Broken Crown

by Drae Box

  He broke away from Aldora’s lips. “Find the assassin,” he ordered the cat. “I don’t want to be caught off-guard.”

  Pedibastet crept down the corridor with his ears pressed against his skull and his tail low as he advanced upon the armoury.

  Raneth forced breath into Aldora’s lungs again and drew back, waiting, watching. “Please,” he uttered, voice cracking. “Please stay.”

  Aldora sucked in a breath alone and Raneth cried out in relief, and smiled as he gripped her hand. “Thank you.” He watched as the reddened tip of Pedibastet’s tail twitched as he peered into the armoury doorway.

  “Is he there?” asked Raneth. “Where is he?”

  The Prince of the Cats ignored him and trotted to the kitchen doorway. Pedibastet peeked through that, his head bobbing before he turned his gaze to Raneth. “He’s gone. And…”

  Raneth frowned, slipping his arms around Aldora’s chest and pulling her torso onto his lap. “What?” he snapped, noticing for the first time two short swords on the floor.

  “He raided Cray’s safe. The Shotput of Power is gone.”

  “She alive?” asked Dragon Bayre.

  Raneth looked over his shoulder at his father. Dragon was standing in the doorway to the throne room. “Yes.” He waited for a flicker of annoyance to sweep across his father’s face, but it didn’t.

  Dragon nodded, face worn and pale, before he looked to the living room. “Put her in there, and then get supplies for our injuries,” said his father. He limped towards the room, resting his weight against the wall and leaving handprints of dirt and dried mud. The marks dissolved a few seconds after he lifted his hand; the palace had never liked being dirty.

  Raneth lifted Aldora up and waited as Dragon stepped into the living room. He followed his father in, taking Aldora to one of the red plump sofas. He lowered her and called her name softly. She didn’t react and Raneth’s gut churned again.

  Pedibastet launched himself onto the arm of the sofa nearest Aldora’s head and looked at her. “What happened, Pedibastet?” asked Raneth.

  Pedibastet told Raneth what he wanted to know.

  Tears burned Raneth’s eyes as he barely kept them in check. Cray, Louise and Lem. His dad. Alagat and Rikward. Aldora. And they’d tried to take him out too. Seemed to know to wait for him to appear, to check on his father.

  Who sent them?

  Raneth looked to his father. Dragon was settling on the sofa opposite Aldora’s with a pained grimace on his face as he eased himself down. He rose his injured leg and rested its foot against the arm of the sofa, and then looked at his son.

  And how did they know the Shotput of Power was here?

  Raneth shook his head. He circled his shoulders, wincing as pain stabbed back at him from the movement. Bandages. He strode out of the room and headed to the spiral staircase, his movements slow and cautious, his steps as silent as he could make them in his boots.

  Behind him, Prince Pedibastet followed.

  What if Aldora doesn’t wake?

  He squeezed the handrail hard. He’d kept things professional between him and Aldora since defeating Broken Crown, at least until she’d come into his room tonight. A choked sob escaped the acting regent before he sucked in a breath, feeling his chest tightening as his breaths became shorter, harsher, as he fought against his tears.

  I just put her through all that for nothing.

  He shook his head, alighting the steps and entered the royal ward. He strode between the eight beds, shoving back at memories of Quinton looking after him and making him smile every time he was injured and confined to one of the beds.

  I love her. Even more now than before.

  He couldn’t give her up. If — when — she woke, he’d tell her as much.

  If I have to, I’ll invoke Trial of Binding. Aldora is my wife-to-be, not some random woman Dad thinks is better for me and the Bayre-Frey Feud.

  His mind barely thought of what he needed from Quinn’s medical cabinets as his calloused hands grabbed everything his father and he needed. He rubbed the heel of a hand against his eyes. He needed to sleep, but he couldn’t. Not yet.

  “Where’s Cray?” asked Pedibastet.

  Raneth looked down at the Prince—

  King…

  “He’s.” Raneth’s shoulders slumped as his tears rushed free, crashing from his eyes like racehorses as he shook his head. How was he supposed to tell Pedibastet that his chosen human was gone? Raneth clenched his eyes shut as Cray’s mangled body flashed behind his eyes. He shunted it away before he opened his eyes. He grabbed a metallic container. “He’s dead. Shrapnel bombs. The tunnels from Cray’s kidnapping… I...” Raneth dropped the bandages in his left hand. He grabbed at them as they fell, but his left hand’s fingers were cold and numb. With his warmer right hand, he picked them up and visually checked them for dust from the floor. They looked OK. He flung them on the bed nearest him with everything else he was grabbing.

  “Dead? Cray is… dead?”

  Raneth hummed an affirmative before he rounded up the supplies and headed back down the stairs. Get it together, Raneth, he chided himself. You can fall apart later. He sucked in a shuddering breath.

  The Giften he had known. That he’d grown up to love… Without Cray. Without him or Lemuela and Louise... It was gone.

  Giften’s dead.

  He paused at the bottom of the stairs, eyes warm with another onslaught of tears that wanted to run free. His lips trembled as he forced himself to keep moving. To keep doing something.

  Aldora and Dad are alive. Focus on them. Keep them alive.

  “What about my mother?” asked Pedibastet as he walked into the room beside Raneth. “Where is she?”

  “Your mother wouldn’t have survived,” said Dragon from his sofa.

  Raneth watched his father as he barely contained his sobs, his body shuddering with each attempt. Dragon didn’t seem as affected, but Raneth knew he was.

  He was as close to Cray as I was. Closer even, maybe.

  Raneth swallowed and knelt down at his father’s side, placing the medical supplies on the floor at his side. He eased his father’s trouser leg out of the way of the deep wound that had slowed their retreat.

  “Just clean and pack it,” said Dragon softly, his blue eyes rimmed red. “I can form to heal in the morning, once I’ve rested a bit.”

  But what if he doesn’t wake up?

  Raneth chest seized as he looked at his father’s face. The black bristles on his jaw, the way his nostrils flared with each painful twinge, the pronounced joints of his clenched jaw and the way his eyes were red and shining from unshed tears. What if his father—

  Pedibastet pressed his weight against Raneth’s side. “What are you going to do about this?”

  Raneth blinked at Pedibastet. “Me?” He gestured at Dragon then Aldora, and then at the medical supplies.

  Pedibastet grumbled deep in his throat. “No. I didn’t mean that,” snapped the cat. “Your father is the Heir Apparent. You’re the Royal Official Captain. What are you going to do about all this? About Cray and my mother? About the others? About the attack on Aldora? All of it. All of this.”

  Raneth’s thoughts stalled at Pedibastet’s barrage of questions. He focused on cleaning his father’s wound; he ignored his father’spained hisses as the anti-infection liquids dug into the wound as he used a clean cotton press to dab it in deeper, and eased out the dirt he could see. As he wiped at what he hoped was a clump of dirt, blood pooling over it and hiding it after each wipe, Raneth shoved away a mental image of Alagar’s dead face. He couldn’t think about that right now. He didn’t want to. He looked over his shoulder at Aldora and waited, barely breathing, as he watched her chest. It raised smoothly.

  Pedibastet batted his thigh with a paw, jerking Raneth’s mind back to the cat’s questions. “Well?” pressed Pedibastet.

  Raneth whined in his throat. He didn’t know what to even think, and Pedibastet wanted him to fix everything? Again? Raneth scowled and
clenched his jaw, jabbing his father’s wound a little more roughly. He gut churned as his father audibly winced.

  Why is everything always my job to fix! And what is there to fix? I can’t fix this!

  Pedibastet rubbed his side and then his cheek against Raneth. “Please, Raneth. Please don’t let them get away with this. The royal official captain should be Giften’s vengeance for this. Justice must come from your hand.”

  The royal official was exhausted. His head and eyes felt so heavy. His shoulders too. He tried to get his thoughts in check but his mind was screaming for sleep and assaulting him with images of the carriages, and of what he’d seen in them. The people he’d known so broken.

  I should have sent royal officials to meet them. Maybe… Maybe they wouldn’t have been caught so off-guard.

  Raneth looked at Aldora. She was still unconscious.

  I need to get a doctor here.

  There would be enough room for him to sleep with her on the sofa, her body resting against his so he could feel every breath she took. His griffin-self made him a light sleeper, so he’d wake if she stopped breathing whilst he slept, and he’d be able to check on her. But the nearest actual doctor was in Icoque or Wisner. Even if he formed into his griffin-self, there was no way he had the energy to get to either and make any sense to the first doctor he found. And there was no promise a doctor would wake up if he did anything other than break down their door.

  And you call yourself a soldier.

  “Please, Raneth,” uttered Prince Pedibastet again. “Please.”

  I could task someone to bring a doctor but there’s nobody here but us.

  He looked at Pedibastet. Grey hairs speckled the black patches upon the cat’s back, making silver tears run down his black tail, and there was a brown age spot in the green of the cat’s left eye.

  He’s old. When did he get old?

  “Raneth, please,” said Pedibastet again, this time gently patting Raneth’s knee with his paw. “Please, you must right Giften. Spill blood. Make our enemies suffer.”

  I could do nothing.

  The royal official captain blinked. Where did that idea come from? Why was that even an option?

  “I don’t want to spill blood. I’m not a monster,” said Raneth finally, his voice rough.

  But I am the Royal Official Captain. I should do something. It’s required of me. I could task royal detectives and officials to look into this if I don’t want to do it myself. The detectives are trained to figure things out. I’m just the soldier they send in when it’s dangerous. After all the thinking’s done. And I need to… Cray’s body. Alagar’s and Rik’s… Somebody needs to collect everybody’s bodies, so they can be prepared for Remembrance.

  Raneth clenched his eyes tightly shut. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t go and retrieve their bodies. His gut twisted so hard he tasted bile in his mouth. He wanted to but he also didn’t want to collect the bodies. His king. His friends.

  Pedibastet rubbed his brown cheek against Raneth’s leg. “You aren’t a monster,” he said softly, eyes half-closed as he rubbed his cheek against Raneth again. “You are a Bayre.”

  Bayre. Raneth numbly nodded. Yes, he was a Bayre. Bayres had two functions in Giften, one of which was to protect the royal family — the Apocolettios. Everything else came secondary to that, because of that. Surviving the Bayre-Frey Feud—

  Giften’s soil, that’ll all end too.

  Pedibastet nudged Raneth’s leg with his cheek again, brushing his scent against Raneth — seeking comfort and giving it at the same time.

  Raneth stroked the brown and black stripes between the cat’s white ears. His hand felt clumsy and heavy compared to normal. Pedibastet’s right though, he thought, as he rubbed a finger across the cat’s white cheek. I’m the ROC. As the Captain, I’m next in line to fix Giften’s messes.

  He started packing his father’s wound. And I want to, he realised, giving a little nod. I want to get to the bottom of this. Find out who is behind this, and why they killed Cray. I have to honour Cray, Lou, Lemmy, Rik and Alagar. Jewel and the others too, by finding their murderer and making sure justice is met.

  He repositioned his weight for a better view of his father’s leg wound. His talisman tapped against his collarbones. And I have to do what I can to protect Dad. The way his world had crashed the moment the Bayre talismans had said something was wrong, when his awareness had almost zeroed down into just his gut. Into knowing something was wrong. Really wrong… His father meant too much to him. He couldn’t lose him. Not if he could stop it.

  Raneth’s left hand was almost useless so he rested it against the sofa and used just his right hand to continue packing his father’s wound. He’d need to sort his own wounds out soon. He glanced at his father’s face but he was asleep. “I need to secure Giften. Get to the bottom of this,” he told Pedibastet, his voice soft. “Whoever did this. Whoever thought they could get away with hurting Aldora and Dad… killing Cray, your mother, Alagar. All of them. I’ll find them and they’ll pay.”

  The King of the Cats purred and rubbed his cheek against Raneth’s side.

  “But I’ll need your help with this,” admitted Raneth.

  “The cats of Giften are at your disposal, Raneth, but you can’t go into this half-cocked. You’re going to need everyone you trust on this one. There is too much at stake.”

  With a nod, Raneth started to finish tending to his father’s leg wound. He moved on to inspect the other areas where blood had spread across the white shirt his father had reformed into, and checked along his black suit trousers. The other wounds were minor, but Raneth cleaned those just in case. He then rested his back against the sofa as he looked at Pedibastet, and then clenched his left hand. He could barely hold a grip of air. With his good hand, he tugged at the rip in his jacket where the bullet had entered him. It was just under the shoulder, in the fleshy part under the armpit. He would be able to form to heal it, if he got enough sleep and if the bullet was removed from inside him first.

  I should recall Rider, and get Ramage to come here too. The Royal Official University should have new recruits ready for assignments too. Redler would know about them. Which ones to task with what sort of assignments.

  Raneth sighed heavily. There was so much he had to do.

  Alagar’s dead body flashed in his mind. Go. Away. He shoved the memory away, then Cray’s dead body as it appeared in his mind’s eye after Alagar.

  “Assassins were after you in Newer Kingdom when you went to relocate the Shotput of Power,” said King Pedibastet, drawing Raneth’s attention. For once, Raneth was grateful for the cat’s presence. “Do we assume this is Broken Crown? Aldora’s uncle and his second in command?”

  “Yes,” said Raneth. “Until we have evidence of anything else. This has to be Denzel’s and Koyla’s retaliation against the heavy sweep I’ve got royal officials on against Broken Crown. They’re arresting or executing Brethren and Guardsmen that the civilians are naming. I’ll recall some of the royal officials; get them to help with the royal household’s bodies.” He stood up and eased to Aldora’s side. “Sweetheart?” He gently pressed a hand to her cheek and watched closely for any flicker of awareness, but her face remained unmoving. “If she’s not awake in the morning, I’ll fetch a doctor, or send for one,” he told Pedibastet. “Stay with her.” He strode from the room and headed to the library. He walked to the third set of shelves on the left and pulled from the left side a thick yellow book, revealing a round door knob. He twisted it and the bookcase swung inwards, allowing Raneth into a room he’d only once entered before.

  The Kingdom’s Records room. It shouldn’t have existed — by all eyes, anyone who stepped into the palace library and then into the room behind it would be certain there was no space for an extra room between the two. Raneth looked upwards, at the high-beamed ceilings that angled upwards like a triangular rooftop, with square skylights that for the moment were dark. Yet it couldn’t be a magic passage to the palace attic, as the roo
f was flat, not a gable rooftop. Gas scounes hissed either side of him between shelving units, where curls of parchments and the spines of books intermingled amongst one another in shelves that went from floor to ceiling. Wooden boxes were stacked together on a few of the shelves and as Raneth drew close to them, he observed that those were labelled, but not with any system he recognised — numbers and dashes were etched into them, with three characters following them. Raneth looked upwards, at the dark wood high beams, and spotted three more etchings.

  Ancient Giften.

  Before the Common Tongue, before Cray’s ancestors started to build upon the continent’s strength as a trader to the whole of the world, Giften had a language of its own. Sometimes simple words were similar enough to Common Tongue to decipher, but other times, it wasn’t. I can’t read that, he decided, frowning. Maybe Cally can.

  The first smile since Aldora made him laugh slipped to Raneth’s lips. His Godmother was Giften’s oldest known sorceress, though her magic capabilities were only known to a trusted few — Bayres, Apocolettios and their close allies. Raneth cringed as Cray’s image crept into his mind. The nails that jutted out from the side of Cray’s face, and the king’s eyes dimmed by the dust that had already started to settle. Go away.

  He crammed the memory into the back of his mind and then pulled at a remembered image of Cally Bayerson. She was in the Bayre Mansion kitchen, a smudge of flour against her right cheekbone. As she had since his first memory of her, she looked to be in her forties or fifties; wrinkles at the edges of her grey eyes hinted that she was still aging despite the magic that thrummed through her veins and slowed her aging. She was almost six hundred and seventy-four years old, making Raneth’s allergy to magic unaffected by hers. Cally had been an ally to Bayres since the days of the Creator, and the head of the few servants in the Bayre Mansion for several years. “Cally, come to me, please.” He opened his eyes and waited. The gaslights on Raneth’s left flickered and as his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, a soft glow of purple bloomed in front of Raneth, between two of the tables that went down the room in two rows. A waft of lavender and lemon cheesecake tickled Raneth’s nose as Cally appeared in front of him, her magic drawing her to him. Her hands were on her wide hips, and a raised brow was directed at Raneth.