Royal Blood

ROYAL BLOOD: THE STORY OF HOUSE WYNN

  by Michael Horton

  Copyright © 2011 Michael Horton

  All rights reserved.

  OTHER BOOKS BY MICHAEL HORTON

  https://mhortonbooks.blogspot.com

  In His Shadow

  James Eldritch and the Day Something Happened (December 2011)

  James Eldritch and the Misogynistic Ghost (February 2012)

  Devil Have Mercy (March 2012)

  The Jerk (March 2012)

  Into Thin Eyr

  Eyr Apparent (January 2012)

  Royal Blood

  by

  Michael Horton

  Rheine had started seeing it again. For six years it was gone. She thought she’d finally rid herself of those foul memories.

  Tink. Thlak.

  The dagger struck bone and shifted roughly against her fingers. It refused to budge any further, but that didn’t matter. The deed was done, and House Wynn would soon fall. By the time the night patrolmen discovered the viscount’s body, she would be long gone. They’d discover the body and deliver her the audience she so deserved.

  Rheine freed the dagger from Viscount Gildre’s chest, cleaned its darkened edge against his silken sheets, and sheathed it at her hip. No moon hung in the sky to shed light onto Gildre’s bed, but Rheine’s eyes were well-trained for the darkness. His linen was fine and pristine, save for the blood that began to spread from the eighteen gashes in his chest. Eighteen was, in hindsight, overkill for a man who’d barely had the chance to struggle. His mustached face was a twisted vision of horror that made Rheine sick to her stomach.

  With the Viscount dead, the images began to disappear once again. The voices in her mind began to ebb, and only the sound of her own pulse remained. She pulled down her head to hide the gleam in her eyes and began to slink out of the Viscount Gildre’s chamber. However, something on his desk caught her eye and made her turn back on her heel.

  Rheine stepped lightly, careful to observe which stones in the floor were loose and would make a sound when disturbed. A single tome lay open on the desk, a rectangular space carved out of its false pages. She pulled from it a liquor flask, pure silver. She swirled it around in her hands, felt its weight—about a quarter liter—and gasped. The people from the Grimdark weren’t allowed any amount of what they called the rich man’s nectar. She pulled the cork free and inhaled the bottle’s contents before releasing a satisfied moan. No doubt about it, what she held was rich man’s nectar, and plenty of it.

  She touched the flask to her lips and took a swig, just enough to get her tongue wet, and retched. Her family had always spoken so fondly of liquor, but it was nothing but bitter swill to her. Regardless, she forced the cork back in and shoved the flask into a sack at her side. It would be a waste to leave something to precious with a dead man.

  Rheine entered the corridor linking the viscount’s chamber to the rest of the castle and cursed under her breath. Two guards stood alert at one end of the hall. The other side was a dead end with only a balcony hanging over the main hall. She bit her lip and considered her options. She could manage a fall from five meters if she tucked her legs in, but the noise would certainly catch the guards’ attention, and they were armored and wielded pikes twice her size.

  She looked toward the balcony again and swallowed her fear. Took a step back. Started sprinting. She placed her hands on the carved stone railing and shut her eyes as she braced for impact.

  Thump.

  She hit the ground hard, sending a wave of pain through her knees and into her spine. She held her eyes shut for a few moments longer, tried to bear the pain while listening for the telltale sound of metal against metal. Plate mail. Rheine palmed her wavy black hair back into her hood, checked the main hall for any additional guards, and crept into the shadows.

  “The viscount!” a voice shrieked from upstairs. “Guards, come quickly! Viscount Gildre has been murdered!”

  Iron pounded against the stonework as the guards rushed up the stairs and circled the Viscount’s doorway. Rheine had planned on being halfway home by now, and improvising was never her strongest suit. She pressed herself against the shadowed side of a column and waited for the remaining guards to run past before continuing toward the front doors and turning right, downstairs to the armory.

  Swords and spears and shields adorned the walls, ready for the Absolute’s soldiers and trainees to wield. She sprinted to the rear of the room where a sewer pipe lay open. She lifted the grate out of the way—a simple task, given it was a fake put together by her brother—and crawled in beneath it.

  Rheine’s blackwind remained exactly where she left it at the base of a ladder. She propped herself up on its seat, revved the engine, and pulled her hood back so the wind could flow through her hair as she drove. It was an older model of blackwind, but her brother had fixed it up so it could go twice as fast as any horse, even through mud and dirt. She peeled off of the ground and began riding through the sewers. Two right turns and one left later, she’d be at the cesspool in the upper Grimdark where the sewer drained.

  Rheine stopped her vehicle beneath the hill just outside Wynn Castle’s domain. Not even the queen claimed the Grimdark; if the land was infertile, it simply didn’t exist, as far as she was concerned. She treated her daughters the same way.

  The Grimdark was a place where nothing grew but mold, nothing was born but resentment, and when it rained, it poured acid. The Grimdark was actually quite the industrious little village, but all of the smoke it produced combined with House Wynn’s refuse yielded only clouds of rancid precipitation. The soil had been dead for decades, meaning livestock and agriculture were left to wealthier, greener cities. The Grimdark was where things were sent to die.

  Rheine killed the engine of her blackwind outside of her front door, brushed the humidity from her hair with her fingertips, and kicked off her mud-caked shoes. Her father was very particular about dirty shoes, which became a rather annoying point of contention between them.

  Rheine’s father greeted her wearily as soon as she stepped through the door. He had been sitting in a bed beside her brother and rose to his feet when she came in.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  “I was busy.” Rheine removed her robe and satchel and set them on a table next to the door. “What’s for dinner?”

  Flames crackled in the stove to keep the room warm, and the scent of something that was possibly pork sent her stomach into a frenzy.

  “Pig ears with turnip chips,” her father replied. “Cold now, prob’ly.”

  Rheine shrugged and stood on her toes to kiss her father on his bristled cheek. “I’ll still eat it, Papa, you know that.” She smiled.

  Her father was a man who’d seen many trials, and the creases on his face and silver streaks of hair were proof. Her brother, on the other hand, only worked when it suited him, in spite of her father’s wishes. His hands were as smooth as her skin, which was typically viewed as a sign of laziness or a possible preference for one’s own gender, both frowned upon outside the castle and ignored within. Rheine knew at least one of these things to be false, however.

  She bent down to kiss her brother on the forehead, and he kicked his legs with delight, nearly knocking her over. “The BW needs some more gas, and I think the brakes are starting to stick,” she said.

  He brushed his thin mustache with his finger and nodded. Rheine prepared herself a plate of pig ears and turnip chips, added a few raisins from a basket beside the table, and took a seat on a short wooden stool.

  “Mm, that reminds me,” she said, her mouth half full, “check my sack. I brought you guys something.” She pointed to the brown leather bag by the door. Her father strode up to it and took a look inside. His eyes lit up as he drew out the silver flask.
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  “Is this what it looks like?” He cast her a glance and examined the flask again, turning it around in his fingers before pulling the cork and sniffing the noxious substance himself. “Wow. Sure is. This for me?”

  “If you want it.” Rheine flicked a turnip chip into the air and groaned when it bounced off her lip and tumbled back down to her plate. “Tastes like sewer water, but if it gets you drunk then I guess that’s fine.”

  Her father raised the bottom of the flask skyward as he chugged the bitter fluid down. He brushed his mouth with the back of a hairy hand and sighed heavily. Rheine cringed, somehow able to taste it again.

  “This is the real deal,” he said, smacking his lips. “Rheine, where on earth did you get this?”

  She filled her mouth with pig’s ear and shrugged, pointing to her stuffed cheeks.

  Her father tilted his head dubiously. “Not from the Grimdark?”

  “From the viscount. I killed him.”

  The flask hit the ground, but it had been drained bone dry.

  Her father clutched his chest. “I’m gonna need another drink.”