Royal Outlaw: (Royal Outlaw, Book 1) (5 page)

Mariel narrowed her eyes at him, suspicious. “I already sent a report about the two weeks I spent at Stonewell
and
a report on when I was in the City of the Gods before I went back to Parloipae.”

“I want to hear the report in person.”

Mariel sat on a rock next to her papa. “I spent two weeks in the household in the disguise of a scullery maid. Besides getting beaten every day by the drunken cook and given small scraps of rotten food to sate my hunger, I learned little.” She began to tick things off on her fingers. “He is running low on money, is trying to secure a marriage for his sixteen-year-old daughter, Cara, who is away at finishing school, and he hates King Vincent and Queen Meredith,” Darren perked up at this, but Mariel held up her hand to show that she was not finished and continued, “But is too frightened that he would get caught if he spoke or acted against them. Oh, and he hits his wife and sleeps with the maids. I managed to steal his measly stash and gave it to some beggars on my way to the City.”

“Good girl.” 

“So are you going to tell me what is wrong, or am I going to have to guess?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Mariel snorted. “That may work on your other co-conspirators, but I know you better than that, and am not afraid to confront you about it.”

Darren was quiet for a while and Mariel was about to ask again, when he said, “You’ll think I’m crazy.”

“I already know you’re crazy. Anyone trying to take down Natric’s corrupted monarchy is insane.”

Darren smiled weakly, but did not meet her gaze. “I’m being tugged.”

“What?”

“Tugged, jerked, wrenched! I feel as though I’m being pulled by something.”

Mariel cocked her head and carefully looked him over. “I don’t see anything.”

“That’s because it’s invisible!” he cried in exasperation. “No one can see it, not even me, but I
feel
it.” Her papa was right: he did sound crazy. Darren seemed to read her thoughts: “You think I’m mad.”

“No,” Mariel said, refusing to let him know that those thoughts had crossed her mind. “Maybe if you told me more.”

“There’s nothin’ more to tell!” He threw up his arms in exasperation. “I just feel like I’m being tugged by an invisible thread.
Valmir,
” he swore using the name of Natric’s patron god, the god of strength and war, “I
do
sound crazy . . . unless, what if it’s the gods? What if they’re mad at me for trying to take down the de Sharecs and the pretty, miserable world they’ve built for themselves? What if it’s punishment?”

Mariel did not put a lot of expectation in the gods. She could not believe that any god could exist and leave the world, especially Natric, in such a mess, with people who ruled for themselves, not for their people. She rested a hand on Darren’s arm.

“Let’s keep the theories in the mortal world for now, please. This doesn’t sound like anything the gods would do for punishment. Besides, you’ve been a traitor to the Natrician crown for more than a decade and no bolt of lightning has struck you down yet. I don’t think it has to do with anything involving immortals. It sounds more like
evraïsér
.”

“Magic?” her papa asked dubiously.

Mariel thought her theory made more sense than his god-involved one, but she was not going to tell him that. “Yes,
magic
. You know I’ve studied a little with the zreshlans. I can’t tell you what is causing the pulling, but I think the zreshlans can.”

“I’m human,” he reminded her, “The zreshlans don’t like me.”

“But they like
me
. And if I ask them to help they will, especially Anoria.”

Darren was quiet as he thought over what she said. Mariel crossed her fingers and hoped he would listen to her.

“No. I’m going north. It’s time to meet up with King Bartholomew of Reckive. He’s our most powerful ally.”

Mariel swallowed her disappointment. “Only because he’s too afraid Natric will attack him next. His kingdom borders Drema, which the de Sharec’s have been at war with for eighteen years just to please the war god.”

“He’s still an ally.”

“If you say so.”

“On the way north we’ll see about relieving some of the stress at the royal estate of Westfalin. Taxes were extra-high there and there are reports of starvation. Being in the mountains, the people won’t be able to get their crops planted for another month at least. I want you to come with me. Bartholomew’s always more relaxed when a woman’s there. For some reason he thinks none of us would dare to hurt him when a ‘delicate’ female is present.” Darren chuckled. What King Bartholomew did not know was that Mariel could kill him as easy as Darren’s best men.

Mariel groaned. “King Bartholomew? I hate that man. If having a female present is the only reason you want me there, take a different girl, you have plenty working for the Resistance.”

Darren’s lips twitched. “But King Bartholomew is charmed by you.” Mariel snorted in disgust, and his smile grew. “Besides, you’re the only one I trust who knows their language, and I like to know everything that’s said around me, it’s safer.”

Mariel could not find an argument to that. “If you aren’t careful, he’ll be asking me to share his bed.”

She had been hoping to set him off, her and the idea of men always made Darren turn into a protective papa, but to her irritation, he just smiled. “Marrying a king wouldn’t be a half bad match, every father dreams of his daughter marrying so well.”

Mariel nearly jumped to her feet and challenged him to a duel. He was a swordmaster, but so was she. He had taught her everything he knew, and she had learned even more from the zreshlans. She also had the benefit of having a very light zreshlan sword made specifically for her, while he possessed a heavier human sword. But just before she leapt up to challenge him, the practical voice in her mind talked her out of it.

She settled for a sharp retort, “I’m sure you’d love to have me ruling a kingdom: getting fat on people’s poverty and misery, and laughing at the world as I sit on a golden throne. Be serious, you’d rather see me dead than part of the ruling class.”

The smile faded from her papa’s face and he did not meet her gaze as he muttered, “Not dead, never dead. That’d be worse, but you as royal would almost be as bad.”

Mariel felt a surge of love for her papa. She hated the idea of being royal even more than he did. She loathed her heritage, the royal blood that flowed through her veins, and although her papa would never admit he hated something about her, she knew that he never completely forgot about it.

“Lucky for you, I would rather die than be aristocratic,” Mariel said.

They sat in silence for a few moments before Mariel broached the topic of the new heir. “Snaketongue passed on a bit of information I don’t think you’re going to like.”

“What is it?”

“The de Sharecs have an heir.”

Darren went very still. “You’re certain?”

“James seemed confident about the quality of the information, but he doesn’t know who or where the boy is. He went to Fintel to dig things up and I went to the City of the Gods, but I didn’t run into him on the way here.”

“What did you learn in the City?”

“No one knows anything. The best I got from my contacts were theories about Princess Carolina having had a second child, a boy. So unless I have some twin brother I don’t know about, you’re out of luck.”

“Are people too stupid to realize that if Carolina had had a boy child at any time before her death he would have been swept off to live in the palace without a word of dispute?”

“Most people don’t realize exactly how much the de Sharecs are adverse to a female heir.”

“So the de Sharecs have finally found their heir, but no one knows who it is? Guess we’ll find out soon enough when they announce it.” Darren stood and wiped his hands on his breeches.

“We aren’t going to try to find him first?”

Darren looked down at her, then across the river. “For all we know, he could be lying in a soft feather bed at the palace already. No, we’ll go to Reckive. Maybe I’ll talk to some Resistance-friendly magicians about this tugging thing on the way.”

Mariel stood without replying and they walked back toward camp, meeting up with Iyela on the way. Back at camp, Mariel unsaddled Iyela, while Darren checked with the decoding team to see if they had uncovered anything important yet.

Mariel had just finished brushing down Iyela when a man cantered into the campsite on a bay horse. The man did not bother to dismount as he shouted to his leader, “Dieter Dreyfuss is nearby. I heard him shoutin’ at his men. They know we’re here and they’re comin’ this way!”

A rock dropped into Mariel’s stomach and she could feel the major artery in her neck throb against the skin as the speed of the blood being pumped through it increased. She tried to control her panic as she looked toward her papa and the shocked expression on his face. He was the most wanted man in all of Natric and it would be a mighty prize to anyone who captured or killed him, and, from what Mariel had gathered, Dreyfuss had a personal debt to settle with Darren.

“Run!” Darren shouted.

No one moved. Everyone stared at him in astonishment; they could never remember that particular order being given before.

“We ain’t fightin’ ‘em?”

Darren turned to the man who had asked, “The last time I faced Dieter Dreyfuss I was standing in the throne room at Fintel and there were just two guards and the king. I only bested the archmagician because he was standing next to me and I knocked him out when he began a spell, but the unfinished spell exploded out killing one of the guards and nearly me. He is the most powerful magician in the Eastern Lands. You can fight if you want to, but I’m outta here.”

He looked pointedly at Mariel and she did not need telling twice. Everyone began to tack their horses. Mariel did not bother with a saddle on Iyela, but she had to put the bridle on for appearance sake. When she was done, she went to help her papa.

He grabbed her wrist as she reached for his horse’s halter. “Get outta here. Iyela can run faster than any horse. Don’t worry about us, run!”

Mariel looked him full in the face. “No! If you don’t release me and let me help you, they will be on us before we have a chance to leave.”

Darren hesitated a moment before letting go of her wrist. Together they finished tacking his horse and as Darren climbed into the saddle, Mariel jumped onto Iyela’s back. Other members of the inner ring of the Resistance were mounting and peeling off. Darren’s and Mariel’s mounts plunged into the cold river. Mariel glanced over her shoulder again to see that the Natrician soldiers had reached their camp.

The soldiers looked around at the faces of the Resistance members who had not escaped in time. Without warning Iyela came to a complete halt halfway across the river, nearly throwing her rider into the water. Mariel whipped around to see that fifty mounted Natrician soldiers had appeared from the forest. She drew Aracklin from its scabbard.

“Which one?” called one of the soldiers who had entered the camp.

Which
one?
They had just caught the inner circle of the Resistance. They should be happy to have caught everyone
,
Mariel thought as Iyela spun beneath her in the river to face back the way they had come.

A man with flaming red hair on a roan horse looked around at the camp and the members of the Resistance who had been caught saddling their horses. On the left breast of the man’s green uniform was a silver symbol of a sun with a star inside of it: the mark of Natric’s archmagician. This was the most powerful magician in the Eastern Lands: Dieter Dreyfuss.

Darren maneuvered his horse so that he was between Mariel and the archmagician. Dreyfuss saw Darren Brightsword, leader of the Resistance, on his horse in the river and pointed. “There.”

“Put your weapons away or the archmagician will bring the water from this river sweeping down and wash you all away,” threatened a soldier.

Mariel, Darren, and the other members of the Resistance who had reached the water, looked upriver as though expecting a wall of water to reach them at any moment. Darren sheathed his sword first and the others copied him. Mariel considered grabbing one of the knives hidden on her body and throwing it into the archmagician’s chest, but he was far enough away to be able to erect a magical shield before the blade reached him.

The man looked directly at Darren and said in a voice that radiated victory, “You are a very difficult person to find.”

It had all come down to this, Mariel was about to watch her papa die at the hands of this horrible man. She could not do anything. If she moved, Dreyfuss would bring the whole river down on her and the members of the Resistance, killing them all.

But Dieter Dreyfuss did not call upon evraïsér. Instead he put his right arm across his waist and leaned forward in the saddle. To Mariel’s confusion, the soldiers copied this strange movement, except they leaned further forward. Dreyfuss straightened and looked toward Darren again, but as he spoke Mariel realized that he had never been talking to her papa, he had been talking to her.

“Mariel de Sharec, daughter of the late Princess Carolina, and granddaughter of the mighty King Vincent de Sharec II and his wife, Queen Meredith, I have been sent by Their High Majesties to request that you accompany me back to Fintel to take up your formal duties as princess and heir apparent of our great and powerful kingdom, Natric.”