Page 5 of The Prince and the Ice King

“Aw, such a sorry sap,” another voice said.

There were two—or was it four?—figures around Reardon. He couldn’t be sure if he was simply seeing double. It was dark as pitch, and his eyes refused to focus.

“Lemme go,” he said, realizing the larger man still had hold of him. “I’m goin’ home.”

“Thought you didn’t wanna be prince no more,” the second man said. He was tall too but stringy, with long, scraggly hair. “Everyone knows what you want, pretty thing, they just love you too much to admit it. When you get pissed, you think your eyes don’t wander? Is that why you really miss that last offering, hmm? He bewitch your trousers too?”

Reardon heaved backward, soberer in an instant at what was being implied, but the big man’s grip was like a vise. “I’m not bewitched. He was myfriend.”

“Good friend, I bet,” the larger man chortled. “You wanna be our friend, pretty prince?” His breath smelled rancid up close, and it mixed unpleasantly with the odor of the piss in the nearby trough, even as they backed him away from it into a tinier alley that had no exit.

“You’re talking treason a-and… depravity!” Reardon fought, but he couldn’t fight the spinning night.

What did it matter if he was depraved too? He didn’t want these men.

“Who you gonna tell, boy?” the stringy one said, a bony hand grasping Reardon’s chin while the larger man still had his arm. Meatier fingers started pawing at his trousers. “Gonna cry to the king? You won’t even remember what we look like.”

Reardon wouldn’t. He couldn’t tell what they looked like now, in the dark, with their bodies pressing tight and those meaty fingersreaching. “Stop—”

The air was cut with a thunderous swish, and the larger man gurgled and fell, his thick fingers leaving with him.

Anotherswish, and the stringy man followed, two thuds on the street.

Reardon squinted through the dark, and when his eyes finally revealed to him the shadow moving closer, it wasn’t some bandit, but Lombard.

Ruthlessly, he drove his sword into both bodies, leaving any further gurgling silenced. Then he wiped his blade on the back of the downed men and held his hand out to Reardon.

Reardon took it, pulled powerfully into the embrace of the general, who kept him close to prevent him from wobbling.

“You remember now why I have repeatedly asked you to not go out of the castle alone at night?”

“They wereawful,” Reardon said in reply. “Most people aren’t awful.”

“You haven’t met most people, my prince. Do you think I should have shown mercy?”

“I….”

“Mercy merely means you might end up the dead man instead. Come.” He pulled Reardon along, sheathing his sword and choosing side streets and alleys with as few evening strollers as possible.

Reardon was grateful but also surprised. He’d been terrible to Lombard ever since Barclay was taken away.

Sudden fear wrapped around his heart as he realized that Lombard must have been watching him all along. “D-did you… hear…?”

“Their blasphemy? It was obvious in their actions, which was why I cut them down. You need not worry.”

That wasn’t what Reardon had meant, but if Lombard had heard what they accused him of, he must not deem it worthy of comment.

Everyone knew, they’d said.

Did they really? Did others suspect that Reardon was corrupt?

But no. Reardon wasn’t the corrupt one. He never would have done what those men tried to do, and Barclay had only ever used his visions to help people and keep himself safe. The real corruption was rarely what people thought.

“Do you really think it was magic that killed my mother?” Reardon asked in the dead of the quiet streets, thinking more clearly by the step, with the castle courtyard coming into view.

“I don’t know, my prince,” Lombard answered. “No one does. But it could have been.”

“If it was… if itwas,” Reardon said, like punching the past with his words, “it wouldn’t change my mind. Barclay didn’t deserve to be taken.”

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