made his way to me, clutching his arm, his hair tousled, his face caked in dirt, but a smile on his face nonetheless.