The King's Blood (53 page)

"You're not the Triad?" she asked, having trouble keeping her secret cults separate.

Taban gasped at that and then smiled, "Me? No, no, no. You would no sooner compare your little princeling to a god. The Triad is the governing body of our home land."

"Your home land," Ciara responded. My homeland is a crumbling mass of black brick.

"Yes, yes, no need to pick nits. One man to represent the nobility, one to represent the common man, and the third to speak for God."

"Sounds like too many cooks in the courthouse."

Taban laughed at that, "There are battle songs of the Passing of Proposition 25 where the Lord of Nobles attempted to bifurcate the Lord of Commons with his own ruler, but after a few centuries we've worked out the kinks and have a nice orderly election sponsored by interested parties."

"So the commoners elect your Common Lord and the nobles your Noble Lord," Ciara said, piecing foreign politics together. Taban nodded, enjoying this rare moment to share his society with another. "Who votes for your God Lord?"

"Ha ha!" the assassin laughed off her blasphemy, "in another life you must have been a Vizier. No one elects the Speaker for God, he has always been since the shattering of the fairfolk."

"You mean his line," Ciara argued back, finding this concept of electing people to rule strange. How could you know that Joe Leather Braider was any more qualified to lead than Lord Stickle Bottom the Fourth? At least nobility was trained from birth for all that leading stuff. "The Elven wars were centuries past."

Taban looked up at the stars and closed his eyes softly before a small smile overtook him, "Yes, yes they were. But you wanted to know of Adherents, yes?"

Another non-answer to her questions. That must be something that runs thick in Dunner blood. "Not particularly," she admitted.
 

"Come, come, it never hurts one to know the truth."

"Bullshit." She'd lived her life enough in both the open and dark forgotten worlds to call him on his crap. The truth, more powerful than any sword, could break a man.

Taban laughed again, enjoying this game more than he anticipated, "Very well, then we are an acclaimed order of pastry chefs who travel the world guarding our secret recipes from infidel spies. Anyone who fails to live up to our high standards is boiled alive in his own pudding."

Ciara watched him the same way her mother followed someone when the good silverware was brought out. He smiled as clear as a summer's day, not letting a single drop of falsehood dot his tongue, all while the shadow of deceit clung to his boots...and she needed to stop reading over Aldrin's shoulder.

"Then why are you here? Why does your order care about Aldrin, about me? Does he have a particularly decadent recipe for burnt bread I'm unaware of?"

The jester's grin turned into a snake's as he stepped behind her. As her head turned to follow he leaned in and whispered into her ear, "Dunlaw may slumber, but she does so with a watchful eye on the world. A broken chain of kingdoms is preferable to a strong Empire."

His breath was cold on her ear, but she feared to turn her head to face those glittering eyes, "And what of me? Why waste your resources on me?"

"Because," his voice paused as a smile took his lips, "you intrigue me."

Just what every girl wants to hear in the dead of night; a highly trained murderer finds her fascinating. Her mother would be thrilled to hear of that match. Ciara stepped forward to turn and face the assassin but found only empty air where he'd been. Apparently rudeness was one of the main tenets of the Adherents as well.

"I still expect you to return that grain!" she called out to an empty night. Scowling, Ciara gathered up her skirts and headed towards Medwin's caravan and a long night of unanswerable questions.

It grew more difficult to find a spare moment to think with the Historians gallivanting about the town trying to get in good with the locals. This earned an admonishing glare from Medwin, who still remembered all too well the fuss they suffered last time. But so far, with the Bothers chained to the cooking pot, and the blessings of a priest's healing touch, they'd managed to pass undetected into Tumbler's End's high society.

And all despite the ex-priest slipping out of his doctoral mask the moment he was away from any patients.

"You owe me a kiss."

"You're completely daft."

"You said you'd give me a kiss if I proved to you the gods are real."

"The hell I did."

"See!" Kynton crowed, "How can there be hell if there are no gods? Pucker up."

"Hell is suffering glib priests and their idiotic idea to treat a respiratory illness with frozen water," Isa muttered. "And if you come near me, I'll smash you into bite sized priest pieces."

"It worked didn't it? The patient was up and moving about in no time."

"You nearly drown him. Are all men suffering from such a lack of mental competency or is it a hallmark of your order?"

"I'm special," Kynton beamed, chasing after the witch as she marked her quick paces with her staff.

Aldrin shook his head as the bickering traveled through the forest. Every night the priest followed the witch towards her lair, trying the most outlandish pickup lines on her until she cracked. Then he'd scamper back towards the caravans taunting that he loved her when she was angry. The historians were taking serious bets on how long Kynton was going to survive. The winning odds gave him until Tuesday.

Two nights passed since they arrived in Tumbler's End to the non-army and, thanks to the ever-mounting work of reviving an entire town, Aldrin managed to put off any official royal decisions. He'd been wracking his brain about any and every thing he could think of that didn't involve his brother, his father, or kings. This meant most days he was assisting Ciara with the growing piles of work, it turned out he was a natural at working the wash ringer, and most nights he'd crawl off into the forest to dig through the few Casamir books they accumulated. The prophecy nibbled at his mind while he cranked the encrusted laundry of the physician through the rollers.
 

Why was there so much focus here, in Ostero? Everyone knew the Elven War, if it did take place, happened mostly in Dunlaw and Avari. A rare meeting of Sultan and Empire ships against the pointy-eared scourge. And what of the magic that was sundered or not sundered. Was it to be brought back? Destroyed permanently? Used to do some great evil or great good? And how did a witch and a sword come into play?

These were the questions Aldrin asked himself so he didn't think of the real problem in his life. What was he going to do now that his brother was King?

"Medwin sent me to find the priest." Aldrin turned to find Ciara, her hair pulled back with a spare ribbon from one of the religious texts no one could pronounce anymore. Floury handprints graced the front of her dress, as if she got in a fight with a baker.
 

"Last I heard he was still trailing after the witch angling for a kiss."

Ciara shook her head and laughed, "That man is angling to get himself set on fire."

Aldrin nodded, "People like to talk about opposites attracting. In this instance I'd fear opposites exploding."

The girl cracked up at that, picturing the witch finally reaching her breaking point and erupting in a burst of light to take the priest down with her. Bracing herself on Aldrin's shoulder, Ciara lowered herself onto the ground, her legs dangling over the cliff's edge. The prince waited until her hand wandered off his shoulder before he tried breathing again.

"This is a lovely spot you found," she said extending her hand to the chasm below her. Pine trees gave the rare burst of color to a still grey world, shifting to a soft pink as the sun began its own slumbers. "You can't hear a single bitchy complaint from Bartrone or an order for anything but oatmeal from Mitrione."

Aldrin laughed, "And no one asks if you're prepared to decide the fate of two mothers who both lay claim to the same infant."

"Perspective," she said, looking down through those shoes she bartered his noble shirt for what felt like years ago. The cliff's rocks shimmered as the setting sunlight bounced across the mica deposits, like the ground glittered as starlight beneath her.

"Yeah," Aldrin agreed, and kicked himself. 'Yeah,' that was a wonderful response. Worthy of the Great Bard herself. He'd tried to ask Kaltar for advice on women and things of that nature, but only got a two-hour lecture on the rise and regulation of the code of chivalry. He suspected that telling Ciara he'd swear to respect and protect women would get him a side eye glare and a long "suuurree." Talk of upholding anyone's honor would probably get him a few hours scrubbing bottles.

"So..." Ciara started. Aldrin wasn't the only one having troubles jump starting the conversation hanging in the air. Luckily, she wasn't bound by some cultural norms to charm the knickers off anyone with a few well-placed adjectives and pollen encrusted weeds. "Your brother is still alive. That has to be a relief?"

Aldrin's own eyes shifted down past his legs, kicking hard into the rock with his heels, "Yeah, sure, great to hear he survived." He didn't even try to disguise his tone more in line with someone just ordered to take a bath. "After all, he was the one raised to take the crown," the prince muttered to his shoes, "Taught since birth how to wave a sword and order people about. The idea of me getting anywhere near the throne sent my teacher into a full on hive breakout."

"Really?"

"And I was just sitting in it drawing on an old shield, but the man flailed about as if I'd ordered an attack on the Bogeyman. He cried for assistance from any knight within a mile radius."

Ciara snickered at the idea of young Aldrin curled up in the oversized chair grinning at those panicking around him. "I don't think you'd be so bad as king," she said to him.

"No?" his eyes broke from his socks to look over at her. The sun warmed her skin so it sparkled like the rock below.

Her eyes held his for a beat too long and that sickly feeling crept along her stomach. She broke the stare to watch her hand land onto the ground as she plucked absently at the dead grass. "And your brother has one very large problem yet to deal with."

"Oh?" Aldrin asked, enjoying the idea of Henrik having to deal with anything more complicated than which is the front side of his trousers.

"If he survived, if Albrant survived, if my...if my father survived, then there's a likely chance the traitor survived as well."

The traitor. The man who'd thrown open the gates to the enemy, sold his soul to the Empire that waltzed in and assassinated his father. Aldrin spent feverish nights strumming up fantasies where he confronted this demon and, in a whirl of wit, demanded of him, "You tried to destroy the line of Ostero, and with it I destroy you," before he sunk his sword deep into the shadow man's chest. But as their journey threw more rocks into the wheels, revenge slipped further and further into the back of his mind.

"I am uncertain who it could even be," he muttered to himself, placing his forehead in his hands.

"Did your father have a lot of enemies?" Ciara asked, because someone had to.

Aldrin looked over at her, his fingers framing his eyes, "He was King; if he didn't have enemies he wasn't doing it right." The boy sighed and leaned back, his arms catching behind him, "By all logic, anyone who was in the hall when the attack occurred couldn't have been the traitor."

"That rules out my father," Ciara said sharply.
 

"I never entertained the thought," Aldrin admitted to her.

"Thanks," Ciara said, even though she wasn't certain what kind of a man he was anymore.

"Many of the lesser knights and hired mercenaries moved about in the back like sheep drifting around the feed," Aldrin recounted as if the scene played before his mind a thousand times before, "the nobler of the nobles were up front near my father." Most of them were beards with wobbly chins to the boy who paid no heed to the machinations of Barons and Earls and people coated in gold droppings.

"What of the Queen?" Ciara tossed out, "Seems she ran off and raised an army really quick."

The boy nodded. The warrior queen, cowed into a life behind the King and facing diminishing power as the crowned prince grew in strength. Sell her husband to the Empire and, in the chaos, man the throne against the armies marching their lands. To turn on her own family would take a heart icier than the glaciers that flanked the edge of their territory.
 

"Well, whoever it was, he's most likely not with the army," Ciara said resolutely.

"Why?"

"The Prince is still alive," she said simply.

Aldrin didn't fail to note the capitalization in her "Prince." Henrik was the leader, Little Bonny the follower. What was shall forever be. It stung under his skin, to have this entire fight for months to have been for not.

Cia read the pain crawling across his face at the insignificant place he held in the universe. Placing her hand on his knee she asked, "Are you all right?"

The connection threw him from his maudlin thoughts, and he sat bolt upright, his own hand coming to rest over hers. That caused even more panic, as his vagrant hand raced up to the back of his neck. His cheeks burned hotter than the setting sun.