The Fanged Crown

by Jenna Helland

  “What a dump!” Boult’s voice came from behind him.

  “Nine Hells!” Harp swore. Engrossed in thought, Harp had wandered down to the lower deck, moving aimlessly between crates and barrels as if answers would be waiting for him in plain sight. He was so distracted that he hadn’t heard Boult come down the ladder into the hold. “Who knew dwarves could sneak like cats?” Harp said.

  “I could’ve cut your throat, and you wouldn’t have seen me coming,” Boult said. “Lingering in the past like a pig rolling in slop. You get that look in your eye, you’re thinking about a certain ambitious, underhanded elf named Liel. When are you going to start using your head?”

  “I’ve made it forty-two years so far,” Harp replied. “No use starting now.”

  “Did you find anything?” Boult asked, lifting the lid of one of the crates and closing it quickly when the smell of rotting meat drifted into the air. “Bitch Queen, spare us. They must have been waiting here a long time.”

  Grates in the low ceiling allowed light into the stuffy space, and they could hear rodents scurrying in the dark spaces along the edge of the hull. Harp brushed aside a coil of thick rope hanging from the ceiling. There was a door at the far end of the hold. Covered in gilt-leaf, the door was surprisingly ornate compared to the rest of the ship and glowed faintly in the dusty light. “That must be the captain’s quarters,” Harp said.

  “My, the captain must have been a man of fine taste,” Boult said, jabbing his finger at the gaudy decoration.

  “Nothing says high class like shiny foil,” Harp agreed as he gingerly pushed the door open. Glass lanterns hung from the ceiling, and their low flames cast swaying shadows in the dingy, sour-smelling room. There was a cot bolted into the floor, a large chest against one side of the room, and a table with papers and brass navigational scopes. It looked very much like Harp’s quarters back on the Crane. Only bigger.

  “Laws of pillage say she’s ours now,” Harp said as he moved into the room to check the maps tacked to the wall.

  “We sail her to Nyanzaru and sell her, chances are we make more coin than doing the job we came to do,” Boult said.

  Harp looked over his shoulder at Boult. “We can finish the job and still sell her at the port. I committed to Avalor.”

  “And what exactly did you commit to?”

  “You’re not going to let it go, are you?” Harp asked. “It might not even matter.”

  “We’re here because of Liel, and that doesn’t fill me with joy and hope,” Boult said.

  “You’re wrong about Liel,” Harp told him, pulling the maps off the wall. He rolled them up neatly and laid them on the cot. In his early days of pirating, Harp learned that if you could only take one thing from an enemy vessel, you should take the maps. “And it’s not like you to even think about reneging on a job.”

  “And it’s not like you to lie,” Boult said. “Especially not to me.”

  “Since when?” Harp asked. “Our friendship would be so much less interesting if we only told the truth. I’m pretty sure you lie to me all the time.”

  “Have to do something to keep you conscious.”

  Harp knelt down in front of the heavy wooden chest and stared at its brass lock. It didn’t look too complicated—or trapped—but Kitto was the true lock expert. Harp sat back on his heels and thought about fetching Kitto, who could open the chest much quicker than he could. But Harp wanted to get off the Marigold and onto shore as quickly as possible.

  “The captain was Alon Merritt,” Boult said, reading from the log on the table. He ran his finger down the page.

  “Sure,” Harp replied, his full attention on the chest.

  “Not much in the way of personal information about Captain Merritt, just weather records and land sightings,” Boult continued. When Harp didn’t respond, he glowered down at Harp who was prone on the floor with his eye looking under the chest for springs or other traps.

  “Did you hear me?” Boult said.

  Harp grunted as he pulled his picks out of his pocket and peered into the keyhole for a better look at the locking mechanism. But the hole was too small to see the components, so he just stuck two hook picks inside and hoped for the best.

  “I bet a mage could open that,” Boult said grumpily. “We need a spellcaster. I’ve told you that a hundred times.”

  “We had a spellcaster. Remember Andia?”

  “Of course I remember her. And the one before that. What was her name?”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Harp told him.

  “Etienne. You chased her away too.”

  “She left of her own accord,” Harp protested.

  “In tears,” Boult pointed out.

  “Well, love hurts.”

  “Only when you love a bastard.”

  Harp twisted the picks harder than he would have thought necessary. Kitto coaxed a lock open with feather touches while Harp always relied on brute strength. However, he heard a satisfying pop, and the box sprang open. Inside the chest was a bundle of papers sealed with red wax.

  “What’s on that seal?” Harp held the papers up to the light to try and decipher the waxy imprint. It was a circular mark with something lean curled around a hexagon shape that might have been a cut gemstone. But heat had smeared the wax and left it too damaged to decipher. Harp showed the seal to Boult.

  “An otter?” Boult suggested. “Or a serpent?”

  “Whoever Bootman got his orders from, they used the stamp to verify them.” Harp broke the seal and opened the bundle, but the pages were blank.

  “Enchanted,” Boult said smugly, as if he had known they would be all along. “Promise me that you’ll keep your hands off the next spellcaster we run across.”

  “I promise no such thing,” Harp said automatically.

  Harp ran his fingertips along the bottom of the chest, pushing gently on the seams of the planks until he felt one bend under the pressure. Using his dagger, he pried up the wood, revealing a tiny piece of rolled parchment tied with a ribbon.

  “Laghessi Cove. Second Ride, Summertide. D. Cardew.”

  As Harp registered the name Cardew, the blood flowed to his head in a rush of anger. Of course it was Cardew who had sent the mercenaries after them. As Harp stood up and brushed off his knees, his anger turned to bitter amusement. Harp handed the parchment to Boult, who unrolled it.

  With an uneasy chuckle, Harp began packing up the maps. But Boult crumbled the parchment violently in his fist and glared at Harp with a deadly look in his eyes. Harp had seen that look on Boult’s face a few times, but it had never been directed at him. At people trying to kill them, yes, but never at him.

  “Easy, Boult,” Harp said, puzzled by the intensity and anger coming from his friend. “What’s wrong?”

  “What in the Nine Hells is this?” Boult said, throwing the ball of paper at Harp.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Those are orders from Cardew,” Boult said, answering his own question.

  “He must have hired Bootman and told him where to find us,” Harp agreed.

  “It’s from Cardew,” Boult repeated again.

  “Yes,” Harp replied slowly, resisting the urge to make a jest. Harp wasn’t the best at social interactions, but even he could tell that making light of the situation might be dangerous to his health.

  “When you said that Avalor wanted us to come to Chult, I assumed it was to find Liel and her husband, Cardew,” Boult said with barely contained fury. “If Cardew is lost in the jungle with Liel, how is he sending mercenaries to kill us?”

  “Because he isn’t lost in the jungle.”

  “Well, where is the bastard?”

  “The Hero Cardew is alive and well,” Harp continued. “He showed up at the Court of the Crimson Leaf—the only survivor of an unnatural attack in Chult, at least so he says. And that’s when Avalor contacted me.”

  “Custard-swilling, dog-kissing, demon-loving, boil-on-a-halfling’s ass,” Boult muttered.

&n
bsp; “I’m going to assume that’s directed at the illustrious Hero of the Realm and not me,” Harp said when Boult had finished his tirade. He considered Boult. “This isn’t about my … relationship with Cardew, is it?”

  Boult snorted. “Relationship? Like you two strolled through a field of violets holding hands?”

  “You know what Cardew did to me,” Harp said. “And while it makes my heart feel all tingly that his name brings out such violence in you—”

  “It isn’t about you!”

  “Gee, Boult, even with the intellectual capacity of a loaf of bread, I managed to work that out,” Harp said pointedly. “Normally I’d have no interest in prying in your past. But it seems like I’m not the only one in the room keeping secrets, and at the heart of the matter is a man named Cardew. You’re right. I owe you an explanation. But I think you owe me one too.”

  “You should be put in a catapult and launched over a cliff,” Boult told him.

  “It’s your turn to confess, Boult,” Harp said quietly.

  “I hate the day you came caterwauling into the world.”

  “Yes, yes, you despise me,” Harp said. “Now talk.”

  “I was happier when I thought that son of a barghest was probably dead,” Boult said. He sat down on the edge of the cot and glared at the crumpled missive on the floor. “Have you ever heard of Amhar, Scourge of Tethyr?”

  “Of course. Who hasn’t?”

  “Who hasn’t?” he repeated sadly. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  30 Hammer, Year of Splendors Burning

  (1469 DR)

  The Road to Windhollow

  Amhar and the soldiers left the grounds of the Winter Palace and headed north up the dirt road. Each man carried a hooded lantern to ward off the gloom. During daylight hours, the pleasant track wound through the woods until it reached the foothills and climbed into the mountains beyond Windhollow. Queen Anais would have taken that road, had she not got stuck in Celleu due to the fog.

  Fog wasn’t a proper name for the weather, Amhar thought. Thick, fuggy, foul—it was as if gauze had enveloped the soldiers. Amhar’s breath clogged his nostrils and throat, and the fog pressed on his ears, smothering sounds. Darkness he could have handled—his eyes were made for the gloom of deep tunnels—but the fog obscured everything past the end of his axe.

  He tried to recall the name of the soldier trudging up the road beside him, but he couldn’t remember. Or maybe he’d never known in the first place. None of the men on the road with him were in his regiment or stationed with him in Darromar.

  Thinking of Darromar—right, ordered, well-built Darromar—Amhar wished he hadn’t been sent to the Winter Palace. It was an honor, to be sure, to be entrusted with the safety of the realm’s finest and the children of Anais and Evonne, the Heirs of Tethyr, besides.

  But that night, in the presence of the abnormal weather, fear had wormed its way into his chest.

  The groundskeeper vanished looking for the cook who disappeared with dinner unfinished. And why was that load of wood delivered in this weather? And then there were the guests themselves. They had managed to arrive before the fog settled, yet they were so fatigued they’d all begged off to their rooms to rest before dinner, without the usual preening and gossiping these sorts of events were full of.

  Nothing made sense.

  Preferring to be angry rather than afraid, Amhar focused his mind on Cardew, the idiot who was ignoring warning signs that were as plain as the nose on his face. Fussing about his dinner with an unnatural fog rising up and swallowing servants. And the children in the palace in that buffoon’s care!

  If anything happened, Amhar knew he’d blame Cardew’s stubborn posturing for the rest of his days.

  They reached the crest of the hill where they were supposed to rendevous with the man who had sent for reinforcements. The fog pressed in on them, smothering the light of their lanterns and deadening the sounds of their footfalls.

  “Where did the scout go?” the man beside him asked, shivering in his uniform.

  “He may be up the next rise,” Amhar said. “Too foggy to see where you’re at in this.”

  Suddenly a noise like a door being ripped off its hinges broke through the fog and made the soldiers startle and yank out their weapons. They moved into a tight circle with their backs to each other, tensely waiting for something to materialize out of the fog. Soon, they heard skittering noises coming from beyond the light of their lanterns. Amhar felt oddly claustrophobic, as if he were in a tiny room. The skittering noises faded away, but the soldiers held their defensive position until the silence seemed secure.

  “The wildlife,” Amhar said, his words sounding false even to his own ears. “They’re probably as disoriented as we are.”

  Continuing their cautious walk up the road, they came to the foot of a steep rise where the ruts from cart wheels dug deep into the road’s surface. There was still no sign of the scout, but the fog was a little thinner, and they could see the diffuse light of the moon through the clouds overhead.

  “Ugh,” a soldier said. “How come it got muddy all of a sudden?”

  Amhar tried to lift a boot and found it stuck in wet earth where just a few moments before the ground had been bone dry. A dark liquid ran down the cart ruts, soaking the dirt. Amhar lowered his lantern and saw that the wetness wasn’t water at all. Blood. He raised his eyes to the dark shape of the cart looming on the crest of the hill above him.

  He motioned to the men to be quiet, although their lanterns would have given them away from a distance. They moved up the side of the road. The first corpse tripped the soldier beside Amhar.

  The body of a man lay half on the road and half in the watery ditch that ran along it. Below the waist his body was a meaty mess, and his unblinking eyes were open to the night sky.

  “Beshaba!” the soldier cried, scrambling back from the corpse.

  “Swords up!” another whispered. “We’ve found our trouble.”

  The dark shape on the crest of the hill was a cart run off the road with a dead horse still harnessed to it. Amhar thought there were three more corpses beside the cart, but as he drew closer, he saw it was just one corpse hacked into three pieces. When the dwarf turned slightly to whisper to the soldier beside him, he saw horror on the man’s face.

  Something moved behind them. Amhar dropped and rolled to the ditch as three dark-clothed figures darted out of the fog, holding scythes in their gloved hands. Amhar’s lantern went flying into the weeds behind him.

  The attackers slipped in and out of shifting cones of light as his lantern flickered out. Men shouted, and swords clashed. Amhar gripped his axe and clambered to his feet as another soldier fell backward into the ditch, a sword in his chest.

  Scrambling out of the ditch, Amhar rushed the attackers, his axe raised. He swung wildly into the murky fog, but the figures were quick and dodged his blade. The blunt end of a scythe flew out of the darkness, striking him between the eyes. Reeling backward, Amhar felt himself lose consciousness.

  But not before he saw the distinctive curve of a pointed ear above a dark mask covering part of a man’s face, limned in the faint moonlight.

  He awoke to a misty morning. Even before he opened his eyes, he remembered where he was and what had happened. Traces of fog still clung to the low-lying areas, but as the sun appeared on the horizon, strong winds off the ocean cleansed the steely sky.

  Amhar pushed himself off the ground. It was not a surprise to see the bodies strewn across the track, but the level of brutality was something more than he could fathom. He tried to count bodies, to determine how many had survived, but the road was littered with so many pieces—recognizable and otherwise—that he gave up.

  Amhar made a cursory search of the empty cart. If there had been a tarp, he would have covered the bodies, or as much of them as he could. Shivering with cold and shock, he stumbled down the hill to the palace, blood soaking his uniform and fear soaking his heart.
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br />   CHAPTER FIVE

  29 Kythorn, the Year of the Ageless One

  (1479 DR)

  The Marigold, the Coast of Chult

  You’re Amhar,” Harp said, for the third time.

  “Will you let me finish?” Boult said. “I made my way back to the Winter Palace. A new regiment had arrived and was dragging corpses out into the courtyard. They’d been … it was horrible.”

  “How many were killed?” Harp asked.

  “Six guests, thirteen soldiers, and four children,” Boult recited tonelessly. “Three survivors. And me.”

  “You’re Amhar.” Harp shook his head. “How did the attackers get into the palace in the first place?”

  “The Inquiry said that the oldest boy, Daviel, stole away to see a village girl. He left a door in East Lion’s gate open.”

  “Were you at the Inquiry?” Harp asked.

  “In chains,” Boult said bitterly. “It was a farce, of course. Daviel’s body was found in the cellar. Why would the killer bring the body back to the palace?”

  “A good question.” They both fell silent. The Children’s Massacre still weighed heavily on the hearts of Tethyr.

  “You’re Amhar,” Harp said after a moment. “The infamous killer of children. Honestly, I don’t know how I missed it.”

  Boult’s eyes narrowed to slits, and a dark look passed over his features.

  “Oh come on! I’m not serious, Boult,” Harp said. “I know you’d never kill an innocent. But, you have to admit, it’s a pretty strange thing to ask me to get my head around.”

  Harp wasn’t exaggerating. After the massacre at the Winter Palace, Amhar the dwarf became notorious throughout Tethyr and even beyond its borders. The name Amhar became synonymous with the worst sorts of crimes. Every unsolved murder in Tethyr was blamed on him and his network of underlings. Many dwarves suffered for their alleged connections to Amhar even after he was sent to the Vankila Slab.

  Harp led the way through the dank hold to the square of dusty sunlight at the base of the ladder.