“When we get to Lightspire,” I said, snapping myself out of that thought, “we’ll see what happens.”
“Yeah, you will.” Jax grinned. “Actually, I kinda wanted to ask you about something. Do you think…think…” He trailed off when he saw something on the riverbank. His eyes went wide, and the blood drained from his face. “Oh shit.”
I followed his gaze and saw it, too. There, jutting out of the muddy shore just a few feet from where we were walking, was a human hand, its fingers curled into a grasping claw.
I instinctively whipped out my knife, ready to defend us from who the hell knows what, before my brain processed what I was seeing. It was a hand, all right, but it wasn’t fleshy or rotting or even covered in skin. It was hard and gray, stained and cracked. It was stone.
Jax seemed to realize it at the same time. “What in the frozen hell…?” he muttered, and walked over to it carefully, as if it might spring up and grab him. “What am I even looking at?”
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, but I had to be sure. I walked over to the hand, knelt down on my knees, and clawed away at the mud along the river’s edge. The hand led to an arm. The arm led to a shoulder. I was right, much as I didn’t want to be. There was something much bigger buried here under the silt, something lying flat on its side. I dug my nails into the mud and scraped off a thick brown layer, only to reveal the stone face of a young man, incredibly detailed and lifelike, trapped in an eternal scream.
“Okay, well, that’s pretty much the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen,” Jax said. “What kind of sick asshole dumps a statue like that in the river? What kind of sick asshole makes a statue like that in the first place?”
“It’s not a statue,” I said weakly. “It’s a person. At least, it was. A victim of the Great War.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Headmaiden Morga taught me all about it. During the war, when the mages wanted to punish prisoners, they’d sometimes turn them to stone. It would take days, maybe even weeks. It was one of the most horrible deaths imaginable,” I said. “I’ve seen bodies like this before. They did it to my great-great-uncle Xander Kent and his wife. My father kept them in the crypts, even though the Lightspire priests told him not to.” In retrospect, that was a pretty big red flag.
“Shit…” Jax whispered. “You hear about history and war and all that…but it doesn’t feel real until you see it up close.”
He couldn’t look away from that screaming face, and I couldn’t, either. Who had he been? A soldier? A spy? Just some poor dumb kid in the wrong place at the wrong time? “I wish it stayed in the history books,” I said. I couldn’t decide what felt more wrong, leaving that boy’s face howling at the sky or covering it back up with mud.
Jax was quiet for a while, and when he finally spoke, he spoke softly, hesitantly, unlike himself. “Tilla…do you ever think we’re maybe on the wrong side of this thing?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m just saying.” He looked up the river, his gaze distant. “I know we didn’t have a choice in how it went down, and we’re doing what we have to, to save our skins. But pretend we weren’t. Pretend we never went to that beach, and we were still happily living in Castle Waverly when this new war broke out. Wouldn’t we think your dad was doing the right thing? Wouldn’t we be rooting for the West and our families and our people? Wouldn’t we want them to win instead of…” He looked back down at the young man’s frozen face. “Instead of this?”
It was a hell of a question from Jax. It was too much of a question for me. When we’d been back on the other end of the Province, when the idea of surviving had seemed like a desperate delusion, it had been easy to avoid thinking about the consequences of our actions. But here, this close, those thoughts came flooding in, and I felt my chest tighten with worry. I felt so trapped and powerless, just a little wooden pawn in some giants’ game, unable to understand the board, unable to predict anything. We weren’t just saving ourselves. If we did this, exposed my father’s plan, we’d be making history, and scoring a major win for Lightspire. We’d be giving into the King and his mages. We’d be dooming the dream of a new Western Kingdom, maybe even causing Lightspire to tighten its grip on my Province. We might be adding a lot more “statues” to the Castle Waverly crypts.
And what would I be? A hero in Lightspire, according to Lyriana. But out here? I’d be the girl who destroyed the Kent legacy, who screwed over her family and her Province. I’d be the bastard to end all bastards.
Even after everything my father had done to me, from ignoring me for most of my life to putting a price on my head, that still made me feel so guilty. Why did it have to make me feel so guilty?
Tears burned my eyes, and I looked down. “Hey,” Jax said, and he reached out to take my arm. “I’m sorry. That was a totally bullshit question. I…I shouldn’t have asked it.”
“No. It was a good question. That’s why I’m upset.” I turned to look up at Jax, at his big trusting eyes, his goofy, messy hair, his eager smile. And I remembered why I was out here in the first place. “I don’t know if we’re on the right side. I don’t know if there even is a right side. All I know is, I’m not going to let you or Lyriana or Zell or Miles get hurt. That’s all I care about now. That’s all I can care about. Everything else…we’ll just have to figure it out as it comes.”
Jax gave me a hug, one of his big bear hugs where he wrapped me up in his brawny arms and pulled me up off my feet. “I love you, sis,” he said. “You’re right. We just gotta get to Lightspire. And then it’s all fluffy beds and carafes of wine and making out in hot springs.”
Any other day, that would’ve made me feel better. But today it just left me cold. “Come on,” I said, turning my back on Jax and that terrible frozen, screaming face. “This kindling isn’t going to gather itself.”
THERE WAS ONLY ONE THING that I knew would make me feel better, and that was some alone time with Zell. Riding this hard left less time to practice, and my aching thighs deeply resented anything resembling movement, but I insisted. I had to. I left Jax in the camp with Miles and Lyriana, and went off into the woods with Zell to try to squeeze in one good hour of training.
The grove we’d settled into didn’t have a lot of room to move around, so we were focused on close-quarters combat. Zell and I stood between two birches, and again and again, he threw jabs at my raised forearms while I blocked and dodged them. Well, most of them, anyway.
“Let me ask you something.” I bounced on my feet, my face slick with sweat, my breath hard and fast. “As fun as it is getting bruised all day, when do I get to learn how to actually hit someone?”
Zell punched with his right fist, and I blocked it with my left forearm. He’d wrapped thick cloth around his nightglass knuckles, dulling their edge, but it still hurt like hell. “The khel zhan is the art of deflection, of using your enemy’s strength against him. You are not the river. You merely change where it flows.”
Another right hook. Another left block. “So I don’t get to hit anyone?”
Zell feigned a third right, but instead threw a left jab. I jerked to the side and felt it streak past me. “If you wanted to learn to hit, you should’ve studied kharr fell,” he said. “I’m sure my brother would’ve loved to train you.”
“Something tells me he’s not the most gracious teacher,” I replied. Zell lunged forward and spun, hurling his elbow at the side of my head, but I wove under it, grabbed his wrist, and pulled his arm up tight behind his back, just like he’d taught me. He grunted, and I jerked him back and held him in place, my chest pressed to his back, my heart pounding against his. We stayed like that longer than we had to, and I think we both knew that we should probably break away, but neither of us did. There was something intoxicating about pinning him in place, about knowing, knowing, that he wanted this.
I leaned forward with a grin, my cheek against his, my lips almost touching his ear. “Gotcha,” I whispered, and let him go.
; He hopped away, flexing his arm. “You learn quickly. I think you’re a natural warrior.”
“That might just be the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.” I leaned back against a tree, feeling the warm sun as I craned my head up at the sky. “You think I would’ve made a good Zitochi?”
“No, actually. Zitochi women are forbidden from being warriors. It is considered too low, too dangerous. They must be scholars, healers, crafters, zhantaren. For a man to teach a woman our ways of fighting is a violation of our oldest laws.”
“But you trained me.”
“So I did,” Zell said, as if he himself was a little surprised by it. “There is a legend. One my mother would tell me often. It is…not secret, exactly, but not commonly told. It’s about a Zitochi girl, Rallia of Clan Hellgen, who dressed as a man to become a warrior and avenge the death of her father. It was my mother’s favorite.” He cocked his head to the side. “You remind me of Rallia. Rebellious. Determined. Stubborn.”
He smiled, just a little bit, at the thought, and I felt my pulse quicken. There was a sweetness to his smile, an odd rustiness, as though it were something he did very rarely and had forgotten how. I’d been seeing more and more of that smile over the last few days. “That’s why you’ve been training me? Because I remind you of Rallia?”
His smile vanished as quickly as it had come. “No. I’m training you because I don’t want to see you dead.”
“Oh,” I said. Well, that was a conversation-killer. I tried to salvage it. “Will you keep training me when we’re safe? When we get to Lightspire, I mean? Because I want to keep learning.”
I’d assumed that would be an easy yes, but Zell didn’t reply. I looked over to find a serious look on his face. “Tilla,” he said softly, “I’m not staying in Lightspire.”
“What?”
“I’m not staying,” he repeated. “I’m not like you. I’m not some southern castle rat who grew up dreaming of your precious King and his fancy city. I don’t belong there.”
“Well, none of us do,” I said, trying to hide my shock. I knew I was maybe overdoing it with the fantasies of Zell and me as Lightspire’s hottest couple. I knew it might not work and then we’d just be friends. But it had never occurred to me that he wouldn’t be staying at all. That thought hurt me more than every bruise and scrape combined. “It’ll be okay. We’ll learn. Lyriana will make sure we’re taken care of and that we settle in….”
“I don’t want to be taken care of. I don’t want to settle in. That’s not who I am.”
“So what will you do?” I demanded, maybe more angrily than I should have.
“There will be a war.” His voice was hard, cold, not a hint of emotion. “Once your King learns the truth, he will send his armies after your father…and mine.”
“So? What do you care?”
“What do I care?” Zell asked, his voice stinging with insult. “When my father accepted the mantle of Chief of Clans, he swore a vow to put the good of our people above all. Instead, he has betrayed our people and brought a storm to our lands the likes of which we have never faced. He has sullied the name of Clan Gaul. He has destroyed his honor, and mine.”
“And what are you going to do about that?”
“I have heard of mercenary companies that will take anyone, even a Zitochi, provided they can fight. Perhaps they will take me,” Zell said. “Perhaps I can still fight and die for my Clan. For my people.”
“You would do that?” I couldn’t even believe what I was hearing. All this time, we’d been running from our parents, from death and chaos, and Zell would just ride right back into it? He would choose to kill? “Why?”
“Why not?” He turned away from me with a shrug, and, holy shit, did that shrug piss me off. “I’m a killer. That’s what I do.”
“Oh come on!” I practically shouted back, and when he didn’t turn around, I stepped up to him and grabbed his shoulder. “Everything we’re doing, everything we’ve done, has been to stop a war, to end the killing! That’s what this is all about!”
He stood firm, not even turning enough so that I could see his face. “Maybe for you, Tilla. But you don’t know me.”
“I know you’re not just a killer like your brother. I know you wouldn’t hurt innocent people.”
That must’ve struck a nerve, because he spun around, throwing my hand aside, and his eyebrows were furrowed deep with anger. “Don’t you talk to me about innocent people,” he snapped. “You have no idea—no idea—what I’ve done, what I’ve lived, what my mercy and weakness have led to!”
“You’re right! I don’t know!” I yelled back. “I have no idea what the hell has happened in your life, because you don’t share it. But I know you’re not just some brutal mercenary who thinks mercy is weakness! I know you could be happy in Lightspire!”
Zell shook his head, livid. “Oh, I could be happy? You really think that little of me, don’t you?”
“That little?”
“You think because I showed you some kindness, I’m suddenly some weak-kneed castle-rat poet, ready to spend his life sprawled out on a bed, sucking down wine and ordering around his servants?” He stepped toward me, and I jerked back. “You think I’ll just change who I am, throw away my culture and beliefs and my whole way of life, just because yours are so superior?”
“No, I—I…” I stammered, still pissed but also a little stung at the truth of his words. “I just mean…”
“I’m a Zitochi.” He took another step toward me, and I stepped away again, my back now pressed against the rough bark of a tree trunk. “I’m a warrior. I fight for Clan Gaul, for Zhal Korso, for the Twelve and their children and the Grayfather above.” He leaned in over me, and his eyes were wide with passion. “This is who I am, Tilla. This is who I will always be. Who I should be. So tell me, tell me, why would I be happy in Lightspire?”
“Because you’d be with me!” I shouted.
He froze. His eyes were still blazing with fury, his breath ragged, but there was a spark of something else as he stared at me. He let out a long, sharp exhale and hung there, his face almost touching mine, so close I could see the pulse fluttering in his throat. “With you,” he repeated, tasting the words, tasting the thought.
I reached up with one trembling hand and ran it along his face, down his cheek, and oh Titans above, did it feel good to touch him. “Zell, I—”
“Both of you, freeze!” a voice barked from behind us, and it sure as hell wasn’t Jax’s. I spun around to see a young man, maybe twenty-five years old, standing in the glade behind us. He had dark skin, like a Heartlander’s, and his hair was cut short in neat black curls around his head. He was dressed like a soldier, with brown leather straps binding a silver breastplate over his chest.
Oh, and he was pointing a crossbow right at us.
Zell froze instantly, any expression vanishing from his face, his eyes narrowing into hard, predatory slits. My mind raced. My fingers twitched. My hand drifted toward the dagger at my hilt.
“Don’t even think about it, girl,” the soldier said. “And you! Zitochi! Raise your hands over your head!”
Zell didn’t say anything but slowly lifted his hands, open-palmed, in the air. It was all happening so fast. Just like that, after everything we’d been through, we’d been made, and so close to safety, too. Also, and this was arguably less important, I had been about to kiss Zell. I looked around for any sign of Jax or Miles or Lyriana, but they must have been back at the camp. Shit. Shit, shit, shit! I glanced at Zell for any help….
And in one fluid motion, faster than I could blink, he whipped his sword out of the sheath on his back and hurled it at the soldier. It whistled through the air in a glistening spiral, aimed like a missile at the young man’s head. The man jerked his crossbow up just in time, and the blade hit the device right in the middle, knocking it out of his hands in a spray of wooden splinters and twanging string.
Somehow, Zell was already halfway across the glade, bounding over it like a cat. Steel
shimmered in his other hand as he drew his dagger from the sheath at his hip. He plunged it at the soldier’s neck, but it struck metal instead with a resounding clang. The soldier had whipped his own dagger out, a long, curved blade with a gold lining around the edge and a little dip at the end, like a forked tongue. The two of them moved in a dizzying blur of motion, blades slicing through the air and striking only each other, sparks flashing as they slashed and parried. The soldier’s style was different from Zell’s, choppier and harder, but it seemed to be working, or at least holding him off. As Zell lunged for a strike, the soldier caught the Zitochi’s knife with his, trapping the blade in that little forked tongue. The two slammed against a tree, knives locked together, nostrils flaring, eyes furious, just inches away from the daggers’ blades.
“Stop!” Lyriana screamed from behind me. “Stop this at once!”
The reaction was immediate. The soldier let go of his knife and dropped down to one knee, so fast that Zell tripped over him. “Your Majesty!” he gasped.
Zell spun around, incredulous, his dagger still drawn. “You know this man?” he demanded.
Lyriana was standing at the edge of the grove, flanked by Miles and Jax. The two boys looked as worried and confused as I felt, but Lyriana was smiling. “Of course,” she said. “Rise to your feet, Lord Reza.”
If I’d been drinking, I would’ve done the world’s biggest spit take. This was Lord Reza? Lord Galen Reza, the man we’d journeyed across the Province to see?
The man who’d keep us safe?
He rose to his feet, his head bowed low. Now, without his crossbow aimed at my head, I could get a better look at him, or at least look at him without panicking. I’d known Lord Reza was among the youngest Lords in the West, inheriting the title from his father, who died in a hunting accident the year before, though I hadn’t expected him to look quite so young. Still, I could tell now he wasn’t the average soldier, even from the Heartlands. His features were smooth, elegant, aristocratic, with sharp cheekbones and a jaw you could slice an apple with. His eyes lacked the telltale glow of the Volaris family, but they still radiated a cunning intelligence.
Royal Bastards Page 20
