Hexborn

by A. M. Manay

  Shiloh realized she’d been spotted when a hail of arrows headed her way, bouncing harmlessly off of her ward. She yanked the bow from the woman’s hands just as a curse from Hatch knocked her off of her feet.

  It ended quickly. One moment, all was pandemonium: spells flying, the screams of men and horses battering her ears and her heart. The next moment, three bodies lay on the ground, and three survivors stood with their arms raised in surrender. Shiloh waited in her hiding place while Hatch and Jenkins checked the defeated men for hidden weapons. Hatch called the all clear, and she rose to her feet and headed toward the men, hoping they couldn’t see how much her legs trembled.

  Redwood stood flanked by two Feral survivors, one an adolescent boy and the other a man with hair of gray. The older one glowered at Hatch before fixing his eyes on Shiloh.

  “My lord, I place you under arrest by the authority of King Rischar,” Hatch declared.

  Redwood wiped blood out of his eye. “If you had any vision, you’d start working for me instead.”

  “Like the Feralfolk you’ve hired? Greetings, Keegan,” Hatch spat. “Still making your living poorly fighting other people’s wars, are you?”

  The older Feral laughed bitterly. “Edmun’s errand boy is all grown up. Still a faithless murderer?”

  “You know full well that Princess Esta would make a better ruler even at the age of thirteen than her father does at fifty,” Redwood told Hatch, ignoring Keegan utterly. “With men like the two of us to help her, she would lead this kingdom to greatness.”

  “Lady Esta may get her chance one day,” Hatch replied frostily, “but not as your puppet and not as a patricide. And not after the war that would surely follow once you snatched her up.”

  “The war would be over quick enough. You think I don’t have men in the palace, ready to slit Rischar’s throat when the time is right? You give me my sons back, and we’d have it mopped up inside a week. You’d still have a place at the table of power, Hatch, if I’m the one guiding Esta’s hand. Every ruler needs a hatchet, after all. Do you think that she’d let you within a hundred miles of the City if left to her own devices, after what you helped Rischar do to her mother?” Redwood bargained.

  “I only sought power to keep the peace, my lord. And I had my fill of traitors long ago,” Hatch replied.

  “Oh, it’s peace you’re after, is it? I wondered if instead you were blocking Esta’s rise in favor of the Usurper’s Unclean spawn, here, what with the way you followed Edmun around like a puppy dog when you were a lad. Is she yours? Maybe Alissa got tired of the Feral and wanted a little boy in her bed for a change, eh?” Redwood grinned savagely, then winked at Shiloh.

  The rebel continued, “How do you think Rischar will react when he finds out you’ve brought the rightful heir to her mother’s throne, the throne he stole, into his house? You think your king would let her live if he knew? Or Esta would, if she knew some crippled abomination could upend the order of succession?”

  Shiloh’s stomach turned to ice. It must have shown on her face, for Redwood crowed, “She didn’t know! Oh, ho, she really didn’t know, did she? My, my. Edmun always did know how to keep a secret. You’re the Usurper’s daughter, princess. Born of a royal monster and a Godsless savage. In wedlock, even, or so this one claims. Congratulations. Long live the queen.”

  “Shut it, Redwood,” Keegan growled. “You swore you would let me tell her if she didn’t know already.”

  “Oh, no,” Shiloh whispered, eyes screaming. She shook her head as though she could shake the words right back out of her ears. “No. Bad enough to be born of that monster, but I am no Feral. I refuse.”

  “What a touching family reunion,” Redwood proclaimed, his face twisted in rage. “So pleased I could be a part of it.”

  Shiloh caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Jenkins turned and ran, apparently having reached his limit of intrigue. Hatch and Keegan sprang into action, the two enemies suddenly of one accord. Before her horrified eyes, the disarmed Keegan reached over and snapped his own man’s neck, while Hatch slew Jenkins before the poor knight even realized he ought to draw a weapon to defend himself.

  Keegan then leapt at Redwood, hands reaching out for the lord’s throat. Before the Feral could begin squeezing the life out of his employer, Shiloh cast a spell, tearing them apart. They landed in the grass with twin thuds.

  “Nobody else dies until I have answers,” Shiloh shrieked, then looked down at Jenkins and the Feral boy, lifeless in the grass. “Gods, what have you done?” she asked, voice soft now, catching in her throat.

  “It is unfortunate, but they both heard too much. We can’t let your parentage become common knowledge, Shiloh. Others would seek to use you to disrupt the peace,” Hatch explained, his hands raised in a calming gesture. “And it would put you in grave danger.”

  “You say that as though you aren’t using her,” Keegan shot back.

  “You have to kill me, too. If you take me in alive, Hatch, I will tell the king who she is,” Redwood pledged. “You’d better not leave me breathing if you want her alive.”

  “King Rischar already knows, you dolt,” Hatch snarled. “Miren knew, too. Who the hell told you? This paragon of fatherhood, over here?”

  “It was part of my price for helping Redwood, that he would help me to get you out alive,” Keegan said to Shiloh, never taking his eyes from her face.

  “Do I look like I need your help?” she spat. “Your men killed my Da.”

  “That was an accident. I couldn’t stand by while Hatch killed you like he killed my Alissa. I sent my men to get you, so I could warn you not to go to court. But Poll got in the way, and—”

  “Stop. Talking,” Shiloh warned, her voice sounding to her like that of a stranger.

  “When I heard about you, I wanted to come for you. But I feared that without the wizard Edmun’s help, you would die. You look so like my mother, Shiloh. Please,” Keegan begged, “You must forgive me.”

  “Must I? Tell me, Feral, did you watch your men burn? Did you see what it did to me to kill them, after my real father bled his life out into the dirt?” Shiloh’s wand began to glow. “Did you watch me wail? Did you listen to me screaming in Edmun’s house when the pains came every night for a week after I buried him? After my neighbors put the heads of your men on pikes?”

  “I just killed my own man to protect you, daughter,” Keegan protested.

  “Don’t you dare call me that,” Shiloh spat. “My father died under a Feral curse.”

  “Shiloh, put down your wand. You might lose control, Shiloh,” Hatch said in a soft and certain voice. He edged closer to her. “You’ve had a terrible shock. Put it down. You don’t want to lose control.”

  “The hell I don’t,” she retorted.

  “Let me handle it. You don’t want that sin on your soul, Shiloh,” Hatch warned. “You don’t want to kill your own father.”

  Her gaze fell on poor Jenkins. His tan face looked up at her from the ground, brown eyes wide and surprised. Shiloh pressed her hook over her mouth lest she scream. She took a step backward, desperate to put some distance between herself and the act, between herself and the men who had just murdered to protect her and were likely about to do so again. She dropped her wand into the grass and fell to her knees, the horror of the moment enough to extinguish the rage that had threatened to consume her.

  Redwood’s eyes darted from her to Hatch, wheels plainly turning behind them.

  “I’ll tell them it wasn’t Esta I was after. I’ll tell them it was this abomination. I’ll say she and Edmun plotted with me for years,” Redwood claimed. “I’ll play to every paranoid thought Rischar has ever entertained about his dead sister and her followers. No one knows her parentage but me, Hatch. I didn’t tell my sons. Kill me clean, or I take her down with me in a ball of fire. Maybe you, too.”

  Hatch’s wand danced with sickly green flames. With a flick of his wrist, Redwood’s head and body parted ways an
d fell separately to the earth, pouring blood into the dirt. “Have it your way, then,” Hatch sighed, then pointed his weapon at Keegan.

  “You want me alive. If it is peace you want in this kingdom, Hatch, you want me alive,” Keegan asserted. “I will pledge on my blood to keep my people out of any future fight against Rischar. You know Redwood isn’t the only one of those lords with ambitions. I’ve received other overtures, Hatch, from men with greed and gold to spare. And if I’m dead, whoever succeeds me will happily take that gold and lay waste to Bryn.”

  Hatch considered his words, muscles working in his jaw, wand still ablaze.

  “I’ll even fight for Bryn if Gerne ever invades, Hatch. Don’t throw that away,” the Feral chief bargained.

  “He’s right,” Shiloh whispered, the words sour in her mouth. “Let him go.”

  Hatch studied her for a moment, then nodded. “Quickly, Feral, before Lady Esta and her guards get curious and come to take a peek,” Hatch told Keegan.

  “If you ever have to run from the treacherous swine in the City, you can run to me, daughter,” Keegan said, turning to Shiloh. She refused to meet his eyes. “As for you, Hatch, one of these days, I am going to kill you. And if you hurt my girl, I will kill you slowly. That I promise you.”

  Keegan then grabbed one of the two surviving horses and swung himself gracefully onto its back before taking off at a gallop. Only when the sound faded did Shiloh find the strength to speak.

  “Is it true?” Shiloh asked. “That I was born of Alissa and Keegan?” Her voice was barely a whisper.

  “Yes,” Hatch confessed. Shiloh pressed her lips together so tightly that they disappeared. He opened his mouth to say more, but she held up a hand to stop him.

  “Not now,” she told him in a dangerous voice. “I cannot do this right now.” She could smell the Feralfolk burning. Her hand felt sticky with her Da’s blood.

  “Then when you’re able to stand, go get Lady Esta, Ladloh, and Gil. I’ll start burying these people,” Hatch told her. “We need to keep moving, in case they summoned help.”

  Shiloh struggled to her feet.

  “And, Dame Shiloh,” Hatch added.

  “Yes?” she asked, straightening her skirt and squaring her shoulders.

  “The moment you become a threat to the peace and stability of this kingdom, I will bury you instead. But until then, I am a friend to you. I hope you know that, now that I’ve murdered two men to protect you. Now that you know that I have convinced the king to let you live.”

  “I know,” she replied, as numb as if she’d been sleeping in the snow. “Do you think Lady Esta knows?” she asked, unable to look him in the face.

  “She might, since Mirin did,” Hatch admitted.

  Shiloh took a heavy step, then paused to speak again, the words rising to her mouth unbidden, her voice cold as ice.

  “Will you put my head in a pretty box for her when she tells you to, like you did my mother’s?”

  Chapter 16

  Let Me At Least Save You

  Silas held his hand over his mouth and averted his eyes, but it did no good. The sound of Edmun decapitating his dead sister set him to heaving into a chamber pot. He did not look forward to carrying it to Rischar’s camp. Just like that other box. Tiny caskets, both.

  “You’ll have to tell them about Alissa’s baby. If she lives, and they find out about her later, they’ll know you withheld the information,” Edmun instructed.

  “But they might send someone to kill her,” Silas protested.

  “So what? She’s doomed regardless. They might send someone to kill her. Or they might leave nature to its course. Or they might realize that an Unclean, crippled girl child whose mother is now universally reviled, and who at any rate cannot prove her parentage, is unlikely to draw a lot of support on a battlefield. Any way they choose to play it, telling them is the wiser course of action for the good of the kingdom,” Edmun declared.

  Silas spared a look at him and immediately regretted it. Edmun was in the midst of placing his sister’s head into a gilded box. Her blood dripped from his hands. His eyes were dry.

  “How can you be so cold about this?” Silas demanded. “The baby’s your niece, isn’t she?”

  Before he could draw another breath, Edmun had thrown him against the wall and placed his wand against his student’s neck. His bloody hands twisted Silas’s shirt as he held his young student several inches above the floor.

  “Do you really think I’m not dying inside, boy?” Edmun snarled. “Do you think regret isn’t going to torture me every day for the rest of my miserable life? I’ve spent the last three years watching my sister destroy herself fighting for a throne that should have been hers. The person I loved most in all the world has died for the sake of a kingdom that doesn’t deserve her, and all I have left of her is a child I have no prayer of being able to protect, and whom I can never tell that she shares my blood. You think I’m cold, Silas? Trust me, boy, you don’t want to see me hot.”

  “I’m sorry,” Silas whispered, eyes filling with tears.

  Edmun dropped Silas and sat down heavily upon his sister’s deathbed. He shook his head, the fight gone out of him.

  “I’m the one who should be sorry. It is my fault you were even a part of this disaster of a war. You are my favorite child, and I’ve used you terribly, and you’d be within your rights to hate me for the rest of your days. I can do little enough to protect you now, but please believe me when I tell you that it is in your best interest to tell Rischar about the girl now, and to take the credit for killing my sister. It’s also in the best interest of the kingdom. Please, do as I say. For the Gods’ sakes, let me at least save you.”

  Silas’s lips trembled. “All right, Master Edmun. I’ll do as you say.”

  ***

  They rode on in silence after burying the dead. Progress was slower now, but far less stressful. Lord Redwood’s head hung in a bloodstained leather sack, dangling from Hatch’s saddle. He’d put a spell on it to preserve it, thinking all the while of Alissa’s head in its carved wooden box years before, thinking of the other box Mirin had once ordered him to bury.

  They came to a village, at last, and found it occupied by what was left of Mosspeak’s force. Mosspeak himself rode out to greet them, anxious to see if Lady Esta was still among them, and still among the living.

  After greetings were exchanged, and the news of Redwood’s death received with good cheer, Lady Esta declared, “You have all served me, my father, and this kingdom well. I shall see to it that you are well rewarded.”

  All murmured their thanks, and Mosspeak led the king’s daughter to the mayor’s house to rest. The rest of them trotted toward the stables and gratefully handed off their mounts. Shiloh leaned against the wall outside and closed her eyes. Her eyelids glowed pink with the setting sun.

  “There is a small monastery here,” Hatch told her, interrupting her moment of rest. “They’ve offered supper and rooms to us both.”

  She forced open her eyes. “Lead the way,” she replied. He offered an arm, and, to his surprise, she took it, leaning on him heavily. He looked down at her, eyebrows drawn. “I’m just tired,” she assured him. Hatch did not believe her.

  The road turned into a path, and soon, they were alone among the trees. Even so, Silas drew his wand and cast a spell to prevent them from being overheard before beginning to speak.

  “Edmun really didn’t tell you?” Hatch asked.

  “He never did,” she confirmed, her voice weary. “I could tell they were lying about how they found me, once I got to be ten or twelve years old. I guessed it was some sort of scandal, but I never knew exactly what. When it was close to the end, Master Edmun said some strange things. He told me to run, but he wouldn’t tell me why.”

  They walked in silence, the dead leaves crunching beneath their feet.

  “Were you ever going to tell me?” Shiloh asked when the gate to the monastery loomed before them.
>
  “No,” he confessed, looking off to the side. “You haven’t asked me if I really killed her.”

  “No good can come of asking such a question, Master Hatch. I do have to look at you every day, after all.”

  ***

  Hatch studied her as they ate, alone at a table together in a hall half-full of monks. She seemed to have a good appetite, which reassured him. She hadn’t flinched in the village when he’d offered her his arm. He realized with a start how painful it would have been if she had.

  He’d been telling himself he had protected her because she was useful to king and country, and that was certainly true. She had proved it several times over. He’d told himself that he hadn’t saved her as a baby just to watch her die on account of that traitor Redwood’s words. That fool was doomed anyway. But as he watched her eat, he had to face the fact that he had grown fond of her. Fonder than was wise.

  And it was affecting his judgment.

  I ought to have killed Keegan, he berated himself. I hesitated because she was there. A Feral general, and I let him walk away to wreak havoc another day. And now she knows. She knows that she is a princess of the blood. She knows I killed her mother, though she refuses to acknowledge it. She could turn on me, or on the king, at any time. And what would I do to stop her? I should have thrown her from that cliff in the Teeth when she suggested it.

  Yet even as he scolded himself for sentimentality, he found himself making conversation with her.

  “What was Mount Tarwin like?” he asked. “I heard you telling Lady Esta you’d been.” Of course, he had already known that.

  She looked up from her plate and smiled. It was the happiest she had looked in days. “It was lovely. The climb was hard for me, of course. Very hard. But the views were so beautiful, and the struggle somehow prepared me for the experience.”

  “What was the Sanctum like?” he asked curiously. He had read many accounts of pilgrimages to Mount Tarwin. The place fascinated him. He had traveled twice to the village at the base of the mountain. For all his knowledge, all his study, all his travels, the one place he knew he would never be able to set foot was Mount Tarwin. It was, perhaps, the only place in the world that women had managed to keep solely for themselves.