“This isn’t just you!”
“S-sorry—”
“Of all the stupid things to get angry about—”
“Grace,” I said.
She spun around to face me. “What?”
“Go easy on her.”
She leveled a finger at me. “You’re not in charge here!”
“No, but I know what it’s like.”
“Stay out of this!” Grace snapped. She marched across, grabbed Krys’ arm, and marched her away from everyone else. Krys went meekly, letting Grace berate her until they were out of earshot.
I stood and rubbed my shoulder again. I could feel some warm wetness smearing my skin under my shirt.
Great.
Mary walked up to me, twirling Krys’s discarded dagger in her right hand. “You handled that well.”
“Then why am I bleeding?”
“What you mean, Mr. Snake?”
“What did I mean?”
“You ‘know what it’s like.’” The dagger stopped twirling, hilt toward me. “What what’s like?”
“I just know what she’s going through.”
“You do?”
I didn’t answer her. I just watched the shadows of Grace and Krys across the clearing from the campfire. I couldn’t really go into why I empathized with Krys right now. How it was that the legendary thief Snake, cold heartless bastard that he was, could be moved by the fact that a young girl felt as if she was trapped in the wrong body.
• • •
My logic won out and we headed for the last Grünwald town before the border with Lendowyn. As we packed up and departed, the looks I got from half the girls suggested that Snake’s façade was beginning to crumble. Only in Krys’s case did this seem a good thing. She smiled at me, and it seemed genuine, but Laya wouldn’t even meet my gaze. Grace was obviously angry, and Mary stared at me in a way that gave the impression that she knew exactly how out of character my reaction to Krys had been.
As I drove the single horse, the mute girl, Rabbit, sat next to me. She was one of the youngest girls aside from curly-haired Thea, and almost as small, a tiny bundle of bone and wiry muscle topped by a cap of straight jet-black hair. She scrambled effortlessly into the bench next to me and shrugged as if to apologize for being a lousy conversationalist.
After we were on the road for about half an hour, she curled up next to me like a cat and fell asleep.
I appreciated the lack of drama.
It gave me time to think, which may not have been the best idea. The closer I got to Lendowyn, the closer I was coming to an inevitable decision. I was going to have to tell these girls the truth, or I was going to have to abandon them somewhere. I was leaning toward the truth, since it didn’t seem fair to take them all this way just to ditch them. At this point the only reason I hesitated was because that would also mean admitting there was no treasure to share, and I suspected the news would be taken badly.
Slipping away felt wrong, but I’d seen enough evidence to tell me that these girls were quite able to take care of themselves, and I’d at least be leaving them in a climate a bit warmer than where I’d found them.
As usual, I couldn’t come to a firm conclusion.
“Yeah,” I whispered, “I’ll think of something when the time comes.” Because improvisation has worked so well for me so far.
Rabbit surprised me by suddenly grabbing my knee and squeezing a lot harder than someone her size should have been able to do.
I winced. She was now wide awake and staring down the road ahead of us. Her nostrils flared and she shook her head.
“What?”
She made a grunt and started waving her hand, palm flat toward my chest. I stared, not understanding, and her gestures got more forceful until her palm struck my chest. She held her hand there and shook her head violently.
I drew the horse to a stop, rolling the carriage to the edge of the road. She exhaled and nodded, removing both her hands.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. She had already scrambled to the ground before the entire question was out of my mouth. I hung up the reins and climbed down myself.
She walked about ten yards ahead, and stood in the middle of the road, looking upward and slowly turning around.
Grace stuck her head out of the carriage. “Why are we stopping?”
“I don’t know,” I told her.
I walked up next to Rabbit and saw her nostrils flare as she froze and looked up at the sky. I followed her gaze and didn’t see anything. I started to ask again, “What—”
Then I smelled it.
Smoke.
Not just the smell of something burning. There was a familiar character to what I smelled. “No, it can’t be what I think . . .”
Rabbit turned to look at me with a furrowed brow.
“No,” I repeated.
“‘No’ what?” Grace asked as she jumped out of the carriage. Mary and Krys followed her out.
“Nothing. I’m imagining things.”
She asked Rabbit, “What’s going on?” Behind her, the rest of the girls had dismounted and were looking around. Mary and Laya were giving me a few suspicious glances.
Rabbit pointed at her nose then swept her hand toward the road in front of us.
“Something’s burning ahead of us,” I said. “We should probably check it out before we go on.”
“Rabbit?”
Rabbit nodded, agreeing with me I suppose.
“Fine.” Grace sounded irritated. She turned around and said, “Mary, go with them and check out what’s going on. The rest of you get back in, in case we have to leave in a hurry. Laya, you keep watch with me.” She climbed up next to the reins and Laya followed with her crossbow.
Mary walked up next to us and told Rabbit, “You lead.”
• • •
We weren’t going to get the girls a change of clothes at the next town.
Mary and I followed Rabbit through the woods, along game trails that were barely visible under a fresh snow cover. As we went on, the woods became deathly quiet. Even the wind fell silent, leaving only the sound of our own breathing and our footsteps crunching through the snow.
The smell got worse, almost choking in intensity. Our footsteps grew silent as the snow melted away to soft forest loam under our feet.
We were upon the scene before I was prepared for it—even though I had half expected it ever since I caught the first whiff of what had happened here.
Mary gasped as we emerged from the tree line about a hundred strides downhill from the town we’d been approaching.
The remains of the town.
It had burned so badly that no snow remained on the hillside or the trees surrounding it. There had been a wall, but all that remained were a few random logs pointing black fingers at the sky. The remains steamed in the cold air.
“What happened here?” Mary asked.
I started walking toward the ruin. There was no ignoring the familiar scent of sulfur and brimstone. I felt my chest tighten as I whispered, “Dragon fire.”
“Dragon?” Mary ran up next to me. “You say ‘dragon’?”
I kept walking up toward the smoldering corpse of the town. No recognizable building remained standing, and I began to smell ugly things underneath the dragon fire, other things that had burned. “No. No. No! Damn it, Lucille! What did you do? What did you do?!”
Mary grabbed my arm, and I realized that I’d been shouting. “Dragon? What dragon?” she yelled at me. “We have to get out of here!”
I shook my head. I couldn’t bring myself to move. I couldn’t force the idea that Lucille might have done this into what I knew of the world. Not my Lucille.
But I’d seen her in combat. I saw what she could do when she was angry. What would she be capable of if she wasn’t near death from dozens of arrow wounds
and facing a guy with a magic sword? Even before that, when we’d suffered the enchantment that swapped us around in the first place, in the first few minutes in her new draconic body she set another town on fire. That might have been an accident, but . . .
“Move,” Mary screamed at me, tugging at my arm. She turned toward Rabbit and yelled, “Run! Get back to the others!”
Rabbit didn’t move. She faced back the way we’d come.
Mary let go of me and ran toward her. “What are you doing? We need to . . .” Her voice trailed off with a weak strangled sound that turned into something that sounded like an obscenity that would have been harsh and inappropriate coming from an old goblin sailor, much less a teenage girl. I turned away from the ruined town and saw Mary and Rabbit staring back toward the woods. I followed their gaze and repeated Mary’s curse.
A line of black-armored Grünwald militia had emerged from the tree line.
I stepped between the approaching troops and the two girls and raised my hands in what I hoped was a nonthreatening gesture. A bull of a man broke ranks to walk up toward me. He had the typically elaborate Grünwald armor, all black leather, spikes, and embossed skulls. He wore a helmet with a visor in the shape of a screaming demon.
We weren’t going to run away or fight our way out of it, so we were left with trying to negotiate. Fortunately, of the three, that was my strength. I just hoped Mary would catch on and play along.
I faced the approaching commander and said, “Thank the black soul of the Dark Lord Nâtlac you’ve arrived. You won’t believe what we’ve had to—”
The guy interrupted me with a gauntleted hand slamming me in the side of the head.
The world went black.
CHAPTER 12
“Okay,” I groaned some interminable time later. After the pain of the word sank into my skull, I added, “Talking is bad.”
“Ahh, the prodigal wakes!”
My eyes shot open. I knew that voice.
A fuzzy smear almost the size of a man dominated my blurry field of vision. I shook my head to try and clear it, and my consciousness rattled around like a dried pea in a coconut husk. The blur defined itself as I squinted.
“Dudley?”
The recently elevated king of Grünwald stared down at me, smiling. “It has been a long, long time, hasn’t it?”
He knows! Somehow the bastard knows who I am.
It was clear to me from the predatory grin on that pudgy face that Dudley knew that inside the body of the grandmaster thief Snake resided the soul of his nemesis, Frank Blackthorne.
As that thought crossed my mind, I completely forgot the first principle of how the universe expresses its hate for me; things never go wrong in exactly the way I expect. In fact, the more certain I am of any one ill outcome, the more severely the reality diverges. The idea he knew I was Frank hit me with such certainty that I almost missed when Dudley took me off the main trail and headed off into uncharted woods.
“What did you say?” I asked, because I didn’t believe what I’d thought I’d heard.
“I said that I always knew you’d come back here, brother. I never stopped watching for you.”
Brother?
Dudley leaned forward so we were almost nose-to-nose. “The life of an outlaw never did quite suit you, did it, Bartholomew? Or should I call you ‘Snake’ now?”
Oh crap.
Dudley gave me a self-satisfied smile as he congratulated himself on outsmarting me. “You’re our father’s son, Bartholomew. I knew, as soon as Mother died, that I would see you return. Just like him, you could never accept the shift of power to Mother’s line. But I’m afraid your claim on this crown died with him.”
Dudley backed away from me, giving me the first clear view of where I was. I sat on a wooden chair in a windowless stone room. I saw a cot and a table bearing a small oil lantern that provided the only light in the room. Two large men in Grünwald armor flanked a rusty iron door a couple of short strides behind Dudley.
“So if I renounce my claim to the crown you’ll let us all go?”
Dudley laughed. “I see you still have your sense of humor.”
“You’re too established; I would need an army to challenge you.”
He spun around and backhanded me. I’ll give the twerp credit, he was able to muster a lot more force than I expected from someone with the constitution of day-old pea soup. “Do not mock me. Don’t pretend I’m a fool, even in jest.”
“No, Dudley. You are no fool.”
Some of my true feelings must have leaked out in my voice, and he struck me again. Between that, and still being dizzy from waking up, I lost my balance and tumbled out of the chair.
“You think I don’t know what you’ve been doing?” He yelled down at me. “You think I don’t know?” He threw a kick into my stomach. It was weak but elicited a groan. “Why else would you amass such wealth if not to raise an army against me?” He placed his boot on my shoulder and rolled me onto my back. “And why bring six maidens into my demesne all by yourself, if not to make a sacrifice to gain the Dark Lord’s favor and seal your victory?”
I couldn’t help myself. I started laughing.
It was just so perfectly wrong. I couldn’t even stop when he started kicking me again. I wheezed and spat out, “They aren’t maidens.” But it was so low I don’t think he heard me. After a few kicks, he finally landed a lucky shot that slammed the breath from me. I gasped, my giggle fit broken.
He leaned over me, panting from his exertion. “Funny now? Is it? Well here’s . . . the punch line.” He took another deep breath. “The Dark Lord’s . . . getting his sacrifice. But I’m going . . . to officiate. And you’re . . . the prize offering.”
He straightened up and waved at the two guards. One opened the iron door.
I sat up as Dudley walked away.
“Royal blood . . . and my own flesh. Going to count . . . for something.” He turned around as he reached the door. “Enjoy the accommodations . . . the King’s Suite is . . . the most palatial . . . cell in the dungeon.”
The door shut me in with a slam, creaking as it locked.
“I don’t believe this,” I whispered. I stood with a groan, Snake’s bruised body creaking almost as much as the door had.
I hadn’t thought my opinion of my body’s prior occupant could sink any lower, but finding out that he was a bastard prince of the Grünwald court . . .
“Bartholomew? Really? No wonder you went by ‘Snake.’”
I had only a vague idea of the history of the Grünwald royals. But I was clear on a few points: the past king had a few bastard children, of which Snake must be one. And given Dudley’s little rant, it was obvious that Snake’s relation with his stepmom was strained at best. Especially since Queen Fiona had assassinated her husband. Given that Grünwald traced royal lines via paternal descent, if Snake was Dudley’s older brother, he’d have a more legitimate claim to the crown than Dudley did. I suppose desperation helped give Dudley a rudimentary spine.
And I had unleashed this—literal—bastard on the Lendowyn court; a completely amoral royal with a grudge; a Grünwald royal, which earned him bonus points in the ruthless evil department; someone who had the ability to finance his own army.
That suddenly placed a more sinister spin—if one was needed—on the fact that a dragon had obliterated a Grünwald border town. In isolation it made no sense. But if Snake—aka Prince Bartholomew—was influencing Lendowyn, it could be a feint in a coming invasion.
I sat on the cot, buried my face in my hands, and marveled at the infinite capacity of things to get worse.
• • •
As always, “worse” is a relative term.
After confirming that my skills weren’t up to opening the door from the inside, I collapsed on the cot and contemplated exactly how bad things had gotten. One bad decision on my part, and it w
asn’t just me suffering for it: I bore responsibility for the six girls who had followed me into this dark hole. Lucille may have become the spearpoint in a war against Grünwald because of someone she thought was me. Then there were the victims who died in that attack, and the thousands who would die in a war between Lendowyn and Grünwald.
I think I had a good grasp on what Laya must have felt when she asked me how to not feel. “I don’t know,” I whispered, my eyes blurred for reasons other than a blow to the head.
A voice answered me. “This is amusing.”
“Who’s there?” I bolted upright, looking for the source of the voice. The door remained shut, and the small oil lamp shone into every corner of the stone cell. As I frantically looked for the speaker, the lamp guttered and started burning with a dimmer, redder light. As the shadows in the room darkened, the voice laughed.
The sound dug into my skin like tiny needles pulling spools of barbed thread behind them.
I got unsteadily to my feet as the cell plunged into a flickering ruddy twilight.
“Enjoying my wedding gift, Frank?” The voice asked.
“You?” My mouth had gone so dry my voice cracked.
“Me.”
My eyes adjusted to the dimness. The walls of the cell were gone, replaced by a plain of living flagstones that receded into the darkness, broken only by veiny stalactites vanishing upward into more darkness. I looked down at myself and I was no longer wearing Snake/Bartholomew’s skin. I stood in the long-dead body of Frank Blackthorne, just as I had the last time I stood before this red-tinted landscape of pulsing pillars and flagstones made of eyes, teeth, and oddly placed fingers.
I looked back up because the floor was staring at me.
I turned around, and faced the handsome figure of a man sitting on a throne of bone and sinew.
The Dark Lord Nâtlac said, “Boo.”
CHAPTER 13
He appeared just as I remembered him, much as I’d tried to forget. He wore the perfect form of a man, perfect enough that looking at him caused an itch in the back of the eyes that told you that what you saw and what was really there were two very different things. He still wore a midnight black cloak whose stitched leather bore the outlines of human faces, faces whose lips twitched against the stitching binding them closed, and whose eyes moved behind eyelids that had been sewn shut.
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