Royal Bastards

by Andrew Shvarts

  That, and one other thing. “Jax,” I said softly, a cold, hard knot twisting in my stomach. “Did you…get him?”

  Lyriana nodded. “Come with me. I’ll show you.”

  Lyriana, Zell, and I left Ellarion in the central tent and set back out across the camp. Lyriana led now, Zell and me following close behind. At the sight of the Princess, mages dropped to their knees, heads bowed. She waved at them with the back of her hand, and her fingers sparkled. She’d gotten new Rings to replace her old ones.

  There was something else on her arm, too, a black square of charred flesh where she’d been burned. I blinked and then realized. Her tattoo, the flowering sigil of the Sisters of Kaia. It was gone.

  Lyriana caught me staring. “They burned it off me this morning,” she said. “Don’t worry. It doesn’t hurt.”

  “Doesn’t hurt? What? Why did they burn it in the first place?”

  Lyriana cocked her head to the side, like she was almost amused. “I killed men, Tilla. I used my magic to take lives. I broke my vows. I could not stay among the Sisters, not after that.”

  “But…but…but you broke your vows for them!” I stammered. “You did it for a good cause!”

  “If we could break our vows whenever a good cause came along, they wouldn’t be very good vows, would they?” Lyriana said. “Relax, Tilla. I made my choice. I’m ready to live with it.”

  “If you’re not a Sister of Kaia, then what are you?” Zell asked.

  “An apostate. A mage without a school.” Lyriana smiled, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “A bastard.”

  I wanted to press further, but then we’d walked across the camp’s western border. I inhaled sharply. Where there had once been a wide grassy plain, there was now a sprawling graveyard, an endless field of burial mounds as far as the eye could see. Each had a single plant growing out of it, a tall green stalk with an orange-and-black flower at the head. An elderbloom. The flower of the Volaris Dynasty, of the Kingdom of Noveris. I guess that’s how mages were buried. And I was looking at a whole forest of them.

  “How many mages died?” I asked.

  “Two hundred and fifty,” Lyriana replied.

  “And how many of my father’s men?”

  Lyriana bit her lip. “A thousand.”

  “A thousand,” I repeated. A thousand. A thousand men dead because of me. A thousand sons, brothers, fathers, men of the West. Had I known any of them? Had I seen them training in the barracks or marching by the castle? Had they understood, even remotely, what they were fighting for?

  A cold wind blew over us. The elderblooms swayed from side to side. Tears stung my eyes. “Did we do the right thing?” I asked.

  Zell wrapped an arm around me and pulled me close. “We didn’t do the wrong thing. That might be all we get.”

  “I think I’m okay with that.”

  “I am, too.”

  “Come on,” Lyriana said. “I’ll show you to Jax.”

  The graves of the nonmages were at the far end of the field, where the stretch of yellowing grass gave way to forest. The mounds here didn’t have elderblooms, of course, but that didn’t make them unmarked. Some had swords planted at their heads, others staffs or shields, or a stack of books.

  Jax’s grave was at the very end of the field, under the shadow of the forest. A tiny tree grew at the head, and I could make out small yellow-orange fruits hidden in its leaves. “A peach tree,” I choked out.

  “I think he would’ve been happy with it,” Lyriana replied with a sad smile.

  “He would have been happy you cared.”

  I walked over to the grave, my knees trembling, and hunkered down alongside it. Zell and Lyriana stood back, and I ran my hand along the tree, and I smelled that damp earth. I couldn’t think about the fact that Jax’s body was just beneath me, that he was down there, cold and gray and dead. So I closed my eyes and I just touched the tree’s rough bark and I talked to him, as if he were sitting by my side, like he had for so many years.

  “Guess I’m going to Lightspire after all,” I said. “Can’t believe you won’t be there to see it with me. Almost makes me not want to go.” My eyes burned. I blinked the tears away. Jax wouldn’t want me to sit here all weepy. He’d want me to go on, to live life, to get drunk and have adventures and be happy. “Shit, Jax. I’m going to miss you so much. I’m never going to forget you. Not ever.” I took a handful of earth up and pressed my hand to my lips, letting it trickle out through my fingers.

  Lyriana knelt down by my side and wordlessly reached out, running her fingers along the tree. Her golden eyes glistened with tears.

  “Did you mean what you said back in the tower?” I asked her. “Did you really love Jax?”

  “I did.” She closed her eyes. “I do.”

  I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. We had the same aching wound inside us, the same emptiness that would never be filled. Being together, holding each other…it didn’t make the pain go away. But at least we had someone to share its sting.

  “We’ll see you again, Jax,” Lyriana whispered to the gently swaying tree. “In the stars above, when the Titans take us.”

  “Just save a little wine for us, okay?” I added, and I could almost hear him laugh.

  I stood up and turned away from the grave. I’d done what I had to, and I couldn’t stay any longer, not without breaking down in tears. I helped Lyriana to her feet. “When do we leave for Lightspire?”

  “Tomorrow morning. And I made sure we’d all be in a carriage together.”

  I turned to Zell. “So you’re coming with us?”

  “I am.”

  I hesitated, terrified to ask the question gnawing at me from within, but I couldn’t hold it back. “And then? When we get there?”

  Zell chose his words slowly and carefully. “I will not kneel. I will not serve. I am a Zitochi, first and forever, and my loyalty will always be to my people.” His eyes shifted toward Lyriana, and she nodded. “But I have had some conversation with Lyriana on this topic. And she has convinced me that I will hold far more influence at her side, speaking to the nobles at Lightspire, than I would dying in the mud with some band of cutthroats.”

  “So you’re saying…”

  He leaned in and kissed me, long and deep, his arms firm around my waist, his body warm against mine, our hearts beating together. When we pulled away, he pressed his forehead against mine, his eyes looking right into me. “I’m never leaving your side again.”

  Lyriana grinned. “You two are absolutely adorable. Can I just say that? Because you are.”

  “I’ve never been called adorable before,” Zell mused.

  I threw one arm around his shoulders and one around Lyriana’s. “You’d better get used to it.”

  For one fleeting second, the weight of the moment hit me. My life as I knew it was over. I was going to Lightspire, the greatest city, capital of all of Noveris. What the hell was I going to do there? Where would I live? How would I fit in? Who would I even be, if not a Westerner, if not a bastard?

  And just as quickly as it had come, that panic vanished. Who cared if I didn’t know where to live or what to do? I’d have Lyriana there, my best friend, my sister, and we’d take care of each other no matter what happened. I’d have Zell, and in his arms I’d never be afraid or lost. We’d crossed a Province, faced skarrlings and mercenaries, and saved innocent lives. What the hell couldn’t we do?

  The sun was starting to set, its broad orange disk slipping behind the trees to the West. Beyond them lay my father, and Miles, and their war. Beyond them lay Castle Waverly and my past. I turned my back on them, and the three of us walked into camp together, the Princess and the Zitochi and the bastard, holding each other up, not letting each other go. We were family now. More family than I’d ever had. I held Zell and Lyriana close, and we walked as one, to the camp, to the future, to the wide and uncertain East.

  Thanks, first and foremost, to my incredible, totally kick-ass agent, Sara Crowe. She believe
d in this story from the start, and her encouragement and support gave me the fire to keep on writing.

  To my incomparable editor, Laura Schreiber, who gave me the most insightful and on-point notes I’ve ever gotten and helped shape this book into something so much better. It’s a hell of a feeling when someone else understands your book better than you do, and working with Laura was a series of endless Eureka! moments. Thanks as well to the rest of the team at Hyperion: Mary Mudd, Cassie McGinty, Christine Ma, Levente Szabo, and everyone else on Team Bastard. These guys are the best.

  To my generous readers: Kara Loo, Jennifer Young, Eric Dean, Max Doty, Royal McGraw, Kenny Wat, and Oliver Miao. Their feedback and guidance shaped me into a better writer; their support and patience made me a better person.

  To all the teachers and mentors who helped me along this journey, who encouraged the weird kid with the gory short stories to keep on writing. Thank you Sharron Mittlestet, Sylvia Harp, Dean Crawford, and Paul Russell.

  To my parents, Simon and Ann, who always encouraged me to pursue this dream, who taught me how to appreciate a good story and tell a good joke; to my grandparents Yakov, Yulya, and Marina, for their endless kindness and support, no matter how rambling my anecdotes got; to my brother, Daniel, for always being there to make me laugh, to talk through my ideas, and to distract me with video games when I got stuck.

  And finally to Sarah, my muse, my puzzle piece, my forever-first-reader. None of this would have been possible without you, and may I always be your wordslinger.

  In addition to writing YA novels, Andrew works at Pixelberry Studios as a designer/writer on the hit mobile game Choices: Stories You Play. We asked him a few questions about Choices and what it’s like writing for video games!

  If you could insert any character from Royal Bastards into one of your games, who would it be and what kind of adventures/mischief would you envision for them?

  Oooh, the Royal Bastards/Choices crossover event of the century! I’d love to send Jax through a magic portal to the party-loving college campus of The Freshman; something tells me he’d fit right in there. That, or I could see Lyriana doing well on the mysterious island of Endless Summer, what with her magic powers and all.

  Oh, who am I kidding? It’s a skarrling love triangle on the love cruise of Rules of Engagement.

  In Royal Bastards, the characters confront injustice and prejudice that are as present in their fantasy world as in our own real one. How do you raise equally important real-life issues in game writing?

  This is something that’s really important to us at Pixelberry. Early on in the company’s history, right after we launched High School Story, we had a pretty serious situation: a player contacted us through our in-game support and said that she was planning to kill herself. We were able to put her in touch with an expert who got her the help she needed, but the moment was a profound wake-up call: we had this platform that reached, literally, millions and millions of teens each month, and that brought with it a tremendous responsibility to be a force for positive change.

  Pixelberry has continued to use our games for social good. We’ve done this through partnerships with organizations like Cybersmile and Girls Who Code, and through storylines that explore issues like harassment, discrimination, and depression. We’ve also made diversity a major commitment in our storytelling, offering casts with broad representation in terms of ethnicity, sexual identity, and culture.

  What’s the biggest difference between writing novels and writing games? What is consistent between them?

  I’ll start with the consistent, since I think it’s the same thing that makes good storytelling in all media: strong characterization, meaningful conflict, real stakes, and a dedication to cause and effect. The differences, I think, are a little trickier. When it comes to writing novels, the author is the sole visionary who shapes the entire arc and tries to communicate that singular vision to the reader. When it comes to game writing, the focus is much less on creating the perfect story and more on giving players the means to create their stories, and to feel satisfied both in that story and in the agency they had. A novel writer is an artist, but a game writer is more of an architect, creating the space and the tools and then letting the player make the actual story.

  What came first for you: game writing or novel writing?

  That’s actually a tricky question! If you’re asking what I was interested in first, it was novel writing; I graduated college convinced I was the next Stephen King and churned out an adult horror novel and a dozen super-violent short stories…none of which sold. I was writing marketing copy for a PC hardware company (it was as awful as it sounds) when I saw a job opportunity as a writer for a mobile games company. I jumped at the chance only to discover that the games they worked on were G-rated tween comedies, which could not have been further from what I thought I could write.

  Still, I took the job and discovered that I actually totally loved the younger, more cheerful tone! Writing for our game at the time, Surviving High School, forced me to forget every trope and cliché I knew, and to relearn from the ground up how to tell a good story. And after a few years working in game writing, I decided to return to novel writing, now fully enamored with the YA space.

  What inspired you to write Royal Bastards, and was it connected to your experience coming up with stories for games at Pixelberry?

  At Pixelberry, we have a writer’s room environment where you quickly learn that the best way to succeed is to find a way to synthesize everyone’s best ideas. I’ve brought that into my personal writing, where I always try to smush ideas together until I find something that really sticks. Royal Bastards actually began as two completely different ideas. First, I had this vague notion that I wanted to do a story about a group of totally disparate teens who get framed for a crime and have to flee together to clear their names. I also had this urge to write a YA version of Game of Thrones, something that took the intrigue and the action and the backstabbing of that world but reframed it in a YA way. I was sort of circling these two ideas separately before suddenly realizing, wait…this is the same story!

  What kind of advice would you give someone who is interested in story-based game writing?

  The biggest advice I’d give is to write a lot, and write broadly. Game writing is often a situational, fast-evolving field, and the more you can do, the better your odds of landing a job. In particular, learning how to write the types of stories not traditionally represented in games (romance, comedy) can give you a huge leg up in the emerging (and expansive) field of mobile storytelling.

  Also, writing for one medium has made me stronger for the other. I’ve learned so much writing for both Royal Bastards and Choices. In fact, can you figure out which were the stories I wrote in Choices: Stories You Play?

  Andrew Shvarts is an author of novels and video games. He has a BA in English literature and Russian from Vassar College. He works for Pixelberry Studios as a designer, making mobile games like Choices, High School Story, and more. Andrew lives in San Jose, California, with his wife, son, and two kittens. Find him on Twitter @Shvartacus.