The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

  She could still hear the shouting of the knights to the south as they pursued the stranger who had helped her. It doesn’t matter, I have to go. Verik is waiting.

  And yet… the highlander had seen her face—she knew he had—and still he had risked his own safety for hers.

  She leapt across the alleyway and followed the noise south.

  The slender man was all black from behind, curly hair blending into a dark tunic and trousers, and there was no light in the street, but Zerill’s eyes picked him out easily—she had lived most of her life in worse darkness than this. He was sprinting at a good pace; he wove gracefully around a drunken man who stumbled into his path, then risked a quick look over his shoulder at his pursuers.

  The knights were easier to see, in their grey tabards—the heavyset man lagged in the rear, and Horte was not terribly far ahead of him. The long-haired knight, though, was surprisingly swift, even after too much drink. He was closing the distance. Not quickly, but he would overtake her rescuer eventually. And they have had enough to drink that they might use those swords when they catch him. Her fingers signed a silent curse, almost unconsciously, and then she was following them over the rooftops, quick and quiet as a bat descending on prey.

  The fastest knight was her priority—the other two were already falling behind. She bounded over the gap between buildings, landed on the inclined slats of the next rooftop, and scampered up to its apex. The curly-haired man risked another look behind him, saw that he was losing ground, and threw himself to the right, disappearing into a nearly-invisible alleyway. The long-haired man followed closely behind.

  The alley passed directly in front of Zerill’s path; she could head him off there. She slid down the sloped roof and then, halfway down, jumped up and landed atop the building’s stone chimney. From there she threw herself across to the next home on the street, grabbing the edge of the roof with both hands. Her shoulder twinged, still sore from her earlier fall, but she had felt much worse, and she was busy. She braced her feet against the wall to interrupt the impact, then pushed off and hauled herself onto the rooftop. The alley was just ahead, and she rushed to the edge.

  The long-haired knight was passing below her and a bit to her left, dangerously close to the slender stranger. Zerill drew her knife and raised it to throw.

  No. Her knife was Maker-forged, a blade of blue-grey slate merged seamlessly with a wooden hilt by the deepcraft so that it was impossible to tell where one material ended and the other began. It would be impossible to confuse for highlander steel. And if the highlanders found a dead knight in the Plateaus with a Maker-forged knife in his chest, the Abandoned would suffer the consequences for years to come. She needed another way.

  She swept her gaze over the alleyway, left then right. There. Someone had strung a clothesline across the small passage to her right, from a window a yard or so down. She threw herself into a tight roll and, just above the window, vaulted over the side of the roof. Holding the edge with one hand, she swung her knife low, severing the line.

  Her timing was good. A bundle of damp laundry plummeted onto the knight’s head as he passed beneath her. Blinded, he stumbled forward and lost his footing. With a startled cry, he toppled to the ground and landed heavily on his stomach. It looked very much like a scene from one of the festival puppet-shows she had seen on the streets earlier in the day, and Zerill couldn’t help but smile as she pulled herself quietly back onto the roof.

  Horte rounded the corner into the alley just as the slender man exited at the far side and continued south down the next street. There was no sign of the heavier knight. Too slow. He must have given up. Zerill knelt at the corner of the rooftop, watching until Horte passed beneath her—she couldn’t risk leaping the gap while he might see. There was a comfortable distance between her rescuer and his pursuers now, though, and the long-haired man had yet to regain his feet. He can outrun them now. There’s nothing more I can do.

  As if to prove her wrong, two men in the blue tabards of the Royal Swords rounded the corner ahead, lanterns in hand.

  Zerill ducked lower to avoid being caught in the light. The slender man checked his stride at the appearance of the guardsmen, looked behind him to see Horte emerging from the alley, and redoubled his speed.

  “Stop him!” Horte shouted, waving his sword overhead to attract attention.

  The two Royal Swords came to a halt, and one of them, a man with a shorn head, raised his lantern. “Who goes there?” Even before hearing an answer, the two men spaced themselves to effectively block the narrow street.

  Between breaths, Horte bellowed, “I am… a Knight… of the Storm! Stop him!”

  The curly-haired man appeared to accept that there was no way past the two Swords and slowed his step as he approached, raising his hands. “Yes, you’d better stop me. Three Swamp Knights with swords chasing an unarmed man, and I’m the one needs stopping.” Again, he sounded more amused than threatened.

  Horte’s cheeks flushed as he stumbled the last yards that separated him from the other men. “I… am no… Swamp Knight.” He inhaled deeply, then pointed his sword at the slender man and tried to look threatening. “Say it again and die.” Zerill gathered that the knights didn’t approve of the term. No surprise, that—highlanders didn’t tend to enjoy being associated with the Swamp.

  The second Sword, a tall, lanky man, took Zerill’s rescuer by the arm and held him as Horte approached, watching the drunk knight with a wary eye. “Is this man guilty of some crime?”

  “Assault… against a… knight.” Horte braced his hands against his knees as he tried to catch his breath. “Unmask him. I would know… I would know his face and his name.”

  This time the slender man laughed aloud. “Remember when you said I would regret getting involved in this? I think it’s only fair that I return the favor: you are really going to wish you hadn’t taken off my mask.”

  “Quiet!” Horte barked. He gestured impatiently at the guards. “Do it!”

  Zerill frantically cast about for some plan, but she was too far away now, and she could not risk revealing herself, not while those lanterns brightened the street. There was nothing she could do—this man had helped her, and now he was going to be badly beaten for it at the very least. Capture had not lessened his insolence in the slightest, and highlanders did not like to be mocked. She could only watch as the bald guardsman pulled the ceramic mask roughly from the prisoner’s head, revealing a brown-skinned face below his dark curls, with a sharp jaw and small highlander’s eyes.

  “I warned you,” the slender man said. The impertinent grin he directed at Horte looked just like his wry tone had suggested it would; it reminded Zerill of Verik, a little bit.

  She braced herself for Horte to strike him, or worse. But to her surprise, the bald Sword uttered a panicked “By the Above!” and both he and his partner dropped to their knees. A moment later, some realization dawned across Horte’s face, and then he too knelt before the slender man.

  It was only when the bald guardsman spoke again that Zerill understood, and the breath left her lungs as if she had plunged into ice-cold water.

  “Prince Josen! We’ve been looking all over the Plateaus for you!”

  4. Consequences

  Josen

  No matter how hard he tried, Josen couldn’t get the swampling girl’s face out of his head.

  Why did I let her go? But he knew why; he just didn’t know if it was a very good reason. He had never seen a swampling before, but they had only ever been described to him as unnatural, disgusting, even monstrous; the Dal’s Rest masks suggested spectres with empty pits for eyes. No one had ever told him that they could look very much like people.

  Aside from her strange eyes and pale skin, the girl’s features could have belonged to any woman in the Plateaus: a sharp chin, high cheekbones, a wide forehead creased with worry. And she spoke! There had been a faint, strange accent to the words, but she had spoken. The stories said that swamplings never made a sound, but she�
�d just sounded afraid. And when he had looked into her eyes—too large, certainly, and too dark, but not the eyes of a monster—he’d seen fear there too. Helping her had almost been an instinct; he hated to watch these new knights of Duke Castar’s get away with their bullying. He certainly hadn’t given it much thought.

  Now, though, the thoughts swarmed in his head like gnats, and he found that he didn’t much like their bite. Of course she was afraid, you idiot—she didn’t want to be caught and killed. But why was she here, if not to spy? What was she planning? What did I help her do? Was I saving her, or betraying everyone in the Plateaus? In all the Nine Peaks? He shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. He had been told more than once that he needed to think more before acting—by his father, by his brother, by Shona when she had still been speaking to him. He just hoped that he hadn’t finally made a mistake too large to correct.

  Rudol’s voice pulled him back to the present. “What’s wrong with you? It can’t be regret. I know you better than that.”

  Josen glanced up and was unsurprised to see the disapproving scowl stretched across his younger brother’s face—a shadowy gash across his jaw in the dim yellow gaslight. Rudol leaned against the wall opposite Josen, outside the door to their father’s chambers in the Aryllian Keep; they had been waiting in the hall for a quarter-hour while the king spoke to Cer Eian and Cer Horte within. Deciding what to do with me, Josen thought. Nothing good, I’m sure.

  The Keep’s halls were stark and unadorned, grey stone broken only by infrequent windows and the occasional wall-mounted lamp fuelled by gas harvested from the Swamp. Comforts were reserved for the chambers themselves; the passages that connected them were uniformly dull, and after nightfall, uncomfortably cold. Even so, Josen would gladly have endured the chill and the boredom for hours longer still. He suspected that what was waiting for him in the warmth of his father’s rooms would be much worse.

  He straightened his back against the wall and forced himself to meet Rudol’s scowl with a grin. “What is wrong with me? More than a few things, I’ve been told. You might need to be more specific.”

  Rudol narrowed his eyes. “Be serious. Arguing with a knight in a tavern is one thing, attacking him is another. You can’t avoid punishment this time, and your… humor”—he wrinkled his nose—“will only make Father more angry.”

  Josen gave a half-amused snort. Angry? Spirit of All, I wish. Better to have him shout at me than look straight through me. But he doubted that Rudol would appreciate the distinction just then. “I didn’t attack anyone,” he said. “They did the attacking, noble knights that they are. Brave enough when they’re grabbing women who can’t resist without being whipped, but one of them falls down trying to hit me and they run weeping to Father.”

  “I could have guessed you wouldn’t listen. I don’t know why I tried.” Rudol crossed his arms and looked down at the floor, apparently finished. He had never been much for conversation.

  It used to be he was just quiet, though. He never used to be so angry. Josen examined his brother in silence for a moment. It was hard to believe that the chubby boy who had followed him everywhere had turned into this sullen giant who lived and died by King Gerod’s word. With his bald head, Rudol even looked like their father now—if a great deal larger—where he had once shared the dark curls of the Terenes with Josen and their mother.

  “If I try very hard, I can remember a time when you were somewhat fond of me,” Josen said. “What happened to those days?”

  Rudol barely looked at him, just a quick flicker of his eyes, up then down again. He shrugged. “I grew up. You didn’t.”

  Josen sighed. I wish that didn’t sound so true, little brother. Trying to continue the conversation seemed pointless. He couldn’t really argue; even at twenty-three years old, he still didn’t feel much like a man grown.

  He walked down the hall to the nearest window, pushed open the shutters of clouded glass, and leaned over the sill into the fresh night air.

  He hated every moment he spent in the Aryllian Keep; it was suffocating. Most of the palace was built directly into the mountainside, and the external buildings and outer walls were carved unbroken from the Godspire itself. Everywhere, he could feel the weight of stone shaped by Aryllia herself in days long past, trapping him, crushing him. Not just with walls, but with history, and legacy, and blood—the Keep reminded him of everything he hated about being his father’s son. At night, in the sickly, wavering yellow of the gas-lamps, every room looked like the one his mother had died in. He could almost smell it when he gave his imagination free rein: a hint of decay wafting over the mountain flowers that had been brought in to mask such odors.

  He wondered what Elda Terene would have said if she knew her son had helped a swampling escape the Plateaus. Despite her deep-seated piety, he had a sneaking suspicion that she’d have forgiven him. Not that it meant much. Toward the end, his mother would have happily watched the Queensmount sink into the Swamp if it had meant freedom from King Gerod. Swamplings overrunning the Keep would have looked like an escape to her.

  The window faced south, toward the Royal Eyrie just beyond the Keep’s outer walls. Silhouetted by the lights of the Countsbluff, the nine concentric circular tiers of the temple were impossible to miss. Some two hundred feet from the bottom of the first tier to the top of the ninth, it was easily the highest structure in the Plateaus. At the eyrie’s summit, nine great hanging banners ringed the open-air nest where chastors gave their sermons, each with a different design, but each—save one—bearing the Sky God’s most revered aspect: the Lord of Eagles, whose single great eye was the sun. The arms of the eight Windwalkers who had performed the Rising, and one bare black, where the Deepwalker’s sigil might once have flown. The people of the Nine Peaks called the descendants of the Windwalkers “Eagles” because of those family arms—other houses were forbidden to bear the God’s most sacred symbol.

  The banners were too far away to see well by moonlight, a hundred feet and more above his head, but Josen recognized the colors and shapes by memory. His eyes were drawn to the crowned eagle of Aryllia, gold on sky-blue, and then to Terene’s black eagle perched atop a watchtower against a white field. The crests of his family, on both sides—two of the three surviving Windwalker bloodlines. Symbols of a life he didn’t want. The Eagles rarely married amongst themselves, to prevent rampant inbreeding; when Gerod died, Josen would be the first king descended from Windwalkers on both sides. A Terene and an Aryllia at once, as he was so often reminded. More responsibility he’d never asked for. If I have to be an Eagle, why not the kind that can fly? I’m as trapped here as Mother was.

  Above the eyrie, stars freckled the early evening sky; they reminded him of her. She had loved to star-gaze. Josen looked over his shoulder at his brother. “Do you remember when she would take us out on the walls to look at the stars, Rudol?”

  “Mother?” Rudol blinked. “Of course I do.”

  “Every star is a soul, she said. Same as the chastors do, but I heard it from her before I ever did from them. The souls pure enough—whatever that means—to earn their way into the Above. I remember once, I wasn’t more than eight or nine years old and I’d made Father angry. She took me out to the walls and told me that. I thought she meant that if I kept misbehaving I wouldn’t get in. God Above, that terrified me. Even then I was fairly bad at behaving myself.”

  “I can’t imagine Mother scolding you like that,” Rudol said. “She was too lenient with you, if anything. You were always her favorite.”

  “It wasn’t really a scolding. When she saw how scared I was, she hugged me and told me not to be. I don’t remember exactly how she said it, but… the idea was that if we’re all born again until we earn our place in the Above, it doesn’t matter what mistakes we make. Just that we learn from them. She was talking about second chances, not final judgements.” Josen didn’t quite know why he was telling the story, or what he expected from Rudol. His brother wasn’t much for second chances.


  But the rebuke he expected didn’t come. “That sounds more like her,” Rudol said, and there was something that might have been sadness in his voice. “She used to love that line from the Word. The end of a life…”

  “Is only the beginning of another,” Josen finished. They both lapsed into silence then; it was hard to say those words and not think of the way their mother had died. Josen vividly remembered the way she’d always said them—how wistful she’d sounded. A sign, if I’d bothered to see it. If the dead really were reborn into other lives, Josen hoped that she had found a happier one.

  But I’m still stuck with this one.

  Josen looked back to the sky, hoping to see one of the baskets leaving for the southern duchies. The great balloons that kept them aloft were made of lightworm silk from the Swamp, and at night they glowed like little moons floating on the wind. But there was only one moon in the sky, half-hidden behind the dark blade of the Godspire. Not a surprise—the winds didn’t blow during a rest, and the baskets couldn’t fly without wind.

  But he always looked, even when he knew he’d be disappointed.

  He’d loved the baskets since he was just a boy. When he watched them fly, he could imagine himself on board, floating off to another life. It was only an idle dream, though. Even if he somehow commandeered a basket and got it into the air, his exact destination could be easily determined by a glance at a wind-chart—the aviators had long since mapped the skies with enough accuracy to track any basket by its place and time of departure.

  The winds that carried the balloons between the Nine Peaks were very near to perfectly predictable: each cycle had its own dependable pattern of currents, divided into four nine-day turns and ending in a three-day windless rest. A gift from the Sky God, the chastors said, at least for those who could afford to fly—not many, given the price of the gas that fueled the baskets. But for Josen, it just meant that his only way out was the Swamp, and he had no illusions about his ability to survive there. He wouldn’t last a day.