A Bit for the King

(This short story was denied from an anthology so now you get to rid it for free - congrats?)

The street rat was no more honorable than the king was wise, and so when, on his deathbed, the heirless royal decreed his crown would pass to the winner of a series of competitions, the rat sought out a hag of great renown and fear, the envy of all blacksmiths for her mastery of the forge.

The street rat believed herself to be as clever as the hag was powerful, and so when the deal was struck, she left the forge with assurance of her crown and confidence in outwitting the hag. She did not see the bit placed between her teeth, the saddle strapped to her back, whose boots wore spurs until it was much, much too late.

Her skin gleamed silver as she paraded through the halls, her cape of the same sheen sweeping behind her. Gazes flickered to her then stalled. They drank her in as she chewed on the offering of their horror and awe. It was pungent and rich in taste, filling her more than any meal could.

She heard a few of their mutterings.

It must be painted on.

It cannot be natural.

She could pick out the other contenders by their attire3. They wore armor, as if the king would demand they be flayed upon entry. They carried the finest weapons, hilts inlaid with glittering gems and wrapped with freshly oiled leather. She gave those she could see a passing glance, chin kept forward and level with the ground.

They would be dead come end of the month, and a king-to-be did not spare a glance for the graves of her enemies.

At the feast, the ailing king, deposited like a sack of grain in his grand seat at the head of a long table shaped like a blade, ruined the meals of those surrounding him—his queen and advisers—with his sputtering, wine-laced coughing.

His announcement of the three trials was like graceful fingers across the harp strings of their apprehensive. The specular and muttering began as servants escorted the king away. What would they test? Strength? Courage? Wit? And though none asked her opinion, or even cast her a glance, she stole the secrets they’d never known they’d shared.

A knight a decade past retirement who carried a great sword as if it were a dagger feared facing the terrors of the front lines, that much he shared from the quiver of his voice when another brought up fighting pits.

A noblewoman who’d trained in hand-to-hand so brazenly announced her inexperience in large scale war tactics when she inquired where all had completed their studies, sliding a hair closer to a general who’d boasted of his top marks from the neighboring kingdom’s top university.

She did not anticipate a foot soldier to boast so openly about his inability to think past the height of his line mate’s shield.

Nor did she think the only of royal blood, a distance cousin sporting the patchy beard of adolescence, would so plainly state his distrust of the church by questioning if a test of faith would be administered.

Only one other guarded their secrets as she did, not caring for the assumptive vulnerability of silence. One of two other women, slender as she, with eyes sharp as an eagle’s. Together, they surveyed the other contenders for the crown and shared their findings with half gazes, quirked lips, slow blinks. Another thief, trained as she in non-verbal communication.

An ally?

No, she only had one ally, an ugly hag who had forged for her the kingdom's keys.

The first task saw them paired. To choose, they followed seniority, with the kid of royal blood choosing the general, the noblewoman choosing a low ranking general with decades of combat experience, the knight terrified of the front lines choosing an adviser as skinny as his blade, and so on. Each attempting to cover their weaknesses like a foot soldier with a shield.

She chose the other silent woman, their eyes meeting across the room as the king’s closest adviser explained the task. The king was noticeably absent, as expected, due to his illness. She would not have been surprised if the feast had been the last they would see of him until they carried his corpse from his chambers.

A simple task, she heard others refer to it as. Each pair would have an army, that army would attack the other armies, and the surviving army would win.

She shared a glance with her partner who had drawn a black line across her eyes like a helm’s visor, disguising the reaction in her deep brown eyes.

They were sent into an arena filled with warriors, though from their stock and confidence, she estimated most, if not all, were children. Teens old enough to be drafted and stuck in a line with a spear in their hand.

She saw the realization flicker across the others’ faces. The noblewoman protested the loss of innocence, the old knight argued for trained soldiers, and the kid of royal blood suggested blunt weapons and nonlethal blows.

They, when their concerns were dismissed and the task commenced, hesitated to strike. They were the first to be eliminated.

She took the words the hag fed her, bit by bit like a dog feasting on rations, and she passed them to the children, a mother bird regurgitating the strength to survive, a sour taste remaining in her mouth. To let the hag speak with her tongue, to feel it flapping beyond her control like a wet eel.

She turned the two girls and two boys, no older than fifteen, into the fray. Her partner seemed to understand the intent with which she unleashed them.

Courage would sustain a warrior for one hit, belief for another, but it was fear of eternal oblivion which kept dead men walking.

Fear of an end which led all to desperation.

Fear of death that kept all four of the children alive and bloodied their blades until the battlefield was as splotched with rot as their souls. They shook like field mice in a storm and mewled like hungry kittens, but they were alive.

The first pair to lose all their warriors, a local merchant and mayor from a distant village, were eliminated and remained for the feast and revelries. She saw morsels of relief in their night, when the weight of a kingdom fell from their shoulders, shed like a winter cloak in the first thaw of spring.

Her partner stopped her at the feast and congratulated her on the tenacity of her command and inquired upon her past, dropping a crumb of information even she did not know she’d scraped from herself.

Plenty would know the non-verbal communication of the street rats, for it was intuitive once one knew what to look for. Guards and soldiers picked it up well enough when needed, but those words, even if not born of her heart, resonated with it. This woman respected it, would have kindled those words into a roaring flame within an army, but they did not fill a well within her.

She climbed the ranks. That was all she had to say to her partner through the night they shared. Her partner had much to share, and even more to say about the state of the kingdom, the trades beyond the borders, the ailments of the people. She lay awake in the morning hours, her skin cool everywhere except where it brushed her partner’s.

Her partner had asked about the unnatural sheen of her silver skin as well, noting that it appeared as if a thin sheet of metal had been inserted beneath her skin.

Impossible, they’d both agreed.

The second task saw them at the start of a maze of hedges, grown in the grand royal gardens, pocketed with thorns and strung together with vines. Eight remaining contenders, each with their own entrance, began the maze at the strike of a gong. As their entrances were on the same side of the square maze, she stole a glance at her partner from the first task, who sauntered out of view.

She felt a sharp tap on her sides, hear the ding of nail against metal, of the hag guiding her like a rider nudging a horse into a trot. First a right turn, then a left. Each choice came from the tap against her side as she approached the turn, and when she came to a four-way in the maze, spotted another competitor turning left toward her, the tap to her sides urging her straight was a stab instead of tap.

It spurred her into a run.

Her breaths came fast as the pain in her sides came like the ticking of a clock. The competitor’s footsteps followed for four turns before she outpaced the elderly knight, still the urging at her sides did not relent.

She imagined the hag hovering over the maze, watching them as if they were rodents escaping an exterminator or thieves disappearing in the winding roads of the slums.

The final reach to the center of the maze seems to expand half its length, with a pedestal and royal official at its center surveying the various corridors.

She reached it a breath before her first task partner, who accepted the defeat with a slight nod and simpering smile. When she attempted to return it, her jaw ached and lips stretched as if adjusting around a bit.

The feeling was gone a moment later.

The third task saw their partnership end and the king’s attendance. He sat in his throne high above the fighting pit, heaved over the ornate armrest, spewing blood and saliva into a bucket. He neither welcomed the competitors nor honored guests invited to the crowning of his heir nor judged the fights. He withered before their eyes, like a garden indicating the changing of the seasons.

The remaining four contenders would fight to the death. They could select their weapon of choice, and so the kid of royal blood chose a halberd, the knight scared of the front lines brought his own great sword, and her partner wielded a rapier. Each wore a breastplate, pauldrons, gauntlets, cuisses, and greaves, with both the knight and boy electing to wear helms as well.

She stripped herself of her thin shall as the first fight began, letting the sun reflect off her silver skin, and stepped into the pit without a weapon. The boy of royal blood, who had had the sense to shave prior to the second task, mocked her brazenness. For he, of all the competitors, would not be so easily swayed by the allure of her body.

She walked from the pit with his blood splattered across her chest, neck, and face.

Her first punch, though she had not thrown it, had concaved his chest plate, and her second had crushed his windpipe, dropping him into the dirt. Through wheezing half-breaths, he had begged for his life and disregard for the task’s rule.

She had tested the resolve of her fist, shining like silver, until his skull proved to be the weaker force.

The bit of sympathy for the boy was as bothersome as a gnat circling her ears, and the longer she sat with it, the louder it grew.

Did wearing the crown mean giving to the impulses of her street rat days? Had she not left that behind or meant to when seeking the crown? What would her partner think of such cold killing when she had gone to such lengths to protect their child warriors in task one?

A child.

She had killed a child.

Her partner had won her bout with the knight, out maneuvering the lumbering oath with the grace of a dancer. Downing the man by corrupting his footwork with her own and sweeping his legs out from under him, she had drawn a dagger and pounced, driving it through the helm’s visor into his eye.

The doubt festering since the first task crashed upon her, battling the cool touch of the hag for dominance as she resisted stepping into the ring. A pang of sadness crossed her partner’s face, and she wondered if she, too, had looked upon her in the warm morning sun and seen a queen to aid a king, a partner beyond the tasks.

If she did, it did not stop the fight.

The bell rang, and her partner moved in a flourish, taking advantage of her own hesitation and fight against the hag’s insistence.

Fight, punch, grab, kill. Harnessing her body as a weapon, the hag propelled her through each strike until one slid across her shoulder, splitting her delicate skin and revealing the metal inlaid.

Whispers fluttered through the mystified crowd, and she thought she heard her partner chuckle at her own cleverness, having guessed at her advantage, before she dove back into her series of blows, leaving another dozen slices across her naked body.

She felt each like a kiss. A parting gift and a promise of what could have been, if not for their own ambitions.

If not for the hag’s curse.

She grabbed her partner’s hair as she twirled by and yanked, then brought her steel elbow upon the woman’s chest. A sickening crunch sent bile rolling up her throat.

She was going to kill her, as she had killed the boy, as she had forced the children to kill others. Her hand fit around her partner’s jaw, her thumb smearing blood across her cheek. Her body shook with the effort to hold off the hang’s influence. The cool metal beneath her skin constricted around her forearm, demanding it to flex and her fist to close, crushing bone as if it were rotten bark.

Leaning forward, she pressed her lips to her partner’s and stole her final breath as her fist closed.

The hag attended the coronation, adorned in a dress of chain mail that clinked like blades swinging in the breeze as she walked.

“My king,” she said, bowing before the new monarch whose silvery skin would eventually overshadow the tasks proving her worthy to wear the crown but not the horrors of her reign.

She demanded the hag, who had served her purpose in fitting the crown upon her brow, leave. If she insisted, the hag could even take back the steel armor beneath her skin. She would have no more need for its protection, no more need for the hag’s words, no more need for her guidance. She had top advisers, a bloodied army, a continent enraptured by its horror and awe of her.

The hag refused.

When the king thought to call the guards, her lips and tongue remained still. Her limbs locked, the lining of steel beneath her skin a cage.

“I prefer to keep you as you are at present,” the hag said, “under bit and spur.”