The King's Blood Read online

  His mercenary friend suddenly shouted and turned to the funny man standing in the midst of the crowd. It was hard to make out who or what it was, aside from a garish mix of colors, but the back crowd was grumbling confusing obscenities.

  "Wha' he say?"

  "Yer mother rode all 'he way to Avar on 'er back!"

  "Wha' cha say 'bout my mum?"

  Insults intended for the Story Weaver missed their target and hit those who weren't even aware there was a Bard in their midst, much less that he'd made some faux pas. It began, as all turns of the tide do, with a small push. The Insulted, or perhaps Insultee (it was hard to tell at this point) pushed back. A fresh push answered with another shove, leading to another insult and finally climaxing with an exaggerated punch applied to the jaw.

  Aldrin knew this was his time to exit. Dodging a mug intended for the Bard currently stammering out a new stanza, he ducked under the now throbbing table and started to scurry past armored legs towards the servants' valleys.

  Behind him, the fighters suddenly remembered that they had access to better weapons than just fists when the power of the Bard's words reached into the hearts and souls of the other guests who weren't trying to pulverize the crap out of each other. Even their long past syphilitic rotted brains could pick up on something off in the air, and they slowly stopped their poundings to turn and look to the funny man with the tales.

  The Bard was waving his arms like a man poorly chasing off a cougar, and when the rest of the knights went wild the mercs followed suit, also bringing their hands together, usually into the face still clutched under their arm. This was actually met with even more laughter and as soon as the fight began it was forgotten. For what was a war between friends, especially when there was no coin to be made for it?

  But Aldrin didn't notice the change in demeanor and kept his long crawl past feet bound up in linen and burlap, most unable to afford anything approaching real shoes. Some even went bare, their toes long since lost to the endless miles through melting snow that began their year. And despite having a royal prince scampering across their legs, the revelers didn't really notice. If they weren't calling for the god verse again, they were ripping into what amounted to the Castle's food budget for a month and harassing some of the servants, at this point not even caring what gender they pinched.

  It was their last night and soon they'd head home to prepare for the winter before War! And what a glorious one it would be too, with lots of time for perfectly innocent bystanders to get in some good old fashioned looting.

  Sliding past the last pair of legs, Aldrin stood, trying to wipe off the grime coating what had once been his trouser legs. He turned and smacked his face straight into the jowls of the frozen dragon. A face made for minting glared down upon his blushing while a hand, still soft as a dove, pushed him back. Henrik paid about as much heed to his little brother as he did to anything that didn't carry a sword.

  "What are you doing back here?" he demanded of the boy, his royal ring tapping hard against Aldrin's collar bone.

  Trying to shake off the hand, Aldrin looked up as defiantly as one could when a foot shorter, "None of your business."

  "You know she hates it when you leave the safety of the guards," Henrik said as his eyes flicked back to the woman surveying the gathered throngs from her throne.

  "No one cares where I go, much less…" Bonny savored his next word, "Mother."

  The fingers gripped him hard, digging into almost nonexistent flesh. "You do not call her that," he hissed. "Mother is dead, because of you. She is nothing more than a snake in a Queen's robes."

  Whenever Aldrin asked about his mother, most who knew her would make the kind of vague generalities one would when talking about someone they never really liked but were bound by the "never talk ill of the dead" rule.

  Well she was pretty, I mean kind of pretty, not really plain but she wasn't ugly at least. And she could be sweet when she wanted to, I suppose. I mean I'd never seen it, but I'd heard talk of it at one point.

  No one really blamed him much for her death, and some were even rather happy to have Queen Moren take his mother's place despite the fact she never birthed any children and clearly had the kind of ambition that would make Emperors blush. No one, that is, except Henrik. Where others saw a plain woman who blended into the background of the tapestries she wasn't very good at embroidering, his memory built up a golden goddess who could heal any wound and banish any demon. Her laugh was forever etched into his heart.6

  So from about day four of little Bonny's birth, as they laid the Queen upon her pyre and a 6 year old Henrik lit the flames, he has despised his only brother. This hatred burned even brighter the more Aldrin came to resemble his beloved mother.

  "You should get up to Father. He'll want to see you," the rage at Bonny's slur seemed to have passed. The maddeningly frozen calm Henrik was marked for dampened the fire.

  But Aldrin had watched his brother long enough to know when he was being played, "Since when do you care what Father's biddings are? You two have been at each other's backs for the past two months."

  The crystal white teeth slipped into a wolf's sneer, "Because, little brother, I worry for your safety. These cut throats would sooner ferry you away and sell you to the Emperor for a small fee than protect your weak body."

  Aldrin struggled more, trying to weasel out of his brother's iron grip. "If you do not release me I shall scream so loud the entire castle will hear."

  It was an old threat, one that usually resulted in Henrik kicking Bonny in the ass and leaving him to cry tears of pain in solitude, but something was different this night. His brother looked away from his kin's tiny face and glanced around at those cutthroats who were now holding onto each other's shoulders and swaying back and forth to some invisible music.

  "Very well," his fingers released, allowing blood to flow back into Aldrin's shoulder, "But do not come running to me when you find your throat slashed."

  And without a look back, Henrik walked crisply out of the 'eh, it's okay' hall. Aldrin adjusted his tunic, the stupid golden knots on the shoulder still trying to fall into his collarbone's gaps, all the while debating whether to dig into just what business his brother didn't want anyone to know about.

  Just as he was about to follow, a fresh fist clamped down upon his shoulder, this one much darker and harder than the first and not about to give in to childish threats of screaming.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Still shaking off her fury, Ciara dropped her ewer into the wash bucket and tried to ignore the snickers of Marna as she sudsed up her own arms and dove into the bucket. Hopefully, a long night of scrubbing the royals spittle off serving ware would calm the embarrassment still burning in her guts.

  The last person in the world Ciara wanted to have dragged her by her feet in front of the King did just that. She found herself cowering beneath the barely five foot glower of her mother. Despite her daughter having gained a half a foot on her a few years ago, the woman could still reduce Ciara to little more than a quivering mass when the time was right.

  Her mother had been born and raised in the Castle; her family seemed eternally intertwined with the Albrants. And were it not for the mud caked under her fingernails, the rough hue to her skin, and the tattered remnants of what clothing she could darn together, she appeared more ladylike than most of those that traveled with the King. Many questioned why Albrant never married, and some looked to the young Bralda already running the kitchen staff and most of the maids as his reason, but when she gave her heart to the "Dark Knight" most of the rumors stopped, especially after her children were born.

  Ciara would have given anything to have just a smidgeon of her mother's beauty, but whatever strength the northern blood had seemed to all pass to her brother, who, thanks to his oak colored skin, strangely golden green eyes and dark with just a hint of cinnamon hair had had his pickings of any girl he wished. Meanwhile, the girl was saddled with enough shadows across her skin and face it was a wonder any could
see her but in direct sunlight. She hated her wide nose, which some of the maids would giggle and taunt she got from pressing her face against her mother's womb too long. She especially hated her hair that matted if even a hint of moisture clung to the air, and being stuck between two rivers and mountain ranges it was so wet here it was a wonder the locals hadn't sprouted gills.

  But, what she hated more than all of it was that which eternally marked her as an other. Ciara was only five, maybe six, when her mother caught her standing neck deep in the washing basins digging a pumice stone into her small belly.

  "What are you doing, little one?" Bralda asked, tiptoeing across the floor to not wake the maids crashed in the makeshift straw beds.

  "Scrubbing," the tiny voice squeaked, redoubling her efforts to buff away.

  "You can't possibly be that filthy," her mother said, walking closer as her enviable auburn locks flamed in the flickering candle light.

  Deep brown eyes, with just a flicker of familiar green submerged in the depths, looked up to her. As her tiny daughter held out her palm Bralda gasped. The pumice was coated in a small sheen of crimson, glittering like garnets in the low light. A similar scraping pattern matched it on the small girl's belly.

  Ciara looked up at her mother helpless, "It won't come off."

  Tears that rarely fell clung limply to her eyelashes as she pulled her baby into her arms and hugged her tight, "Of course it won't, that's a part of you. That's who you are."

  "But I don't like it."

  "Oh," she kissed the top of that mass of curly hair, always unruly, always carefree, "my baby, some day you will. Some day you will."

  The dark eyes looked deep into her mother, searching for a trick, another one of those lies parents tell their kids when they think they can't understand the world, "Promise?"

  "I promise."

  But nothing had changed in those 10 years, except Ciara grew taller. Much taller than any of the other maids, and even some of the knights, which lead to a lot of them trying to stand on their tip toes when around the black maiden. The Lord banned this after one lost his balance on the staircase and proceeded to send about five hundred pounds of armor crashing down as half a dozen knights smashed into the other.

  At first things grew icy as her little girl became more of a woman and was still as unhappy with her origins as she was at the age of six. And after they lost Corwin her mother simply drifted away, becoming nothing more than her Mistress, like the other servants.

  "What are you doing down on the floor, girl?"

  "I was trying to find this pitcher," she raised the cursed thing to show that she didn't make it up. Unfortunately she did it upside down and also drained whatever small pools of wine remained through the spill.

  "And what was it doing on the ground?" Her mother crossed her arms, never a good sign.

  "Sitting?" Ciara glanced down through her eyelashes at the steam rising off that white cap that now obscured most of the frosted red hair.

  "Don't be smart with me, child. Get to the washrooms!" Bralda pointed her finger towards the dank hell that was scrubbing, a punishment for any who displeased her. "And tell Marna we're gonna need more glasses if these fools keep throwing them at the caperer."

  Another load of soapy mugs fell into her bin, the bubbles outlines amplified by her dark skin compared to the ghost beside her. Marna, with her nearly translucent complexion, giant blue eyes and fading blonde hair appeared like a girl sentenced to eternity in the dark. Which is exactly what she was after Bralda caught her pilfering valuables from the Albrants.

  Anyone else would have been kicked out into the forest to be set upon by bears, or wolves, or flying squirrels, or any of a dozen things Ciara's father used to scare her with late at night even as she begged for more. But Marna had a way of coating her entire being in pathetic. She could become so pitiful beggars would give her coins on the street. So, she labored beneath the castle rooms, the armory, and the kitchens. Which, thanks to the giant ovens, pumped out enough heat to keep the little washroom blisteringly hot in the dead of winter and nearly unsurvivable in summer. With only a single brazier to light the door and another small lantern beside the tub, causing shadows to dance in the sweltering heat it wasn't any surprise the rest of the staff called it the Gates of Hell.

  Marna; however, took the bad with the worse and made her own little home in hell. She'd taken to scouring some of the lower regions of the castle late at night, scrounging up whatever scraps most people forgot and added them to her nest. On occasion, she'd even show some of the few people she liked. Strangely, one of them happened to be Ciara.

  "Didja see 'im?" the wisp started, lifting a bent fork, all but one tong broken, out of the bucket and pocketing it.

  "See who?" Ciara asked, in no mood to be social, especially to the specter of hell.

  "The Prince. I hear he's got them killer eyes. The ones all the girls swoon over in the knight's tales. And a real mustache, not like the stable boys that only get some grain dust on their faces and go about claimin' is a beard."

  "What are you doing talking to stable boys?" Ciara asked, despite her better judgment.

  Marna shrugged, "I know lots of things about the Castle. Sometimes even a ghost needs to stretch her legs."

  Picking up a fresh brush, Ciara dug into the platter that could house an entire roast pig and two pheasants. "But no one ever sees you out and about."

  The ghost smiled at that and laid a finger to her lips. Picking up her lantern, she inched towards the only wall that had any trappings of personality. For reasons no one ever asked, Marna got her grabby hands on a long roll of vellum and took a crude attempt at drawing a boy riding a pony with a spear through its head.

  Still dangling off her fingers, the lantern cast shadows rocking back and forth as she reached up to tear down the side of her drawing. Hidden behind was a blackness, a large crumbling hole in the masonry so dark not even the lantern could fully pierce it. Marna looked back to her friend and grinned again, carefully putting back the edges of her drawing.

  "No one knows about it. I's my secret," her sing song voice turned to diamonds "and no one's gonna know about it either, is they?"

  Ciara shook her head, for the first time in her life spooked by the ghost.

  "Now, about the Prince. Did he smell good? I heard all them royals smells like lavender and sunshine."

  Ciara grunted, not wanting to admit to her utter humiliation, but who was the ghost going to tell aside from a few rats and her hole to the underworld?

  "I wouldn't really know; I only trod on his toe."

  "Eeee," Marna squealed like a mouse, "tha's how Rian met his wife. He trod right on her toe with his horse. They say she chased him down for miles before'n he'd stop and demanded he pay for her boots. The rest, they say, is history."

  Ciara wasn't certain exactly how that situation could lead to a lifetime romance but there was a lot about the arts of the heart that escaped her. Like why it had to make you sound like you hit your head in a fall and were still suffering from a small concussion.

  "I don't think there's gonna be any shoe purchasing in my future. He was very nice, apologized for getting in the way of my boot, and then got back to royal things." And smelled like elderberries after a summer rain.

  "Well if that doesn't work out, I suppose you could always settle down with the miller's son. He's already gotten himself a real pair of trousers."

  Despite the brackish water pruning her fingers and sweat pouring from her brow, Ciara laughed hard at Marna's eternal optimism. "Sure, I'll think about it."

  As the girl tossed her sponge into the drying bucket, a loud thud echoed from above.

  Two heads swiveled up, trying to see through yards of stone. As their eyes swung back down and met, a scream echoed back; a woman's voice full of terror.

  By the time it was answered by a man's, Ciara was already halfway up the stairs to the kitchens.

  The shade grasping firmly upon his shoulder lowered slowly until its monstrous
face came into focus for Aldrin. Instead of red glowing eyes and rows of gnashing teeth, the dark monster had a well weathered, but still surprisingly youthful countenance. What skin drooped beneath his eyes seemed to come more from weariness than age, and what lines were there vanished in the folds of mahogany skin.

  "What brings you to this place, Milord?" the dark specter asked, his clean shorn chin distracted Aldrin who'd grown up in a land where as soon as you could sprout a forest on your face, you did.

  "My father," was all the prince could stammer out, transfixed.

  His monster laughed, a warm one that could put any at ease. So well honed, most did not pick up on its cultivation. Aldrin chuckled too, much squeakier.

  "Yes, father's do complicate," the Dark Knight responded.

  The boy wanted to say something witty, and wise; the kind of quick turn of the tongue that could have this exotic man belly laughing.

  "Mine's the King," was the best he could come up with and a good reason why the boy was kept far from any public speaking.

  But the Dark Knight laughed again. Asim spent much of his younger days entertaining small children, little past their weanings who bravely touched the shadow man's skin, or tried to weave a finger through his tight curls. The stares and gasps of the children did not bother him; it was simply a pity that most never grew out of the fear of anything fresh. Many had never seen a Dunner, much less spoken to, or walked past, or sold bread to one.

  It was a long, slow climb to a plateau of acceptance serving Lord Albrant. While the Lord set the precedent by never treating his new friend as anything other than a spare soldier, the fellow lesser knights took it differently. But time and age cooled hot heads and even some respect from fresh recruits who, upon meeting Asim, would be pulled aside and warned against calling the man a "sandworm" or "shadow wraith." Some of the warnings from men still bearing the scars of a Dark Knight who they regretted learning did have a breaking point.