Royal Outlaw: (Royal Outlaw, Book 1) (20 page)

“But none of you can understand that because you were born to noble families where there is always food on the table and you can hunt anywhere you like—except in the king’s forests. And if the buck you are chasing just happens to run through a peasant’s crop, you run right after, smashing and ruining the only livelihood the farmer has.”

“It is all in good sport,” Sir Robert said.

Mariel laughed bitterly. “I’m sure the starving peasants agree with you.”

“Peasants do not deserve to eat meat, they are not good enough for it,” Isabel said.

“What makes you any better than them? Is it because you were born to privilege? Is it because your mother didn’t deign to nurse or raise you, but hired someone else to do it for her and then loved you enough to pack you off to a finishing school at the first chance she got? Is it because you are lazy and attend fancy balls and outrageously expensive banquettes and hunts? Or is it because you live that way only by taking advantage of those worse off than you by destroying them with taxes?” Mariel’s voice began to rise. The blood pounded in her head, and she plunged on without thought of the consequences.

“Taxes to work their own land. Taxes to their local noble. Taxes to the temples. Taxes to the king. There are taxes to use the mills belonging only to the nobles to make flour from the grain the farmers produce. Then there are taxes to use the ovens to bake the bread. And what about the salt tax? Everyone must buy at least five pounds of salt a year, but those living on the coast pay less—up to sixty percent less—than people further inland. And those who can’t pay the taxes? They go to debtors’ prison or are hanged.”

“But you are noble too,” pointed out one of the older girls. “You are not a starving peasant, yet you have been stealing from us for months!”

“And I gave what I stole from you and the things my grandparents sent with me to the townsfolk and nearby farmers. I’ve kept nothing.”

“Dear gods!” Sir Robert cursed. “This kingdom is going to the dogs! This is no royal princess. She is a thief, a vagabond, an outlaw, a rat! Valmir will abandon our weak kingdom lead by a woman. Our neighbors will prey on us and chop us into bits!”

“You speak the truth,” Isabel agreed. “The king made a mistake naming this treacherous snake his heir. He was weakened by the fact that she is family and so favored her.”

“Family?” Mariel shrieked in disbelief. “He left me for dead years ago! He insists that I will be broken of my bad behavior here at this gods-forsaken finishing school.”

Isabel latched on to this piece of information. “It is no wonder she has been behaving better. She wants to leave and return to the capital. She claimed this was an assassination attempt,” Isabel pointed to the large, dark stain on the front of her gown. “To make us think she is the victim.”

“I. Am. Not. Lying.”

The other girl ignored Mariel. “She will kill the king and queen and make it look like someone else did it because supposedly another assassin tried unsuccessfully to kill her too . . .”

“The drink really had poison in it. For once, won’t you believe me?”

Sir Robert picked up where Isabel and left off: “Princess Mariel will claim the kingdom as her own and destroy Natric. We nobles will fall first! Anyone in the aristocracy, or even remotely related, will be killed. It will be a revolution!”

“
No!
” Mariel screamed in horror.

She could not believe things had gotten out of hand so fast, but by this time, no one was listening to her. The girls and many of the priestesses were panicked.

“We must do something!”

“She must be stopped!”

“
Revolution?
”

Mariel’s protests went unheard. What they were thinking was murder, genocide. Even the Resistance did not want that. They had been trying to overthrow the oppressive Natrician monarchy for years, but not in the way Sir Robert described. They would not kill people simply for the blood that ran in their veins, or the privileges they had been born to. And Mariel had never intended to be part of the new leadership. She did not even want to be princess, let alone queen.

“High Priestess, you must throw her out of this convent. Stop her before she gains too much power and ruins us all!”

Mariel knew High Priestess could not expel her, she answered to the king and queen who would never allow it . . . Mariel paused at that thought. What if High Priestess already thought Mariel planned to lead a bloody revolution? Maybe she had seen that the princess could not be expelled from the school and thought the only way to stop her was to kill her. High Priestess had been surprisingly forgiving after the fiasco with Sir Robert’s purse. She had even helped the girl with her hair, insisting that she attend supper—had it all been an act? An act so that Mariel would go to supper and meet her death?

High Priestess had been trying to persuade Mariel to take the drink, was she behind the assassination attempt? A bitter taste filled Mariel’s mouth and she felt betrayed. She did not like High Priestess, who was her prison warden, but she had always respected the woman. Mariel had thought High Priestess attempted to be fair to all her charges, but if she had taken it upon herself to ensure that a poisoned goblet was given to Mariel, then the priestess was just as bad as other nobles.

The dining room was a scene of chaos with girls crying and panicked and half the occupants of the room yelling at each other. Mariel stood there feeling defeated and trapped. She had begun to trust, only to be betrayed. Her lies were fewer and her truths more common, but she told the truth about the poison and no one believed her.

“Quiet!” High Priestess ordered over the din.

The dining room fell obediently silent and everyone turned to look at the woman.

“Priestess Maren, please escort Miss Mariel to the temple where she will spend the night praying to Narel for forgiveness for her wicked lies and abominable behavior. Another priestess will relieve your vigilance in an hour.”

Priestess Maren rose from her seat without protest, but her angry eyes pierced Mariel.

“Follow me.”

Mariel looked back at the many angry and frightened faces. No one believed her and everyone thought she was the enemy, not the victim. None of the girls or women dared to meet her beseeching gaze. Except Cara.

“I’m telling the truth,” Mariel told her quietly.

Cara looked at her with wide, fear-filled eyes, but she nodded to show her friend that she believed her.

Mariel’s feet were asleep and her knees ached painfully. She could not have been in the temple for more than half an hour and already her body protested the position. Priestess Maren had instructed her to kneel on the hard stone floor in front of the altar. The only good part of being in the temple was that it was made of stone and cooler than other parts of the convent and outside.

The girl could feel the priestess’s angry eyes bore into the back of her head, just like she could feel the poisoned wine that seeped through her bodice and some of her skirts. The wine was sticky and unpleasant, a reminder to Mariel of the injustice of the situation. She had been punished for something she had not done. Usually when she was arrested it was for a viable reason, not for saving an ungrateful noble girl’s life.

To distract herself from thinking about what had happened, she stared at the towering black marble statue of Narel with her dark skin and flowing hair. The goddess stood tall and elegant, holding a shoot of rue in her left hand to signify healing. Her right arm was stretched forward and to the side, as though inviting the worshipper to embrace her.

Not that anyone would dare hug a goddess
, Mariel thought,
especially when she is in the form of an eight-foot-tall stone sculpture.

The diversion did not last long, and soon the girl’s mind wandered back to the events of the day. It seemed impossible that the day had begun so regularly and it was only the last few hours when everything had fallen apart. Mariel knew she should feel angry toward the priestesses, the students, and the guests, and even the cook who had slipped the poison in her wine, but all she felt was exhaustion. She did not want to think or move, but simply to sit—although not on a hard floor.

Something nagged at her mind, and it was not the poison or the horror at being accused of leading a bloody revolution. What bothered her was the scene she had witnessed in the forest when the hooded figure had passed the poison to Cook. For some reason, Mariel felt very uneasy when she thought about that mysterious hooded figure in the forest and suspected that person was behind the poison attempt. There was no logical reason for this belief. After all, the hooded figure could just be the person who made the poison and sold it to High Priestess through Cook, but Mariel had a feeling it was the hooded figure who was the mastermind.

She mentally ran through a list of all the assassins she knew, but most of them would have done the job themselves.

She could not forget the stench of the rotting carcass in the woods, and she had no idea why. It could not possibly be important. Animals died all the time and one did not always have to see the carcass to smell it. It was a nervous feeling in her gut that refused to allow the seemingly nonsensical smell to escape her thoughts. In fact, it was almost as though it tugged at her memory . . .

She remembered crouching behind a rock in a barren land while she struggled to stay warm with a single hole-riddled blanket. She remembered the smell, that same unbearable stench of carrion, followed by several brown recluse spiders climbing over the rock. She had fallen backward, only to find herself staring at the hem of grey robes . . . the memory shifted to running, running, running. Running through forests and towns and cities. Always running, because she could not let
him
get her . . . her mother, her beautiful mother telling her they must escape, they must find a way to run before
he
killed them. They did not need to fear the mutilation and torture they had witnessed as the fates of their servants, what they faced was worse, although she did not know what it was, and they needed to run . . . she remembered her mother’s dying screams, remembered looking back as she ran to the hope of freedom . . . Mariel knew now what they had needed to run from: the Brown-Spider-Man.

Mariel gasped and her heart hammered in her chest. She felt sick, so sick she thought she might vomit on the temple floor. Her entire body trembled, as she tried to force the new-found memories out of her head, but she could not escape anymore. She now remembered pieces that had happened in the gap in her memory. Everything except what the Brown-Spider-Man had looked like.

Fear held her fast now, a fear so impossibly powerful that it was all she was aware of and, for the first time in years, she could not deny it. The fear bound her so tightly she did not hear Priestess Maren’s jump of surprise when someone started banging on the other side of the temple door, screaming that they open it, or else she would have remembered that the temple door could not be locked. It was a terror so strong it brought the stench of the Assassin into the temple . . . until a smooth voice broke the silence of the holy room, a voice that did not belong to the man pounding on the door, or to the priestess sitting in one of the benches.

“I doubted you would fall into the trap of the poison,” the voice said, seemingly speaking out of her partially remembered past.

At first Mariel thought that the voice was something her imagination had created from a memory, but then Priestess Maren screamed and kept screaming. Mariel did not dare turn around.

The priestess paused in her screaming to gather her breath and Mariel heard the yelling on the other side of the door, more people were there now, not just one. There should have been nothing stopping them from entering.

“Too frightened to even look at me?” The Assassin asked, raising his voice just loud enough to be heard above the screams of the priestess. “Cease that incessant shrieking this instant, human!”

Mariel heard the scream strengthen for a second and then cut short. It sounded like a body fell to the floor. The pounding and yelling on the door intensified, but still Mariel remained frozen in fear.

“Mmmm,” the Assassin said as though he had just taken the bite out of a cake. “I have always enjoyed the flavor of a priestess. Somehow eating someone dedicated to the gods tastes unbelievably delicious.”

Tears of fright ran down the cheeks of the girl who still knelt in front of the altar and her breath came in gasps. The memories and the present immobilized her with fear.

“Why will you not turn and great an old friend? It has been a very long time since we last met.”

The Brown-Spider-Man made no sound as he moved toward the front of the temple where Mariel knelt, but she could sense his movements.

“It would be a lie for me to say that I am disappointed the poison did not work.”

Small creatures scuttling across the stone floor entered into Mariel’s vision. For more than eleven years she had thought these spiders were the only thing she truly feared, but now she remembered and she knew she had been wrong.

“You have escaped me too long for me to allow such a . . .
merciful
demise.”

The poisonous spiders began to crawl up her gown and onto her arms. The Brown-Spider-Man stood directly behind her now. She could feel the heat radiating from his body.

“We shall have a little fun, you and I.”

A striped hand, pale as dead flesh, reached out and caressed her cheek. She could barely breath now and her heart beat so fast she wondered if it would burst, and hoped it would because then she would be spared the agony of a long, drawn out death at the hands of this monster.

“I admit I am disappointed at this meeting I have looked forward to for so long,” he whispered in her ear.

The stench of the breath was unbearable, Mariel gagged and vomited. The Brown-Spider-Man stepped back to avoid her sick and the brown recluse spiders fled from her clothes and arms.

“Yes,” the Assassin mused, “My smell tends to have that effect on people. It is a side effect of my diet.”

Mariel’s body convulsed automatically and when she had finished throwing up she was immobilized again.

“You were much more of a warrior at age six . . . and here I was, thinking you would put up an interesting fight.”

  The Brown-Spider-Man stepped close again. He ran his sharp fingernails gently over the skin on her left arm. Every hair on her body stood on end.

“I’ll just have to give you the right motivation.”

The Assassin pressed deep into her soft skin and ran his sharpened fingernails up her arm. Mariel screamed in pain and jerked away, staggering to her feet. The corrupted zreshlan grabbed her tightly by her injured arm and pulled her close to him. She screamed and thrashed, but he was stronger than she was. He drove his sharp teeth into her bleeding arm and bit down. A red haze clouded her vision as he tore off a small chunk of her flesh.

She remembered the small knife she kept in her bodice. With her free hand she pulled it out. It was not much longer than her middle finger, but she hoped it would buy her time to escape. She twisted her torso toward the monster. Catching sight for the first time of his bloodshot eyes with their grey irises, Mariel almost froze. With great effort, she tore her gaze away and focused on her target. She tried to keep her hand steady as she plunged the little knife toward the artery in his neck.

He saw what she was doing and moved slightly. Her knife pierced his skin and buried itself in the flesh of his shoulder. The corrupted zreshlan merely grimaced, but he released her.

Mariel staggered slightly and her head swam with pain and fear. She turned and bolted toward the back of the temple. Blood poured out of her left arm, but she did not pay attention to it. Staunching the blood would not matter if she could not reach safety first. The body of Priestess Maren lay in the aisle, with a large chunk torn out of the neck. Mariel leaped over her, but slipped in the priestess’s blood and barely managed to keep from falling.

Amazingly, she reached the door without the Brown-Spider-Man catching her. She reached out and pulled on the door handle, but the door refused to budge. Knowing it was useless, but unwilling to give up, Mariel tugged on the handle repeatedly.

Those outside the doors shouted to her and each other as they pounded on the wood of the door and on the hinges.

“Let me out!” Mariel screamed. “Please, let me out!”

All sound on the other side of the door ceased.

“Mariel?” A man’s voice asked desperately.

“They cannot get in,” the Assassin said calmly, still standing near the altar.

Mariel pulled on the handle again. “You have to get me out, James!”

Laughter from the corrupted zreshlan filled the temple, which was empty save for him and the desperate girl. The laughter sounded normal but echoed eerily in the sacred place.

“Mariel,” James said, obviously trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “What is he doing to you?”

The laughter ceased and the girl turned and saw the monster start to walk slowly down the aisle toward her. She gripped the handle with both hands and pulled with all her might, ignoring the pain in her bleeding arm where the Assassin had removed a chunk of flesh. The Assassin stepped closer, smiling ever so slightly.

“No! No! No!” Mariel collapsed to the floor and began to claw at the door in desperation. Splinters and chunks of wood delved into her hands and beneath her fingernails. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the Assassin stepping over the body of the dead priestess, he was halfway to her.

“Mariel!” James cried. “Are you still there?”

Mariel stopped scratching at the door and leaned against it as hard as she could, hoping she could pass through the wood, wishing there was a spell to move through solid objects, knowing that even if there were she did not know enough evraïsér to use it. She remembered Anoria always nagging her about learning magic. Maybe if she had studied more and studied harder she could undo the magic lock the corrupted zreshlan had placed on the door. Maybe she would have lived.

“Mariel!”

The salty taste of tears hit Mariel’s taste buds. “He’s going to kill me. He’s going to kill me like he killed my mother,” she sobbed into the door. “I’m scared. Please, don’t let him kill me, James.”

“Mariel!”

“How sweet,” the monster said, not more than ten feet away. “I always find it amusing to watch my victims plead for help. I must admit, this started out badly, but you are making this much more interesting now.”

A new emotion entered Mariel, one she knew much better than fear: anger. She would not die sobbing. She would die fighting. Her left arm was too weak and painful to move now, so with her right hand she pulled one knife from its ankle sheath and set it on the floor beneath her blood and wine stained skirts. She attempted to stop her body from shaking, but could not. The zreshlan was almost too close, she needed to act now.

She pulled the second knife from its sheath and as she jumped into a standing position she threw the weapon. It flew toward the assassin, not as perfectly as she had hoped, but well enough. Her heart fluttered in her throat as hope told her the knife would strike him in the chest. The very tip of the knife poked through the skin on the right side of the monster’s chest and stopped.

Mariel’s heart ceased beating as she saw the knife hovering suspended in the air. A small blossom of maroon colored blood seeped into the grey robes that the knife had cut through. The Assassin had not even flinched. He turned his eyes toward the knife poised against his chest.

“Now that was impressive, dear princess,” said the corrupted zreshlan nonchalantly, as though he had not nearly been killed, but then again, maybe he could have stopped the knife earlier but wanted to be more dramatic. “But this is not the place it belongs.”