The King's Blood (77 page)

"You should not be here," Henrik said dismissively like he was excusing a servant, and turned to pick up his shirt.

But this was a small spark upon a decade's resentment powder keg. He spent the past three months scrabbling through briars and brambles, survived an assassin's blade, faced down their enemy, lost more than he deserved, and every time something tried to swat him down below the depths, he rose back up. Aldrin felt himself rising taller as he pointed an accusing finger at his brother's turned back, "What are you doing here?"

Henrik paused, his fingers letting go of the fabric but he did not turn as his voice shifted to a honey so many scorned maidens knew all too well, "What ever are you babbling about?"

"You, you should be clapped in irons rotting away in a dungeon, not living like a Lordling in this extravagance," Aldrin said looking around at the room furnished at what must have been a great expense for those who couldn't afford it. Gold shimmered from carvings and inlays that was just on the right side of tacky. Fat candles graced every corner from the four poster bed laid with velvets and furs to the desk and dressing tables. It was almost as nice as his own bedroom back home.
 

Henrik turned, his hands folding across his chest as if that could protect him. He tried to look down at his little brother but was perturbed to find the child staring him right in the eye. "I am the King of Ostero. I am to be awarded certain rights and privileges. And you would do well to remember that," his voice lost the honey, switching to venom as he pulled those pouty lips back into a sneer.
 

"The keep is overrun by the Empire," Aldrin cursed back, exasperated by his brother's calm, "the enemy lurks in every corner and you sit in your palatial room taking baths?!"

Henrik pulled in his lips in thought and unfolded one of his arms for emphasis, "The Emperor has agreed to spare my life if I stay in my 'palatial room.'"

This didn't have the effect he'd hoped for. Little Bonny would have shut down as his brother loomed over him, he would have scampered to his hole and gone back to whatever he did to pass his wretched life. But Aldrin paced back and forth, his eyes scanning through the remnants of a seemingly joyful existence as a prisoner, while his men rotted below. "You grow fat on the hog while our people suffer."

"Oh, is the nation's little prince suddenly caring about 'our people?' Will he weep tears for the child whose parents die in the war? Will he gnash his teeth at the bogeyman knocking at the door? I did this for our people!" Aldrin leaned back at the vitriol pouring from his brother, the ice eyes flaring to rage as he justified his actions. Anger covered any regrets.

But as quickly as it flamed up, the rage receded and he coolly asked, "How did you come to be here? The Tower, as you so pointedly acknowledged, is under Empire hands."

Aldrin had suffered many bruises, cuts, and one time a broken bone under his brother's disdain, but for the first time he felt from Henrik an honest rage to snuff out Little Bonny's brief candle. He retreated his story, erasing all tales of the witch and the sword, "The Queen's army."

"She is no queen," Henrik spat automatically, savoring the sensation, "She is nothing but a relic from a bygone era."

"She is the only one willing to raise her arm to fight our enemy."

Henrik snorted at that, "She is a fool, running and hiding with her people while we suffer for freedom."

"Moren survived an arrow to the chest to take down the Empire!" Aldrin shouted, for the first time in his life willing to defend his stepmother.
 

Henrik glared at little Bonny, his countenance ice as he said, "It's too bad they didn't finish the job."

Aldrin wanted to slap that smug satisfaction right off his brother's face, but he continued his pacing instead. None of this made any sense. The Emperor, upon having the spare drug before him in chains, threatened his life. Why let his brother, the actual King of Ostero live, and to live in such opulence? And why hadn't his brother attempted an escape out of an unlocked room rarely patrolled by the few guards in the keep.

Oh Gods.
The color drained from Aldrin as his head snapped over at his smug brother, who still had his arms crossed in triumph at the news of their stepmother's injury.
No. He couldn't. He wouldn't. He...
Aldrin's head fell down.
 

"It was you," he whispered to the wind.

"What?" Henrik snapped, worry breaking up his handsome features.
 

Aldrin looked up into his brother's steel eyes. The eyes of a man who sacrificed the lives of men sworn to protect him for his own selfishness. The eyes of a man who ran and cowered and lied and tricked. The eyes of a man who killed their father.

"It was you," Aldrin accused, stepping towards Henrik. "At the Castle, you slipped off just before someone threw open the doors and let the Empire invade. And here again...this Keep is impregnable, unless someone holds the fucking door open!"

Henrik snarled, wanting to beat the certainty off his brother's face. But if he was here then there must be others who support him, others with far stronger arms and backs, others the Emperor would pay handsomely to know of. "And if I did," he tried to start, without really confessing or admitting any wrong.

Aldrin flew up into his face, "You killed our father!"
 

Henrik barked back, "And he'd have killed us all!"
 

He stepped away from Aldrin, and paced back and forth as if he were trying to outrun his own guilt, "The man was a fool, a pottering fool who only cared about where his next meal came from and if there'd be pudding. He put everything, everything we have, everything we ever were, in the hands of that bitch of a whore."

Aldrin cringed at Henrik's classification of Moren, "And you sold everything we were to the Empire."

"Have you seen war, little boy?" Henrik asked, "Have you felt the soul shaking cries of a man as his own legs are sawed off him? Have you tasted your own blood as you bit back at a crazed man trying to kill you?"

A flint of steel broke off Aldrin's soul as every horrific moment, every cry, every gram of pain and suffering and loss cumulated behind his eyes while he formed a single word against his brother, "Yes."

Henrik staggered against that. He wanted to argue, tell the child how ignorant he was but he couldn't break through that force. The truth was too strong, "Then how dare you judge me for trying to stave it all off for our people. All Vasska wanted was this puny tower. Let him have it I told father, I did. Over and over, but the bitch was always at his heels. Whispering, turning him against me. We fought for days, weeks, months, and every time I had him convinced, she'd appear with golden promises of fame and victory."

He was pacing again, his head bowed as if he couldn't look at his brother as he laid his confession out for the first time. "So I sold our family out to Vasska, promised him a seamless transfer of the Tower if he got me to the throne. But that Lord Albrant and his men proved to be too competent for their own good."

"You mean they kept you from murdering them," Aldrin said, disgusted.

"I had the throne, Vasska should be happy, but all he wanted was the tower. So I threw open the door once more with the promise he let everyone live."

"And you trusted him?" Aldrin refused to believe the nonsense spewing from his brother's mouth.

"Every knight, every soldier not cut down in the 'ambush' are locked away in the dungeons. Once Vasska's finished he'll free them."

Aldrin shook his head, "And what of the servants?"

"What of them?" Henrik snorted at his weak sibling. "Do you care for the dogs and vermin as well?"

The prince turned from his brother, disgusted at everything he heard. "Only a fool would believe a snake's lies. Only a fool would trust the mute to honor his word."

"And only a fool would let his entire country burn for some dead bastard in the sky," Henrik rounded on his brother, having spent most of his self-loathing with his confession. Now all that remained was hate with only the slayer of his mother in sight to burn it all on.

"Vasska would raze us all to the ground for his glory. Why..." a small panic gripped Aldrin as tears clung to his eyes. He looked at Henrik, so cocksure in everything he did, "Why can't you see that?"

Henrik folded his arms again, trying to rise as regally as possible over his brother. He wished he kept his heeled boots on, "Either the Emperor will slit all our throats for his dark ritual on the top of the tower or he won't. Either way, you cannot change it. I am your King, little brother, and you must do as I command." Henrik held out his hand and pushed the Seal of Ostero into his brother's face.

Aldrin staggered at that. His father almost never wore it, calling it a "Godsawful gaudy bauble what snags on my underthings." But it was the symbol, the mark of the pantheon chosen seat to fill the Ostero throne. And Henrik wore it proudly upon his fingers as if he'd already traveled through the trials and been awarded the crown.

He turned away from his brother, staring at the door. The others were still out there. He could stay here with his King and let them find the sword and free the tower. But Henrik wouldn't stand for it. He'd sell Aldrin out as sure as he sold their father and everyone they ever knew for that hunk of metal upon his finger. Henrik could talk noble, but Aldrin knew the viper behind the Ostero eyes. The honey voice that whispered such sweet nothings at night called for an execution by day. He cared nothing for ruling, only for power. A lump fell inside Aldrin's stomach from his brain as a terrible decision was reached.
 

He turned to look upon his smug brother as his hand cupped around the leather grip. Aldrin unsheathed his sword.
 

Henrik let a flash of fear fade from his eyes as Aldrin said, "You are my king." He nodded in agreement, enjoying this new game.

But the murky eyes of Little Bonny snapped up and hardened to steel as another piece of Aldrin's soul splintered off, "Yet you killed our king."

Henrik backed up at the fury leeching off his brother. His hands flew up, the ring knocking into Aldrin's breastplate.
He looks so much like our father when he panics
, Aldrin thought as he bared down upon his only brother. His blade arm rose back.
 

Despite the threat, or perhaps because of the fear, Henrik laughed, "Come now, Bonny, you cannot be serious. Put that down before you hurt yourself."

Henrik started to slap the blade out of Aldrin's hands but a gauntleted fist caught his brother's wrist and turned it aside. "You must be executed," Aldrin said as he thrust his rusted sword deep into his brother's gut.

Shock cut off the air trying to get to Henrik's lungs and his screams turned to mutterings as he fell to his knees. Aldrin kept his grip on his blade as the dying king slid off it. The icy eyes of his brother looked into Aldrin's and he whispered to his dying King, "I am sorry." And he meant it, as he watched that flicker of anger and hatred fade for the final time from Henrik as his body slumped over and fell to the floor. It would never rise again.

Aldrin reached down and pulled the ring off Henrik's fingers before placing it safely in one of his inner pockets. He brought the sword up to his face and watched a strange sheen glimmer beneath his brother's blood dripping down the rust. Perhaps the blood of kings could polish any sword.

He sheathed it back upon his belt and turned away from his brother still laying slumped against the floor, the blood oozing into the masonry.
'They would never get that clean,
' someone other than Aldrin thought.
'I need to get out there and find the others. The dungeons are the place to look.'
The stranger in his head kept up, giving orders to a child hiding in the corner gnawing at his fist for what he'd seen. What he'd done.

Aldrin listened outside the door but heard nothing. He stuck his head out and, finding no guards, broke for the staircase to the dungeons at a moderate run. Behind him he left his brother, his King, and Little Bonny.

Taban, his hand still clutching the terrified maid, opened up the door and peered out into the hall. "Your Princeling is not there," he closed the door and looked back at Ciara, "On the plus side, neither is his bleeding corpse."

Ciara muttered something that sounded dangerously familiar to Taban and he tried to hide the smile at her dubbing the boy a "hopping lambskin." He may need to teach her proper Dunish lest she become the hit of the court on accident. The mewling thing in his hands squirmed and opened her mouth to scream. He clamped a hand over her mouth subconsciously.
 

This drew the attention of Ciara away from where the hell Aldrin got himself this time. She looked into the wide eyes of the girl trying to squirm away from the people who assaulted and jammed her inside the makeshift linen closet, "Matilda? Is that you?"

Matilda nodded and mumbled something under Taban's hand, slobbering down it. He sneered at her but looked to Ciara, who nodded her head slowly.
It's all right.
Slowly he removed his hand, ready to snap it back in place if she tried to scream, and rubbed his palm on his pants.