Royal Outlaw: (Royal Outlaw, Book 1) (4 page)

At the edge of Parloipae, Mariel would change into human clothes and saddle Iyela, so that they would not draw too much attention, but for now the two friends could race through the forest together, uninhibited by human restraints.

For three full days, Mariel searched the Citadel in the City of the Gods. Despite dodging hordes of powerful magicians dressed in the robes of priests and priestesses dedicated to Valmir and Narel, the patron gods of Natric, she had been entirely unsuccessful with uncovering information about the heir James had spoken of. Not even Lizzie or Tristan, her two best contacts, had anything of use to say about the subject. Another two days had been spent questioning her contacts in the city itself, but to no avail.

Mariel was disheartened, but not surprised. She had strong blood-ties to King Vincent and Queen Meredith, but outside of Parloipae only her papa knew that Mariel Quickwit, swordmaster and skilled thief and spy, had once been Mariel de Sharec, illegitimate child of the exiled Princess Carolina. This lack of knowledge was because very few people had known that Sergeant Darren Haroldsson of the Versati Corps was the father of the princess’s illegitimate child, and those who did were either dead or had sworn under penalty of death never to mention it aloud.

Everyone in the kingdom, including the monarchs, believed her to be dead. The monarchs had refused to look for her after Princess Carolina’s death even though it would have taken only a drop of blood and a bit of evraïsér because she shared their blood. Instead, they had left her to die.

As Mariel walked through the slums of the City of the Gods, she felt her anger grow toward the king and queen of Natric. Not only had they left her to die, but they left their people to die as well. On a street corner sat a woman who had grown so thin that the rags she called a dress hung loosely on her frame. Beside her were two hollow eyed children, their stomachs swollen from lack of nutrition, one wept in hunger. Not a street over, were two men, one without an arm, the other without the lower portion of his leg, victims of the constant wars the kingdom had to fight to keep the war god Valmir as their patron god. Mariel slipped into the shadows of an alley as six rough men walked down the street, obviously looking for trouble. No one would stop them; there were no guards to protect the people in this part of the city. Although Mariel often dragged men like that to the City’s jailhouse and deposited them unconscious with a note revealing their crime, six were too many to attack, especially when she had not caught them in the act of doing wrong.

The men passed by, but not before Mariel heard a whimper behind her. Four children huddled together looking at Mariel in fear. Just because she was a girl did not mean she would not hurt them. Mariel wished she still had some of the money she had stolen from the Citadel to give them, but no matter how thin she stretched the funds, they never stretched far enough. There were always more starving, desperate people.

Mariel turned her back on the children and stepped out of the alley and back into the street. She pulled the hood of her cloak further over her head and kept to the shadows as a couple of drunken men passed by. A scantily clad girl, who could not have been more than twelve or thirteen, stepped in front of the men and shakily offered them the only thing she had to sell. Mariel looked away, unwilling to watch the exchange. She wondered briefly if those children hiding in the alley were younger siblings of the girl forced to prostitution or if the girl was simply trying to feed herself.

Outside of a decrepit building with rotting thatch that looked like it should not have survived the winter sat an old man with a begging cup. His coughs were so continuous he could not vocalize his plea for money. In other kingdoms like Reckive and Drema, Natric’s northern neighbors, the sick man would have been able to go to the Temple of the healing goddess, Narel, and find help, but not in Natric. In Natric, the price of healing was hefty and most could not afford it.

Mariel had nothing to give the man, so she stepped into the dimly lit, putrid smelling tavern, lowering her hood as she did so. The mish-mash of rotting tables and chairs were packed with customers. No doubt the coin being used to buy ale and prostitutes should have been going toward food or rent, but Mariel could not prevent people from wasting their earnings any more than she could help all the people left to die by the callous king and queen. The place stunk of unwashed bodies, waste, and a smell like something had died. In other words, it smelled only slightly worse than the streets outside.

A hand reached out and grabbed her wrist tightly, while another hand pinched her rear. “I’ll keep yer bed warm tonight,” a tall, thin man cooed between several missing teeth. “I’ll show ye what a real man’s like.”

Mariel turned her uncanny, dark green eyes on the man. He grinned drunkenly at her. Her eyes moved toward the dirty hand holding her wrist. Without saying a word, Mariel twisted out of the man’s grip, slammed her other fist into his nose, and pressed a knife against his throat. “I don’t appreciate the offer.”

Only the people close by paid any attention, while the rest of the patrons continued carousing. The man who had accosted her swallowed nervously, causing the knife Mariel had pressed against his throat to slightly cut the skin.

“Don’t go scarin’ off the cust’mers, Quickwit,” said the approaching woman in her early forties, with wide-shoulders and well-muscled arms for breaking up tavern brawls.

“Quickwit?” said one of the offending man’s companions. “Mariel Quickwit?”

Mariel watched in satisfaction as the offending man’s eyes widened in fear. “Don’t touch a woman unless she gives you permission to.”

The man nodded slightly, which was a mistake, since the knife blade drew blood. Mariel sheathed the knife and turned to the burly woman who had intervened. “We need to talk, Dale.”

The older woman nodded and led Mariel over to a small table in the corner. As the two women sat in the rickety chairs, Mariel explained about the heir and asked if Dale knew anything. 

“Can’t tell me nothin’ ‘bout the lad’s looks?” Dale asked.

“Not when I don’t know who he is.”

Her contact snorted. “That ain’t helpful.”

Mariel shrugged. “It’ll be less helpful if Dreyfuss finds him first.”

“If you don’t know who it be, how you know it be a lad?”

“It’s a boy because Their Majesties would never name a girl heir. They’re too proud of their blood and think women weak.”

“Women ain’t weak!” Dale shouted, slamming her fist against the scarred table. Several patrons looked over at the woman.

Mariel leaned across the table and spoke just loud enough that only the tavern owner could hear, “
I
know that.”

Dale was calmed by this statement. Mariel was small, but Dale had seen what she could do and she knew the girl was dangerous. Mariel had just proven that with the man with the wandering hands. “Don’t be countin’ out lassies for the heir,” Dale grumbled.

“Want my reasoning?”

Her contact’s eyes opened in surprise because Mariel was secretive, rarely willing to give away more information than necessary—Dale only knew she was part of the Resistance, but not how deeply involved she was—but Mariel was also getting desperate. “Princess Carolina was King Vincent’s and Queen Meredith’s only child, but they never made her their heir.”

“That’s ‘cause some poor cove got her pregnant ‘stead of some dandy with a large purse.”

Mariel shook her head. “They would’ve never named the princess heir. They wanted her to marry well and had rich suitors waiting for her. The king wanted her to give him a male heir, because the queen hadn’t.”

A smile tugged at Dale’s lips, as she remembered the scandal. “She messed it up.”

“Yup,” Mariel smiled too, but the smile was short-lived. She leaned across the table again. “If Princess Carolina had had a boy, even if he wasn’t fathered by a toff, King Vincent would’ve named him heir.”

Dale’s eyes widened in surprise. “But it be a lassie.”

Unknown to the tavern owner, the girl she mentioned sat across from her in the dimly lit room. Mariel restrained a shiver at the fate that would have been hers had she been born male. If there really were gods, she had to thank them for sparing her such a horrible life. She felt bad for the poor boy, whoever he was, that the king was after now.

“Maybe,” Dale’s eyes lit up with excitement at the thought. “Princess Carolina be pregnant twice and had a boy ‘fore she and her bastard daughter be murdered.”

Princess Carolina’s very much alive bastard daughter had heard that before and knew that the second child theory was not true. Before Mariel could reply to the remark, a table across the room was overturned, sending plates, mugs, cutlery, and the man who had been sitting at the table crashing to the floor. The man jumped to his feet and threw himself at the man who had overturned the table. Other tables were soon toppled as more men began to fight and Dale waded in to try to break up the brawl.

Mariel carefully slipped passed the fighting people and out into the cool spring night air. She shoved her fists into the pockets of her skirts and headed down the rutted street.

Mariel was supposed to rendezvous with Darren soon. She had sent coded reports through the Resistance’s intricate intelligence network before returning to Ambras Añue in Parloipae, but had not sent him a communication about James’s intelligence of a new de Sharec heir. That information could wait until she saw him in person, since she had very little information to report. Tomorrow she would meet up with Iyela outside the City and head west toward the rendezvous point with Darren.

As Mariel thought about her papa, she caught sight of a rough sketch of a man plastered onto the side of a well-kept wooden building next to a sketch of her. Natrician soldiers patrolled the cobblestoned streets, a contrast to the city’s slums where she had come from. She approached the poster and read the text printed beneath the sketch:

Wanted: Darren Brightsword. Dangerous man. Guilty of high treason, thievery, spying, leading an underground revolt against the crown, the deaths of Natrician soldiers and guards, threatening His High Majesty King Vincent II . . .
the list continued, but Mariel noted that nowhere did it mention his first offense against the crown that had nearly lost him his place as a member of the Versati Corps and possibly his life:
impregnating Their High Majesties King Vincent’s and Queen Meredith’s only daughter, Princess Carolina.
Mariel was glad that misdemeanor was not on the list. Very few people knew that she, Mariel Quickwit, was Darren’s daughter, it was a safety precaution, although she would never be recognized by Natric’s monarchs as a princess.

“Thank the gods for that—if there are any.”

She started to turn away from the poster, then looked up at the building again.
A little thievery will brighten my day
, she thought and checked the street for passing soldiers before slipping into the shadows of the building. She found a handhold and began to scale the wall, relishing in the freedom of her choices.

* * *

Iyela plunged through the swollen river with ease, while Mariel attempted to keep her feet out of the cold water. Birds chattered away, singing for mates, as the pair of unusual friends reached the other bank. Shabbily dressed men and a few women performed various tasks about their camp. Some roasted freshly caught meat on a spit over one of the fires, while two sliced up wild onions and carrots. A group of men played dice, while another group practiced swordplay and hand-to-hand combat. One man and one woman perused sheets of paper and wrote down something on another sheet, undoubtedly decoding messages from distant contacts.

“Oy, Quickwit,” one of the fighting men called. “Long time no see.”

“Where’s Brightsword? I’ve got something he’ll want to hear,” Mariel said without dismounting.

“Up the river a bit,” the man said, pointing.

Mariel nodded her thanks and Iyela headed in the direction he had pointed without being asked. A short way up the river, she heard the splashing of rocks in the water. Iyela stopped walking and shook her head. Mariel’s vision was filled with an image of her papa, which suddenly changed to a single drop of blood. The image vanished as quickly as it appeared, leaving Mariel confused. “I don’t speak unicorn.”

Iyela repeated the image.

“Sometimes I wish you could communicate with me with more than feelings and images.”

Mariel dismounted and walked carefully through the woods, as silent as any zreshlan or serpentramel. Sitting on a rock next to the river was a man whose unwashed brown hair fell forward to frame his strong face. Thick hairs hid his chin and the skin above his upper lip and freckles spotted his handsome nose. His clothes were worn and dirty. A well-used long-sword was settled safely in its scabbard strapped to his left hip, and, like Mariel, he had two visible throwing knives. She knew that he also had an array of other weapons hidden on his person because, although he had once been a respectable sergeant in Natric’s elite Versati Corps, he had turned traitor years ago. His body was tense, almost angry, as he threw pebble after pebble into the creek.

“If you’re trying to make a bridge, you’ll need bigger rocks,” Mariel said.

In one smooth, quick motion, Darren was on his feet with his sword in his hand, ready for an attack. When he saw it was only his daughter, he sheathed the weapon. “Only you could sneak up on me.”

“And any serpentramel or zreshlan,” Mariel pointed out as she walked over to him.

“What did you learn of Lord Stonewell?” Darren asked, sitting back on his rock by the creek.