The King's Blood

by S. E. Zbasnik

  "He killed the assassin and saved us both," he said, "and has been following us ever since?"

  Ciara sensed the opening there. Was it really a lie of omission if she didn't fill in all the details about her involvement with Taban? But as she looked over to the man who could slit both their throats before they uttered another word she decided to come clean.

  "There's more," she knotted her hands into the coat's pockets, her fingers clinking against something glass, "the night of the 'party' I didn't escape on my own. He helped me."

  "I'd say I did a bit more than help," Taban said, the smirk secure on his face, tilting up a mustache he'd cultivated in the past two months.

  "Aldrin," she looked into his eyes, more disturbed that she was concerned about hurting him than from actually lying, "I'm sorry I never told you. It," she glared over at Taban, "I didn't think I'd ever see him again."

  "Why?"

  "As I was running nearer to the caravans he just vanished from my side. Then we packed up and sailed off so quickly I assumed he'd fallen into a badger hole or something," Ciara confessed.

  "Thanks for caring," Taban said cheerfully.

  "I, I'm sorry," she continued, ignoring the assassin.

  "No," Aldrin said, his eyes breaking free of Ciara's warmth. He raised his arm again, pointing the sword toward the man calmly picking at his freezing shoulders, "Why did you save me? Why does everyone keep saving me?"

  Taban chuckled cruelly at that, "I could not tell you the machinations of a witch. As my Gran always said, 'do not meddle in the affairs of witches for they are witches, moron.' But my mission is much like the girl's here."

  "You are beholden to me, then," Aldrin said.

  A shadow fell over Taban and his tone darkened, "I am beholden to no boy who can barely find his own bollocks. My mission is my own. Lucky for you, it involves keeping you alive for the time being."

  "Then why save me?" Ciara asked pointedly, well aware what her life was worth when compared to a possible king, "Aldrin was safe with the historians, with or without me."

  Taban laughed at that, the shadow vanishing back into the night as quickly as it came, "Perhaps I am a sucker for damsels in distress."

  "Or perhaps you simply hope she will do your job for you."

  "Is it open stage night?" Taban muttered as a fourth voice joined their unexpected party.

  Isadora dropped her hand covering a small blue crystal clutched in the other. It lit up the snow around her, casting such a glow over her face she looked as if she were frozen solid. A blanket was wrapped over her shoulders and she had a woolen hat covering her head and ears, almost down to her eyebrows.

  "You let a witch follow you home?" Taban asked Ciara, "Very dangerous. Once you feed it, you'll never get rid of her."

  Isadora gripped her light crystal tightly and turned it until the blue beam focused squarely upon Taban's face. He staggered a bit in the snow, but tried to hold his ground. Ciara thought she could see small shards of ice crystallizing across his eyebrows and mustache.

  He threw up his hands and said, "Very well, I can see when I am unwanted," even as his teeth chattered. Taban turned, stomping away from the three deeper into the forest.

  "Wait!" Ciara called out, running towards him.

  Taban turned, a small smile heating up the ice still clinging to his face. She sloughed off the second sleeve of the coat and handed it to him.

  "I do not wish to be beholden to you," she said, passing it to him.

  He took it slowly, looking back at the witch who continued to cast her ice crystal upon the spot he'd been standing, "For your sake, Nachtegaal, I hope you never are." Slipping on his coat, he got a few more feet into the trees before his trail vanished, as if he'd never left it.

  Aldrin looked over at Isadora, still watching into the woods in case the assassin turned around. "Thank you for your assistance."

  The witch turned to the boy king, covering over her crystal once more, "Shouldn't you be researching? Unless you think the sword of Casamir will discover itself."

  With the prince properly cowed, the witch glanced once over at Ciara and, shaking her head, vanished back to her corner of the woods, leaving the two teenagers alone.

  Aldrin struggled to put his sword away while still holding a torch high in one hand. Ciara walked to him, and, like a mother hen, said, "Here, let me help." Grabbing his belt loop, she guided the no longer sharp end to its home.

  As soon as she released her grip, he stumbled back a bit, his cheeks flaming in the cold, "Now that whatever that was is over we should be getting back. Medwin says he found something for you."

  "Right," Ciara nodded, trying to shake off the disquiet she felt at Aldrin shirking away from her touch.

  The prince led the charge back, casting his torch high. Ciara looked back towards the spot where Taban had stood fearing her already complicated life was about to go careening off a cliff.

  Medwin placed another three books into her overburdened pile and, lightly tapping his whiskery chin, bent down into another indiscriminate pile of books to haul out a fourth one. Aldrin was long lost to research notes, the handful that had survived the trip, and his own source material that Pajama's begrudgingly handed over as well as Mitrione and Dean. None of them were happy to be giving up what could have been their own personal discoveries if they'd ever one day suddenly decided to look at those books again.

  "What's a cubit?" a voice called from the stacks that replaced what was Medwin's bedroom. The Chancellor took to sleeping in his overstuffed chair while the two scoured the past three hundred years, trying to find any mention of a sword.

  "I believe it is a unit of measurement, though there is some debate as to exactly how long," Medwin responded settling behind his desk.

  "So, it's not a cake then..." Aldrin tipped the book he'd been reading sideways, scattering a pile of notes onto the floor.

  Ciara scooped some of them up and started to rifle through, pausing as she came across a few drawings in the margins. One was of a goat head butting what could have been Bartrone in his knickers. She flipped through a few more and beside "Casamir = homily about stabbing?" was a simple girlish face. He'd forgotten the nose and one eye was much smaller than the other, but she was framed by yards and yards of curly hair. Aldrin had spun his quill about so much it overlapped and ran off the margins.

  As she came upon the last drawing, Ciara slapped the extra sheets down on top and, without looking at the boy, handed the notes back. He seemed oblivious, thanking her without looking up as his finger followed along a tricky passage.

  Her cheeks burning, she turned back to her own section of the world, remembering all the times her mother told the maids to keep the cleric's quills away from the Knights. She was tired of scrubbing smut off the walls.

  Aldrin put down his book and rubbed weary eyes. They'd been at this for almost three days now, the caravans trapped on the roads until a good wind came. The historians kept themselves sequestered in their own houses on wheels, watching the heavy flakes fall upon the already laden roads and abandoning their orphaned work as chattering teeth dreamed of how to ready for the coming holy day.

  Chase and Chance, a long scarf wrapped between the two, picked up one of the armor historian's battle axes, actually sharpened it, and wandered into the forest. An hour or so later they returned with a small tree missing half its pine needles, and one very angry squirrel forced to shop around for a new home in this terrible market.

  Aldrin rose from his spot and carefully made for the window, holding the robe close to his legs to keep from sweeping any more piles over. Pulling his sleeve over his hand, he wiped the condensation off the glass and looked out.

  A few of the historians crowded around the tree, little more than three feet tall, each carrying a string of garland formed from whatever they could find. Kaltar had carefully threaded coffee beans with some twine and was trying to wind it about the baby tree. Dean took the few remaining pickled apples and shoved the twine through the center
for some slightly soggy brine scented ornaments.

  Chase and Chance argued over whether it should be a star or a moon on the top of the tree. Mitrione shooed them both away as he placed the traditionally ancient ball of raven feathers on the leaning top branch. It was really a few pigeon feathers he painted black, but tradition could be a bit flexible under such situations.

  At the far edge stood Bartrone, who'd kept himself as much to himself as he could while still having food to eat and a warm place to sleep. After Medwin placed him on probation, most of the others avoided him lest they also catch sanction cooties. While Bartrone was supposed to be using his time organizing the library thinking upon his sins, he fed the fire of vengeful ambition instead. And occasionally cursed the dyslexic historian Dewey who last tried to organize every book by some arbitrary number his addled mind transformed into a letter.

  "Is it really almost Soulday?" Aldrin asked as is tradition for every holiday since some caveman decided to declare that day important because he had the biggest club of them all and who was gonna argue with Ogg?

  Ciara put down her book, a large tome about the mythical creatures of Arda where every sentence ended in a question mark. "It isn't Soulday without roasted pecans drizzled in syrup."

  "We had that once, when a passing merchant was trying to start a fresh tradition in Ostero. Sir Brant stuffed the entire cone into his mouth and the wad lodged in his throat. It took two knights jiggling him upside down before the nuts came loose. I'd never seen a man or beast run so fast as that merchant after Brant recovered." Aldrin chuckled, trying to overlay a burning pang of homesickness with nostalgia, "It's all acorns and chestnuts up north, mostly burnt and then shoved inside whatever animal came too close to the lands during the month."

  Ciara nodded. There were always feasts, oversized ones as most of the neighboring towns crowded in the castle to ward off the shadows on the longest night of the year. And what better way to keep the ravens at bay than with lots of drinking, singing, and…other things her mother said she'd tell her about later. "The Lord used to eat something similar. Pheasant under duck and suckling roasted turnips. Weird, rich food that everyone got a few bites out of and pretended they enjoyed."

  Aldrin turned from the window to look over at her. He'd eaten much the same, trying to hide the more bizarre looking vegetables in his lap and scoot them to the hounds when no one was looking. He had no idea there were other options. "What did you have?"

  "Bone soup was my favorite," Ciara said wistfully, "My mother would take the bones of every animal slaughtered for Albrant and stew them all in a pot with some onions for days. Then everyone would try to crack them to get at the marrow. It was said whoever got the duck would travel, the goose called to war, the deer married before the spring, and the bear probably just broke his hands."

  The prince watched her eyes, millions of miles away and tried to imagine what was so festive about drinking bone flavored water the entire night waiting for the next sunrise. Even their dogs got real meat.

  Ciara looked over and saw the disgust passing over Aldrin's eyes as she relived some of her happier childhood memories. He looked like he wanted to pat her on the back and apologize. She glanced down at her book pile and fumbled for another, this one without a real cover. Cracking it open to any page, she tried to focus on the words as the boy gazed once more out the window.

  As Ciara re-read the same sentence three times he finally got the hint and wandered back to his own pile. She risked a peek over at the boy who'd been raised as a prince. His hair was almost to his shoulders and was so rarely washed it was losing that Ostero ice blonde shine for a matte tan. Whiskers, actual whiskers, dotted his chin and part of his jaw, giving him the appearance of a man who'd run out of his house midway through a sloppy shave. A nose, once far too large for the small face it was saddled with actually began to feel more at home with the general surroundings. The wider jaw provided more running room, and the rising cheekbones a place to settle down into.

  He'd have passed for a wildman, or someone who did silly dances for coin in the street far more easily than a prince if it weren't for those sharp eyes. Where the poor ragged sot, fresh from the woods stared distantly into the past when he wasn't a cracked shell of a man, Aldrin zeroed in on the present, the clear grey of his stare analyzing each moment.

  It made him look unsettling at times, a lazy face with a focused stare. Unsettling, in an attractive sort of way.

  Wait.

  No, that wasn't it at all.

  Ciara's eyes flew back to her book, flipping through the pages like mad, banishing that thought to her brain's nether regions.

  I mean, the back of her mind.

  Gods, was it getting over warm again?

  She shifted under her coat and held the book up to her face trying to hide the blush staining her neck and cheeks. Aldrin didn't notice as he was back to cubits and hogsheads as he read through the "Guide to Proper Latrine Building" with a small tale of Casamir scrawled in the back to keep the kiddos entertained.

  Her eyes flitted across the text, most words little more than distant stars as one walks under the night sky, until she came across a familiar constellation. "...Liam."

  The book dropped to her lap and she read the line again. "He never spoke directly of Liam, only vague inferences and hearsay."

  But that didn't make any sense, Casamir mentioned his sword often. There was even a popular children's tale about Liam the Talking Sword. And then Liam the Talking Sword that Saves Soulday.

  She flipped back a few pages and a new confusion arouse. "Sir?" she asked.

  "Yes?" Medwin responded, his own mind still back on the coastal Soulday that involved a large pot of clams and an even larger pot to throw the shells into.

  "Why does this book refer to Casamir as 'Cas?' And there seems to be an unnamed woman here."

  Medwin chuckled, "You have fallen down the research rabbit hole I'm afraid. The further back one delves, the more the stories change."

  Of course, everyone knew that there were always a few things altered to suit the audience. How many harpies Casamir rode into battle, if he was on his third or fifth wife before the Battle against his second cousin on his mother's side. And if he actually died or not. But the rest was fact, told enough times to become truth.

  "So Casamir was known as Cas in previous ages?" Ciara asked.

  "What is the date on your book?" Medwin asked, uncertain which he'd handed her.

  She flipped through the front cover to find something etched in red by a foreign hand. It was clearly one of the older ones, done up on those presses that littered the land before the Empire crashed. "The 'Shade Era...maybe?'" she recited to him.

  Medwin tapped his lips, his mind pulling back the curtains and shattering most of current history, "Yes, that would be nearer to the suspected era in which a barbarian named something approaching Cas existed. The prevailing theory among most scholars is that over time the name was modernized to fit better with changing audiences."

  "You sure know a lot about some mythic backwater hero off the top of your head," Aldrin observed, a set of magnifying lenses slipping off his nose. The Big Book of the World (pocket edition) could only be read by someone holding two magnifying glasses together, and no one could make sense of the footnotes until someone invented the telescope.

  Medwin's head bobbled, an acknowledgment of the new voice, "Yes, it is a subject that I immerse myself in from time to time. It was very dear to my daughter. She would always ask me to tell her about Cassy and his mighty adventures."

  "Was?" Ciara picked up on the past tense, having spent much of the past two years feeling the sting every time she spoke of her own brother.

  The Chancellor winced a bit and then waved his hands, ending the conversation. "But you are looking for this sword, yes? Not whatever name Casamir may have gone by."

  "There is a mention of a Liam in here, but it doesn't appear to be a sword," Ciara said, standing up.

  "Where did you find this?"
>
  "In one of the Translator's Notes in the back. After he talks about how he drank exactly five quarts of weak white tea while transcribing every chapter."

  "Read me the passage," Medwin said, rising from behind his desk and walking closer to her.

  "'He never spoke directly of Liam, only vague inferences and hearsay. But there are some who believe that Liam was either a dear friend of Cas or, as some of the more romantic poets suspect, was a lover or husband,'" Ciara fell quiet at that passage. Aldrin scratched his head, seeming to be lost in the pronouns.

  Most of the tales about the Greatest Hero involved him either killing or bedding anything in his way. He was the manifestation of what every little boy was supposed to want to grow into; what every maiden was supposed to lust after. Not that there weren't a few tales involving Casamir and his loyal servant Humphrey that got a bit more exotic when the men were out of the room. But no one put any stock in mythfiction.

  But Medwin skipped over the implications of Casamir having a husband, "Is there anything more?"

  "'All that is known of Liam is that he came from the Northeast near Carthas and he passed early into Cas's career.'"

  Medwin clapped his hands together and jumped in the air twice. "Of course, how could I not see it?" The man old enough to be her grandfather giggled like a schoolboy released home for winter break.

  "See what?" Aldrin asked, towering over his castle of books and trying to follow the conversation.

  But Medwin had already spun about and began to rummage through his one filing cabinet. Fingers counted past tabs, each marked with little holes to mimic the alphabet. Midway through he pulled out a sheet, stained to the color of a dark tea, and laid it upon his desk. Ciara climbed over to stand behind his shoulder as he leaned over and spread it out. Aldrin, having a harder time of it, weaseled through the library labyrinth and tried to see over top of Ciara's shoulder before tipping up one of the crates and standing on it.

  "There," Medwin said, his fingers following along a crease.

  Once again, a cruel thought struck Ciara and she wondered just how little the Chancellor could really see. How did he know that this was the correct map he wanted to show them, and not, say, a drawing of the goddess of love, Nila, nude and riding an octopus.