Royal Bastards

by Andrew Shvarts

  “Like I said. Evil,” Jax replied. “And I can’t wait until he’s in charge of all the Zitochi when your dad bites it….”

  “That’s not how it works,” I jumped in. “They hold a Conclave, and all the Chiefs make their pitch and…” I realized the others were staring at me. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I worried about Razz,” Zell went on. “So did our mother. He was dangerous, unhinged. And he sought out men like himself for his mercenary band, men with the same appetites, cruel and vicious men exiled from my culture and yours. We tried to convince my father, but he…he…”

  “Wait. Your mother?” Miles chimed in. “You and Razz have the same mother and the same father? So how are you a bastard?”

  Zell looked at his feet. The whole time I’d known him, I hadn’t seen him express anything resembling embarrassment, but now his cheeks flushed with shame. “With my people, a bastard isn’t born. He’s made. He’s made when he disgraces his family, when he shames his Clan. I’m a bastard because I…I…” He sighed. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Damn, Miles,” Jax said. “You just made Zell uncomfortable. That takes skill.”

  I turned my head sideways, trying to understand Zell’s expression. I couldn’t. What was it that he had done? I’d known him less than a month, but I was sure he couldn’t have done anything worse than Razz. Something had happened, something to cause all that fear and pain inside him, and that something had led to his disgrace…but what?

  I didn’t know. I couldn’t know.

  The conversation had nowhere to go after that, so we ate in silence, then went to sleep. I rested badly; it wasn’t exactly easy to sleep on a bed of sharp pebbles, in the heat of the sun. But I didn’t mind, because it made sure that I woke up early, just as the sun was setting, just as Zell was starting his training/prayer/whatever.

  I found him at the center of the quarry, practicing. He was doing a slightly different routine this time: fewer twirls and rolls, more stabs and blocks. But he still had the same precise focus, the same rhythmic, graceful moves. He barely looked up as I approached him, and only really stopped when I stood right in his path.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’d like you to teach me to fight.”

  Zell blinked at me, perplexed, as if I’d just asked him to teach me to fly. “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want your brother to kill me. So teach me how to fight him.”

  “My brother is second only to my father in skill. You wouldn’t have a chance against him.”

  “Fine. Then he’ll win. But I want to at least go down with a fight.”

  Zell stared at me curiously, and I met his gaze. I could tell we were thinking about the same thing. That cottage we’d passed. The woman behind it. The girl in Lyriana’s arms. The unspoken weight of that morning hung over us, binding us, and it was enough.

  “All right,” Zell said. “I suppose this could work. I’ve been watching you move for some time, and you do have a natural grace.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been watching me move?”

  “I…I mean, I did watch you as a…There’s a way that you move that…” He gave up and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Do you want me to train you or not?”

  “I do.”

  Zell nodded and walked off to go root around in a pile of debris at the quarry’s edge. He returned a minute later and tossed me a long oak branch.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s a stick.”

  Right. Should’ve seen that coming. I sighed. “Why am I holding a stick?”

  “If you want to learn to fight with a sword, you have to learn to fight with a stick.” Zell stepped back, then assumed the grounded position he always began his routine with: legs apart, feet planted, knees slightly bent. His hands were empty, though; the sword and dagger lay in the dirt. “Assume this stance.”

  “Um. Okay.” I tried as hard as I could to copy his position, but felt awkward doing it, like the first time I took a dance lesson. Or, really, any time I took a dance lesson. “How’s this?”

  Zell could barely hide his disappointment. “Know how most warriors die?”

  “With…honor?”

  “No. On their backs.” Zell darted toward me, cleared the gap between us in one stride, and kicked me in the back of my ankle. My legs flew out from under me, and with an incredibly ungraceful flailing of my arms, I fell hard on my ass in the hard dirt. It hurt. A lot.

  “What the hell?” I heard Jax yell from back in the camp, and I struggled to turn myself around.

  “It’s fine, Jax!” I shouted back. “He’s just teaching me how to fight!”

  Pushing myself up with my arms, I could see Jax back by the fire pit. He stared at me, tried to say something, then threw up his hands in defeat.

  I hoisted myself and turned back to Zell. He had his head cocked to the side, scrutinizing me. I could tell what he was thinking: was I going to give up now? My back flared with pain, probably from where I’d landed on an exceptionally pointy stone. My thighs hurt from the riding, and from the anticipation of the more riding we’d have to do. It was starting to dawn on me just how hard learning to fight would be, and how outmatched I’d be even if I tried. And I desperately wanted to go lie down for a short, sweet nap.

  But I thought of that family again. And I wondered how many cottages like that Zell had seen, how many of his brother’s victims he’d been forced to bury.

  “Let’s try again,” I said to Zell, and planted my feet firmly in the dirt.

  NOT MUCH HAPPENED OVER THE next few days.

  Well, that’s not true. Plenty of things happened. To avoid Razz and his men, we rode even farther away from the main roads, pushing through woods so deep we had to ride our horses in single file just to make it through the dense trees. Sometimes we had to hop off and hack through the bushes to clear a path. Once, while descending a steep, crumbling slope, Jax’s horse tripped and Miles tumbled off; it was only Lyriana’s quick reflexes with her Lift magic that stopped him from plunging to his death. Another time, after we’d made camp in a sunken ravine, a trio of wolves came upon us. We sat there, tense, weapons in our hands, as they glared at us with their yellow eyes and their bared teeth, but after what felt like an eternity, they ran back off the way they’d come. Miles started joining Zell and Jax on the hunt, and while I don’t think he ever caught anything, he seemed damn proud of himself for participating. We had a terrifyingly close encounter with a group of men, bandits probably, stalking through the woods at night with torches held high; we hid from them in a damp grotto, holding our breaths, and they came within twenty feet of stumbling upon us.

  What I mean, though, is that things settled into a routine. I’d wake up in the early evening and train with Zell for an hour, slowly learning the khel zhan, his flowing, dance-like fighting style. This training consisted a lot of me falling down, flipping over, or getting hit with a stick when I failed to block one of his attacks. It left me bruised, bleeding, and aching with every muscle in my body. But even after just a few days, I could feel myself starting to improve, could feel my reflexes sharpening and my body hardening. The hurt started to feel good, in a weird way, the hurt of progress, the hurt of growth.

  I started to like it. And maybe I was just imagining it, but I think Zell was starting to like teaching, too. He smiled at me more, and laughed more, and I could see a real pride in his eyes when I mastered one of his stances or blocked one of his jabs. Maybe he was a natural teacher. Or maybe, maybe, he just liked spending time with me.

  We kept up our push southeast, riding through the nights and camping through the day. Between the guys’ hunting and Lyriana’s Growing, we were never hard up for food. Zell even killed a woodsram and fashioned us capes from its shaggy gray fur to keep us warm. Lyriana objected for about ten minutes, but put hers on as soon as a cold night wind blew in. The landscape began to change as we moved farther and farther from the coast, the redwoods giving way to more oaks and firs, the roads getting rarer
and the forest growing quieter. We could now see the Frostkiss Mountains in the distance, massive blue jags looming toward the sky, the barrier that blocked off the West from the rest of Noveris.

  And despite a few setbacks and scares, we began to travel more confidently, more capably. It wasn’t just our comfort on the road, though that helped. It was our comfort with one another. We started talking more as we rode and spending more time together in the camps. Lyriana told us about growing up in Lightspire, about her cousin Ellarion, about how she never even stepped outside the palace until she was six years old. Miles and Jax invented a game where they tried to make each other guess things they were thinking of by describing them in rhymes, and while Miles always won by crafting elegant stanzas, Jax did a surprisingly impressive job of finding new rhymes for “ass” and “tits.” Even Zell and Jax started to thaw toward each other; Jax taught Zell about all the beasts of the West, and Zell taught Jax how to hunt them. Best of all, there had been no more signs of Razz and his men, and that cottage and the poor family started to fade into memory.

  Twelve days after we left the beach, we reached the banks of the Markson River, and I realized the biggest change in our group’s mood: we were starting to have hope.

  We made a camp on the river’s west bank, settling down in a cluster of trees while the current roared next to us. The Markson was the largest and longest river in the West, running south from the Zitochi tundra before arching west to meet the ocean at the bottom of the coast. Most travelers crossed it by passing through Bridgetown, a legendary hub of trade that spanned the Markson’s narrowest point. That was a no-go for us, obviously. We’d have to head north, toward some of the fishing villages, and hope to cross using one of their bridges when no one was looking. I didn’t mind. Camping alongside the river meant fresh fish, not to mention a place to wash off the dirt and grime. Zell even shaved, scraping the edge of his dagger along his face until it was bare. Miles and Jax passed. I think they were starting to like their scruffy, stubbly beards.

  There was another reason this place made me emotional, one I didn’t share with the others. The Markson River was the farthest I’d ever been from home. When I was eight, my father and I had ridden out to Bridgetown for their famous Festival of Masks. We’d stayed in the estate of Lord Collinwood, whose House governed the town, and at night my father and I had walked through the festival hand in hand. I remember being transfixed by it all: the floating lanterns, the musicians playing in the streets, the people in masks, some scary, some beautiful, dancing and drinking and singing all around us. I remember so clearly when, at the festival’s climax, they set a giant effigy in the river and lit him aflame. I was so scared, but my father comforted me, let me hide behind his legs and told me it was just a big wooden scarecrow, nothing more.

  I didn’t like that memory anymore. Or at least I didn’t want to like that memory anymore. I blinked the tears out of my eyes and turned back to our camp. Lyriana and I sat together on a log, and Miles was on his knees in front of us, blowing on a pathetic campfire to try to get it to catch. Jax and Zell were down by the river’s edge, gutting some fish they’d caught. I could just barely hear snippets of their conversation over the river’s roar.

  “I don’t see the problem,” Zell said. “A beast with claws and great brown hair; I’m thinking of a big cavebear.”

  “You can’t…you can’t tell me what you’re thinking of,” Jax replied, exasperated. “You make up the rhyme, and I guess what it’s talking about. If you tell me it’s a bear, there’s nothing for me to guess.”

  “Is the point not to make a rhyme?”

  “Well, that’s…that’s part of the point, but…”

  “Damn!” Miles pounded his fist into the dirt by the campfire’s edge. It looked like he’d just barely gotten the kindling alight, but the logs lying over it weren’t giving. “Sorry. Sorry. Just dealing with this.”

  “May I try?” Lyriana offered.

  “Well, sure, I suppose, but the branches are really damp, so I don’t know if you’ll—”

  Before Miles could finish, Lyriana raised her hand and twisted her fingers in the air, the gesture I recognized as Grow. The fire instantly caught, bursting up from the branches as if oil had been tossed on it. Miles tumbled onto his back in surprise. “How did you…?”

  Lyriana shrugged. “Fire grows, same as anything else.”

  “That’s incredible.” Miles picked himself up and took a seat opposite us. He had a pensive expression, like he was debating whether or not to speak, and then went for it. “Your Majesty, is…is it true that only people born in Lightspire can be mages? I mean, I know most are, but I am a really quick study, and I’d do anything, anything I had to…”

  “Ah,” Lyriana said as if she’d been dreading this question. “You speak the truth, Miles. The Titans blessed Lightspire and Lightspire alone with the gift of magic. That’s the Heavenly Mandate, the entire basis for the Volaris Dynasty’s rule. No soul born outside the city has ever possessed magic, and none ever will.”

  “Oh.” Miles tried, and failed, to hide his disappointment.

  “But…there are many other things you could do! For every mage, there are a dozen scholars, studying the lore of the Titans, deciphering their buried secrets and searching ancient barrows for more Rings…” Lyriana said. “I think you’d be great at that.”

  “Professional bookworm. Yeah, that’s right up his alley,” Jax said. He and Zell had walked over while we were talking, and settled down with us. Jax rested on the log next to Miles while Zell set up skewers for the fish. “How about me? Is there a perfect job in Lightspire just waiting for me to come along?”

  “Well, that depends,” Lyriana replied. “What do you want to do?”

  Jax blinked, unprepared to be taken seriously. “Well, I…I guess I hadn’t really thought about it. I mean, I was raised to be a stable hand. Figured one day, maybe I could be a stable master, something like that.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “I don’t know.” Jax blinked. “Maybe? Not really, I guess? I don’t think I really had much of a choice.”

  “You do now.” Lyriana smiled. “When we reach Lightspire, you’ll all be rewarded with wealth, status, land. You’ll have servants of your own, and you’ll be able to do whatever you want to. When we get there, you can put your old lives completely behind you. You’ll be starting anew.”

  We all looked around at one another, letting the gravity of her words sink in. Jax let out a long, slow whistle, then snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! Do they have brothels in Lightspire? Because I always thought it’d be fun to run a brothel!”

  “Must you ruin every single conversation with a crude joke?” Lyriana crossed her arms. “Can you not be serious about anything?”

  Jax grinned. “On the contrary! I’m very serious when it comes to brothels! There’s one in Millerton. Whew, you should see these girls….”

  Lyriana turned away with a sniff of disgust. Just then, Zell perked up, apparently joining the conversation for the first time. “I’ve got it! Whether man or fish or ram or deer, a bear is the beast that all should fear!”

  Jax let out a groan and cradled his head in his hands. “I hate this guy. I hate him so much.”

  Everyone laughed, including Zell, who I’m pretty sure was just messing with Jax at this point. But I felt distracted. Back on that beach, the idea of actually reaching Lightspire and reaping the royal benefits had seemed like an absurd fantasy, the sort of lie people tell themselves to keep moving; sure, sure, we’d get our happily-ever-after. But now, halfway to safety, it was dawning on me that it might actually happen. Holy shit. I might actually get to Lightspire. I might be…well, if not a noble, then as close as can be, and certainly more well-off and wealthy and powerful than I’d ever be in the West. I’d have all the dresses and carriages and dashing suitors I’d ever want. The thought was incredible. Amazing. Overwhelming.

  So why did it make me feel so sad?

  That nigh
t, we looked for a bridge to cross the Markson. We didn’t dare risk riding out in the open, not until we were sure we had a clear run, so Zell and Jax went off to scout the way, arguing about who’d win a fight, a Western greatcat or a Zitochi cavebear. They took Lyriana with them this time; her glowing balls of Light were proving increasingly useful at navigating, and were safer than Sunstones, given how quickly she could snuff them out. Miles and I stayed back to watch the horses and our supplies. I didn’t mind. My body was aching even more than usual. Training with Zell that day had consisted of him honing my reflexes by having me attempt to catch rocks.

  Mostly I just got hit with rocks.

  I sat by the water’s edge, staring into the river. A thin veil of clouds blocked out the sky overhead, but they’d part just long enough for a beam of moonlight to light up the rushing water. If I squinted and stared way, way down, I could see the faintest light in the distance: Bridgetown, shining like a candle in the dark.

  “Hey,” Miles’s voice said from behind me. “Tilla, I found something for you.”

  I glanced back as Miles walked out of the forest brush. To be honest, I hadn’t noticed he’d been gone. He plopped down next to me and extended his hand, revealing a palm full of green speckled berries shaped like little bells.

  “No way,” I beamed. “Bellberries! Where did you find them?”

  “Well, they tend to grow along the Markson, and I remembered they were your favorite, so I just went scrounging, and you know, got lucky.” Miles blushed a tiny bit. “Go ahead. Have some.”

  He dumped a few into my hand, and I popped one into my mouth. It was perfect: tart but sweet, with just a tiny sour hint. I savored the taste, letting the juices melt into my tongue. “Mmmm…so good,” I said, and waited until the taste had completely faded before opening my eyes. “How did you know they’re my favorite?”