War of the Bastards

by Andrew Shvarts

  “You did it!” I beamed at the mages. “You saved us!”

  “I…I just…I…” Lyriana tried, but couldn’t find the words. That was fine. She’d done more than enough.

  “Uh…guys…” Ellarion said, staring toward the back of the room with a grimace. “Look.”

  I followed his gaze and…

  My stomach leapt into my throat. No. Oh no.

  My father lay against the farthest wall, slumped down in a heap. He was lying very still, barely moving, and that’s probably because a jagged spiral of twisted metal was bursting out through his chest like a massive bloodied spear. He’d been thrown onto it when we landed, and it had skewered him clean through.

  No. No no no.

  Not now.

  Not like this.

  I ran over to his side, bounding over the debris, and fell to my knees beside him. “Father. Can you hear me? Father!”

  He craned his head up to me weakly, his one eye bleary. Blood trickled down his lips, soaking his beard. “Tillandra,” he said, each syllable a labor. “You’re alive. Thank the Old Kings.” He tried to look around, but it was clear he was having trouble focusing. “The others? The Queen?”

  “We all made it, Father.” I hadn’t touched him in who knows how long, probably not since I was a little girl, but I grabbed his hand, squeezing it tight. “We’re safe.”

  His lips twisted into the tiniest hint of a smile. “Good.” Then he coughed, a horrible rasping cough, and his chest shuddered and I saw just how much blood he’d already lost, how slick the floor was. “Damn. Shame to go like this. I’d hoped to see it through to the end.”

  “You’re not going to die here,” I said, and the reality of it was crushing, suffocating, closing in around me. I looked to Lyriana for help, but she just shook her head. Healing Arts could only repair what the body would do on its own. And no body could recover from this.

  “Listen, Tilla,” he said, each breath a bloody wheeze. “I need to tell you this. Before it’s too late. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life.” He squeezed my hand tight. “But you are not one of them.”

  “Father…” I tried, and my eyes were burning and my hand was trembling and my breath was trapped in my throat. Was this really happening? I’d thought about my father’s death so many times in so many ways, but I couldn’t believe it was actually here. “You can’t die. Not now. I still don’t know what to do. I still need your help.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” he said, looking at me, really looking at me. “You’re a marvel. You’re smart and resourceful and the bravest fighter I’ve ever met. And you’ve surrounded yourself with incredible friends. Whatever challenge you’ll face, you’ll overcome.” His grip was getting weaker, fading away. “Win this war, Tilla. Fix what I’ve broken. And then…live for yourself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Go somewhere far away. Make a home. Put war and death behind you.” The others were gathered around me, silent, but it was hard to see them through the tears. “Keep Zell close. He’s a good man. You two can build a life together…find the happiness I never did.” He was fighting now, fighting to stay lucid, to stay alive. “Be kind. Be brave. Be better than me.”

  I squeezed tight, so tight, trying to will my life into him for just another moment. “I will. I promise.”

  He swallowed tight, and seemed to pull himself together, just a little. He craned his head to the side, trying to look past me. “Is the Queen there?”

  “She is.”

  “Then listen close.” He pulled his hand out of mine, and reached up to touch my cheek. “By the laws of the Old Kings and the laws of the Kingdom of Noveris, under the eyes of its True Queen, I hereby declare Tilla Kent to be my true-born daughter, and the rightful heir to House Kent.” His gaze met mine. A single tear streaked down his cheek. “You are bastard no more, my love.”

  This was it. This was really it. The words I’d spent the first sixteen years of my life dreaming about. And they were coming like this, so long after I’d given up on hearing them, after their meaning had changed in every way. “I love you,” I told him. “But I don’t forgive you.”

  “I know,” he whispered with a proud smile.

  Then he died.

  I sniffled and clutched his limp hand to my lips and tried and failed to blink away the tears. Zell reached down and squeezed my shoulder and I pressed my cheek against him. My father was gone. He was really gone. There was so much more I wanted to say to him. So much more I needed to know. So much more we could have done if we’d only had more time, if we’d only talked more, if we’d only, if we’d only—

  “Someone’s here,” Syan said, pulling me out of that thought. I spun around to look, and yeah, she was right. There were people emerging from the fields to surround our fallen room. A lot of them too. Kind of a mob. Most were Heartlanders, with a few Southlanders and Easterners in the mix. A few were dressed like soldiers, but most just looked like smallfolk. They held makeshift weapons, pitchforks and clubs and rusty blades, and stared at us like they wanted to attack but weren’t quite sure if they should.

  I turned to the others for guidance, and they all looked as confused as I was. It suddenly dawned on me that I didn’t know where we’d landed or who they were or what in the frozen hell we were doing next.

  Then the crowd parted and a man stepped forward, a man with a crisp tunic and a familiar face, a man staring at us with his jaw wide in disbelief.

  “No fucking way,” Galen said.

  WE STOOD THERE FOR A moment, nobody moving, and then Lyriana was the first, bounding out from the rubble of the shattered quarters to grab him in a hug so hard it nearly knocked him off his feet. We all emerged one by one, looking like utter hell: our hair tousled, our faces stained with ash and blood, our clothes barely rags at this point. I was surprised to see Galen, of course; when we’d last left him, he was taking the remains of the Unbroken and heading east to recover and rebuild. But he looked vastly more surprised to see us, which makes sense because we’d literally fallen out of the sky in front of him. He held Lyriana tight and waved weakly at us and it took nearly ten minutes before he was back to his usual self again, marching us forward while filling us in.

  Galen, it turned out, had been almost as busy as we had. After the fall of our camp, he’d fled with the remaining Unbroken to the East. He’d had some luck at first, regrouping with some small rebel groups and rebuilding his numbers, until an attack on a grain caravan had turned out to be an ambush. They’d lost another dozen men, including poor Kelvin, and Galen had been forced to flee once more. The survivors were pursued into the south, and just when things had looked hopeless, they’d managed to run into the oncoming vanguard of the Southlands army, fresh off crossing the Adelphus. Galen convinced the army’s leader that he was an asset, and brokered an alliance between the Unbroken and the Southlanders. I didn’t ask if that meant Galen had to marry him, badly as I wanted to.

  “So who are all these people?” Lyriana asked. We were walking through Galen’s camp, though even calling it a camp was a stretch. It was more a long messy train, a procession of at least two hundred smallfolk, sleeping in shoddy tents or just out in the night air. We’d left the captain’s quarters behind, walked away from the cold, still body lying inside. My chest was heavy, my heart refusing to admit it had really happened. My father was dead. My father. Was dead.

  I couldn’t think about that, couldn’t handle dealing with the whirlwind of warring emotions just waiting to come tearing out. So I pushed it all down and just tried to focus on looking at the people around me. Here three old men sat, cooking scrawny-looking game over a crude fire pit. Here a pair of women practiced their sword work using blades so rusted they looked ready to break.

  “They’re rebels,” Galen said, beaming. “Well, aspiring rebels mostly. Smallfolk who’ve put their lives on hold to join our ranks and fight the tyranny of the Inquisitor with everything they have. Every day, their numbers grow as more and more arrive.”

>   “I don’t understand,” I said. “Why now? Why like this?”

  Galen jerked his head to the north, past the sprawl of commoners. There, laid out across the wheat fields, was the bulk of the Southlands army. I could see huge pitched tents and rows upon rows of wagons, could hear the clatter of blades and the clanging of hammers and the rumble of men’s voices, blurring together like a distant river. I’d never seen an army on the march, but the sheer size blew me away: there had to be at least two thousand soldiers there, maybe more, marched right up to the very heart of the Kingdom itself.

  Lightspire. The city sat in the distance, and from here I could make out the details more clearly. Tall stone walls surrounded it, and they still stood, despite the army camped outside. Normally, I would’ve been able to see the roofs of some of the tallest buildings from here, like the domed temple spires, but right now, the city was hidden behind thick clouds of smoke billowing up from behind the walls, like the whole place was burning in there. Tiny shapes, dozens of them, paced the ramparts. Bloodmages. Every now and again, one of them would make a sharp movement, and there’d be a flash of light, a bolt of lightning or a blast of flame screeching down, keeping any potential intruders at bay.

  I remembered riding up here, what, a year and a half ago? How majestic and beautiful the city had looked. How worried I had been about what the King would think of me. How certain I was that I’d never see my father again, and how certain I was that I’d never want to.

  If I had known…if I could’ve just talked to him more…if only I’d protected him, if I hadn’t gone down to Miles, if I—

  Zell must have seen the look on my face, because he reached out and held me close. “The smallfolk are joining you because of the Southlander army?” he asked.

  Galen nodded. “Oh yeah. The people of this Kingdom are sick and tired of this bloody regime. They want their Queen back, and they’re ready to fight for her. They just needed to know it was possible.” A young man with a bow pressed his fist to his heart as we passed, and Galen returned the salute. “I’ve never been the biggest fan of the Southlands. But say what you will, they really came through here. Seeing them march through the Province, driving Miles’s army back, in open defiance…it was exactly the push the people needed.” There was a sense of pride to his voice, an optimism I don’t think I’d ever heard before. “Four minor Lords have thrown in their lot with us. Dozens more are pulling back. Reports are coming that the city itself is in rebellion, that insurgents take to the streets. And every village we pass, our ranks here swell and grow.”

  “So you’re what? A recruiter?” Ellarion asked.

  “It’s what I’ve always been good at, right?” Galen replied. We’d gone farther up his camp now, and I think we were entering the “skilled rebel” section; armored defectors practicing their forms alongside surviving mages from the old regime, like a pair of Hands sculpting a floating ball of earth or a sole Knight of Lazan, off in the distance, twirling a blade of shimmering flame. “I ride behind the army and give my speeches in the villages we pass. It’s amazing, in a way. We’re stronger than ever, and we’re finally in a position to make Miles suffer.” He looked around the camp. “If we keep this up, by the time winter breaks, we’ll have a formidable army all on our own.”

  “By the time winter breaks?” I asked. “I don’t understand. That’s months from now. Why would we still be here in winter? Aren’t we taking the city back?”

  “That hasn’t gone as well as we’d hoped,” Galen said, his expression dark. “Miles pulled all of his forces back to defend it. We’ve tried to breach it but between the walls and the bloodmages, it’s just resulted in a lot of dead Southlanders.” His troubled look made me think he’d seen a lot of that up close. “That’s why we’ve gone into siege mode. Sooner or later, their food will run out. Sooner or later, the city will burn from within. Sooner or later, winter will come. In three months, it’ll be ours.”

  “I don’t think we have till winter,” Lyriana began, but she was cut off by the loudest, most boisterous shout I’d ever heard. I turned and there he was bounding toward us, Marlo Todarian, his apron dirty and his hair wild around his head, with the quietly smiling Garrus closed behind. I was so damn happy to see them.

  “Tilla!” Marlo grabbed me up in a hug, lifting me off my feet, while Garrus gave the others a curt salute. “You’re alive!”

  “It’s. Good. To. See. You. Too,” I squeezed out from the depths of his arms. He smelled like oatmeal and potatoes.

  “Titans be blessed,” Garrus said with a little nod. That was a weird phrase to hear these days, but I let it go. “I’ll make sure there’s a bowl of stew waiting for you.”

  “Don’t suppose it comes with a glass of ale.”

  “I’ve got my own special little supply,” Marlo said with a wink, then turned to Galen. “We were actually coming here to ask about the prisoners. There’s some dissent regarding how much we should be feeding them.”

  “Prisoners?” I asked, and Galen jerked his head to the side. There, a row of miserable-looking men sat on the ground, mostly Westerners, their wrists shackled together to their ankles. Their faces were pallid and sweaty, veins throbbing under their skin. One leaned over and vomited, a noxious black bile.

  “Bloodmages,” Zell said.

  “About that,” Galen said, glancing away with a hint of guilt. “The Southlanders insist on keeping them. They’ve been draining their blood, trying to use it to make their own serum. About time, I say.”

  “They’re making their own bloodmages,” I said. I felt sick to my stomach. “No…no, they can’t do that.”

  Galen blinked. “Why not?”

  We all looked at each other uneasily, and then Lyriana spoke. “There’s something you should know.”

  It took a while for us to catch Galen up to speed. We told him everything, well, almost everything: our journey across the Adelphus, the night with the vagabonds, the earthquake in the Southlands, the deal we’d made with Rulys Cal. He took that in stride, more or less, but the more we got into what happened to us in the Red Wastes, the more perplexed he got; by the time we were talking about meeting an actual Titan, he was staring at us like we’d all collectively lost our minds. He grinned when we told him about capturing the Skywhale, and scowled when we told him how Miles took it back. But when we told him the last part, about the Heartstones and the magic and the end of the world, his face darkened, curling into a cold fury worse than I’d ever seen on him.

  “You’re telling me,” he said at last, each word a labor, “that every single new bloodmage brings the world closer to ruin? That even if we take back the throne, we still have to deal with every bloodmage out there or we’ll all die?”

  “Not just bloodmages,” Syan corrected. “All the mages, period. Except for me, Ellarion, and Lyriana, that is.”

  “That’s a price we’ll just have to pay,” he said, which was really easy for him since it wasn’t his choice to make. “We have to do the thing. Get Tilla to the Heartstone and have her use the crystal. Kill them all and save the Kingdom.”

  “Kill thousands of people?” Lyriana demanded. “No. There has to be another way.”

  “There isn’t. The Titan said so herself,” Galen said, with way too much authority given that he hadn’t even been there. “We have to do it.”

  Lyriana’s gaze narrowed. “You almost sound eager.”

  “To kill the bloodmages who’ve taken so much from us? Yeah. I’m eager,” Galen growled. “And I’m eager to prevent the end of the world.”

  “Maybe it should end,” Zell said. “If we do this, what makes us worth saving?”

  “Are you serious right now? Are you actually—”

  “Stop it!” I yelled, and they all went quiet. “Stop talking, all of you. I’m the one with the crystal in me. So this is my decision. My choice. And I…I…” It all felt too much. The power surging inside me. The weight of the choice in front of me. The city lying ahead, the army all around, and the room lying
behind me, the crushed captain’s quarters, and the still form within…

  I turned my back on all of them. “Right now, I have a father to mourn.”

  WE WESTERNERS DON’T USUALLY BURN our dead; we bury them in graveyards, or in the case of nobility, inter them in crypts below our castles with majestic statues that watch over them with cold, regal eyes. But we weren’t in the West, and I wasn’t about to bury my father here, in the Province he’d so hated, the Province he’d broken himself trying to conquer, the Province that had, in the end, taken his life.

  So I went out to the farthest edge of the camp and built a pyre there, dragging logs away from the woodpile and stacking them up. My arms ached and my fingers bled but I couldn’t stop, no matter how tired I felt. After a moment, Zell came to join me. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Together, we stacked log upon log upon log, built up an interlaced mound, laid down the kindling. A few of the peasants watched us, confused, but none approached; they could tell something heavy was going on.

  By the time we finished building it, night had started to fall, the sky a soft purple, the sun slipping behind the horizon. Despite it all, I still couldn’t bear the thought of carrying my father, so Zell did it, emerging from the crushed quarters with my father’s body limp in his arms. He looked so small like this, a bundle of flesh and bone wrapped in bloody cloth, his eye shut, his hair hanging low. How could someone so powerful, so important, so utterly monumental, become just this?

  Zell laid my father down on the pyre, and turned to me. I took a torch from a nearby fire pit and lit the kindling. Then the flames spread, climbing up the wood like hungry vines, swallowing my father in a shroud of orange and yellow and red.

  Zell’s hand found mine, and we stood there, still, like the statues that watch over the dead in the crypts of the West. Tears streaked down my cheeks, but they were quiet tears, the kind that came not with heaving sobs but a broken heart. “I feel like I should say something,” I whispered. “But I don’t know what to say.”