The King's Blood (14 page)

The gates of Dawning were little more than someone's sheep fence, stolen in a fit of a mayorish prank, drug across the road. The fact they only came up to about crotch height and were completely rotted through on the left side didn't disinter the guard patrolling in front of them.

"What is your name?"

"Well, I'm Brander and this is Gelder."

"What is your purpose?"

The two men looked at each other, their horse tack clanging across broad shoulders. "Like 'e said, I'm the Gelder and he's the Brander."

"Do you have any Flora or Fauna to report?" The guard stared straight into the setting sun, the beams glinting off the star he carved for himself out of an old potato. It began to brown a bit on the edges.

"I dunno any girls by them names. Do you Gelder?"

"Na's, we ain't got no's Floras or Faunas. Just lots of sharp things for slicing balls off." Brander and Gelder giggled together because what's the point of life if you can't find humor in your job?

"Very well, sirs," mister Guard continued. "I'll ask you to kindly step over here and remove your shoes."

Ciara sighed from her vantage point behind a set of mulberry bushes, still clinging stubbornly to their leaves in the face of winter. She watched this idiot do the identical song and dance with every farmer, peddler, and the set of kids chasing after their ball. Ask the same inane questions, pull them aside, make them remove their shoes and coats, and then wave a stick for awhile before letting them pass through.

"I still say we risk it. What are the chances he'd even notice two people climbing over the fence from this far back?"

Aldrin shook his head, "He could alert the local law. We're too close to the Emperor's loyal territory now."

It was true; the ramshackle road led them far closer than Ciara liked, but something told her they were currently eyeballing the only law enforcement and he was a few barons short of a full court. The prince had been even more of a wet sack than she suspected he'd be on their two-day hike through shifting wilderness. If winter weren't here yet, it was knocking loudly on the door asking to borrow a cup of ice. Her plan to follow the river towards Dawning traveling at night ended quickly as the air near the trickling water practically crackled with frost.
 

Turning towards the road offered better warmth but far less protection. She thought to try and disguise the boy prince, but the weeks of jam deflated whatever royal bloat his stomach had, the still throbbing wound gave him a disorienting shuffle of the feet, and he kept his eyes concentrated lower to the ground. And it went without saying that the lack of anything approaching a bath left him ranker than most of the serfs they passed guiding their livestock through the crop remnants.

Thanks to all that, he fit the part of a humble, wandering peasant more than Ciara did. She hated to admit it but she was probably the greater threat of the group. A young boy with runny eyes and muddy hair blended into a crowd. A dark Dunner princess, exotic to everyone who'd never stepped more than ten miles away from their homes, stood out a bit.

They'd been watching the gate for the past few hours debating the best way to sneak into Dawning unnoticed. "We go for it, jump the fence, take our chances with the guard sheep," Ciara nudged away another one of the feral beasts as it tried to reach across the fence and nibble on her sleeve.

Aldrin crossed his arms, displaying his first sense of leadership in decades, "Why don't we simply go through the guard?"

"Ah," Ciara tried to think of a good objection. Because they didn't want anyone to know they'd arrive? But everyone in town who had eyes would probably notice the pair asking around for merchants heading through the pass.

Because he could be in the pocket of the Emperor? Watching the only guard confiscate a small flask of water out of the hands of a man with a set of hidden blades sticking over the top of his overcoat, it was obvious they need not worry about him reporting to anyone higher than a scarecrow.

Because she hated having to listen to that kid make a good point.

"Fine, we'll do it your way. But if it all goes kumquat shaped you best be able to run."

Aldrin nodded grimly, uncertain what sort of terrors the local populace could inflict upon them with kumquats. Carefully sliding down the grassy hill, the two of them seemed to appear like magic in front of the guard. Rather than overreacting, or even vaguely reacting, he curled up in his out of place dining chair and pulled out a small book filled with pictures of ancient dwarven devices one could purchase if they traveled the Air Road that skirted around Dunlaw.
 

Ciara paused, waiting to see if the guard would react. She tried coughing into her fist, tapping her foot, even arguing loudly with a silent Aldrin about how this was taking forever. It was when she finally moved towards the gate and placed her hand upon the latch that the guard launched into action.

"What is your name?"

The girl didn't pause before responding, "Marna, and this is...Corwin." Aldrin blinked, but didn't say anything, his eyes focused fully on the guard's mismatched shoes.

"What is your purpose?"

"Trade. We need to trade this, uh," her fingers dug in her pocket for anything, "jar of tomatoes."

The guard carefully picked the jar up out of her hands, holding it to the afternoon light, the red washing over his face. "Is this over five ounces?"

It was a fifty-fifty shot and Ciara went with, "No."

"All right then," he returned the jar to her hands and said, "Good luck selling that. E'eryone with brains knows them tomatoes is poisonous. Wiped out an entire village of Aravaingions."

"That was because they tried swimming in it and forget how," Aldrin said dismissively. It was one of the tales his father's knights loved to guffaw over during any meal.

The guard turned on him, leaving the girl with her jar, "And what is your purpose today in Dawning, Mister Corwin?"

Ciara made some strangled motions behind the guard's head,
shutup shutup shutup!

"I am…I'm helping her to sell the tomatoes. To buy medicine for our ailing mother."

Ciara's palm met her forehead, but she dropped it quickly as the guard turned on her, taking in the darkening complexion of tomato girl and the near ghostly shade of the un-tomatoed boy.
 

She watched the math add up in the guard's brain and as 2+2 came to -15 he asked slowly, "You two are related?"

"No, no," she said as sweetly as possible. "He's adopted. A foundling actually. My father came across him while he was out hunting. The boy was being raised by wolves."

The guard turned his eye back on the boy encrusted with dirt, who wouldn't make eye contact as he waddled about with a strange limp. "Well, yer story checks out. If you could just step over here and take off your shoes I'll be getting you into Dawning."

Ciara didn't ask why the guard had to rattle around their shoes, why he waved a stick around their back or even why he felt the need to touch her hair. She was just grateful when he finally drew back the twisted wire on the broken latch and let them into the town, trying to not glare at her "brother."

Aldrin hobbled up beside her, his shoes still in his hands, "Now what?"

"We head to the market, see if there's anyone willing to hire a couple hands in exchange for passage."

The boy nodded slowly before asking, "Who's Corwin?"

Ciara paused, "What?"

"My codename," he said enjoying this little subterfuge, "who is Corwin?"

The girl caught the powerful scent of pigs wafting in from
 
the north and walked purposefully towards the square set aside for people peddling whatever crap they could unload on others, "He was my brother."

Dawning wasn't some one hole in the wall town; they had at least two churches,
¹⁶
a thriving nightlife thanks to a bat infestation, and their own culture. Most of it was a heady mixture of salmonella and e. coli, but it was their own special Dawning blend that made them all proud and diarrheic.
 

There was even an art museum. After crazy Ed, the fabled bandit who stole from the rich to give to the richer, left to the community whatever coin of his collected in the pointy toes of his shoes, they put it to good use preserving the highly erotic and controversial tree carvings of one Beatrice Livingston the Fifth. Every year, the ladies of the Lady of Perpetual Waiting would gather together in their church's basement, conspiring hurriedly over cookies and tea. Then they'd don black masks, alight their torches and try to burn down the small shack that housed about thirty or so logs carved artistically to mimic the near anatomical precision of penises.
 

They had yet to make it as far as fifth street before an argument would break out over whose great grandson was the bigger disappointment and they'd eventually all break off for home swearing they'd never talk to their closest friends ever again. Despite never having any visitors, the museum was declared a great success thanks to the near controversy it courted.
 

Even their marketplace was a smorgasbord of delights. Fabrics from over two towns away, candy hand whittled by one of the Emperors own members of court, and of course pithy sayings painted onto wooden signs that no one ever buys but are always a good 30% of every farmers market.

Ciara wandered away from Aldrin, who found his eye drawn by the "Sugared" Beets stand. She figured he couldn't get into too much trouble with no money and no one willing to stand downwind of him. The worst he'd face was being rounded up for vagrancy and getting tossed into Dawning's jail; a small hole the Guard dug that the sheep keep wandering into.

"Ho, there," her voice carried over the market din. It was rare for her to have any dealings with merchants or other traveling varieties visiting the castle; that always fell to her mother. But she'd observed enough to know there was a certain pageantry involved. "My good man."

The head turned, and -- thanks to a hat pulled deep over its face -- gave no hints as to what, if anything, resided within. The only clue she wasn't talking to an endless void in an overstuffed trench coat were the piles of matted hair flowing out from under the straw brim.

The "good man" struck a match on his shoe and placed the flame deep under his hat. Ciara, uncertain if he'd just tried to commit very slow suicide by lighting his own hair on fire, waited. Slowly, a curl of smoke puffed from somewhere under the hat, yet no light pierced the black hole of the merchant's face.

"Watcha want?" the voice should have been raspy, like someone breaking apart cheap kindling and tossing it onto a flame, but it coursed surprisingly sweet like a poet reciting a lullaby about the moon to the ladies of the court swooning all over his belled shoes.

"I would like to hire your services."

Despite there being no evidence of eyes, Ciara felt them shift over her form, taking special care around her chest. "Dunna, you's a bit too skinny for me. 'N' I'd hae ta wash the smell of camels off me later." The smoke bounced at that, as if he were giggling silently to himself about a joke she'd heard more times than she cared to admit.

Her fingers slipped into her pocket searching for her dagger and hating herself for wishing Aldrin were behind her. "I need to travel through the Northern Pass. I assumed one of..."

"Northern Pass? Ya shit out of luck gel. Whole thin's been caved in."

"What?"

The merchant seemed to enjoy her discomfort, walking a bit closer until she got a strong whiff of fermented potatoes. "Yep, 'parently there was a big wossa call it, snow crumble down the Caddatch. Took out most of the pass and some of the town behin' it."

He nodded towards another stall beside him, "Ol' Fredrick here was travelin' by, said it was a hundred feet high with legs and arms all sticking out. Right, Fredrick?"

The fellow merchant, a slip of a man, was dressed in a brightly colored mishmash of the fabrics he was trying to get post harvest housewives to buy. He looked right through Ciara to the large merchant sucking up all the oxygen in the market stand. "Yup."

"Ya won't be getting to the north 'til spring thaw at best, little missie."

She tried to hide the sinking disappointment as she curtsied a bit and said, "I see. Thank you for your time."

Walking away, she overheard Fredrick whisper loudly, "I didn't know them kinds could talk what with the pretty words so well."

When she found Aldrin, the boy had been all but adopted by the wattled woman running the cider stand. She'd grin, proudly showing off her iron tooth, and pat the boy on the head with each crank of the apple peeler. The screw rotated the apple, while a pair of razors sliced off the peel.

Aldrin found it fascinating, such an ingenious design that sopped up so much of the finger breaking work in the cider making process. Having found a slightly dimmer replacement than the slop boy she hired, the woman was ecstatic, chattering on about the best kind of apples (all of them). How to tell when an apple was ripe (ya pick it off the tree and bite it. If ya can't get through, put it back. It ain't done yet). And what was in the cider (a very poorly guarded family secret, apparently).