Royal Bastards

by Andrew Shvarts

  A slow, easy smile crossed Razz’s face. Zell stiffened beside me. “Not a problem,” he said to the Watchman. “I’ll certainly pretend this never happened when I report back to High Lord Kent. But I have some very important fugitives to kill. So why don’t you sit down, have another beer, and get your grizzly old ass out of my way?” He shoved the Watchman aside and took another step toward the stairs.

  The Watchman was having none of it. He reached out and grabbed Razz’s shoulder with one meaty hand, stopping him in place. “I don’t care if you’re High Lord Kent himself. No one disrespects me like that. Now, get the hell out of my tavern!”

  Razz didn’t turn around. His eyes still locked on mine, he made a bored, irritated face, like a child exasperated at having to do his chores. Then he pulled a curved dagger out of its sheath, spun around, and slammed it into the underside of the Watchman’s chin, driving the whole blade into his skull.

  The room exploded into chaos.

  A woman let out a piercing shriek. The Watchman fell backward, gurgling, the hilt of Razz’s dagger jutting from his jaw. Razz’s men rushed forward, sprinting toward the stairway, unsheathing their blades. Half the tavern patrons hurled themselves out of their way. But the other half lunged forward to meet them, yelling in outrage and anger. A hulking drunk grabbed a wooden chair and smashed it across a mercenary’s face. One of the musicians swung her lyre into the back of another’s head, and it exploded in a noisy spray. Even Razz got intercepted, tackled to the ground by the tattooed barkeep. The room broke into a full-on brawl.

  I guess it’s true what they say: never piss off an East Bridgetown bar.

  Zell rushed to the balcony’s edge and threw one of his daggers. It spiraled through the air and somehow, even on the crowded floor below, caught one of the mercenaries in the side of the head. He dropped like a stone. Another, a tall, thin man with spiked hair, hurled his hand ax back up in our direction. It missed Zell by a foot, but it almost took off Timofei’s nose. The apothecary shrieked and fell onto his back, and his flailing hand caught the edge of my shirt and pulled me down with him.

  Timofei landed on his back on the balcony, and I landed on top of him. Our faces just a few inches apart, he stared at me in shock, and his eyes went wide with recognition. “You’re—you’re—you’re those fugitives!”

  I pressed my elbows into his chest. “The antidote! Give it to me!”

  “Take it!” he gasped, and fumbled a hand inside his coat. He pulled out the thin vial, the blue liquid inside sloshing around, and it almost tumbled out of his trembling fingers before I grabbed it. It was in my hand. The antidote was in my hand!

  And not a moment too soon. The spiky-haired mercenary had somehow made it to the stairs and was almost at the top, a glistening ax in his right hand. Miles stumbled away, but Zell stepped forward. With one hand, he hurled a goblet of rye into the mercenary’s face, and with the other, he grabbed a torch off a nearby wall and threw it toward him. The alcohol-soaked mercenary burst into flame, and he tumbled back over the stairway’s railing, plunging toward the brawling crowd below like a flaming comet.

  “I’ll hold them here!” Zell barked. “Get to the window! Get outside!”

  Window? I spun around and then I saw it, a small square pane of glass on the floor’s far end. I had no idea where it dropped to, but it had to be safer than staying here. Clutching the antidote tightly against my chest, I shoved myself off Timofei, who scrambled away, and sprinted toward the window. I couldn’t see what was happening behind me, but I could hear it: people fumbling, blades scraping, and men screaming.

  I turned just as I reached the window, and smashed into it with my shoulder. The glass shattered easily, and I felt a sharp pain flare down my arm, pain that almost certainly meant I’d been cut. I’d gotten more injuries in the last week than in all of my life. There was a small awning just under the window, and I rolled down its slope and knocked off a few loose shingles, before free-falling a solid story and landing in the dark, wet mud behind the tavern.

  I let out a sharp gasp and, not able to stop myself, looked at my arm. I wished I hadn’t. My shoulder was slashed open, warm blood trickling down to my elbow, and a thin sliver of glass jutted out. But that didn’t matter. Not right now. The vial in my hand was unbroken, and I could see a few horses tied up behind the tavern. I could make a run for it. But I wasn’t just going to leave Miles and Zell. Clutching one hand over my bleeding cut, I looked up to the window. There was no sign of them, but there was an awful lot of smoke billowing out, and I could hear, under the sounds of brawling, the crackling of flame. The fire was spreading.

  That was when the mercenary stepped around the corner.

  He was young, my age, with a soft unshaven face and pretty gray eyes. For some stupid reason, I thought maybe he’d let me go, that because he looked so nice he wouldn’t just attack an unarmed girl. Then he drew his sword from the sheath on his back and charged me with a scream.

  Maybe it was the adrenaline. Maybe it was Zell’s training. But I jerked my shoulder back, perfectly dodging his downward slice. I felt the whoosh of the air as it streaked by me, saw my face reflected in the polished blade. The vial flew out of my hand and rolled away into the mud. The mercenary jerked the blade up, trying to catch me on the backswing, but I dodged that one, too, and when his arm rose up past my head, I shot out a hand and grabbed his wrist. My combat training was mostly limited to dodging and catching, so I acted purely on impulse: I shoved the sword away from myself, smacking the mercenary in the face with the hilt, and then hit him again and again with my spare hand, yelling an incoherent string of syllables. Most of my punches missed, glancing off the side of his incredibly hard skull, but the last one connected. My fist hit his nose, and I felt it break with a way-too-satisfying crack. The mercenary broke free of my grip and staggered back, blood trickling down over his mouth, staring at me in stunned disbelief.

  For once in my life, I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t planning, either, or analyzing, or any other thing that used my brain. I was all heart, raging, pounding, bleeding, fighting. I wanted to live, and I wanted my friends to live, and in that moment I would have murdered any idiot who dared get in my way. I lunged forward with a guttural roar, hands outstretched for the mercenary’s face….

  And slipped in the mud, falling flat on my ass.

  Now I was thinking again. I was thinking about what an idiot I was. I was thinking about how I was going to die. Why the hell hadn’t I just run? The pretty-boy mercenary stepped over me, grinning. He turned his sword over in his hands and raised it high.

  How do most warriors die? On their backs.

  I closed my eyes. I was terrified of dying. And somehow, even in the face of that fear, I was disappointed I hadn’t done a better job of fighting back.

  There was a sudden roar from above, and a person tumbled over the awning’s edge and fell right onto the mercenary. Miles. Holy shit. It was Miles. He drove the shocked mercenary down into the ground, hard, mud splattering everywhere, the man’s sword flying out of his hands. I’m pretty sure I heard something snap. The mercenary let out a pained gurgle, but before he could recover, Miles scrambled to his feet. He was holding something in his hands, a long wooden stick with a broken end. A leg from a chair, maybe? The mercenary fumbled for his sword, and Miles swung the chair leg down like a club, hitting the man right in the center of the forehead. That did the trick. Pretty Boy was knocked clean out, facedown in the mud.

  I pushed myself up onto my elbows, gasping, mostly for relief. Miles stared at me, still clutching the chair leg tight in his white-knuckled hands. “I just hit that guy,” he said in a daze. “I hit him right in the face.”

  “Yeah, you did,” I whispered, legitimately impressed. “I think you just saved my life.”

  “I did, didn’t I? I did.” Miles blinked himself back into the moment. “The vial!”

  “I dropped it when I fell. Somewhere in the mud.”

  Miles dropped to his hands and knees, scrambled ar
ound, then held up the mud-caked but mercifully unbroken vial. “Okay. Got the vial. Time to run.”

  “Run?” I turned back to the flaming tavern. I could still hear the clash of blades, the screams of men. “We can’t leave without Zell!”

  I stepped forward, and Miles grabbed my shoulder. “Tilla, please! We’ve got the vial, we’ve got our lives! Don’t throw it all away for—”

  A deafening blast sounded from the tavern, blowing out the remaining windows, shaking the ground, and knocking us both back. One of the massive kegs must have gone up. The horses tied to the side broke and ran, neighing into the night. The whole building was full-blown on fire now. Dancing orange flames grasped like hands out through the roof and lit up every shattered window frame. I could hear a frantic commotion from the front of the bar, the patrons running for their lives. Now I couldn’t hear any more fighting from inside. Just crackling wood and low, raspy screams.

  No.

  No!

  I struggled to my feet and moved toward the tavern. “Lyriana!” Miles shouted. “The mages! The war!” He got up and grabbed me, actually grabbed me by the hand and pulled me away. “Come on!”

  He was right. There was too much at stake. We had to go, and hope Zell would find his way back to us.

  Miles and I rushed out around the side of the tavern and stumbled into a huge crowd. Half of it was pushing away from the burning building in terror, and the other half was pushing toward it to get a better look. Almost no one was pushing toward the alley that led to the apothecary’s, though, which meant we had a clear run of it. As we ran, I looked back at the burning tavern, which was now just a towering pillar of fire, catching onto the roofs of the neighboring buildings. City Watchmen broke through the crowd behind us, carrying buckets and ladders. I felt a pang of guilt, the same pang I felt whenever I thought of Markos. People were going to die in this fire. People had died. Maybe even Zell. And it was only happening because of me.

  We rounded the corner of the alley to the empty apothecary, where, thankfully, our horses were still tethered. Miles scrambled onto his, and I climbed onto mine. And as the two of us raced toward the town’s exit, a shape, a person, came out of the shadows in front of us. My hand jerked toward my knife before I remembered I didn’t have a knife, but it didn’t matter because the person staggered into the moonlight and I saw those deep brown eyes.

  Zell’s hair was a ruffled mess, his face caked with soot, and his pant leg was slit open, revealing a long, bleeding cut along his calf. A huge black bruise blossomed around his left eye. But he was alive, alive and safe. The surge of relief that passed through me was almost painful. I yanked on the reins, and before I’d even stopped he pulled himself onto the horse, sliding up behind me.

  “Zell,” I breathed. “We had to…Lyriana…”

  He shook his head sharply. “No time. We need to ride. Now.”

  I swallowed and nodded, spurring my horse along, and as we rode onto the main street, I saw why Zell was in such a hurry. The entire block was crawling with City Watchmen, a sea of bustling blue-and-green uniforms. Luckily, most of them were still preoccupied by the tavern fire they’d just barely started to contain. The rest were distracted by something else, a commotion in a noisy crowd. I leaned over to see what it was and found myself staring, once again, into Razz’s eyes.

  He was on his knees, surrounded by Watchmen, with his hands bound behind his back. His face was caked with blood, and some still dribbled down his chin. He must have put those fangs to use. The furious Watchmen surrounded him, kicking him into the dirt and pulling him up again, but he barely seemed to care. All of his attention was on me, and his gaze burned with hate.

  He could have stopped us so easily there, with one simple shout that we were the fugitives the whole Province was looking for. But he didn’t say anything. Of course he didn’t. Razz wanted to let us go, just so he could be the one to hunt us down. See you soon, he mouthed.

  A wave of dread washed over me. Somehow, I knew to take him at his word. This wouldn’t be over for him until he dragged my body back to his father, probably in several pieces. I thought of that mother in the cottage. I shuddered.

  As we crossed the city entrance and galloped back onto the dirt road, the buildings gave way to the comforting shadows of trees, but I didn’t feel safe. My heart was still thundering, my breath still ragged. It felt like every close call was catching up to me in a rush. Timofei almost seeing through our ruse. The pretty-boy mercenary looming over me with his blade. And worst of all, Razz, his nightglass grin looming at me in the dark. I was shaking, gasping. My chest felt like a fist, clenching around my heart.

  Zell leaned forward and wrapped an arm around my waist.

  My shaking slowed. My breath calmed. And that rush of panic, whatever the hell that was, faded away. Zell’s touch made me feel calm, like the first quiet moment after a thunderstorm. I melted into him. Zell, the Zitochi warrior, the hardened killer, the boy whose hands were weapons, was the only thing in the world that made me feel safe.

  I leaned back, pressing myself against his chest. He felt warm, firm, and, underneath the scent of smoke and sweat, I could still smell him, that earthy smell, leaves crumbling in winter frost. Through my back I felt his heart, pounding in his chest, and mine pounded back. He leaned his head forward, just an inch from mine, his hair just barely touching my cheek, his breath warm on my collarbone.

  This was like the moment in the river, that powerful, aching physical tension, but I didn’t fight it or fear it now. I leaned into it, embraced it. My mind had been resisting what my body had wanted, but I’d been through way too much hell to give it that power anymore. He held me close and I pressed in closer, and damn if this didn’t just feel so, so right.

  I had the antidote.

  I had my life.

  And I had Zell’s arm around my waist.

  I spurred my horse and rode on, away from Bridgetown and Razz and the City Watch, into the night.

  WE DIDN’T BOTHER BEING QUIET on the ride back. There was no point: anyone who spotted us would just report us to Bridgetown, and we’d already been seen there. The best thing we could do now was take advantage of every second the chaos had bought us.

  We got back to our grotto in just two hours and pushed our way through the big willow tree’s canopy. I’d gotten this terrible image in my head that we’d arrive to find Lyriana already dead, our efforts having taken too long, so I felt an incredible surge of relief to see her right where we’d left her, still breathing in Jax’s arms. Then I got closer and saw how awful she looked. Her skin was translucent, bloodless, and her open eyes were vacant. Her clothes clung to her, sticky with sweat, and her breath came in short, pained gasps. The Rings on her fingers had been a vibrant green when we’d left, but now they were dull, their light almost extinguished.

  “The antidote!” Jax shouted. He looked absolutely terrible, his hair a wild mess, his clothes soaked with sweat. “Please, please tell me you got the antidote.”

  “Here!” Miles took the vial out of his jacket and, against anything resembling common sense, tossed it to Jax.

  Jax caught it, uncorked it, and pressed it to Lyriana’s pale lips. “All of it?”

  “All of it.”

  He tipped the vial and let the blue tonic pour into her mouth. She arched her back and wheezed, but the liquid all went down. When Jax pulled the empty vial away, she collapsed back into his arms and lay there, barely panting. “Well?” Jax asked. “Did it work?”

  “This is medicine, not magic,” Miles replied. “It takes at least a few hours to counteract the poison. We just have to wait.”

  “I’ve been waiting all night,” Jax said, his voice pinched and angry. “I thought…I was sure she was going to die in my arms!”

  Miles shook his head. “Yeah, well, our night hasn’t been great, either.”

  Jax started to reply, then finally took a good look at us. Miles and Zell were ragged and worn, their faces blackened with soot, their clothes ripped and st
ained. I couldn’t imag-ine what I looked like.

  “Holy frozen hell,” Jax said. “What happened to you guys?”

  I glanced down at my left shoulder, which was caked with dried blood from where I’d cut it hurling myself through the window. The big sliver of glass had fallen out in my scuffle with Pretty Boy, but tiny little fragments still glistened around the wound’s dark edges, like diamonds dropped in mud. I’d managed to ignore the pain while we were riding, and even now, it somehow didn’t seem that bad, like I was looking at a nasty cut on someone else. Maybe I’d just been hurt so much in the last two weeks that I’d lost all sense of perspective.

  That was weird, right? A month ago, I would have woken half the castle if I’d stubbed my toe. Now I felt like someone could tear off my arm, and I’d barely blink an eye.

  “We got spotted,” I explained to Jax, “by Razz, of all people. Yeah. That’s how shitty our luck is.”

  “So he knows we’re here?” Jax wrapped one arm protectively around Lyriana. “Are we in trouble?”

  “Not just yet,” Miles speculated. “Razz got arrested, and between the fire, the brawl, and the half-dozen dead City Watchmen, I think the good folk of Bridgetown are going to be distracted. At least for a little while.”

  “I don’t even want to know.” Jax shook his head. “Just once, it’d be nice for things to go smoothly for us. Would that be too much to ask?”

  I started to point out that the most important part was that we had come back with the antidote, when a flickering green light distracted me. Lyriana’s Rings. They’d faded more and more the sicker she got, but now, suddenly, they lit up a vibrant emerald, brighter than I’d ever seen before. They throbbed like a candle’s flame and cast a warm green glow over the willow’s canopy. Lyriana stirred and gasped, just a little, but I swore it sounded like her breath was already a little less raspy.