The King's Blood (39 page)

"Let's try the door," the prince said, trying to pass off his blush as a snow flush, which was rather easy to do as they hadn't been warm in three days.

"You mean the one shattered upon the ground?" Ciara asked, pointing to what had once been a mighty set of siege proof doors, now resting in their own stone graves.

Aldrin shrugged and headed haphazardly down the hill, his boots sliding in the wet snow. Isadora looked out across the valley shrouded in shadows, the few pillars bursting through the mist like fractured bones.

"It smells of death," the witch said.

"Could be worse," Ciara responded, watching Aldrin finally succumb to gravity as his backside hit the ground, still sliding. She laughed quietly at the sight of the prince trying to maintain his dignity while sledding ass first down a hill.

"I suppose you are correct, it could taste of death as well," Isa said plainly and more cautiously began her own descent.
 

Ciara shivered under her coat. The witch had kept mostly to herself, only making the occasional comment or direction, but every now and then Ciara'd overhear her talking to herself. Most of it was muttered in a foreign tongue that clipped by indecipherably, but there were moments when she'd seize upon a familiar phrase or word and the soft winds carried back the muttering talk of "blood after the snow, summer's delight."

She still didn't believe in magic, the most she'd seen the witch do was preserve some fruit and keep Aldrin from dying. If that was all it took to be a witch, Ciara should be a full hag by now. But that didn't mean the witch wasn't dangerous. Anyone could wield a knife to the back. Ciara glanced behind her once more.
 

There'd been no sign of the assassin from the moment Aldrin ventured into the woods to find Isadora already packed and ready to leave for the dead city. No boots crunched in the shifting snows and no shadow followed behind far in the distance of the flat landscape. The fact she'd had no proof Taban was with them made her all the more certain the assassin was closer than she feared. Shaking her head, Ciara resigned herself to her fate and joined the others down the hill.

Aldrin was already shaking the back of his borrowed shirt trying to get the snow out by the time Isa joined him, delicately setting her feet upon the broken road that made up Putras' main street. For being of a rather intimidating girth, she moved silently in her strange slippers as if she spent most of her life trying to not be seen.

"There's a door up ahead," the witch said, peering through the broken shambles of eras long since lived. A set of ravens perched on top of the half shattered arch watching the new flesh. The descended keystone made for a great leaning spot for Aldrin as he lifted off one boot and dumped snow out.

"How is it you cannot keep out of the snow?" Isa asked, watching the boy replace one shoe and then attack the other.

"Dunno. Snow's just clumpy water. I've never had any aversion to swimming," Aldrin admitted watching Ciara try to cautiously balance her way down, one-foot sliding forward as her arms waved about like a very poor juggler.
 

"Cold, clumpy water," the witch pointed out. Her hands vanished into the folds of her own coat and cupped around the crystal she attacked the assassin with. Every now and again, she'd pull it out at night and wave it about, as if she were casting some spell. Then a huge nothing would happen and she'd carry on as if it were all perfectly normal.

"You don't much care for snow?" Aldrin asked, surprised to find someone who hated the white wash. If it weren't for the ease of a fearsome dragon's head, the Osteros probably would have drafted a snowflake for their crest. Entire weeks were lost building terrifying snow forts that would melt before Springday. But it kept the knights busy during the dark winter months and away from the handmaidens.

"I don't much care for any of this land," Isadora said, rubbing her pale fingers against the charred carbon still clinging to the aching pillars from an ancient fire.

"So, you're not from around here," Aldrin pointed out to her.

Isa looked over at him, her thin eyes narrowing more. She seemed uncertain if he was playing with her or really that stupid, "Didn't my face give it away?"

He shrugged, "It's not like it has scales or anything."

"Charming," Isadora muttered. She looked over at the Dunner who spoke like a backwater Ostero, shivering from the drifts that clung to her skirts.
 

Ciara's hair scarf slipped back in the fight to the bottom and black curls framed her face, growing ashen in the rising cold. "We should get inside quickly, feels like a storm's coming."

But in the forgotten city it felt more like the storm long since passed, and the souls of those left behind were still waiting for their own ship to the underworld. Aldrin dropped his foot and stood, shaking off what he hoped would be the last of the snow for a while. Turning, he began to lead them through the cracked teeth of the giant's mouth. "Maybe they'll have hot buttered rum inside," he mused aloud. He may be an Ostero, but he still preferred the feel of something warm against his skin over the bite of ice.

"We'll be lucky if there's anyone alive in there," Ciara muttered, falling in beside Aldrin. She glanced into the void where errant wind whistled through cracked stone. Aside from the clop of their feet, no foreign sounds echoed through the dead city.

"There's life moving," the witch said confidently. Her walking stick was out again, carefully measuring each of her steps.
 

"And you just happen to know that because..." Ciara started, favoring the sound of a voice over the deafening silence of ages past.

Isa focused her pale eyes, the alien white appearing a haunting shade of blue in the shadows of the half goddess. She stared the girl up and up some more. It wasn't always easy intimidating someone when you barely broke five feet, "You do not want to know."

Ciara folded her arms, "And maybe I do. Maybe I want to hear all of your witchy secrets. Teach me how to throw about fire, and ride on broomsticks, and get cats to do my bidding."

The air crackled as Isadora laughed, sparks jumping off her fingers from the buildup of static charge in the dry air. "Ha ha ha ha, anyone can toss about fire if they have the means to douse a rag in alcohol and are none too attached to their fingers. The closest a witch can come to flying while on a broom is jumping from her roof and then an umbrella is preferable. As for the cats, there is not a man or beast alive who can command a cat."

"So it's all trickery then. Know more than the peasant you just snickered a few coins from," Ciara stuck her chin out.
 

The scepticst was strong with this one. Isadora stepped lightly over to the dark girl and waved her hand about. The sparks grew stronger until, with a flick of her wrist, she sent a bolt of energy right into Ciara's face. Ciara jumped back, her hands rising up to bat away something that suddenly wasn't there. Fingers previously afraid of the shock, poked at the air no longer kicking energy out like a hamster inside a sweater. Ciara glared over at the witch, who switched her staff to her other hand and laughed.

"You're right. It is knowing more than the person you're with. Much more."

"Aldrin," Ciara asked the boy loudly, "Did your contract say what state the witch had to be in before you gave her the sword?"

As Isa rose to her full height, Ciara's fist balled up inside her mitten. She had a good half a foot on the girl, though the witch looked like she could be a scrapper. Get in fast and close before she could do any damage with her stick.

A stone skittered between the two, breaking their death glare and both turned to look at Aldrin who had his arm pulled back with another spare stone ready to launch. "We can debate the nature of magic versus science when we're warm," he said.
And not under the unsettling stare of crumbling statues
, he thought to himself.

The city might be dead but the stones felt alive. Like something was hiding in the mist. Something that was watching them all very closely.

Without waiting for the stalemate to be notarized, Aldrin turned and crossed the final threshold. A pair of statues, with the bat-like ears of the fabled elves, guarded the smaller side entrance with a set of scrolls. To doctors, the bill was mightier than the sword. Aldrin dropped his stone and rapped his fist upon the wooden door, about the only piece of wood left in the world of stone. He knocked again, as the mists began to swirl in the distance, obscuring the statues he'd bumped into on his way down.

"Try the handle," Ciara suggested, the chill rising.
 

He lifted the latch and pulled, but could only move the door an inch before a bolt rattled and stuck it fast. "No luck."

"Life, huh?" Ciara asked the witch, whose eyes darted to the edges.

Isa didn't respond to the jab. She was too busy trying to pierce the mists. Something was rising.

Aldrin pulled harder on the door, shaking its hinges but otherwise failing to budge it. "Maybe there's another entrance we can try?"

Ciara looked up at the roof, shuddering under the minor strength of the prince. It was doubtful anywhere else could have stood the test of time, much less the trial of negligence. As she glanced towards the witch, a knot thudded into her gut. The witch's eyes grew wide as she slinked closer to the teenagers, her knuckles white as she gripped her staff.

"Something tells me we should be getting inside, and quickly," Ciara said as calmly as possible.

She shouldered around Aldrin and banged her own gloved fists against the door. He knocked again himself; a still cherry "hello" for Ciara's growing "Open up in the name of 'I don't want to be eaten!'"

A witch's shoe bumped into his heel and he whipped his head around. It could be the cold digging into his brain or the macabre setting, but, for a brief moment, he thought he saw movement in the distance. Not the kind of movement one expected from an animal in full control of its senses. It was the stilted, jerky twitchings of something in its death throes. Only it was upright and coming towards them.

"Cia," he said evenly, his finger pointing out into the fog.

But he didn't need to warn her; every sense screamed that they were in the kind of mortal danger that led to feudal legends told around a summer campfire: "By the time the door was answered, no one was there, but hanging on the door handle was a solitary hand!"

She wasn't about to go down like that and threw her whole body into trying to knock the door down. One...two...

As she leaned far back, about to smash into it for a third time, the scratching of metal pulling back resounded but it was too late to stop her momentum. Just as the lock broke, she powered through the door, slamming it wide open and tumbling on top of a startled man in a blue robe. Aldrin and Isadora scampered inside after her, the latter re-bolting the door tightly and sighing. Ciara tried to push herself up off the man beneath her, who was more robe than body.

He glared at the girl rolling to her side and rising slowly, "Whate'r it is you're selling, we don't want any."

"I'm so sorry," she offered her hand but he refused it, sitting up slowly and checking for any broken bones. "But there was...something out there," she started to try to explain the gut feeling of dread but inside the flickering lights of the church foyer it seemed to have been little more than an overactive imagination.
 

"Ain't nothing there but the eternal sleepers," he said, referring to what his order called their failures. They weren't dead; they were just sleeping…for a really long time. And rotting a bit. It's what all the cool patients were doing these days.

The man rose fully, the bleak candlelight giving depth to an already hard worn face. Life in service of a demi-god was not an easy one, and it showed well in his stooped shoulders and talon fingers as the priest tried to stick his jaw back into place after Ciara rammed her shoulder into it.

"Whatcha want anyway? You's sick?" he covered his mouth with his hand as he asked them, forgetting the rules of his order. It'd been months since their last pilgrim.
 

The women looked at Aldrin, the one carrying the papers. He gulped a bit and said in as commanding voice as he could muster, "No sir, we have strict orders to reclaim a stored tome in your library."

Aldrin unfolded the letter and handed it to the man. He held the sheet to his face as if the words could jump straight to his brain, "You're...clerics? Oh dear..." he scratched his chin, bereft of beard but with the start of a day-old stubble. "We don't be messing with your kind no more."

He handed the letter back to Aldrin and lurched towards the door, his fingers trying for the locking mechanism. "You best be heading back to your master, tell him to try some other library. Ours is closed."

A gasp caught in Aldrin's throat as the priest wrenched open the rusting door and three pairs of eyes looked out into the snowy void, expecting something with sharp teeth to gnash back. Only the howling winds and mist answered. Ciara smashed her hand onto the open door, ripping it from the priest's hands and slamming it shut. He turned to glare at the sandworm who sent him careening to the filthy floor.
 

"We'd like to see your manager," she said coolly, "and we're not leaving until we do."

The priest opened his mouth to refuse her, but thought better of it. Best to pass the problem off, he had better shit he could be doing. And that short one was giving him the willies. The Bishop could deal with them.

"Very well then," he said, his fingers slipping the lock back in place, "walk this way." And he shuffled forward, leading heavily with his right foot.

The others fell behind, following deep down into the livable remains of the crumbled city.

"Aldrin, stop that. He didn't mean it literally."