The King's Blood (73 page)

A man limped from the doorway of the keep, his hand draped protectively over his bandaged side. In strange sympathy, Aldrin's own wound cried out to its kindred. His face was gaunt, more so than the others, and a wanness clung to sinking cheeks. Age circled his eyes like a dog on the hunt, but still he pulled himself high, ordering to his two soldiers. The men both stood straight up at the limping man's approach, saluting. He argued back with them about something, probably how we're all in this together, there's no I in team, and let's get out there and kill some people for the Emperor. The limping man pushed past furred soldier, shoving him off to the sides as if he were an insignificant speck, and stood before Aldrin.
 

The prince tried to rise, his meager height bringing him barely to the limping man's chin. Something in him seemed familiar, not the scarred and broken face, but the barring. The command of every moment in his life. It must have struck the limping man as well, for he pulled his heavy hand away from his wound and placed it upon Aldrin's shoulder. Leaning in closer to inspect the outline of the face, he mumbled in passable Ostero, "Dark hair was better."

The General rose again and turned to the furred soldier, who passed him the blade of Cas. He took the sword, peeked beneath the leather wrapping, and, scowling at their discovery, said for the prisoners to understand, "I will take them to Vasska."

Marciano scowled, an expression he'd been unable to shake since they took the tower. He didn't bother to threaten or cajole the prisoners, only walked with his measured march into the main gate of the keep and towards the hall that Vasska appointed as his own. One of the serving girls, a mousy thing that whimpered whenever a soldier passed squeaked at the line of chained people passing before her. The one in blue, and oddly unbound, bowed momentarily at her before the sandworm kicked him in the backside.

The General chose to ignore it all. Secretly, he'd hoped the scouting party the Emperor specifically chose to send out into the wild, and did not inform his general of until they'd taken the tower, would return empty handed. Vasska's beloved Springday would pass unrecorded and they would all head home before the Osteros could raise their proper army. As well as the Huntars, the Bulgers, and the Whits. Talk of rebellion was rife, even amongst his own adopted men. They splintered at the slightest hint of disagreement. It made mealtime a real treat, with the whimpering Ostero servants scuttling off to their corner for fear of the ravages of the soldiers, while his exhausted men glowered into their bland meals and clutched harder to hidden daggers. Only by the grace of Argur would anyone make it out of here alive.

Marciano walked around another of Vasska's relics placed atop a stone altar, this the hipbone of Argur's favorite demi-god, someone so obscure Marciano called him "mumbledegoop." He'd have kicked it to the ground if his side weren't aching and his head pounding. The priests that flocked around the Emperor were as useful with healing as they were at fighting. He'd had to rise from the sick bed, kicking and pushing a few aside, to clean and bind his wound himself.
 

Passing the long tables, which lay unused as only twenty or so soldiers hovered about the place like misplaced bees uncertain where they'd left their hive, Marciano clapped his heels against the hard Ostero stone. He grumbled a bit louder, and the priests that survived their first assault rose, their heads recently shorn as was the custom when entering a new dwelling. They bumbled away from the head table, a purple runner with edges in ivory and gold its solitary decoration. Only the bowed head in the middle didn't rise. It continued in its prayers as if the real world were as ethereal as the creatures it spoke to.
 

Marciano paused, his right hand resting upon the back of a chair for support. It'd be a long time before he was at fighting speed again. If ever. The prisoners bumbled behind him, coming to a stop, each watching the solitary man praying at the table. They seemed to shift away, as if they could sense the madness the same way animals could.
 

Coughing into his fist did nothing. Whistling under his breath did nothing. Tapping his shoe's toe against the chair's leg did nothing.

"Why have you brought us here?" the young boy who played a convincing elf a lifetime ago piped up, his voice much lower than Marciano remembered. He had no idea what the child had to do with this sword, or this tower, but somehow the General was not unsurprised to see him again. The gods worked in ironic and cruel ways.

Slowly, the praying man dropped his hands to the table and bowed his forehead to it. Finishing, the grinning visage of Vasska took in his newest toys. He surveyed the boy who tried to square off against the mad Emperor but after a few moments the kid blinked. The girl didn't even play the game, and the priest with them didn't seem to have a concept there was a challenge at all. Only the sandworm dared look back, staring into the void with all the resolve of a man who'd faced down worse in his life. This standoff could last for days.

"Sir," Marciano cut in, stepping between the two, "I have the sword."

"Let me see, let me see," he bounced up and down on his heels, clapping his hands.
 

The General felt the boy recoil at the Emperor's outburst but shrugged it off, it wasn't his place to teach the child how to keep his head. Instead, he stepped forward and laid the sword upon the table.

Vasska's thin fingers pulled back the leather wrapping as if he were unveiling a present, and he gasped at the piece of metal shining below, "It's beautiful." The Emperor ran his finger along the grip and the crossguard, covered in jewels, before dancing across the inscription. Tears fell freely from his eyes as he covered his mouth in joy.

"That isn't yours," the boy snapped at the Emperor. Vasska quickly covered the sword up in the leather and turned his maddening glare upon the child, "None of this is yours. You have no claim to this tower!"

Slowly, Vasska moved around the tables, his fingers steepling and bouncing against each other as his thoughts churned and bubbled beneath that foaming brain. Marciano felt himself shifting closer to the child, absurdly wanting to protect a boy who seemed dead set on getting himself killed. His soul was too burdened for this.

The Emperor paused and leaned his narrow backside against the table, as if he were about to have a friendly chat with the people he had brought before him in chains. His eyes searched over the people in the group. In Avarian he chuckled to himself, "A Dunner killer, little more than animal. A white witch, from the sea dominion. And a," he paused momentarily at the man in blue who stopped his assessment of the hall's ceiling at the eyes landing upon him. Vasska clicked his fingers against his mouth, "Most curious, a priest of Hospar."

The priests all turned at that, glaring upon the intruder into their circle. The man in blue shrugged his shoulders and waved meekly, uncertain what all the attention was about. "They shall live," Vasska said dismissively, waving his hand as if he'd pardoned men caught stealing bread to feed their starving families. "A new order is coming and it will bring a peace none have ever known. And these shall be some of the first to know it," he said eyeing up the white witch like a pig to the slaughter. She in turn hissed and spat at the ground.

"But you," Vasska rose quickly from his seat, his feet clipping across the stones until he was inches from the boy's face. His tongue switched to Ostero, and grew about twenty decibels louder as he tried to overcompensate for his lacking translation. "You son of Ostero, child of the cold," he glared at the child that met him eye for eye.

The boy should have shirked back, dodged his eyes and looked away, but he met the Emperor on his own battleground. The inky madness that consumed Vasska's brain sat nestled squarely inside his eye and the child got a full dose of it, but did not shudder under the weight. Instead he rose up, his chains jangling. The Emperor chuckled before bringing the back of his hand against the boy's cheek, collapsing the exhausted child onto the ground, blood dribbling to the stones from the rings of Avar. Marciano touched his own face in sympathy.

"You, child of Edric the Foolish, shall die by my hand," Vasska hissed to the boy struggling to his shaky knees. Then, as quickly as the anger appeared, it passed like a wandering cloud. The Emperor turned to his fellow priests who were scrabbling about looking for the holy scepter of slaying, before turning back to Marciano and reverting to proper Avarian, "But not today. Take them to the dungeon."
 

Marciano bowed slightly, and curled his good hand around the boy's arms, dragging him off to his stay of execution.

"Mind the big rocks!" the voice called cheerfully out of the darkness.
 

Ciara cursed as her forehead met with another woefully misplaced brick dangling from the ceiling. She'd been crouching in a half stoop since they broke into the passages. Every hundred feet or so the Caretaker would hover his hand over an indentation in the wall and a soothing white glow would spring up, just in time to illuminate the chest she was about to smash her shins into.

"Couldn't they have built a taller ceiling?" Ciara mumbled back, afraid of the horn sized welt hatching beneath her forehead.

"No, no, waste of negative space. Very bad planning," he said 'planning' as if it were a demon's name. "Dwarves would never have with that."

Ciara laughed at him, which caused the lantern to swing back and the pulled skin of where an eyebrow should be to rise. Her chuckles died in her throat and she sputtered, "You cannot be serious. Dwarves are a myth."

"Shh shh shh," the Caretaker jumped up and down, able to pass more easily amongst the roads of the height challenged.
 

"What?" she looked behind her, expecting ravenous hordes of gnashing teeth, tentacles slapping against the walls, or perhaps a really peeved off gnome in a dressing gown holding a dripping bathing sponge. Only the faint glow of magic and a gaping maw of miles of masoned cave answered back.

The Caretaker turned back, his hands pushing against the wall as if he were checking for something. He laid his bat ears against it and then licked the red stone, a purple tongue darting out like a lizard. Ciara didn't hide her disgust, and he didn't care.

"Abandoned," he declared after holding his finger up to test for any underground bellows. "Good. Never tell something it's a myth," he waved a warning finger at her, then fell back on his heels and said to himself, "I fear I no longer have the dexterity to deal with any dwarf ambushes."

"Masters of combat?" Ciara asked, her hands batting at the ceiling in front of her to search for more marker stones.
 

The Caretaker giggled, "No. Well yes, but not in their home. Makes too much mess, and is an unnecessary waste of air. Practical. Very practical. Sounds familiar, eh?" he nudged the air beside him and it didn't answer back. "Dwarves do not attack with blade or hammer, they trap you under forms and red tape until you've signed every atom of your body away," he answered Ciara, his momentary invisible friend forgotten.

"That sounds...unpleasant?"
 

"Yes," he nodded his bulbous head, the sheafs of white hair dancing in the motion, "many prefer death to a Dwarf audit. Ah, this way!" he spun about to the right, his beak sniffing the air, and dashed down a new pathway that looked like the other five he already turned them down.

Ciara sighed and followed, trying to rub the small of her back with one hand while keeping the other extended against any flying Dwarven clerks. It had to have been hours, maybe even a day. Time didn't really exist when all you could measure was the beat of your heart or the pound of your foot. Or the mutterings of a mad monster to some invisible friend that always walked to the right of him.
 

The Caretaker would scuttle ahead of her quickly, his voice dropping low to talk to the ether, but the acoustics of the stone road amplified even his most breathless aside back to her. On the plus side, she hadn't heard any mention of him trying to rip out her intestines and wear them as a hat. It was mostly talk about "getting close, not certain to be ready, but can't start without the bridegroom." Or "she left it in the back hamper, I always sort my socks proper." If he did finally turn feral, Ciara suspected her best move would be to throw her socks at him and run.