The Fanged Crown

by Jenna Helland

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  29 Kythorn, the Year of the Ageless One

  (1479 DR)

  Chult

  We have to stop him,” Boult said when Harp had finished. “I knew Ysabel. She was a sweet child. She used to follow us around the castle yards, pretending she was an elf. Just a tiny little thing with a huge gap-toothed smile.”

  “She’s not a child anymore,” Harp said.

  “Her brother and mother were murdered on the same night. Granted, her mother was as bad as the daughter of Asmodeus himself.”

  “So you’re with me?” Harp said. “We’ll do it for Princess Ysabel?”

  Boult shot him a look. “We’ll do it for what Cardew did to you.”

  Despite himself, Harp winced. “And to you.”

  After a quarter hour of walking along the path through the thicket, the ground opened up, and they found themselves in a stand of towering trees. The ground was nearly devoid of plants between the massive buttress roots, and sunlight filtered down in streams through the ceiling of leaves above them. There was an unnatural silence in the grove, as if the wildlife saw them approach and found places to hide.

  “The thickets must have been the outer band of the jungle,” Harp said looking up at the towering treetops hundreds of feet above them. “Have you ever seen trees that tall?”

  “Captain?” Verran asked, walking up behind him. “The body’s over there.”

  “Could it be an animal carcass?”

  “Possibly,” Verran said, but he didn’t sound very convinced. “I didn’t look too closely.”

  “Everyone have a look around,” Harp said. “Keep an eye out for more … plant monsters.”

  Verran led him to a spot beside a buttress root. When Harp reached it, he could see that the root was partially hollow and someone was tucked inside.

  “Can you get Boult?” Harp asked Verran. The boy nodded and headed across the grove.

  When Harp bent down, he could see that something had been gnawing on the body and most of the face was gone. And there was something odd about the remains. It was as if sections of the corpse had disintegrated down to the bones while other parts were untouched by decay. A netting of skin bound the corpse into human form, and as soon as those skin-strands broke, the body would fall into an unrecognizable heap. Harp had seen many bodies in various states of decay and dismemberment, but nothing quite as disconcerting as the one before him.

  He could see strands of reddish hair tucked under a green hood and a gold necklace hanging around the neck. He heard Boult come up behind him and pulled back so the dwarf could see inside the hollow.

  “Let me,” Boult said gruffly. Harp wandered a few steps away and stared up at the towering trees as the light glittered through the spaces between the rustling leaves. He could feel every muscle in his chest as he took each breath. He’d wondered about Liel so often in the past ten years that it seemed impossible that the Chultan jungle would be the place he found her, curled up in a hollow like a frightened animal.

  Suddenly he didn’t know if he could take it. He wasn’t a sentimental man. Those who were close to him called him cold. And he wouldn’t have admitted it to another soul, not to Boult or Kitto, who were the only family he had. But the first time he Liel on the deck of the Marderward was frozen in his memory like a painter’s still-life. If it was possible to love someone from the first moment you saw them, Harp had loved Liel starting then.

  Harp had been twenty-nine years old when he first set foot on the Marderward, a three-mast ship with a glossy black hull edged with gold. The carving of a raven-haired maiden graced her prow, her painted arm outstretched as if she were leading them across the treacherous seas. The ship’s decks shone, and her sails were as white as snow. The crew’s quarters were spotless, and a collection of well-fed cats kept them free of vermin.

  But the ship’s impressive exterior hid a rotten core. After only a few days aboard the ship, Harp regretted the night when he shared a few pints with some of the crewmen of the Marderward. Harp had just ended a charter on a filthy, ill-run boat that ran stolen goods up and down the Sword Coast. He’d been on pirate vessels for nearly ten years and had a vague notion that he wanted a legitimate life away from the pirating that had marked his sailing career thus far. The Marderward’s sailors assured Harp that their captain was a fair man who ran a tight ship. The crewmen paid for round after round of ale, and before the night was up, Harp signed a year’s contract under Captain Taraf Predeau. He woke up with a headache and hoped for the best.

  The red-haired, broad-shouldered captain had a deceptively boyish face and friendly grin. On Harp’s first day aboard, the captain shook his hand and personally showed him around the immaculate ship, explaining the tight schedules and rigid discipline that was expected from his sailors. Despite his easy-going manners, Harp felt uneasy around the captain, with his booming voice and biting humor.

  From the beginning, Predeau made fun of Harp’s name, calling him Lute or Whistle. At first, Harp thought the captain was trying to get a rise out of him, but he soon realized the captain viewed Harp as a kindred spirit. And after a few tendays on the ship, it turned Harp’s stomach that there was something about him that was appealing to a man such as Predeau. By that point, Harp understood that Predeau’s clean-cut appearance was nothing but a façade. And it was his blood-encrusted whip and his steel-toed boots that told the true story of his depraved nature.

  Although he had a joint license from the Houses of Amn, Predeau was far from a merchant seaman, despite what the sailors had led Harp to believe. By the time Liel was kidnapped and brought aboard the ship, Harp had seen how Predeau’s kidnap-and-ransom scheme worked several times over. It soon became obvious that Predeau didn’t kidnap arbitrary people off the street, but he did so at the request of the politically well connected. Mostly, it was perfunctory—haul them out of their beds at night, take them to the ship, and lock them up until their kin paid the coin. It wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t cruel either. And there was a certain amount of satisfaction in watching a silk-robed nobleman spend a few days locked in the hold until the price was paid.

  But Predeau hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said he ran a tight ship. He issued beatings or withheld the crew’s payment for the slightest infraction. Still, Harp could have tolerated the conditions, except for the fact that Predeau treated the youngest members of his crew worse than the older sailors. Boys as young as eight who were purchased from parents who were desperate for any coin they could get their hands on. The so-called cabin hands were indentured until they were eighteen, and many were weak and ill from untreated maladies.

  Harp was expected to organize the boys into work crews, but he wasn’t their keeper. Predeau’s henchmen monitored them constantly and locked them in their quarters whenever the ship made port. The boys slept in a dark, squalid room in the depths of the ship and ate the scraps left from the older sailors.

  They’d been on the water for a few days when Harp awoke to the sounds of scuffling above his head. He rolled out of his hammock and climbed the ladder. The sun hadn’t fully risen, but a handful of the boys were on deck, their hair and clothes damp from the spray of the rough waves. They were grouped around a small black-haired boy who was on his hands and knees scrubbing the boards. When the black-haired boy paused in his work, a lanky boy named Merik would kick at him or call him a name.

  “What’s going on?” Harp asked Merik. Even though he’d been onboard for less than a tenday, Harp had figured out that Merik was Predeau’s pet. A few of the boys were handpicked as henchmen-in-training, with Predeau taking much pleasure in goading his favorites until they abused the younger and weaker ones of their own accord.

  “Predeau said Kitto wasn’t working hard enough,” Merik explained. “He gave us all more shift time.”

  Harp looked down at Kitto, who couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old. The kid’s arms were shaking with fatigue.

  “How long have you been out here?”
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  Merik shrugged. “Not long enough.”

  “He’s supposed to finish the deck?” Harp asked, looking down the length of the ship. Usually it took a crew of five several hours to finish the task.

  “Yeah, then we get out of our extra time,” Merik said, kicking at Kitto again. “Work faster, rat-face.”

  Harp looked down at Kitto, whose gaze never wavered from the brush in his hands. He scrubbed the deck rhythmically, as if he were some kind of machine. His blank features had no more expression than a mask.

  “All right, get back to your jobs,” Harp said firmly. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Most of the boys looked relieved, but Merik looked suspicious. “Are ya going to make him finish so we can get out of our time?”

  “I’ll tell the captain you did your jobs.”

  As the days passed, Harp saw it happen again and again. Merik led the charge against Kitto, who never complained or cried. And hardly spoke, Harp noticed. Merik took his cue from Predeau, who seemed to have a particular dislike of slender, quick-footed Kitto, even though the boy had a reputation for being the best picklock and pickpocket on the crew. Predeau’s men took Kitto with them whenever there was a tricky lock or the need for quick hands in a crowded bazaar. Despite these successful ventures, Predeau hounded Kitto more than anyone else on the ship.

  Harp never heard Kitto say a word. After his day’s work ended, the boy would find a quiet corner and hack away at a hunk of wood with a little blade that was barely sharp enough to cut butter. On the few occasions Harp tried to talk to him, Kitto scurried silently away, although Harp once found a crude whistle stuck in the laces of his boots. It played a surprisingly sweet tune.

  On the night before Merik’s eighteenth birthday, Harp found him sitting behind a row of barrels, smoking a pipe, and rolling a bone-carved die over and over on the boards beside him. The die landed on the jack-side every single time.

  “Have you ever heard Kitto talk?” Harp asked, sitting down beside Merik and pulling out his tobacco pouch.

  “Nah, he’s a mute,” Merik said, looking pleased that Harp had joined him. He sat up straighter and tucked the die into his pocket.

  “Why does Predeau hate him?”

  Merik shrugged. “Cause Kitto’s too stupid to live, you know? All he’s got to do is simple. But he always has to make things hard on himself.”

  “How?”

  “You know those ’tails Predeau’s got to use on the prisoners?”

  Harp nodded his head. So far he hadn’t witnessed one of the notoriously brutal beatings Predeau unleashed on crew members and prisoners from time to time, but he’d seen the cat-o-nine tails’ distinctive scars on Kitto’s back—Predeau’s fingerprint that the child would bear his whole life.

  “Usually he likes to do it himself, but sometimes he asks one of us to do the lashes. And you better do it, you know? Kitto had been around. He knew that. But there was a little boy got nabbed with his da. Not like a baby, but you know, younger than Kitto. Predeau hands him the ‘tails and tells him to lash the boy. I think he stole a crust or something. But Kitto wouldn’t even hold the handle, just let it drop to the ground. You should have seen the captain’s face. Three times he put the ‘tails into Kitto’s hand, and three times Kitto lets it drop. Between you and me, it was kind of strong of him to do it, but it was stupid too. He took the kid’s lashes and some more. Captain was furious and made us all pay for what Kitto done, and we hated him for it.”

  “Captain Predeau?” Harp asked.

  “Kitto. It was his fault.”

  “What happened to the boy?”

  “The kid? His coin got paid,” Merik said, looking surprised at the question.

  “Do you plan to leave after your birthday?” Harp asked, pulling out the small flask of brandy that was the boy’s allotment for the tenday and handing it to him.

  Merik shrugged again and uncorked the flask. “I’ve been on the boat since I was thirteen. I hated it so much, I thought I’d die. I was sure I’d leave the day I turned eighteen But now I’m not so sure.”

  “There’s nothing for you on the ship.”

  “Where would I go? I hate it, but it’s my home, you know?”

  Harp sat quietly for a moment before checking over his shoulder to make sure there was no one in sight. They were sitting near the bow of the ship, both of them having finished their shifts before the dinner call. Harp pulled out his dagger and began to clean his fingernails. At the sight of the knife, there was shift in the mood. Merik, used to violence, felt it.

  “I don’t think you’re stupid, Merik. I might be wrong, but I don’t think so. Who bought you?”

  “What?” Merik asked in confusion.

  “Who bought you? Who beats you? Who makes you work like a dog for no pay?”

  The boy made a move to get up, but Harp grabbed his wrist and yanked him down hard.

  “Who, Merik? Is it Kitto?” He whispered, digging his fingernails into the boy’s dirty arm.

  The boy shook his head quickly, obviously shaken by Harp’s unusual intensity.

  “Say who it is,” Harp said.

  “The captain,” Merik whispered.

  “That’s right. And who should you hate?”

  Merik tried to wrench his wrist out of Harp’s grasp, but Harp tightened his hand. There were tears in Merik’s dark brown eyes. Harp felt bad about making him cry, but he felt relieved at the same time. At least Merik could still feel something. It might not be guilt exactly, but it was a stone’s throw away from being so.

  “Who should you hate? Kitto?”

  Merik shook his head again.

  “You’ve become a little captain, which makes you more whipped than Kitto. Don’t you get that?”

  Merik stopped struggling and slumped against the railing.

  “Do you know what you’re going to do on your birthday? You’re going to walk off the ship a free man. And you’re never going to look back. Find a girl, get married, and forget about Captain Predeau. Otherwise he’ll be the voice that whispers in your ear for the rest of your life.”

  Harp put his dagger away and helped Merik to his feet. When the boy walked off the ship in the morning, Harp was the only one at the railing to watch him go.

  With Merik gone, Predeau searched half-heartedly for a new ringleader. But with Harp around, the other boys were reluctant to turn on each other. They stopped targeting Kitto, kept quiet, and did their work. When Predeau unleashed his wrath, it was at the lot of them, and that seemed easier for the boys to take. Harp counted the days until his tenure was up and worried what would happen to the young sailors when he left.

  And then Predeau kidnapped two elves: a blond male and a coppery-haired female. There’d never been any ransoms of anything but human men before, but from his perch in the rigging Harp saw the distinctive slant of the prisoners’ ears, and a feeling of certain dread rose in his chest. Everyone knew that Predeau viewed elves as little more than vermin infesting the land. Harp slid down the mast rope for a better view of the elves, but not far enough to attract the attention of Predeau.

  Predeau strode out of his cabin to the elves lashed to the center mast. Without speaking, he pulled out his sword and slit the throat of the male, an older elf who had a look of calm acceptance on his face when he died. In later years, Harp wondered why Predeau picked that elf, if he knew of him specifically, or if he was simply closest to the captain at the time. As if he’d heard Harp’s involuntary gasp, Predeau looked up and grinned at Harp, who was still perched in the rigging.

  “Get down here,” he bellowed as the blood from the elf soaked into the boards around the mast.

  Harp slid down, landing softly beside Liel, who was trembling visibly. She was shorter than Harp, and slender with a pixieish face. A delicate pattern of flowering vines was inked along her jaw and disappeared along her neck under her coppery hair. There was a palpable sense of strength about her, as if she could strangle a man with either her hands or an incantation—had she not bee
n bound. They must have taken her cloak and armor when they grabbed her. It was too cold for the thin shift she was wearing.

  “We got ourselves a little elf whore. What do you think we should do with her, Flute?”

  “I’ll take her down to the hold,” Harp volunteered.

  “Eager, aren’t you, boy.” Predeau laughed, and Harp saw the elf flinch. As Predeau headed back to his cabin, Harp undid the rope from around the mast and led her to the hold.

  “No one is going to touch you,” he whispered. But he could tell by the loathing in her eyes that she didn’t believe him.

  That night, he organized the boys into a round-the-clock watch on the elf. If any of Predeau’s henchmen came near her, one of Harp’s boys made a diversion, and another ran to tell Harp. Harp made sure he was the one who brought her food. When she figured out that Harp was watching out for her, the hatred disappeared from her eyes, although she was still reluctant to talk to him. She took a shine to Kitto, however. One night as Harp started down the steep steps with a plate of food, he heard two voices coming from the hold. He hurried to see who had slipped in without his notice, and saw Kitto seated on a barrel outside the elf’s cage.

  “What are you talking about?” Harp asked casually. He handed her the plate of food, trying to hide his surprise that Kitto wasn’t mute after all.

  “Flowers,” she said, with no trace of humor.

  He paused. “What kind?” he asked, as if it were the most natural thing in the world that they would be discussing gardening in their wretched surroundings.

  “Violets.” She smiled, and he decided it was the sweetest smile he had ever seen.

  Soon it became obvious that Predeau was in no hurry to ransom Liel. When they were docked at ports, couriers brought letters almost every day, but Liel remained in the cell. One of the older sailors told Harp that he’d heard there wasn’t going to be an exchange made at all. That Predeau had kidnapped her for political reasons and was waiting for the right moment to kill her and leave her body in a public place.