The King's Blood

by S. E. Zbasnik

  Turning towards the road offered better warmth but far less protection. She thought to try and disguise the boy prince, but the weeks of jam deflated whatever royal bloat his stomach had, the still throbbing wound gave him a disorienting shuffle of the feet, and he kept his eyes concentrated lower to the ground. And it went without saying that the lack of anything approaching a bath left him ranker than most of the serfs they passed guiding their livestock through the crop remnants.

  Thanks to all that, he fit the part of a humble, wandering peasant more than Ciara did. She hated to admit it but she was probably the greater threat of the group. A young boy with runny eyes and muddy hair blended into a crowd. A dark Dunner princess, exotic to everyone who'd never stepped more than ten miles away from their homes, stood out a bit.

  They'd been watching the gate for the past few hours debating the best way to sneak into Dawning unnoticed. "We go for it, jump the fence, take our chances with the guard sheep," Ciara nudged away another one of the feral beasts as it tried to reach across the fence and nibble on her sleeve.

  Aldrin crossed his arms, displaying his first sense of leadership in decades, "Why don't we simply go through the guard?"

  "Ah," Ciara tried to think of a good objection. Because they didn't want anyone to know they'd arrive? But everyone in town who had eyes would probably notice the pair asking around for merchants heading through the pass.

  Because he could be in the pocket of the Emperor? Watching the only guard confiscate a small flask of water out of the hands of a man with a set of hidden blades sticking over the top of his overcoat, it was obvious they need not worry about him reporting to anyone higher than a scarecrow.

  Because she hated having to listen to that kid make a good point.

  "Fine, we'll do it your way. But if it all goes kumquat shaped you best be able to run."

  Aldrin nodded grimly, uncertain what sort of terrors the local populace could inflict upon them with kumquats. Carefully sliding down the grassy hill, the two of them seemed to appear like magic in front of the guard. Rather than overreacting, or even vaguely reacting, he curled up in his out of place dining chair and pulled out a small book filled with pictures of ancient dwarven devices one could purchase if they traveled the Air Road that skirted around Dunlaw.

  Ciara paused, waiting to see if the guard would react. She tried coughing into her fist, tapping her foot, even arguing loudly with a silent Aldrin about how this was taking forever. It was when she finally moved towards the gate and placed her hand upon the latch that the guard launched into action.

  "What is your name?"

  The girl didn't pause before responding, "Marna, and this is...Corwin." Aldrin blinked, but didn't say anything, his eyes focused fully on the guard's mismatched shoes.

  "What is your purpose?"

  "Trade. We need to trade this, uh," her fingers dug in her pocket for anything, "jar of tomatoes."

  The guard carefully picked the jar up out of her hands, holding it to the afternoon light, the red washing over his face. "Is this over five ounces?"

  It was a fifty-fifty shot and Ciara went with, "No."

  "All right then," he returned the jar to her hands and said, "Good luck selling that. E'eryone with brains knows them tomatoes is poisonous. Wiped out an entire village of Aravaingions."

  "That was because they tried swimming in it and forget how," Aldrin said dismissively. It was one of the tales his father's knights loved to guffaw over during any meal.

  The guard turned on him, leaving the girl with her jar, "And what is your purpose today in Dawning, Mister Corwin?"

  Ciara made some strangled motions behind the guard's head, shutup shutup shutup!

  "I am…I'm helping her to sell the tomatoes. To buy medicine for our ailing mother."

  Ciara's palm met her forehead, but she dropped it quickly as the guard turned on her, taking in the darkening complexion of tomato girl and the near ghostly shade of the un-tomatoed boy.

  She watched the math add up in the guard's brain and as 2+2 came to -15 he asked slowly, "You two are related?"

  "No, no," she said as sweetly as possible. "He's adopted. A foundling actually. My father came across him while he was out hunting. The boy was being raised by wolves."

  The guard turned his eye back on the boy encrusted with dirt, who wouldn't make eye contact as he waddled about with a strange limp. "Well, yer story checks out. If you could just step over here and take off your shoes I'll be getting you into Dawning."

  Ciara didn't ask why the guard had to rattle around their shoes, why he waved a stick around their back or even why he felt the need to touch her hair. She was just grateful when he finally drew back the twisted wire on the broken latch and let them into the town, trying to not glare at her "brother."

  Aldrin hobbled up beside her, his shoes still in his hands, "Now what?"

  "We head to the market, see if there's anyone willing to hire a couple hands in exchange for passage."

  The boy nodded slowly before asking, "Who's Corwin?"

  Ciara paused, "What?"

  "My codename," he said enjoying this little subterfuge, "who is Corwin?"

  The girl caught the powerful scent of pigs wafting in from the north and walked purposefully towards the square set aside for people peddling whatever crap they could unload on others, "He was my brother."

  Dawning wasn't some one hole in the wall town; they had at least two churches,16 a thriving nightlife thanks to a bat infestation, and their own culture. Most of it was a heady mixture of salmonella and e. coli, but it was their own special Dawning blend that made them all proud and diarrheic.

  There was even an art museum. After crazy Ed, the fabled bandit who stole from the rich to give to the richer, left to the community whatever coin of his collected in the pointy toes of his shoes, they put it to good use preserving the highly erotic and controversial tree carvings of one Beatrice Livingston the Fifth. Every year, the ladies of the Lady of Perpetual Waiting would gather together in their church's basement, conspiring hurriedly over cookies and tea. Then they'd don black masks, alight their torches and try to burn down the small shack that housed about thirty or so logs carved artistically to mimic the near anatomical precision of penises.

  They had yet to make it as far as fifth street before an argument would break out over whose great grandson was the bigger disappointment and they'd eventually all break off for home swearing they'd never talk to their closest friends ever again. Despite never having any visitors, the museum was declared a great success thanks to the near controversy it courted.

  Even their marketplace was a smorgasbord of delights. Fabrics from over two towns away, candy hand whittled by one of the Emperors own members of court, and of course pithy sayings painted onto wooden signs that no one ever buys but are always a good 30% of every farmers market.

  Ciara wandered away from Aldrin, who found his eye drawn by the "Sugared" Beets stand. She figured he couldn't get into too much trouble with no money and no one willing to stand downwind of him. The worst he'd face was being rounded up for vagrancy and getting tossed into Dawning's jail; a small hole the Guard dug that the sheep keep wandering into.

  "Ho, there," her voice carried over the market din. It was rare for her to have any dealings with merchants or other traveling varieties visiting the castle; that always fell to her mother. But she'd observed enough to know there was a certain pageantry involved. "My good man."

  The head turned, and -- thanks to a hat pulled deep over its face -- gave no hints as to what, if anything, resided within. The only clue she wasn't talking to an endless void in an overstuffed trench coat were the piles of matted hair flowing out from under the straw brim.

  The "good man" struck a match on his shoe and placed the flame deep under his hat. Ciara, uncertain if he'd just tried to commit very slow suicide by lighting his own hair on fire, waited. Slowly, a curl of smoke puffed from somewhere under the hat, yet no light pierced the black hole of the merchant's face.

&nb
sp; "Watcha want?" the voice should have been raspy, like someone breaking apart cheap kindling and tossing it onto a flame, but it coursed surprisingly sweet like a poet reciting a lullaby about the moon to the ladies of the court swooning all over his belled shoes.

  "I would like to hire your services."

  Despite there being no evidence of eyes, Ciara felt them shift over her form, taking special care around her chest. "Dunna, you's a bit too skinny for me. 'N' I'd hae ta wash the smell of camels off me later." The smoke bounced at that, as if he were giggling silently to himself about a joke she'd heard more times than she cared to admit.

  Her fingers slipped into her pocket searching for her dagger and hating herself for wishing Aldrin were behind her. "I need to travel through the Northern Pass. I assumed one of..."

  "Northern Pass? Ya shit out of luck gel. Whole thin's been caved in."

  "What?"

  The merchant seemed to enjoy her discomfort, walking a bit closer until she got a strong whiff of fermented potatoes. "Yep, 'parently there was a big wossa call it, snow crumble down the Caddatch. Took out most of the pass and some of the town behin' it."

  He nodded towards another stall beside him, "Ol' Fredrick here was travelin' by, said it was a hundred feet high with legs and arms all sticking out. Right, Fredrick?"

  The fellow merchant, a slip of a man, was dressed in a brightly colored mishmash of the fabrics he was trying to get post harvest housewives to buy. He looked right through Ciara to the large merchant sucking up all the oxygen in the market stand. "Yup."

  "Ya won't be getting to the north 'til spring thaw at best, little missie."

  She tried to hide the sinking disappointment as she curtsied a bit and said, "I see. Thank you for your time."

  Walking away, she overheard Fredrick whisper loudly, "I didn't know them kinds could talk what with the pretty words so well."

  When she found Aldrin, the boy had been all but adopted by the wattled woman running the cider stand. She'd grin, proudly showing off her iron tooth, and pat the boy on the head with each crank of the apple peeler. The screw rotated the apple, while a pair of razors sliced off the peel.

  Aldrin found it fascinating, such an ingenious design that sopped up so much of the finger breaking work in the cider making process. Having found a slightly dimmer replacement than the slop boy she hired, the woman was ecstatic, chattering on about the best kind of apples (all of them). How to tell when an apple was ripe (ya pick it off the tree and bite it. If ya can't get through, put it back. It ain't done yet). And what was in the cider (a very poorly guarded family secret, apparently).

  It was only the apple screw machine she remained mum on. "Where did you find this?" Aldrin asked.

  "Din't, been in my mum's for I dunno. Cider-er's all around these parts have one, though they rent them out to the pie makers for Soulday," she popped another bottle open with her teeth and dumped something that could kill an entire army into the vat.

  Ciara approached, watching the boy prince ecstatically peel apples as if it were the best thing in the world, "I have some dangerous news."

  "Ah, you're back," Aldrin's head snapped up at her voice, his face beaming, "Look! You jam an apple onto this spike, and then turn the crank. It both cores the fruit and slices off the peel. Fascinating. I've never seen anything like it in the kitchens before."

  "Yeah, a real...you've spent time in kitchens before?"

  Aldrin mumbled something under his breath that she couldn't make out and pulled a freshly nude apple off the spike. "Did you find a cart to take us on?"

  At the avalanche news, she'd been tempted to tell the kid he was on his own, then try and hitch a ride back to...and that was where her plan fell apart. Where could she go now? More than likely her father traveled with Albrant's men, who had a good two weeks march ahead of them. And, she prayed, made it through the pass before the avalanche.

  Despite everything, she still had a promise to keep. "No, and we won't find one. The pass is blocked."

  The apple stopped turning, "Blocked? By what?"

  "Marshmallows. Big, fluffy marshmallows."

  He glared at her, just as exhausted as her and perhaps twice as hungry as his body continued to try to heal. "Now what?"

  This set her off. She smashed her hands onto the bench, rattling the small apple in the middle of a strip tease off the spike and onto the ground, "How in the entire pantheon should I know? I've been making every step up as we go, all while you sit beside me droning 'Now what?' 'Now what?' like a mindless parrot."

  Aldrin piped up at her, hunger and exhaustion a good fuel for a rage he was rarely capable of, "And in that time you've managed to get us lost, get me stabbed, and ruined whatever chance we had of catching up with my father's army."

  "If it weren't for me, you'd be a royal stain on the castle walls."

  "That would be preferable to this!"

  "Hey!" the cider woman clapped her hands together, "yous kids don't be fightin' like that. 'Ere, have an apple. It'll set ya right." She handed them both one of the redder ones, and folded her hands until petulant teeth began to bite down. Ciara and Aldrin munched silently, still glaring at each other across their vanishing fruit.

  "There. Doesn't an apple make everythin' better? Now shake 'ands and make peace." Teenage anger couldn't overcome the patronizing calm of the grandmother and the two shook hands, looking away. Just then, the cider lady spotted a potential customer and dashed after him, spilling a bit on the ground as she gave chase. For being in her seventies, the woman could outrun most marathoners if the promise of two chickpeas and some hambones were involved.

  Ciara nudged the dirt with her shoe, "So, now what?"

  Aldrin smiled, despite himself and said, "I guess we try the road again. Maybe the next town will offer better options."

  "Like someone who can move mountains of snow?" she muttered, but at this point it was a better idea than anything she could think of.

  Leaving town was less of an endeavor. Sure, the guard, who now had on a tricorner hat and was sipping his own mug of cider, tried to make it difficult for them. He called for them to take off their shoes and wait until the ground had come to a complete stop, but they walked past him and headed east.

  East led deeper into recently claimed Empire territory while the sun hugged the horizon behind them. Ciara suggested they try off the road until the darkness of full night forced them out of the black forest full of ankle breaking branches. Aldrin wanted to argue, point out they hadn't seen anything but sheep since Dawning, but he didn't want to begin another fight. Supplies were even lower now; only a few jars of tomatoes, some okra and, as a last resort, bread & butter pickles. Lady winter's icy grip seemed to follow them, her prickly fingers touching upon their exposed noses and fingers. Aldrin stuck his hands deep inside his pockets while Ciara broke out the mittens, a strange pink and red zigzag pattern on them. The pom poms caught on her dagger's sheathe and she ripped the right one off.

  "You really ought to learn how to use that thing," her voice broke the frosted silence as she brandished her dagger about at anything that wasn't a tree and then a few trees just to be safe.

  "What thing?" Aldrin asked, on the defensive.

  "What's dangling between your legs," she said without thinking.

  He paused, their little torch casting Ciara's retreating shadow deeper into the forest when she realized what she said. Stopping ahead of him, she was thankful he couldn't see her blush in the dark, "I mean that sword Marna gave you."

  "I thought you were Marna," he said. She could hear the wide grin in his words, horrifying her even more.

  "Very funny. You're a regular infiltrator," she turned to look back at him and, despite it all, smiled briefly.

  He turned strangely red at that, or perhaps it was the orange glow of the fire blazing at the end of his hands, "What makes you think I don't know how to use it?"

  "For starters, not a lot of men let their blade slide around upon their hip like it was part of some 'capture the
sword' game for Soulday."

  He tried to slide it back to his side, where it refused to remain upon his bony hips. "So I never got a real belt clip sword thing."

  "Belt clip sword thing?"

  "If I'm not getting too technical," his non-torch fingers wandered to the hilt, jiggling it up and down as he talked.

  "Oh no, of course not. And two, men who know how to use a sword aren't bloody terrified of one unless it's comin' at their heads."

  Aldrin looked to the blade strapped to his hip again, vividly aware of just what images the thought of it curled in his hand roused in his brain. For most boys they involved a heroic pri...knight slaying the dragon and rescuing a damsel...or rescuing a woman who politely led the hero through the forest and was in no way damseling. For Aldrin, all he saw was him slipping, falling, and stabbing himself repeatedly in the foot. Or worse. Behind his eyelids at night, he saw over and over the face of that nameless man as a dagger flew into his throat. First confusion, then terror as his eyes rolled up and he crumpled to the floor. Sometimes the man became his own father, screaming out for his sons in his last moments.

  "You're right. I'm no good with swords. No one ever taught me. A waste."

  Ciara nodded, as if it were a given she was right, "My father used to say a weapon in the hands of an amateur is doubly deadly, both for the man he is facing and the man holding it."

  Aldrin felt the pain in her words, the fear that his words could be nothing more than a distant memory now and no longer a common aphorism spouted over the table. He was still coming to terms with the loss himself. He'd gotten as far as never seeing his father's old pile of socks, always wool grey with little red E's stitched into the sides, scattered about the castle. It drove the servants nuts, but if you followed the trail you were certain to find the king complaining about his cold feet.

  "I, I'm sorry about...your father he, I'd be long dead if it weren't for him," Aldrin babbled, forgetting what he wanted to say as soon as he started.