Jenna Helland - The Fanged Crown

“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.

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 lyrical 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.