Royal Outlaw: (Royal Outlaw, Book 1) (3 page)

She felt victory rise within her as she watched the last traces of his smile vanish.

“All I did was get you arrested. And you must have had fun escaping.”

“I’m tired of your games.”

He looked down at her sword with his blood shimmering on the tip. He appeared to ignore his shallow wound as he looked over the blade.

“
Aracklin
.” He read the name etched into the blade beneath the hilt. “Blood-biter. A good name, I think.” He looked pointedly down to where the sword was pressing into his flesh and then back at the blade. “Made by the skills of zreshlan smiths with all their normal cares and artistry. The metal is
puilion
. Lightweight, but extremely strong, and known only to the zreshlans. It would have been forged with special spells of strength. I can see the single emerald in the pommel, a
lina
. And . . .”

To Mariel’s alarm, James stepped back slightly and flipped the bladed over, jerking Mariel’s wrist painfully. She switched hands quickly, keeping the blade pointed at the snake-man.

He did not appear to have noticed her switch of hands, as a smile tugged his lips. “Ah, yes, here it is.” James tapped the metal of the blade just beneath the hilt, the same place the sword’s name was written in elegant script on the opposite side. On this side were three horizontal wavy lines. “The symbol for a river, a
gres
in Zreshlan.”

James looked up from the sword. “I suppose I said it backwards, huh?
Gres-lina
. River-emerald. The symbol of the river and the emerald in the pommel are to represent your zreshlan name. River because that is how you entered Parloipae when you were six, and emerald because of the color of your eyes.
Greslina
.”

He lifted the edge of Aracklin and stepped away from its dangerous blade catching the afternoon sunlight that filtered through the open window. Mariel was not about to let him escape so easily and she quickly had the sword pressed against his back.

James sighed heavily and turned to face her again. “Don’t be silly, Mariel, you would never kill me.”

He pushed the blade down, until the tip touched the wood floor. Mariel gave no resistance, shamed and angry. He was speaking to her as though she was a child, but he was only three years her senior.

“Would you like to play nice now?”

He touched the tear in his shirt and then examined the bright red blood that stuck to his fingers. He glanced at Mariel, and she felt color heat her cheeks in a humiliating blush. She was ashamed of her behavior. James had meant no harm, not even when he got her arrested the last time she saw him in the City of the Gods. He had gotten her arrested before, and she had returned the favor at least once. Threatening him at sword point was one thing—she did that quite often—but actually drawing blood was something entirely different. She could not meet his gaze and wiped the tip of Aracklin clean on a spare bit of cloth instead.

He looked at the detailed map of the Eastern Lands tacked up on the wall.

“Why are you here, James?” Mariel asked, sheathing Aracklin and setting it against the wall to avoid temptation if he aggravated her again. “Come to gloat over you last success?”

“Can’t a man come visit his friends?” James said, still staring at the map. “The zreshlan are my friends, too. I received my schooling here, just like you did.”

James was serpentramel and not human, so the zreshlan welcomed him to their lands, at least the zreshlan of Ambras Añue. Unfortunately, humans were not so welcoming to serpentramel. Although the Nería royal family who had ruled Natric before the de Sharecs overthrew them had been serpentramel, ever since the coup serpentramels had been hunted. Luckily for most serpentramels, so long as they did not shape shift in front of a human, it was unlikely anyone would discover that they were serpentramel.

“Who sent you?” Mariel demanded. “Who arranged to have the zreshlans tutor you? Who do you work for now?”

“We’ve been over this before. I have my secrets. You have yours. We hand each other information and help each other every once in a while.”

“That’s not fair,” Mariel said, sitting on the edge of the narrow bed. “You know I work for the Resistance. You actually know that the leader of the Resistance is my father. No one who works for the Resistance even knows that, but I know almost nothing about you, except that you are serpentramel and were tutored by the zreshlans.”

James crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall. “The only reason I know that Darren Brightsword is your father is because you and I were with our tutor Quillase on the edge of Parloipae when he stumbled into zreshlan lands. I was there when, after two years of not knowing who you were before you floated down the river into zreshlan lands, you suddenly remembered everything.”

Mariel looked at the floor, not daring to admit to him that she had not remembered
everything
.

He stepped away from the wall and lifted her chin. “I’ve kept your identity a secret, even from those who I report to. You’ve not broadcast to the underworld that I’m serpentramel. Even those in the underworld would kill a serpentramel on sight. We’re both wanted outlaws, Mariel Quickwit. We’re both after the same thing: overthrowing the corrupt de Sharec monarchy. It doesn’t matter that we work for different people. It doesn’t matter that you don’t know who I report to. What matters is that we trust each other.”

James only knew that her father was Darren Brightsword, leader of the Resistance, an organization bent on disrupting and eventually destroying the corrupt de Sharec reign. He did not know who she had been before coming to the zreshlan: who her mother was, who her grandparents were.

Mariel shoved his hand away and stood. “I don’t trust you, I tolerate you.”

James sighed in an exaggerated manner, as Mariel pushed passed him. “Pity, I had some pretty good intelligence for you, but now . . .” he shrugged.

Mariel turned, “What’s the intelligence?”

James shook his head. “You nearly skewer me with your sword and now you think I’ll just hand over the information?”

“You owe me. You got me arrested.”

“And you got out before they managed to lock you up.” He touched his fingers to his ripped shirtfront, where the blood had already dried. “You drew blood. Now you owe me.”

Mariel scowled, weighing her options. James had never given her false information before or lied about having it. What information he had provided her in the past had always been worthwhile. “What do you want?”

Much to her annoyance, the young man grinned, revealing his straight, white teeth. “Give me a kiss and I’ll tell you.”

“No. What’s the information?”

“You’re wet.”

“Is that your idea of ‘good’ intelligence?”

“No. You aren’t complying with my offer, so I’m changing the subject. What did you do? Fall in the river?”

“What’s the information?”

“I want my kiss first.”

Mariel hated this game. He had been doing this to her recently: sometimes he would not pass her the information until she gave him a peck on the cheek. She glanced at the smiling James again and briefly considered beating the information out of him, but his well-defined muscles made her think twice about it, along with the knowledge of what the zreshlans would think of such behavior. All zreshlans were trained fighters, but they only believed in using violence to defend their homeland from humans.

Mariel’s curiosity won out. She braced herself and leaned up toward James, aiming for his cheek. He turned his head and met her lips with his own. Shock swept through her body, but before she could fight him, he stopped and backed away smiling even wider than before. The kiss had been short, but it felt longer to her. The fear vanished, replaced entirely by anger. She launched herself at him and slapped him across the jaw. A satisfying sound went with the smack and she was about to strike again when James held up his hands in defense and said, “Want the information?”

Mariel backed off with her hands clenched into fists at her side. To her fury, James straightened himself with his annoying smile plastered to his face. “Want to give me another kiss first?”

Mariel picked up her sword and shifted into the ready-stance with the point facing toward James’s chest. “Give me the information.”

The aggravating smile did not fade from his face, although Mariel noted with satisfaction that James moved back, out of lunging range. He bowed mockingly to her, “Forgive me, Your Royal Highness, I meant no harm by a single kiss.”

Mariel faltered, shocked by what he had called her.
Highness
. James did not know she was the granddaughter of Natric’s monarchs. He did not know that she was princess by blood, but not by recognition. She had never told him and although many of the zreshlans in Ambras Añue knew, it was not their habit to tell other people’s secrets. Did James know? How could he have found out?

“Why did you call me that?” she asked softly.

James rose from his bow. The smile vanished as he stared at her with a bewildered expression. “It was a joke.”

“Oh.” She felt no relief in his innocent reply, her mind had already traveled to the past where she skipped around in rich fabrics doing anything she pleased with her mother running just behind, laughing.

“Mariel, are you okay?”

She shook her head to clear it of the memories and lifted her sword toward the young man again. “Tell me the information.” she spoke the words in Zreshlan, just to remind herself where and who she was now. The past was dead and buried.

The playful smile did not return to James’s face, replaced instead by confusion and possibly a bit of concern, but Mariel could not be sure because he was difficult to read. He replied in Natrician: “The de Sharecs have found their heir.”

Mariel stared at him in disbelief and then glowered. “You made me kiss you for false information?”

“It’s not false.”

“There’s no male left with enough de Sharec blood to be named heir without causing a civil war. They’ve been searching for an heir ever since the queen grew too old to bear children.”

“I know all that.”

“Then someone passed you false information. There is no heir. The de Sharec monarchy is going to die when the greedy, fat, old king keels over.”

“The information is valid.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I’m sure. I know you don’t trust me, but you have to trust me on this.”

“Do you know who it is?”

“No. All I know is Natric’s famous archmagician is personally on the move.”

“Is there no stopping Dreyfuss?”

“Not if we don’t know who the heir is.”

Mariel spun Aracklin around in her hand, debating what to do next. She could tell her papa, but she did not have enough information to be of much use. She sheathed her sword and started packing, shoving human clothes and her knives into a rucksack.

“Where are you going?” James asked.

“To the City of the Gods. I want to try to dig up more information before I pass it along.”

“I’m going to the capital. If the information about the identity of the new heir is anywhere, it’s there. We’d have more chance of finding out if we work together.”

Mariel paused in her packing and held the potion that suppressed the nightmares that led to madness. Fintel, the capital of Natric, was the one place in the kingdom she had never been allowed to go. When she had first convinced her papa to let her join the Resistance seven years before, she had been forced to promise never to go there. Regardless of circumstances, Mariel had no intention of breaking that promise. She put the dream-suppressing potion in the rucksack and said, “I know the City of the Gods better. That’s where all my contacts are. You said that Dreyfuss is the one searching for the heir. He spends part of his time at the Citadel in the City. I’ll ruffle through his papers, ask around, see what I can find.”

James walked to the open doorway and turned. “May the seÿas be favorable,” he said the traditional zreshlan farewell. The
seÿas
meant “stars” or “gods,” since in Zreshlan the words were interchangeable

Mariel looked up and returned the farewell. She finished packing not long after he left. With the rucksack thrown over her shoulder and Aracklin strapped to her waist, she headed for the zreshlan kitchens to stock up on food for her journey. With that done, she began a calling spell for her loyal friend, Iyela, as she walked through the forest. She felt a tug at the other end and knew that her friend would arrive shortly. A white blur in the trees caught Mariel’s attention and she stopped to wait. The white unicorn approached and Mariel told her what was going on.

Unicorns were one of the five intelligent beings that lived in the Eastern Lands, along with humans, serpentramels, zreshlans, and ogres. Like serpentramels, unicorns were hunted by humans. Iyela was a female, so she had no horn and could pass for a horse. Mariel had rescued her from a mud-hole when she was a foal and Iyela had offered her services to Mariel ever since.

Mariel twined her fingers into her friend’s mane and jumped, swinging her leg over the white back. Her young friend picked up the pace and Mariel pressed her legs tightly to her steed’s sides and clung to the mane. The giant xanlor trees became blurs as the young female unicorn almost flew through them. They ran like that for hours, the strength and endurance of the unicorn never wavering for an instant. Unlike horses, unicorns had remarkable stamina and could run faster than any living creature.