The Fanged Crown

by Jenna Helland

  “If you weren’t even in the palace at the time of the massacre, how exactly did you end up blamed for it?” Harp asked as they weaved around the tools and ropes hanging from the ceiling.

  “Cardew,” Boult said. “He blamed me, and everyone believed him.”

  If Amhar the dwarf had become known as the Scourge of Tethyr after the tragedy, Cardew had emerged as the Hero of the Realm, savior of Ysabel, heir to the throne. He had ascended to a place of prominence in the Court of the Crimson Leaf and was said to carry Queen Anais’s personal mark of confidence.

  “You must be the busiest dwarf alive,” Harp said, resting his foot on the lowest rung of the ladder and staring up at the square of blue sky above him. “You managed to sail with me on the Crane and direct your minions’ activities from the underworld at the same time? Pillaging, spreading plague, kidnapping—how do you find the time?”

  “Don’t forget Ranyt,” Boult said sarcastically. “Amhar contracted a demon to plague that village. Oh, and supposedly I’ve trained a monster to sink ships in Lantan’s Rest.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Harp prodded.

  “About Lantan?”

  “About Amhar,” Harp said.

  Boult hesitated. “Because you didn’t need to know. No one needed to know.”

  “Until now?”

  “Like you pointed out, I owed you an explanation,” Boult said impatiently. “Especially since Cardew is involved. Are you planning on climbing out of the hold? Or shall I carry you up the ladder on my shoulders?”

  But Harp didn’t move. “Why did you take the name Boult?”

  Boult sighed and looked away. After a moment, he said, “He was another dwarf in Vankila. For ‘treason,’ when ‘treason’ meant interfering with some lordling’s trade.”

  “Does he know you’re borrowing his name?” Harp said.

  “He’s dead, idiot. I was the only one who saw the ogres kill him. When they asked, I told everyone the ogres had killed Amhar and from then on I was Boult.”

  “That worked?” Harp asked.

  “You remember how it was. We were so filthy we might as well have been made of mud. And no one looked at anyone else’s face for long. Put the two of us in a pack of dwarves and no one could have said which was which.”

  “Didn’t you want to clear your name?”

  “Didn’t you?” Boult said, glowering at Harp.

  “Oh, I committed my crime, and I’d do it again. You, on the other hand, are innocent. I would think you’d want the truth to come out.”

  “Amhar’s dead, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “What does your family think?’

  “He’s dead to them as well.” Boult gestured impatiently at the ladder, and Harp climbed one rung higher but stopped again.

  “It’s as easy as walking!” Boult said. “One foot in front of the other and you’ll be topside in no time.”

  “You told me you were in prison for desertion,” Harp said.

  “I deserted the children.”

  “In what way? You went out to protect—”

  “I’m done talking about it,” Boult interrupted. “You know as well as I do that Cardew being here is no coincidence. Everything happens for a reason.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Harp replied and started climbing again. “Everything is coincidental. We’re just blind men stumbling around in the dark.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said, and you know it.”

  “You’re right. We’re just hunks of meat being slowly boiled to death in the stewpot of existence.”

  “You’re not as clever as you think you are,” Boult growled.

  Harp grinned and turned back to Boult. “Nope, but I’m still smarter than your average foodstuff.”

  “Tell me. If we’re not searching for Cardew, are we searching for his wife?” Boult asked.

  The grin disappeared from Harp’s scarred face. “Avalor would like us to bring back her body. If there’s enough left to bring to back.”

  Boult watched his friend climb up to the daylight. No man should have to talk about the woman he loved like that.

  CHAPTER SIX

  30 Hammer, Year of Splendors Burning

  (1469 DR)

  Winter Palace, the Coast of Tethyr

  The night’s formal dinner was a yearly tradition even though the Winter Palace wasn’t the ideal place for entertaining, or the night outside the ideal weather to do it in. An austere stone fortification on a cliff overlooking the ocean, the palace had survived the harsh winters and driving storms for generations. It was notoriously drafty with cavernous high-ceilinged rooms and strange noises that spawned endless stories of hauntings. The cold, foggy weather only fed those old stories.

  Even though the palace was chilly and damp, her annual visit to the Winter Palace had always been seven-year-old Ysabel’s favorite because it was the only time her cousins were all together. Their family’s nicest residence was the Violet Stone House outside Riatavin, and her father’s ancestral manor outside of Darromar was much warmer. But the starkness of the cliff-top palace, with its black-roofed turrets, lion-headed gargoyles, and serpentine corridors appealed to Ysabel’s imagination.

  She walked down one of the corridors, trying to find the room her brother Teague had disappeared into. Room after room lay empty and cold, their doors locked.

  Except one. Just past a suit of old armor, the door was ajar. She pushed the door open.

  A shadow lunged from the darkness. Ysabel screamed and released the heavy wooden door, which swung back on its hinges, scraping against her bare foot.

  “Teague!” she yelped.

  Teague grabbed her arm to steady her as she stumbled backward in surprise, trying to catch her scraped foot. “Are you all right? I didn’t mean to make you hurt yourself.”

  When she regained her balance, she punched him as hard as she could in the shoulder.

  “Ouch,” he said, laughing. “You’ve got quite an arm for a little girl.”

  “You’re so mean,” she said sulkily, glancing at the cut on the top of her foot, which was bleeding slightly.

  Teague looked down at her smugly. “You fall for that every time.”

  “And you never get tired of the jest,” she replied, giving him a shove. “Have you seen Cousin Daviel?”

  “How should I know where he is?” Teague asked.

  “I saw you two in the kitchen just a little while ago,” Ysabel said.

  “And yet I didn’t see you,” Teague said. “Little sneak. Still playing elves in the woods.”

  When Ysabel stood on the palace’s eastern balcony on the occasional clear day, she could see the green tapestry of the Wealdath, the massive forest that had once stretched much farther inland. Sometimes she and her cousins pretended to be elves by sneaking around the courtyards and making mischief on the unsuspecting groundskeepers. But they had to be careful at such games. If someone discovered them and told their mother, Evonne, her anger would be as bright and as hard as the sharp edge of a blade. She never lashed them herself. But it might be better if she did because her manservant wielded the belt with an arm made of iron. Now that their Aunt Anais had been crowned Queen of Tethyr, it was less dangerous to play at being elves. But still they never knew who might be listening.

  “You have to stop following us,” Teague said.

  “Why?” Ysabel asked, following him into the dark room. She heard him roll back the stone cover from the hearth, and soft red light from the fireplace filled the room. “Are you plotting something?”

  “Did Mother and Auntie Anais arrive yet?” Teague asked, ignoring his little sister’s queries.

  Since the death of their father, Garion, a few years before, Teague and Ysabel rotated from palace to palace while Evonne remained in Darromar year round. Evonne was constantly busy with political work in Anais’s Court of the Crimson Leaf—so busy that her children only saw her a few days out of every month. Evonne was beautiful to look at and had a quiet ly
rical voice even when she was furious. But she frightened Ysabel sometimes, especially when she talked about the degraded races—the rotten ones who should be removed from Tethyr forever.

  About a year before, Teague had whispered to Ysabel that their mother might actually be crowned the Queen of Tethyr. Ysabel worried that her Auntie Anais might be unhappy because she was actually next in line for the throne, at least according to the Line of Succession, a favorite topic of her boring tutor.

  Evonne had sent Teague and Ysabel to an isolated farm to live with a silent old man who never let them out of his sight, which was strange because the brother and sister were used to little or no supervision at all. The old man was called Filgarth, and he had once been a warrior, or so said the scars on his arms and face. Filgarth was toothless, which troubled Ysabel—how did he eat?—and he had no duties other than to trail them as they played in the fields or forest. Despite their ever-present chaperone, Ysabel liked the run-down farm, which was close to an oak forest and had a leaky barn that was home to a litter of stripey kittens.

  After a few months, one of their mother’s servants appeared on the winding dirt road that led to the out-of-the-way property. He took them back to their mother’s house in Darromar, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. A tenday later, they attended Auntie Anais’s coronation, and Ysabel and Teague returned to their normal cycle of spending a few months at each of the palaces scattered throughout the kingdom.

  “There’s a fog,” Ysabel told Teague, crossing to the slit in the wall where she could feel a wet mist creeping around the thick stones. “Mama and Auntie had to stop the night in Celleu.”

  “Because of a fog?” Teague asked, coming to stand beside his sister at the window. Outside, the sun had set even though it wasn’t even dinnertime. It always got dark early on wintry afternoons, but that night the air was thick and white, almost as if it was snowing heavily. But there were no flakes falling from the sky, just light drops of water that moistened Ysabel’s palm as she held her hand open against the night air.

  “It looks … odd,” Teague said uneasily. Peering out into the night, his thin face looked pinched with concern. It was so unlike him to worry about anything.

  “Who’s the baby now?” Ysabel teased. “Come on! Let’s find Cousin Daviel.”

  “Why are you looking for him?” Teague wanted to know. “He doesn’t want to play hide-and-seek.”

  “Master Cardew wants to see him,” Ysabel said. She didn’t like Declan Cardew, the haughty solider who served as Teague’s chaperone. Cardew never talked to her. He acted like she didn’t even exist.

  “What’s wrong with Cardew?” Teague asked her as they left the sitting room and padded down the cold flagstones to the spiral staircase that led to the kitchen area in the basement of the palace.

  “Nothing,” Ysabel said sullenly.

  “Bella …” Teague began as he noticed his sister’s wounded foot and the little blood tracks she’d left all along the corridor behind them. “You really hurt yourself! Go get a bandage. I’ll find Daviel.”

  Ysabel stopped as if she were considering his offer, a look of serious concentration on her little face. She knew Teague thought she was slow, but she was really just careful. And she liked to irritate him.

  “All right,” she finally agreed, smiling at him brightly when he crossed his arms in frustration. “But when you find him, bring him to our quarters so we can get ready for dinner together.”

  “Are we still having dinner, even without Mother and Auntie Anais?”

  “Oh, yes,” Ysabel replied as she padded down the corridor in the direction of the infirmary. “Master Cardew said we had to.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  29 Kythorn, the Year of the Ageless One

  (1479 DR)

  Chult

  Harp and his men rowed the short distance through the choppy waves to the beach. He watched Boult working the right oar and grinned broadly. He’d been traveling with the most infamous killer in Tethyrian history, and had never known it.

  Cardew had framed Boult for masterminding the entire massacre at the Winter Palace, with political implications that still resounded throughout Tethyr. Knowing Boult and his character, Harp decided there was a vicious irony to the situation. Life was such a travesty. A man had to learn to laugh about it, or he’d burn down the world for what it did to people who did nothing to deserve such pain. As if Boult could read his mind, the dwarf shot him an annoyed look and shook his head in disgust.

  The skiff crested a wave, and Boult glowered at Harp over the top of his oar. “You’re a goat, Harp. You’re the son of a goat, and your children will be little, bleating goats,” Boult said crossly.

  Harp laughed, ignoring the surprised look on Verran’s face, who had no idea where Boult’s outburst had come from.

  There were five of them in the skiff. Kitto and Boult were going with him into the jungle. Harp wanted to bring Verran onshore too, just because he wanted to keep an eye on him. At seventeen, the boy was a year older than Kitto, but he still had that wide-eyed look of most youths—scared, but curious. With his round cheeks and big blue eyes, he looked as if he’d just crawled out of a schoolroom. Verran was almost a head taller than Harp, with a stockier and more muscular physique. Most men of that size dominated any situation they were in. But Verran, who was almost as big as Cenhar, never seemed to know what to do with his body or how to use his commanding presence.

  Cenhar and Llywellan had been with him on the Marderward. Both were older and capable in a fight, but Llywellan had the edge when it came to thinking, which made him a better choice to guard the ships. Besides, Cenhar carried a greataxe, and a jungle seemed like the kind of place where they might need to chop down a tree—or something more vicious.

  “Don’t worry, Verran,” Cenhar said. “They’re always like that. It’s especially bad when things get hairy. Whenever Harp starts joking, somebody’s going to get hit.”

  “Mainly because Harp thinks he’s funnier than he is,” Boult said.

  “Kitto thinks I’m funny,” Harp protested.

  “Kitto thinks we’re all funny,” Boult said amicably.

  From his place at the back of the boat, Kitto didn’t say anything, but there was a faint smile on his lips. Kitto was easily amused by the antics of the world. Although he was quiet, Kitto seemed to be a master at picking up subtle things that Harp usually missed. Kitto could pick a cutpurse out of a crowded bazaar before the thief even made his move.

  “Should we be worried?” Verran asked, when the boat reached the shallows. “I mean, are things going to get … dangerous?”

  “It’s Chult,” Boult said. “What did you expect?”

  Harp and Kitto jumped out and splashed through the waves as they lugged the skiff onto the narrow beach running along the edge of the cove. Kitto crouched down and scooped up a handful of fine white sand. He let it seep through his fingers while the others pulled on their packs and canteens.

  “It’s too hot,” Harp groused. Sweat was running down his face and stinging his eyes, and his cotton shirt was sticking to his lower back.

  “It’s Chult,” Boult repeated testily. “What did you expect?”

  From the ship, the band of green that marked the beginning of jungle looked like a seamless wall of vegetation. Harp could see that the earlier assessment wasn’t far off. The edge of the jungle was an imposing barrier of thorny vines, jagged leaves, and flowers in startling shades of red and orange.

  “How in the Hells do you expect us to get through that?” Boult said, peering at the tangled undergrowth in front of them.

  “Avalor said there was a path to the colony,” Harp told him.

  “He didn’t happen to know where the path began, did he? There’s probably a mile of beach along that cove.”

  “Well, we’d better start searching.”

  As they walked down the beach, tiny red crabs skittered across the sand at their approach. There were no breaks in the wall of vegetation or path
s leading into the darkness of the jungle. Except for their footprints in the sand, there was no evidence that anyone had ever discovered this pristine corner of the world. But as Harp and his men searched the beach, he began to hear sounds from inside the jungle. A faint vocalization, like the cry of a wounded beast, and a rumbling growl echoed out of the jungle. Even more disturbing were the rhythmic sounds that seemed too regular to be accidental.

  “Is that drumming?” Verran asked nervously. They’d all heard rumors of what dwelled in Chult, the feral monstrosities that had survived for ages hidden in the tangled undergrowth that covered most of the island: yuan-ti, carrion crawlers, purple worms, plaguechanged horrors too terrible to consider.

  “The colony is just a mile inland,” Harp assured him. “Once we find the path, we’ll be in and out before nightfall.”

  The men spread out along the beach, searching for what should have been seen easily. In his experience, forests were quiet, reverent places crowned by oaks and conifers, where man or elf could walk between the trunks of trees hindered by no more than the occasional blackberry bramble. The Chultan jungle couldn’t be more different than the forests of his childhood. Listening to the distant, unfamiliar sounds, Harp felt as if he was faced with a creature he’d never encountered before. It was vicious and feral with only one purpose—constant growth toward the heavens.

  A few paces down the beach, Kitto stood close to the edge of the jungle. With his eyes closed, he held his hands up with palms open to the tangled vegetation.

  “Is something there, Kitto?” Harp asked.

  “Heat,” Kitto replied.

  “Heat coming off the plants?” Sure enough, waves of hot air pulsed against Harp’s sweaty face. “What do you think

  it is?”

  “The life of the jungle,” Kitto told him, as the other men joined them. They waited there for a moment, feeling the flow of warm air against their faces, listening to the call of an unknown creature, and staring at the vegetation as if an easy passage through the mass of thorns and leaves might reveal itself.