The Merry Men Masquerade

26. The Fool

Whiplash slapped a hand over Ronan's mouth.

He pressed his ear to the engraving in the door but couldn't hear anything over his blood rushing and the screaming bells. Someone gripped the back of his shirt when he laid his palms over the planks, but they couldn't stop him from cracking the door open a sliver, just enough to let sound in and get an eye on the scene.

He saw Amir raise yielding hands, reaching one to pull down his hood. He was slowly approaching the hall entrance and the four rumpled guards; they leveled their blades with his chest. Ronan strained to catch what snippets he could.

"Your highness," someone was saying. "...should have realized...the rest, where...? Who are they?"

Amir said nothing.

"Stop moving," the guard commanded, leering at his prince Rainer. To his comrade, "Search the place."

Only three guards left. Fight, Ronan implored, but Amir stilled, obedient like he'd always had to be. He let himself be manhandled and cuffed, and Ronan got the briefest flash of his face. Resigned, like he had come to terms with this outcome long ago, but proud. A tight jaw and hard eyes, anything but weak.

The guard tried to push him toward the door but he went willingly, not wavering at the force of it. Ronan watched him walk away, out the door, back to his prison. By the looks of it, he might actually wind up in a cell this time.

Robin's frantic hiss, "What the hell are you-"

"Don't follow me," Ronan said, then ran into the Great Hall.

He sprinted with abandon, cloaked by the bells until the moment he burst through the doors and threw himself into Amir's back.

They tumbled together to the floor. Ronan winced at the slam of Amir's chin. "Sorry, love," he murmured as he sat up over Amir's back a meter from the guards, twisting to point his right arm their way. Clutched between his fingers, cool against his burning skin, was the wooden grip of a shiny steel pistol.

The guards stopped dead. Ronan cocked the hammer and leveled the barrel with his prison guard's chest. It was the bluff of the century, but he was a damn good liar.

Shielding his movements with his body, never taking his eyes off the guards, he worked on the handcuffs with his left hand. Quickly, quickly. Seconds were all the hoax would buy him. And all he needed.

"You good to go?" he asked, leaning down so Amir could hear him, when he felt it: the tell-tale sigh of release from deep within the metal as the lock came undone.

"Great," Amir groaned.

Ronan tucked the gun back into Amir's hip and stood.

In the time Amir spent pushing to his feet, the brief moment in which three swords came down on Ronan at once, Ronan saw the lines of Amir's face pull downward and inward, so very tired. Then he erupted.

That was it. Amir was centuries old when he fought. He was ancient magma bubbling over. He was lava gushing hot and fast, spraying high, filling every space. He propelled one guard back with a kick and caught the other two with a knife in each hand, throwing aside their strikes as if they wighed nothing. He moved as a smoke cloud, surging forward then curling out of reach in a wisp. Fighting him looked suffocating.

Ronan ran at the first guard before he could regain his footing and put all those sparring sessions to use. A jab to the guard's unarmed side to make him veer away, a swipe of the leg mid-dodge to knock him off balance. Deflect the swing, counter with another strike to his unsteady side, and once he was really teetering, throw a shoulder forward. That last step probably wouldn't get Amir's approval, but it did the job. The guard wound up on the floor, and Ronan wound up on top of him.