The King's Blood (48 page)

"Push!"

"Not this again! I know I'm supposed to be pulling!" Chance yelled back at the man in blue robes, glaring at the interloper. He'd been grateful when the young princeling returned with the girl, but was less excited to see another mouth to feed beside them. This "intern" was proving to be a right donkey chasm.

The caravans rattled slowly down the Imperial Highway, later renamed Lord Joltar Boulevard, which none of the locals ever used, much to decapitating Joltar's disapproval. Small colonies of snow clung desperately to the ground, refusing to believe the coming tide of change as a warm wind swept out of the south. Like children at the first hint of spring, the Historians threw off their cloaks and coats and raced out into the muddy pits, dragging their robe's hems with them. Medwin followed the delighted screams of joy to find a ring of academics lobbing balls of mud at each other, trying to knock their only wizard hat off Chase's head.

"We're moving," was all he said before turning on his heel, trying to hide a chuckle. This daring mission of pulling one over on the Empire, the priests, and the gods themselves seemed to put a bounce in the old man's step. He never touched his walking stick.

With still grimy fingers, the most learned men in all of Arda packed up their belongings and began the final push. Aldrin had been quiet that morning. After checking in with Medwin, under the pretense of visiting the ailing patient (which the blind man saw right through), and learning that they'd be "Getting him to his army soon," the wind deflated his sails.

Coincidentally, it also did the same to the historian's land ships. A light spring breeze, while warm to the skin, did little to propel a giant cart overloaded with tomes. Without a word to anyone, Aldrin vanished deep within the bowels of the Associate professor's caravan, taking a turn at the pedals.
 

Isa, who'd been hanging on the outskirts of the men while Ciara battled her inner demons, walked a yard and a half down the lane from them. At first, she was in the lead, but either from an incredible need to get somewhere one could call civilization, or the frisky energy of spring, the caravan's soon overtook her.
 

And at the back stood Dean, Mitrione and Kaltar, each glaring at their caravan that refused to move. Kynton offered up un-useful advice as Chance struggled to get the blighted thing on the road.
 

"Did you check the emergency brake?" the new voice was still raw, but no longer sounded like death creeping across a battlefield.

Kaltar looked at his fellow brothers in books, who shrugged. Mitrione had no idea there even was an emergency brake. Sighing, the only one with any brains vanished into the depths of their caravan.

"Well, well, you look a little worse for the wear," Kynton said rubbing his fingers through what had once been stubble but was on to a full beard. The Historians offered him one of their straight razors, but he refused. For the first time in his life, he could grow a beard and he didn't want to slice a single hair from his face. As the wild dark fuzz forested his face, it was becoming clear that a little freedom could be a dangerous thing for some.

"Quite the charmer," Ciara quipped back. Medwin hadn't been happy with her rising from her sick bed but she was about to scream if she didn't get out and do something. Her mother would have tanned her hide if she'd caught her sleeping away the day in bed.

"I do my best," Kynton grinned wide, showing a row of surprisingly white teeth.

"I'd hate to see your worst, then," the girl responded.

The priest laughed at that, his voice growing louder as he realized no old man was going to shush him for disturbing the patients. "I shall have to keep my eye on you," he leered at her and winked, "both, in fact."

Ciara crossed her arms, grateful to have her old dress on instead of the intimate nightgown. Not that it revealed anything other than her head, hands and occasional toes resting beneath a blanket; but to share her bedwear with the world was like reading aloud from her diary to the square on market day.

She'd have lobbed the priest a serious barb if Kaltar hadn't poked his head out and called, "It was the brake. She should be moving again."

And to punctuate his words, the wind picked up, lifting the over patched sails. Wheels rotated quickly until the historian wafted in the breeze, clinging precariously to the door. As the caravan began to pick up speed, Chance chased after, his fingers reaching for the wheel, while Mitrione, startled from the noise, dropped his writings and waddled after.

"This should be good," Kynton said, rubbing his hands as the historians fought against their own machine.

Ciara picked up the lost bit of parchment (a poem devoted to a miniature woman named Debbie) and pocketed it, intending to hand it over to Mitrione, assuming he survived. She glanced over at the priest, who was clapping like a schoolboy as Chance clung onto the back bumper with all his force and Mitrione waved after, already huffing. "I suppose I should thank you, priest."

"Kynton, please," he said without looking at her. There were only two ways this chase would end, either the larger of the twins would stop up the wheel or...CRASH! The wagon would hit a tree. Still, good show.

"Ah, yes. The priest who gave up his frock for an exciting life trailing after a bunch of strangers and their incompetent chaperones," Ciara gestured to the historians scuttling around their once again immobilized vehicle.
 

"At least the view is pleasant," Kynton leered lightly, as if it were meant for any female within spitting distance.

Ciara scowled and glared down at her shoes, unused to this kind of male attention. Flirting was something that happened to already married women who needed a way to pass the time between plagues and keeping their offspring from dying. Things were much more direct below the stairs.

The ex-priest ignored the wave of vitriol steaming off the girl and asked nonchalantly, "What brings a woman such as yourself into the company of a band of rowdy men?"

"A Queen tried to take my heart to feed her own obsession with vanity."

"Really?"

Ciara cocked an eyebrow at him; he really had spent most of his life head deep in someone's spleen, "No."

Mitrione gave out a cheer as Kaltar and Chance attempted one final shove, getting the last of the caravans on the road. Kynton clapped excitedly, as if he'd given any help. "Do you try to shut out every man who wishes to know you?" he asked the girl beside him.
 

"Only the ones that annoy me."

"So, yes."

Ciara laughed at that, earning a glare from the witch trying to feign indifference while also remaining just close enough to eavesdrop. "You first, pr...Kynton. Why leave your order?"

"Most men enjoy devoting their every waking moment to being kicked face first into a bucket of piss you collected from a man raving about the pixies living under his skin. Me, I'm just too picky," Kynton bent down and draped his fingers around a small bud not ready for the world.

Rising, he picked a few leaves off the purple flower, little more than a weed, and then donned it into his buttonhole. "If you were cursed to spend your mortal life in a decaying city, wouldn't you take every opportunity to escape?"

Ciara paused to stand beside the ex-priest taking in the splendor of a coming spring. It didn't seem so bad to her. She'd been facing down a life serving in the castle she was born into. And now...perhaps she could return to Albrant once she said her byes to Aldrin. A life in safe, sturdy walls, scrubbing pots and pans and keeping ditzy maids like Marna in line. It was...something.

"Why wait for us?" the girl could niggle a scrap of information out of the best-trained spy if she wished to avoid her own thoughts.

Kynton sighed, "I tried to escape almost eight times before your prince traipsed through the doors."

"Eight?"

"The Bishop always threatened to toss me into the vulture pile if I got to ten. Laughs on him now. With all them unblinkers he's probably feeding it."

A chill gripped Ciara at the unwashed memory of that stumbling corpse rearing its lolling head. She'd always wanted to pass the old tales off as nothing more than drunk bravado from a man who accidentally stumbled into a crypt to take a piss. Her core beliefs were getting a good working over on this trip.

"How'd you wind up there in the first place? If'n you hated it so bad," she added.

Kynton's laissez faire face dropped to a stern countenance that belonged more on a man glaring down a galley of baron's than a priest on his first road trip. "You know much about nobility? Aside from the golden child you drag about, I mean."

Ciara chuckled a bit cruelly at his summation of Aldrin, "I...my mother served a knight. I have a fairly invasive grasp of the politics."

"Was her skin the same intoxicating color of mushroom soup?"

At that Ciara barked hard, her still healing hand coming to rest on her fluttering diaphragm, "That's a new one, I'll grant you."

Kynton smiled, his surprisingly sharp grey eyes scouring the pressing foliage around them and coming to rest on a witch who scowled, but refused to turn her head to face him. "You've heard of the Heir and the Spare," he continued his tale to the girl still chuckling beside him.

"You were the third excess lordling that fell out your mother."

"Not quite," Kynton's fingers fiddled with his small weed. "A plague of some sort that involved lots of discharge and swelling of the...a sickness swept across my father's lands. Things weren't looking so good. It cut through half his army and most of the smaller villages. By the time it reached the keep, he became desperate. Noble desperate. Calling upon the Hospars, he promised his last born son to her service in exchange for a cure.

"The men in blue waddled about, waving their hands, saying a few words, and miraculously the tide of illness turned," the priest who'd done much the same to numerous patients clawing on death's door seemed unimpressed. "My father was a man of his word and promised to send my brother to them once he reached the age of six.

"Hospar's men all went back to their dead city and life grew warm again. Frederick could look towards a life of sitting down and shutting up, while I chased about being a spoiled brat."

Kynton closed his eyes, his slow pace ceasing as the next words tumbled from his mouth slick with scorn, "Then the little bastard had to go and die. A kick from the horse, knocked his skull right in. Near his sixth birthday no less. So who should come waddling up the walk while the ashes were still warm?

"But my father, my father who hadn't known a day of work in his entire coddled life, swore he was a man of his word and silently handed his last born son over to them, not even bothering to wave goodbye."

The ex-priest was strangling his little flower, the tiny petals fresh to life bruising and slipping off the stamen. His eyes screwed tight as he fought through his own memories. Ciara involuntarily moved away out of fear of what would arise from those awakened eyes. But as soon as the moment came, it passed, and that nonchalant grin returned, "Family? It's a kick in the teeth."

The girl turned from him, the emotions washing from a man of god, almost too powerful for her (or perhaps it was his socks that he refused to change). Kynton chose to not notice, or failed to, it was hard to say as the slippery mask of the unwashed priest fell back into place.
 

"If you don't mind my asking," the priest began indifferently, "what the fuck are we doing out here?"

He'd intended the cursing to be quaint but it only earned him a glare from one of the hulking twins who favored tucking their robes into their pants. Ciara, who'd heard worse from a stable boy half his size and a quarter his age responded, "Traveling."

"So I gathered. Anywhere in particular or is this a rather bland circus? Will one of the more corpulent ones try to shove his overstuffed head into a painting of a lion's mouth?"

Ciara smiled to herself, surprised to find a growing warmth to the man who'd have left them all to the Empire if he hadn't needed them, "We're to meet with the King's army at Tumbler's End."

"Tumbler's End? Sounds like the title of a poorly thought out nursery rhyme," Kynton mumbled. "And an army? They're so much fun with rampant strains of gangrene, cholera, and every venereal disease known to man, and a few to livestock."

The girl nodded slowly, her illusion of a white knight in shining armor shattered long ago. It was hard to think a man heaven sent when he was vomiting on the tapestries yards from his bed.

The ex-priest rubbed his hands together. Casting his eyes downward, he picked up a shed stick and raised it as if it were his own sword, "To Tumbler's End!"

A creaky pair of wheels rattled over the broken stones of the road leading into the cornerstone of the Caddatch mountain pass. Only the sounds of bouncing axels and creaking wood reverberated across a town deep in the throes of an unending sleep. Well-read eyes peered out through windows, carefully sealed tight against the rising dust and to obscure the men inside. Something was terribly wrong.