“Like…” Lyriana thought for a moment, then snapped her fingers. “Like the one about the priest’s daughter and the stable hand!”
Jax shrugged. “I don’t know that one.”
I elbowed him. “Yes, you do. You told it to me. The daughter ends up having sex with the stallion.”
“What? No! That’s not the joke! The joke is that she…” Lyriana trailed off as awareness dawned in her eyes, then looked down at her feet, mortified. “I seem to have misunderstood the punch line.”
Jax let out a braying laugh. Zell nodded thoughtfully. “I believe the Zitochi have a similar joke, except it’s a priestess and an elk—”
“Somehow, I don’t think this conversation is going to make any of us look good, so maybe we could just move on,” Miles cut in. “Tilla, would you please help the Princess get her pants on?”
Despite myself, I laughed out loud. That was a sentence I never imagined hearing. And I had to fight back an even bigger laugh a few minutes later, when I stood with Lyriana behind a boulder near the cove. She and Markos were roughly the same build, so I’d thought his clothes might fit her, but she was drowning in his rumpled gray work shirt. His pants had turned out to be too loose, so I’d had to tie them around Lyriana’s waist with a bit of cord. They were still too long, scrunched up around her ankles. She looked ridiculous, like a little girl who had somehow gotten into her dad’s closet. And her regal features, her perfect skin, her glowing golden eyes all just made it so much worse.
“Well?” she asked timidly. “How is it?”
“I’ll put it this way. You were right earlier. No one’s going to believe you could be a servant girl.”
We packed up our camp, but then, of course, we had to argue for a while about who got to ride which horse. With three horses and five of us, there would have to be some sharing involved. There was no question that Lyriana couldn’t ride alone: it turned out she’d never actually been on a horse, just had horses pull her carriage, and was actually somewhat afraid of them. Miles offered to ride with her, but she’d looked down and stammered, deeply embarrassed at the apparent impropriety of touching a boy. I’ll give her this: it took a lot of prudishness to make Miles look like the worldly one. That meant that I’d ride with Lyriana, and, after only twenty more minutes of arguing, that Zell would ride alone while Jax and Miles would share the third horse.
We left just after sundown. Jax led the way, guiding us down the beach and up into the forest. I knew that the farther we got from Castle Waverly, the less we could rely on his knowledge of the land, but here, at least, he was still an expert. Just to be safe, we decided to take a longer route, arcing far east around Castle Waverly before plunging south; we didn’t dare try any roads. Instead, we tromped along an overgrown trail, our horses gamely stepping across tangled roots and slippery stones, treading lightly through the dark water of barely flowing creeks. I’d offered to use Miles’s Sunstone, which he’d refused to take back, but Zell said it would give our position away. So we rode instead by the light of the stars and the moon, which half the time were hidden by the canopy of leaves overhead.
I was scared. No, I’ll admit it. I was terrified. I’d never been out in the woods at night, not without a bunch of friends and a campfire and a half skin of wine in my belly. I flinched at every passing shadow, jumped every time the moon drifted behind a cloud, and saw tangled, grasping hands in the branches of every distant tree. Lyriana held me close, her face pressed into my back, her breath fast and scared. Sparkling eyes glinted at us occasionally from the branches: owls, I hoped, or raccoons or something. I thought of all the dangerous animals that lived out here: bears and wolves and skarrlings. And I thought of all the stories I’d loved as a kid, which of course were all about the terrible things that children encountered in the woods at night: gibbering mudmen, crones with stone teeth, and ghosts of lovers long dead, their cheeks slick with bloody tears.
Why the frozen hell had I liked scary stories so much? Why couldn’t I have just wanted to read about princesses and ball gowns?
It seemed like the night would never end. But then the first rays of light crept over the horizon and the sky began to turn a soft pink, and it dawned on me that we’d made it after all. Jax led us off the trail, and we settled down in a mossy grove of redwood trees. The grass was soft and wet, but that didn’t stop me from sprawling on it. My thighs hurt so bad I never wanted to get up again.
We tied up our horses and set up camp as the sun rose. I was more than happy to lie in the grass, eat a loaf of bread, and then fall deeply asleep, but Zell insisted on going out to hunt. Jax went with him, either because he genuinely wanted to or because he felt like he had to prove his manhood, I don’t know. But the two of them went off and left me, Miles, and Lyriana to settle in.
A gentle fog rolled in over the glade. One of the trees had a recess in its bough, like a big, welcoming mouth, and I crawled inside. Tiny mushrooms grew off the slick bark, and I could hear a loon calling out in the distance. Lyriana curled up with me, her head on my shoulder; I was getting the impression she wasn’t going to give me a whole lot of space. Miles sat on a stump nearby. Out of all of us, he looked the most changed, like two days roughing it had already kicked the soft out of him. His eyes were sunken, tired, and his curly hair hung tangled around his face.
“Your Majesty,” he said, breaking the silence, “may I ask a question?”
Lyriana arched her head up toward him. “Of course.”
“What’s it like in Lightspire? I mean, I’ve read plenty of books and accounts and all that, but I’ve never talked to anyone from there.” He looked off into the distance. I couldn’t tell what his deal was. Was he genuinely curious? Or was he just trying to say something, anything, to distract himself?
“It’s very different,” Lyriana replied. She stared out at the grove, shrouded in fog, the ground glistening with dew. “It’s hot there, hot most of the year, and so flat you can see for miles if you stand in the right place. And these woods here…there’s nothing like this. In the city, the only trees we have are those in planters, arranged by the City Beautification Council. And even outside of it, the land is tamed, refined, perfectly sculpted. There is nothing this wild. This beautiful.” She let out a slow sigh. “This dangerous.”
Miles started to say something, but then the bushes rustled at the far end of the grove. The three of us went silent as they parted to reveal an elegant brown doe, on her own, her back speckled with white spots like a spattering of snowflakes. Maybe she didn’t see us, or maybe she wasn’t afraid. But either way, she walked straight into the heart of the grove and grazed there, still and beautiful.
“Should we…should we do something?” Miles whispered. “The guys went off to hunt, right? I mean, wouldn’t they want us to get this deer?”
“What do you want to do?” I replied. “Because I didn’t exactly bring my bow and arrow….”
Miles turned to Lyriana. “Can you do something? You know, with your magic?”
“Of course not.” Lyriana said. “I swore a sacred oath, Miles Hampstedt. To never kill. To never harm. To only use my magic to help and nourish. I would never hurt a living creature. Especially not one so beautiful.” Miles turned away guiltily, and Lyriana looked down at the Rings on her hands. “Besides. I don’t know any violent arts. I couldn’t kill it if I wanted to.”
“What can you do?” I asked. I knew the mages kept the secrets of their power deeply guarded, but I was starting to realize just how little I knew about how magic even worked. I didn’t realize there were different “arts” that mages knew. I just figured it was all, you know, magic.
Lyriana shrugged. “I can Lift,” she said, and flattened her hand, raising it as if lifting an invisible plate. She had three Rings, two on one hand, one on the other, and they all pulsed a delicate yellow. At the heart of the grove, a stone lifted up, floating into the air exactly in line with Lyriana’s hand. The doe looked up, startled. “I can Light,” Lyriana said, snapping her finge
rs. The Rings turned white. The stone fell to the ground, but a gentle ball of soft light danced out of her fingers, hovering in the air right in front of us, like a tiny star. The doe took off running. Miles and I stared in wonder.
“And I can Grow,” Lyriana said. She reached up with her other hand and twisted her fingers in a circle, as if tightening a screw. Now her Rings glowed green, a gentle, flourishing green, like a field of grass. The bark of the tree above us rumbled, and the tiny mushrooms sprouting from it expanded, puffing out like they were being blown full of air. Before my eyes, they grew and grew, from just barely bigger than my thumbnail to nearly the size of my hand, suddenly the fluffiest and most appetizing mushrooms I’d ever seen.
I reached out and plucked them. “It’s not fresh venison, but I could probably get by with a mushroom soup.”
Lyriana laughed. “I’m glad I’m good for something.” She held out her hands so we could see her Rings, and I noticed for the first time how much smaller and simpler they were than her uncle’s. “I’m just a novice, I’m afraid. I can’t do much more than that.”
“Don’t be modest,” I said. “We saw what you did on the beach and in the tunnels. When you saved our lives. That was a lot more than lifting a stone and growing some mushrooms.”
Lyriana turned away, embarrassed. “That was…Heartmagic. It happens sometimes, when a mage loses control, when the emotions they’re feeling overwhelm the restrictions of the Rings. It’s extremely draining, extremely dangerous. I could easily have died. I should never let it happen again.”
“Right. Of course,” I said, though if we found ourselves in that situation again, I was kind of counting on it. “I still don’t really get it, though. You said you couldn’t use your magic to harm. But mages use their magic to harm all the time. I mean, they fight wars and stuff.”
Lyriana sighed, and Miles look embarrassed, like this was something I ought to know. It probably was. “The School of Mages has twelve orders, each with its own purpose and vows. The Knights of Lazan, the warriors, are the largest order and the one you’re likely most familiar with. They, of course, may use force as they see fit, to enforce the will of the King.”
“But there are others,” Miles cut in, never one to miss an opportunity to show off his knowledge. “There’s the Gazala Guild, you know, the Artificers. There’s the Brotherhood of Lo, who handle the bestiaries, and the Maids of Alleja and…” He paused, blinking at Lyriana. “Wait, which order do you belong to?”
She smiled slightly and rolled up her sleeve, revealing her slender arm. There, just above her wrist, was a tattooed sigil. It looked like a tiny flowering blossom, glowing a faint, pleasant green.
“The Sisterhood of Kaia?” Miles gawked. “You’re kidding!”
“It caused quite the stir in my family when I declared,” Lyriana said. “It’s the reason my father wanted me to conceal my Rings and my magical aptitude. He’s worried about how the other Houses will react.”
I felt like a little kid at the grown-ups’ table. “Sorry, back up. What’s so special about this Sisterhood of Kaia?”
“They’re the most controversial of the twelve orders,” Lyriana explained. “Their focus is on charity, healing, and compassion.”
“That doesn’t sound very controversial.”
“While the other eleven orders are sworn to serve the will of the King, the Sisterhood of Kaia believes its calling is to serve the people of Noveris…even those the King opposes,” Miles said. “During the Great War, many of them disobeyed a direct order from the King and crossed the battle lines to heal the wounded, Heartlanders and Westerners alike. It was a big deal. There was talk of disbanding them, hanging them for treason, all kinds of stuff.” He turned back to Lyriana. “I apologize if I’m prying, but I have to know. How does the Princess, the Queen-to-Be, end up declaring herself a Sister of Kaia?”
“It’s a long story,” Lyriana said. “As a child, I never even considered the Sisterhood. I’d assumed I’d be a Maid of Alleja, an enchantress, gifted at glamour and illusion. It’s the traditional order for female mages from the great Houses.”
“Sounds boring,” I said.
“Women in Lightspire do not have quite as many options as they do out here, Tillandra,” Lyriana replied, a slight scold in her tone. “The truth is, I loved enchantment as a child. I used to think that’s all that being a Queen was: glamorous masquerades and beautiful dresses and the endless wonder of the court. And then…”
She paused, like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to say more, then sighed and went on. “It happened a year ago. Lady Ella was throwing her birthday party, one of the most important social events of the year. I was late because I took too long to get ready, and by the time we got out, the King’s Road was a mess of slow-moving carriages. I didn’t want to miss the first dance, so I asked…no, I ordered my driver to take a shortcut through the center of the city.” She sighed. “He’d been drinking. He made a wrong turn. And we ended up in Ragtown.”
“That’s the poor part of Lightspire,” Miles explained.
“Yeah, I got that from ‘Ragtown.’” I shot him an annoyed look. “What happened?”
“I’d never been there before. I couldn’t believe it. I’d always known there were disadvantaged people in the Kingdom, but I’d imagined hardworking farmers or tanned, rough sailors. But what I saw in Ragtown…people living in crumbling shacks, sprawled out in the streets in tattered clothes, the stench of excrement, naked children so thin you could see their ribs, their faces marred by pox…” Her voice trembled. “I could not bear it. I ordered my driver to turn around, but it was too late. A mob rallied at the sight of my golden carriage and swarmed us. I had two bodyguards with me, Knights of Lazan, who began attacking the mob, but there were just so many of them. And…”
She closed her eyes. I could feel her heart pounding. She clearly did not want to relive this part of the memory. “When the smoke cleared, my guards were dead. My driver was dead. I was trapped under my crushed carriage. And all around me were bodies. So many dead. And so many wounded. These thin, fragile, diseased people, desperate for even a crumb of bread, and my guards had attacked them without a thought.
“Then the Sisters came. There was a temple of Kaia in Ragtown, the only mage-ministered temple in the neighborhood. They rushed to the scene, before even my father’s men could arrive. They pulled me out of the rubble, mended my leg, and treated my burns with their healing arts.”
“That’s why you joined them,” Miles said.
“No. I joined them because they helped everyone else,” Lyriana said. “There is a term we use, ‘willstruck.’ It means when you feel the Titans’ guidance most clearly, when you understand exactly what it is they want you to do. In that moment, watching the Sisters tend to these starving, wounded men, these men who had attacked me, who my father would have put to death in a heartbeat…I was willstruck. I understood that this was my purpose as Queen, why I was put on this earth. My father is a good King, but his care is for politics, for preserving the family, for building the Kingdom. He does great works. But my purpose is to help all those he missed.”
“How’d your father react when you told him you wanted to join the Sisterhood?”
Lyriana looked down, embarrassed, and turned away her wrist. “I didn’t tell him. I snuck out as soon as I was better, and pledged myself. I’ve never seen him angrier than the day he saw my mark.”
“Huh,” I said. I hated to admit it, but I’d misjudged the Princess. I’d written her off as annoying and sheltered, and, okay, that was still true. But behind that, there was something I’d missed, something I had to respect. I’d spent my whole life torn between two worlds because of my birth, craving the comforts of one while living the reality of the other. Lyriana was torn, too, but she was torn by choice, throwing away one world because she felt a duty to the other.
We sat in silence. Lyriana dozed off. And half an hour later, the bushes at the edge of the grove parted again, now giving way to Jax and Zel
l.
“Say what you will about the Zitochi”—Jax laid down a half-dozen rabbit carcasses at the heart of the grove—“but this guy can hunt like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
I looked to Zell, who didn’t say anything. He had something wet and heavy slung over his shoulders. He knelt down and laid it out on the grass: a doe’s body, its neck snapped, its limbs limp. I could make out the familiar white speckles on her back.
I’d eaten meat all my life. Hell, I was ready to eat meat right then. Yet I still felt a weird pang of sadness. I didn’t mind eating a doe. But did it have to be that one?
Lyriana felt more than a pang. “You killed her.” She scowled at Jax as she stood up. “You killed that beautiful, free creature.”
Jax looked confused. “Well, technically, Zell killed her. I just chased her to him, and he caught her and—BAM—snapped her neck with his bare hands and…” He finally noticed Lyriana’s furious look of disgust. “Did I miss something? Why are you acting so crazy about this? Did they teach about hunting the same day they taught pants?”
Lyriana turned away with a snort. “You’re an insensitive boor, and you don’t understand anything.”
“Really? Because I think I’m the insensitive boor who just killed our dinner, while you sat around here moping!”
“I thought you said Zell killed our dinner,” Miles interjected. Jax shot him a menacing look.
“Maybe in fancy-pants Lightspire, you can eat your truffled scones with gold-flecked sauce,” he said. “But here, in the West, you eat what you have to! And that means killing meat!”
“You didn’t have to kill her,” Lyriana insisted. “And to be so callous, to boast of snapping her neck like it was sport, like she meant nothing at all, like she was just a—”
“We thank you, Mother,” Zell spoke, cutting Lyriana off. We all turned to look at him. He sat cross-legged by the doe’s body, his eyes shut, and spoke in the tone of someone repeating something he’d said a thousand times. “We thank you for the bounty of your flesh, that it may sustain us through our hunger. We thank you for the gift of your fur, that it may protect us from the cold. We thank you for the gift of your life, that ours may go on.”
Royal Bastards Page 11
