Royal Blood : Chapter 19 (Patreon)

Chapter 19: Royal Route

Unlike last time, it wasn’t just as straightforward as walking up to the magistrate’s house and hiding in his closet. For one, there were guards this time.

For another, I was also wrestling with the question of why. Like, if Magistrate Scionus knew I was the prince, and that was still a big if, why did he react so strongly to my presence?

Obviously, he wasn’t actually here for me. Like the innkeeper had said, the Royal Guard had been pulled back to the Palace, and while I…hoped Elysia was still trying to find me, I also knew that her own sphere of influence was much closer to the capital. I’d slipped right through the cracks of where she was strongest too. Iduneth was the property of house Idun, a family that held no love for Emperor Raxus and his dynasty. Port Royal, on the other hand, was one of the crown jewels of the Empire, and control over it was fiercely contested by all of my siblings.

In either case, Elysia was just too nice to use my disappearance as an excuse for the political maneuvering necessary to take over the city.

Fortunately, it was far more likely that the magistrate worked for one of my other siblings, and was not pleased to see me. I imagine I had no shortage of people in the Palace who were happy to have me gone, namely, every one of my dozens of siblings that were below me in the order of succession. Some of those men and women, by virtue of being born to the Emperor’s concubines, were actually much older than me, even though they came in behind a child of the Blood such as myself.

Any one of them could have arranged for Velari to be assassinated for much the same reason.

Or at least, that’s what I hoped was true, because otherwise I was stuck between killing someone who worked for Elysia, or failing my first mission.

Going back to the Palace wasn’t an option at this point, even on the off chance Scionus was Elysia’s man. Leaving aside the apprentice oath or whatever my boss had put me under, I still had no idea who let Boss’s men into the Royal Gardens just over a year ago. Without that information, not only would Elysia still be in danger, but I wouldn’t even be able to protect myself.

And if the magistrate worked for someone else, well, upstanding or not, if he reported me to one of my siblings, I was as good as dead.

Ultimately, I was stuck with a choice that was no choice at all, and the sobering realization that I was actually okay with murdering a man who might be trying to help me, if it furthered my goals.

I guess I wasn’t so immune to the cutthroat mentality of this new world after all.

Ah well, at least I’d saved Vel before I got corrupted or whatever. She’d been a snotty little brat, but I still couldn’t really find it in me to get upset at thirteen year olds, even if was only turning twelve soon.

Nezza poked me in the side. “Whatcha so sad about?”

“What are you.” I poked her back playfully, and she stuck her tongue out. “You know, if you’re gonna be a noble one day, you should start learning how to talk like one.”

“That’s what I got you for!” She grinned, before pulling my arm. “Anyway, stop moping ‘n look at the cute otters!”

I blinked, and Nezza took the opportunity to drag me towards the water’s edge.

We were at the fringe of the port. Like I said, there were a lot more guards around Queen’s Row right now, so we were playing it slow, meandering down near one of the little inlets dotting the bay.

As I squinted through the evening light on the water, I did actually see a pair of familiar aquatic mammals playing near a docked dingy.

“How do you know what otters are?” I blinked up at Nezza. She was looking at the two animals splashing in the water with a look of childish glee.

“Oh, Leiroc told me about ‘em.” She shrugged. “While I was tellin’ him my story. Said I reminded him of a cute otter, then I asked what an otter was and he said—”

I cut her off. “The demon merchant told you?” She nodded. “I’m surprised he used Common.”

“I told ‘im I didn’t know any demon.”

“Something else you should work on, yeah?” I nudged her again. One of the otters clambered out of the water, perching on the dingy and barking—I think that’s what it was called—down at its compatriot. “Anyway, I forgot we had them here. You’d think they would have been hunted out already.”

“Hunted?!” Nezza looked to me with a betrayed expression. “Who would kill such cute lil beans!”

“…Beans?”

“Look at ‘em” Nezza pointed. “Don’t they look like water beans?”

I looked at Nezz for a moment longer. I guess it only made sense, she’d been in a landlocked city her whole life, and the sewer rats weren’t exactly cute.

“Wanna get a closer look?” I asked. She was still a kid, after all. She should get a chance to enjoy cute things.

That, and we already had enough problems to worry about without me being a whiny little brat about Nezz wanting to look at some of the wild life.

“Can we?” Her gaze snapped to me, red eyes wide. “Won’t that jus’ scare ‘em off?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. They’re probably pretty used to people, though, if they live around here. There.” I pointed. “Go buy some fish.”

She paused, patting her pockets. “I’m outta money.”

I gave her a shove. “Then go steal some, dummy.”

“Oh.” She scowled at me. “I knew that.”

I rolled my eyes as she started meandering her way up the street towards one of the main roads. I went down to the water. The street here went down to a cobblestone quay, stone supports dipping down into the water. The dingy wasn’t the only little boat moored there; the ropes went up, looped over carved figures set into the way. They looked like dragon heads arching out over the water, scales of their neck worn smooth by ropes.

I plopped down, kicking my feet against the stone. The two otters shifted a little when I came closer, but I made sure not to make any sudden movements or even look at them directly, and soon enough they went back ignoring me.

They were both on the boat now, and one of them even had a little shell that it was prying open with a rock. Cute. I’d seen videos about that in my last life.

I pointed it out to Nezza when she came back with the fish.

“Wow, they’re smart.”

“Smarter than that fish, anyway,” I said. We shared a laugh.

“So what should I do with this?” She raised the raw fish she’d snatched. I figured we should probably wrap this up before the fishmonger realized he was missing some stock. Fortunately, I also saw how both of the fluffy little otters immediately locked their beady eyes onto the fish.

“Try feeding them.” I pointed. “Here, put it in the boat with them, on the seat, then move away.

“I want to feed them by hand.” She pouted.

I rolled my eyes again. Christ, this girl was supposed to be fifteen, wasn’t she? “And how would it work if someone came up to you and tried shoving raw fish down your throat.”

She tilted her head. “I mean, you bought me food and it worked pretty good, didn’it?”

I shoved her. “Only because you tried to steal for me first, or did you already forget that?”

Her arm snaked out, wrapping around my neck. “Hey! Don’t think you can just mouth me like that an’ I’ll just take it?”

I caught her other hand as she tried to smear raw fish all over my hair. “I’m being repressed!”

Nezza laughed, picking me up off my feet. Unfortunately, even if I was strong enough to keep the fish off of me, that didn’t do anything about my weight. For a second I thought she was going to chuck me into the water.

Then the otters both jumped off the boat, spooked by our play fight.

“Wait no, come back!” Nezza darted forward, dragging me behind her as I struggled to get my feet back under me. “I brought fish!” She threw the dead fish back into the water, where it hit with a wet splat before bobbing back up to the surface.

“Good work.” I squirmed in her grip. “Aren’t you…so happy?”

To be fair, one of the otters did come back up and snag the fish with a cheeky little bark before flipping onto its back and tacking a snack as it slowly paddled away.

“Aww.” Nezza slumped, and I began the arduous process of worming out from under her arm.

“Oi!”

We both froze at the sound of another voice.

“You stole my damn fish, thief!”

We both looked back, well, Nezza looked back and dragged me with her. There was an irate-looking man in a big apron storming down the slope towards the water, an annoyed looking guardsman right behind him.

Well, we were in the nicer part of the city.

“Under that bridge.” I whispered. Nezza nodded before turning and dashing away.

I made a big show of staggering as she let go of me, falling so that my hand was out of sight behind the stone bridge that went up over the water towards the central port districts. The moment Nezza was out of sight of the two men, and hopefully everyone else, she transformed, falling neatly into my hand.

I palmed her dagger form, slipping it into the hidden sheath on the small of my back as I rolled to my feet.

It was the type of trick we’d practiced exactly for situations like these. Hell, normally, I stuck around to point the guards in the ‘right’ direction, but this time there were a non-zero number of people looking for me. I shot a dirty glance and a muttered curse over my shoulder—helpfully hiding my face—and darted past the two men and around the corner.

Just in time to see the otter actually dart, fish in mouth, beneath my feet to escape the commotion on land.

It was that fact that led me to come back to the waters edge a few minutes later, after the guard was gone and the fishmonger was back to selling his wares. He looked annoyed, but really, people in this part of town weren’t going to lose their livelihood for a single fish.

“Whatcha doin’ now?” Nezza asked me as we returned to the scene of the crime.

I guess it was true what all those police procedurals said, huh?

“I have an idea.” I replied.

The otters were long gone, unfortunately, but when I leaned over the side of the stone walkway, I saw their escape route.

Now, the stone path itself was something that wouldn’t look out of place in a modern city back on Earth. It was all cobble, but it was held together by some type of mortar or concrete or something, and the pillars that went down into the water had space between them, kind of like little cut outs, so that the water could flow underneath.

When I looked into those little cut outs, I saw that not only could you go up and down the waterfront quite a ways in each direction, but also I caught sight of more than a few downspouts that let water flow out into the bay.

Most of them were pretty small, but I saw one or two that I could probably slip into pretty easily.

Guess there were still advantages to being the size of a child, though I really did wish my growth spurt would just hit already.

“I think I know how we’re gonna get in.”

I felt the equivalent of a sigh from Nezza. “Through the sewers?”

“Stop complaining, you’ll be a dagger most of the time.”

Nezz just sighed.

But now I had the place, the Magistrate’s House, and hopefully the mode of ingress.

I just had to ask Boss if he had the plans for the sewers like he’d clearly had for the Imperial City.