Royal Bastards Read online

  We got to the Dolan estate around midafternoon. An hour’s ride from the town of Hale, this was probably as far north as Western vineyards could go; any farther north and you’d start encountering the frosty Borderlands and the Zitochi tundra beyond them. A thin veil of clouds hid the sun, casting the world in a gloomy gray light. We stepped out of the forest and onto some gently sloping hills dotted with rows and rows of barren white posts, their grapes already harvested. Another day, I might’ve thought it looked pretty. But right now they looked way too much like graves.

  “I don’t like it,” Zell muttered. “Too exposed. Anyone could see us here.”

  “Right. Which is why we’re headed toward the house.” Jax jerked his head down the vineyard. A country estate lay at the end, a beautiful two-story manor with a painted stone front and a red-shingled roof and pretty arched windows with carved wooden panels. A stable sat to the side, and an exceptionally cute herb garden sprawled out alongside it. It was a hell of a place for an old vintner, even one who’d served Castle Waverly for thirty years.

  How did the old saying go? A Kent will reward loyalty a hundred times over, but punish betrayal just once.

  We were halfway across the vineyard when Tannyn stepped out of the house, carrying an empty tin pail. He was stout and handsome, with toned biceps and neatly combed brown hair. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years, but they’d obviously been good to him: his arms were bigger and muscular like Jax’s, and a sandy beard dotted his dimpled chin.

  “Hey!” Jax shouted.

  Tannyn looked up and saw us. His jaw dropped, and his eyes went wide. Did we really look that bad? “Jax! Tilla!” he shouted.

  Jax let out a booming laugh. “Come on, Tannyn! Is that any way to greet your old friends?” He glanced back at Zell and me. “Oh. Right. It’s not every day your friends show up with a glassie warrior.”

  Tannyn rubbed his eye with the back of his big ruddy hand. “Forget him. What are you doing here?”

  I stopped moving, uncertain, but Jax pushed toward the house. “I’m gonna level with you, Tannyn. We’re in trouble. Big trouble. We need your help.”

  “My…my help?” Tannyn asked, and then blinked, as if he suddenly understood. “Right. Okay. Yeah. Of course! Whatever you need! Why don’t you come on in and tell me what’s going on?”

  “That’s my boy!” Jax beamed and broke into a sprint. I wanted to rush after him, but for some weird reason, my legs held firm. An unpleasant truth twisted my stomach. We’d come all the way out here because we desperately needed help…but if we went in there, we’d be pulling two more people into this mess. If my father got word that they’d sheltered us…they’d be just as screwed as we were. I looked to Zell, and he was standing firm, too, his brow furrowed, his gaze intense. Was he feeling guilty, too? Or was this something else entirely?

  “Jax,” I called out. “Maybe we should—”

  “Markos!” Tannyn yelled, cutting me off. “Get out here! You’re not going to believe it! Tilla and Jax are here…and they need our help!”

  The door to the stables swung open. A tall, thin young man stepped out, jaw hanging open in disbelief. Markos Dolan had barely changed. Messy blond hair hung down around his shoulders, and even in the shadow of his hand, I could make out his crooked nose and freckled cheeks. From across the vineyard, his pale green eyes found mine. “T-T-Tilla!” he stammered.

  I remembered that night, three years ago, after the Summer’s Bounty feast. The adults were all drunk, either passed out around the Castle or singing dirty ballads in the Hall. Jax and Tannyn had stolen a whole skin of wine and snuck off to drink it. Markos and I had found ourselves hiding out in the hayloft above the stables, lying together in a big, soft pile of hay, laughing about the ridiculous things we’d seen the Lords doing below. Then the conversation had lulled, and he’d kissed me, or maybe I’d kissed him, but either way we were kissing, soft but frantic, my hands around his shoulders, his gently holding my waist. I still remembered so clearly the way he’d nuzzled the side of my neck, leaving a little trail of little fluttering kisses down to my collarbone. I remembered how he’d held me close afterward, my back pressed against his chest, feeling his heart, how he’d somehow known just how far I’d wanted to go and stopped there.

  “W-why…why are you here?” he said now, the color draining from his already pale face. “Why are you—”

  “I’m sure they’ll tell us all about it, Markos,” Tannyn cut in. “But let’s get them cleaned up and fed first! They look like they just came from a war!” He shot his brother an intense glare. “Get in there and get some water ready, man!”

  “Right. Yeah. Water.” Markos broke his gaze away from mine, rushing into the house. I wanted to call out something, to warn him, to turn back….

  Jax stepped past Tannyn and vanished into the estate’s doorway. It was too late, wasn’t it? He was in. There was no turning back now. One way or another, Tannyn and Markos had tied their fates to ours. I wanted to throw up.

  “Then, let’s go,” Zell said, and marched forward.

  Tannyn knelt down and picked up his pail. Zell and I made our way toward him, and he stood back up. “Tilla,” he said. “And…well, someone I don’t know.”

  “This is Zell,” I explained. “He’s with us. He’s…he’s in the same mess we are.”

  “Right.” Tannyn looked him up and down, his gaze lingering on the long dagger sheathed at his waist. “Look, I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in. And I can’t even begin to imagine why you’re showing up at our house with a gla—with a Zitochi. I want to help. I do. But…”

  “But you won’t let me in your house,” Zell said coolly, and Tannyn didn’t reply.

  “He’s a good guy,” I explained. “Really. And he needs help, too. I’ll vouch for him, okay? He won’t cause any trouble.”

  Tannyn sighed. I could tell he was just putting on a friendly front for Jax, that inside he was worried, trying to figure out just how badly this could all end for him. He wouldn’t like the answer. “At least leave the weapons outside, okay? For my peace of mind?”

  Zell glanced at me, and I nodded. “Do it, Zell.”

  He shrugged, unlatched the belt holding the sheath at his waist, and tossed the dagger down by the entryway. Then he pulled a second knife out of a sheath under his shirt, and a third one from a strap on his boot. He threw them on top of the dagger. “Satisfied?”

  “Not the word I’d use,” Tannyn replied, and stepped back into the house. “Come on in.”

  We followed him inside, and even as sore and hungry and unhappy as I was, I couldn’t help but admire the place. Jax had visited them before, but this was my first time. The floor was smooth tile, and nice tapestries hung down the walls, showing pictures of humble farmers and vintners at work in the field, alongside a beautiful, hand-drawn map of the Western Province. A winding stairway led up toward the bedrooms. There was a big fireplace on the opposite end of the room with a pair of elegant swords mounted on the wall above it. A long wooden table sat in the middle of the room, and on it, a bowl of the most succulent, ripe, juicy raspberries I’d ever seen. Jax had already slumped down into a chair and was busy shoveling them into his mouth.

  Tannyn must have seen my hungry stare. “Pull up a chair, too,” he said. “Have some food. You look like you could use it.”

  I crossed the room in record speed to plop down next to Jax before he could polish off all the berries. My stomach practically roared with hunger. I had no time to worry about looking ladylike, not today. I wolfed down a handful of berries, and they were, no joke, the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted.

  A pair of doors at the room’s end swung open, and Markos hurried out from the kitchen, holding three carved wooden cups with water. “Here!” he handed them out. Jax grabbed one so eagerly he spilled half of it over the table. Zell declined. I reached out to take mine, and my fingertips brushed with Markos’s. He pulled back his hand, and his cheeks flushed a tiny bit.

  “Mar
kos,” I said, “it’s been a while.” He and his brother had moved out of the castle just a week after that fateful night, and we’d barely spoken since. This certainly wasn’t the reunion I’d imagined. “You’re looking good.”

  “Th-thanks,” he said. “You look really good, too.” He must have seen me glance down skeptically at my frayed sleeves and mud-caked pants, because his flush deepened to a full scarlet. “I mean…not your clothes, but you…your looks…I…That is…”

  “It’s okay, Markos. I get it,” I replied. Jax was grinning ear to ear. I kicked him under the table.

  Markos turned away, unable to keep my gaze. “Tannyn, listen…maybe we should…”

  “Get them some food!” Tannyn finished. “That’s a great idea. Why don’t you go into the kitchen and get something ready? Maybe a stew with that rabbit I brought in yesterday?”

  “I…” Markos tried, and then looked down. “Right. Okay. A stew. I’ll get right on that.”

  Markos shuffled off into the kitchen. Jax shot up out of his chair and hurried after him. “I can help with that!”

  “He’s just going to eat half the ingredients before they go in the pot!” I called after him, even as he vanished around the corner. “Watch out!”

  I’d thought that might even elicit a smile from Zell, but he just stiffened in his chair, a tense look on his face. What was wrong with him? Why was he so on edge?

  “Hey. What do you think of these?” Tannyn asked. He was standing by the fireplace and idly reached up to take one of the swords off its mount. It had a thin, flat blade, shorter than most Western swords, maybe the length of my arm. The cross guard looked like it was made from some kind of a bony shell, and the pommel held a gleaming purple stone. “Markos bought them off a merchant from the South. I thought he wasted his money, but, well, you know Markos.”

  “It’s nice.” I forced a smile. “Very elegant.”

  Zell’s hands clenched around the arms of his chair, the nightglass shards on his knuckles jutting out. I wasn’t imagining it. He was tense. And I felt myself starting to get tense, too. There was something off here, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, something just out of sight. My heart started to quicken.

  “So,” Tannyn said. He leaned back against the fireplace, the sword still in his hand. It was like he was trying to look casual holding it but didn’t know how. Why was he still holding it? Why had he taken it down in the first place? “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “We saw something,” I said. “Something we shouldn’t have. And some…some people are really mad at what we saw, and they’re after us, and…and we just need to figure out what we’re going to do.” I sighed. “I’m sorry. I think that’s all I can tell you.”

  “It’s fine. Totally fine. Don’t worry about it. Honestly, I don’t even want to know more.” Tannyn turned the blade over in his hand. “Just relax. We’ll get you some stew and something to drink, and maybe a nice bed to sleep in. You guys can figure it all out then.” He was being friendly, so friendly, but was this weird? Should he have been asking more questions? Or was I just reading too much into it? Was I losing my mind? Why were my knees shaking so much?

  “And horses,” Zell finally spoke up. “Could you get us horses? If we needed them?”

  “That might be a little tougher, but…but yeah. We’ve got enough.” Tannyn nodded.

  “For all of us?” Zell pried.

  “Yeah. We’ve got five horses to spare.”

  Zell let out a sharp exhale.

  Tannyn froze in place.

  Five horses to spare, Tannyn had said. But we hadn’t said a word about there being five of us. As far as he knew, it was just me, Zell, and Jax. So how did he…? How could he…?

  Oh no.

  The room exploded into a flurry of motion. With a roar, Tannyn lunged toward us, the sword in his hands plunging right at me like an arrow. But Zell was faster. He hurled himself back in his chair, shoved one hand out to take me with him, and kicked the bottom of the table up with his feet. Zell and I fell to the ground onto our backs, and the table flipped over, acting like a shield between us and Tannyn, whose sword drove into the wood with a shower of splinters and stuck, its razor-sharp point just a few inches from my face.

  He’d tried to kill me. Tannyn Dolan, the boy I’d grown up with, had just tried to kill me.

  I lay there, stunned, but Zell moved. He kicked up off his back and pounced like a cat, clearing the table in a single stride to drive his fist right into Tannyn’s neck…and plunge his nightglass knuckles straight into his throat.

  The two fell back against the fireplace. Tannyn’s eyes went wide with pain and horror. Blood bubbled up from his lips, even as his hands twitched at his sides, and he let out a terrible, rasping gurgle. Zell jerked his hand aside, tearing what was left of Tannyn’s throat open, and Tannyn’s life shot out of him in a hot red spray.

  There was a commotion from the kitchen, the clatter of dishes and the impact of bodies hitting the ground. Jax’s scream cut through the house. Now I moved, jerking up to my feet and sprinting around the corner.

  Jax lay on the floor, with Markos on top of him, surrounded by shards of a shattered plate. Markos was holding a knife, a long, sharp butcher knife, and Jax’s hand on his wrist was the only thing stopping him from plunging it into Jax’s chest. Markos pressed down, overcoming Jax’s struggles, bringing the blade closer and closer. “I’m sorry!” he stammered. “I’m so sorry!”

  I acted on pure instinct. I crossed the room, grabbed a heavy iron frying pan off a rack, and swung it in a hard, vertical arc that caught Markos right on the side of the head.

  When I was a little girl, one of my favorite books was Muriel Vagabond, a funny little story about a girl in a theater troupe who fought off robbers. She’d hit them with a frying pan, and it made a hilarious WHOMP sound as she bopped them out cold.

  There was no hilarious WHOMP sound here, just the sickening wet crack of the pan fracturing Markos’s skull. He tumbled off Jax with a yelp and fell onto his side, twitching, moaning, blood pooling around his head like tea spilled from a cracked cup.

  My stomach turned on me. A hot wave of bile shot up my throat, and I just barely kept myself from throwing up. On the ground, Jax gasped for air. “What…? what…? Why…?”

  I tried to lean down to help him, but I almost fell over. My legs were made of water. I slumped to the floor, my head spinning, desperate to find the words. “They…they tried…” But nothing came out, nothing that could make what had just happened make sense.

  Jax sat up and wailed as he looked through the kitchen’s doorway back into the main room. Tannyn lay against the fireplace, his face slack and pallid, his hands limp at his sides, his shirt soaked red from the ragged ruin that was his throat. “No,” Jax moaned. “No, Tannyn, no…Oh no, why…?”

  “He tried to kill us.” Zell stepped around the corner into the kitchen. His voice was flat, his face blank, emotionless. You’d never guess he’d just murdered a man with his bare hands. How could he be so cold, so calm? “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “He…he…” Jax’s eyes glistened with tears as he crawled forward. His pain cut me worse than all the falls and scrapes of last night. “Why? Why would they…? How could they…? Why?”

  “That’s what I’d like to find out,” Zell replied. He stepped past Jax, past me, over to where Markos was moaning. Zell kicked him in the side, rolled him onto his back, and then knelt over him, driving his knee down into Markos’s chest. Markos let out a howl, eyes wide with pain.

  My impulse was to shove Zell, to protect Markos, to stop this. But I held back and did nothing.

  “How did you know?” Zell demanded. “Why did you try to kill us? Why?”

  “W-w-whisper,” Markos choked out. “Flew into town. This morning. R-r-roost master wrote it up.” He reached into his jacket with a trembling hand, his fingers twitching. I hoped that was just from fear, but I knew it was probably the concussion. He pulled out a crumpled b
rown parchment, and I reached over, took it, unfolded it….

  “Oh no,” I whispered.

  I’d seen parchments like this before, of course, plenty of times, big printed flyers with the word WANTED at the top and a bounty at the bottom, usually with a description of some scruffy brute wanted for rape or murder or theft. I’d never thought I’d see one with my own name.

  “What does it say?” Jax demanded. “Please. Read what it says!”

  “‘Wanted dead…for murder and treason,’” I read. “‘In an act of savagery that will forever shame our great Province, these three West-born youth, along with a Zitochi exile and a servant girl from Lightspire, murdered the visiting Princess Lyriana Volaris and Archmagus Rolan Volaris in cold blood. They committed this grave act at the behest of the Zitochi tribes and should be considered traitors to the Kingdom of Noveris. They are extremely dangerous, and may spread seditious lies, including passing the Lightspire servant off as the Princess. Anyone aiding them will be found guilty of treason and executed without mercy.’” I reached the bottom of the paper and realized how badly my hands were shaking. “‘Lord Kent has authorized the people of the West to kill these five on sight. The bounty for their bodies is ten thousand Golden Eagles each.’”

  Below were our names and the descriptions of the five of us, written up in shockingly precise detail. I didn’t need to read them out loud, and I didn’t need to know that the best word to describe me was apparently “plain.” Any other time, that would’ve stung. Now, it was the least of my issues.

  “They framed us,” Jax muttered, slumping back onto the floor. “Those sons of bitches, they…they…”

  “They marked us for death,” I said. The paper fluttered out of my hands. I didn’t realize I’d had any hope left, but I must have, because my chest tightened with the horrible feeling of it draining away. Because that was the terrible truth, the one I hated to admit, that all this time, even with everything that had happened, I’d still thought maybe there was some way out. Maybe, if we just lay low and bided our time, there’d be no need to keep this secret and Jax wouldn’t be in danger. Maybe, just maybe, my father and I could work this out, and things could go back to how they were.