Royal Blood : Chapter 20 (Patreon)

A/N: Entering what will probably be the last week of daily updates for Royal Blood. After this I will be returning to a more sane update schedule for the sake of my poor fingers, but until then, let's finish out strong!

Chapter 20: Blood Tells

“So why do you need those maps?”

Boss, of course, wasn’t just going to hand over valuable intel to a kid.

“Because I figured I could use the same trick you pulled.” I shrugged. “Either get in or get out via the sewers. It’ll be a lot easier to just walk up to a man’s house in the middle of Queen’s Row.”

“I don’t think so.” Boss snorted, stretching his shoulders. The wraps on his hands were torn up, like he’d been in a fight.

I didn’t ask.

“For one,” he continued. “It’s a lot easier to walk up to people’s houses in the rich part of the town. The guards won’t shank you for looking the wrong way.”

“Not when I look like a street urchin.” I waved at my clothes. They were a bit dirty after a day or so of running around the city. To top it off, I hadn’t had a new pair in about three months, and my ankles were already starting to show again.

“Buy better clothes.”

“I spent money on better gear instead.” I crossed my arms.

He laughed again. “It’s not better if it don’t get you to your target, boy.”

“Including rope and a light stone for navigating the sewers, along with some other climbing gear.” I kept my voice even. Boss didn’t mind some banter, but if I got mad at him he’d take my head off. “Really, the plans will just be saving me time at this point. I’m gonna have to map it all out myself otherwise.”

He paused at that, actually turning to face me. His slate grey eyes were sharp as always. I’d learned that they weren’t demon eyes or anything, but his observation skill was still much higher than anyone else I’d ever met. I felt something like fingers running down my back as he effortlessly pierced my concealment skill.

“Port Royal keeps a tighter lid on these things.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Tighter than the Imperial City?”

“The City doesn’t have smugglers trying to sneak in goods off the water. Guard is too good for that. Here? A thousand ships come through a week, or near enough it makes no difference.” He leaned back languidly in his bed. It looked like that might have actually been the first time he’d used the mattress at the inn. “So they have more precautions. A lot more, and not just locks.”

“Stuff like what?”

He waved a hand. “Shafts with spelled walls so you can’t climb ‘em, doors that only open from the other side, sheer drops, tunnels so small a man’ll get stuck in them. To top it off, the whole place is a maze for rats. Even work crews tie ropes and mark the walls so they don’t get lost.”

I nodded, thinking that over in my mind. “Well, seems like the maze part would be solved by a map, as for the rest…” I flicked Nezza’s Bite out of her sheath, flicking the bone white dagger over my knuckles. “How many people trying to sneak in are child assassins with a transforming knife?”

He eyed me a bit more seriously. “How do you plan on getting past the doors?”

“I can probably cut through them, or just slip Nezza through if there’s a gap.” I pulled a length of rope from under my new cloak. “Same with the climbing shafts, as long as I can get a good enough throw.”

He hummed, before shrugging. “What the hell, go get yourself killed, brat.” He leaned over, pulling out a few sheafs of paper from his own traveling sack. “It’ll be hilarious to watch.” He tossed me a single bundle. “There are the plans we have for the sewer system, and the knowledge of the patrols.” He gave me a sharp look. “Those don’t leave this room. Got it?”

I nodded, glancing over toward the door. Boss had hung a necklace that was enchanted to stop people from overhearing or coming into the room unless they had a good reason. Apparently, someone with a high enough Charisma score or something could shake it off, but hopefully there wouldn’t be any high level people down in this part of the city to begin with.

“Good.” He socked me lightly on the shoulder. “And if you touch my belongings, I’ll kill you.”

“You’re all heart,” I muttered.

He laughed, going to the door. “Just leave it on the bed when you’re done.” Then he was gone, leaving me with a thick sheaf of papers wrapped in twine. I gently undid the knot, laying out what I had across the floor.

After a moment, Nezza transformed back into her human form, landing lightly behind my back. “I hate tha’ man…”

I gave a short laugh. “Don’t we all?” I shook my head, going back to the papers. “Anyway, I don’t imagine you want to help me with this?”

“Nah.” She shook her head, trudging over to lean against the wall. “I don’ think I’ll be much help.”

“Never too late to start learning.”

She frowned. “Learn this, learn that.” She threw her hands up. “Sometimes ya gotta get out there and do, Aly.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s never been my problem. You of all people should understand why I’m so cautious now.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She nodded. “It makes sense, why ya wanna stick around. I jus’ hate waitin’.”

I flicked through a few of the papers. Some of them were actual blueprints, or whatever passed for that in this era, with exact measurements. Those were unfortunately few and far between. The majority of the papers consisted of sketched out junctions in a dozen different hands, little bits and pieces of knowledge assembled over years of working with smugglers and other groups that plumbed the depths beneath Port Royal.

I was beginning to see why the Boss hadn’t bothered with it. Just fitting all the intel together would be a chore.

“Why don’t you start reading those little onyx slips we got?” I asked. “We finally have time.”

Nezza muttered something, glancing off to the side.

“Huh?” I looked up from where the two pieces of parchment I had in my hands.

“I said I can’t read ‘em…” She folded her arms even harder. “They’re all in weird squiggles!”

I hummed. “I guess they wouldn’t be in Imperial, would they?” I tapped my chin. Really, I don’t know why I expected it to be any different. They were written in some weird magic script on tiny pieces of stone that you needed demon eyes to read. If it was in Imperial script, nothing would even fit. “Can you at least see what the letters are?”

“Yeah, but I dun’ know what any of ‘em mean…”

“Didn’t I just tell you it’s never too late to start learning?” She pouted at me, but I did have a solution. “I can get you started at least; I know the alphabet.”

“You do?” Nezz blinked, before leaning forward eagerly. “Why?”

“It was part of my studies, you know.” I jerked my head vaguely in the direction of the Imperial City. Just because we could talk about it freely didn’t mean I wanted to start developing any bad habits. “I was supposed to start learning grammar and vocabulary, well, last year.” I laughed. “But that didn’t happen. I really hate the way my tutors taught me languages. It was so counterintuitive.”

At least I had a child’s elasticity for new information, and Elysia, who was always happy to practice with me.

“You speak more than jus’ Imperial?”

I sighed. “Nezz, I was a prince, remember? I speak like, six languages.” I frowned slightly. “I actually need to make sure I don’t lose my Myrese. It’s been a year. Anyway.” I actually gone a bit harder on the language side of my education than most of my siblings, because it reminded me of back home.

I’d gone to college for math, and sure, I could do linear algebra and shit that most people here hadn’t even conceptualized yet, but I’d realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t anything special back home. I’d actually been thinking of switching to linguistics for a while, but I’d been determined to tough it out like I usually did.

The linguistics would have been more helpful. I wasn’t interested in rebuilding mathematics from the ground up just so my knowledge would be useful.

“Here.” I pulled a blank sheet of paper out of one of my own bags—perks of pretending to be an apprentice scribe. “This is the basics of how the alphabet is formed. It’s actually more of a syllabary.”

I couldn’t help but smile as Nezza mouthed the word ‘syllabary’ to herself as I wrote down the ten base symbols of Demonic across the top of the paper, then across the left side in the same order.

In order, they were: Chi, Roum, Invet, Inket, Neq, Mirn, Xan, Thje, Nnm, and Cer, and they were all appropriately squiggly.

I made a grid, filling in the spaces where the rows and columns met. Where each symbol met its like across, I filled in that grid square black. Each ‘symbol’ combined with each other, but not with itself, so there was Chi-Roum and Chi-Invet, but no chi-squared.

Math joke.

There were also some complex rules for what each combination meant depending on what symbol was first or second. I’d actually been forced to memorize all ninety combinations separately, but fortunately I’d thought up the grid in my spare time and it made the whole process so much easier.

“Here’s where we start.” I ran my finger across the top row of mono-symbols, reading each to her in turn. Then going over the pronunciations.

Annoyingly, she got the pronunciation of each letter down much faster than I had. Soon enough, she got a skill, and I told her to take it.

I may have been offered a polyglot skill if I’d kept up my studies, but there was no use crying over spilled milk.

“So they read differen’ forwards and backwards, huh?” Nezza tilted her head side to side like a pendulum, as if she was trying to see the sheet of paper from multiple directions. “What about up and down?”

“I actually don’t know what direction it’s read in.” I rubbed the back of my head sheepishly. “In my studies, it was always written left to right, like Imperial.” I glanced toward the box on Nezza’s waist, where the Rithatra Mersuz was sitting. “Somehow I doubt that’s how it works.”

“Mmm.” She nodded, taking the piece of paper from me. She traced her fingers down the rows and columns.

“Let’s start with the Chi column.” I drew her attention to the nine symbols there.

“Is that what’s it’s called?” She leaned closer, until she was practically leaning against my shoulder. I huffed, she had nearly a foot and twenty pounds on me.

“Chi combines with each of the other letters, but you can’t just read them like they’re right next to each other. Instead, Chi-Roum is pronounced, Krroum, with a rolled ‘r’, but sometimes it’s also shortened to…”

Nezza watched with intense eyes as I walked her down the first column, and made her repeat them back to me. It took a bit, but while she was usually flighty and distractable when it came to book learning like this, instead she showed an incredibly intense focus, even as she struggled to remember the second row.

It was because this was part of her heritage, I realized. Nezza had always been looked down upon for being part demon. To learn that her blood wasn’t something to be ashamed of, that it was something beautiful, that she had a language and a people of her own.

Yeah,  I could imagine it was a powerful experience.

As I pulled out another sheet of paper and quill for her to practice, I decided that I should probably pick up my own studies into language.

After all, I was going to be a prince again one day, wasn’t I?

We’d made a bargain.

For learning to teach, and teaching to learn, you have gained +1 Int

+2048 EXP

Current Experience 4 208/35 000