She tied the strip of cloth tightly around his thigh to keep the venom from spreading. And then she lifted him in her arms and carried him back to the castle.
His tears had dried by the time she delivered him to his bed, so he was surprised to realize that Drina was crying now, burying her face in their mother’s side.
“Why’s Drina crying?” he asked.
“Because she’s your sister,” their mother answered. “And she loves you. Look here, Drina.” She took Drina’s chin and turned her tear-streaked face toward Shane. “Your brother is just fine. See?” With her other hand she reached out and ruffled his hair, as light blond as her own. “This is the prince of Stetriol,” she said. “He’ll never bow to a mere snake.”
The gardens had seen better days, but they were still beautiful. It had been a project of Shane’s mother’s. She loved the idea of taming a space grown wild, of imposing some small amount of order on the chaos of nature. On the days she was feeling well, she would even get down into the dirt and do the work with her own hands — pulling weeds, planting bulbs. And on the days she wasn’t feeling well, she’d usually insist the guards lift her from her bed and carry her there. If she had to spend the day lying down, she said, she may as well have a view.
In her absence, the site had become as overgrown as ever. It was wilder now, but no less lovely for its wildness.
The space had once been home to the royal menagerie, a collection of caged animals. Kings and queens of the past — Shane’s ancestors — had kept a variety of creatures here, many of them exotic, captured in foreign lands back before travel to and from Stetriol was banned. But the cages had been emptied out in the early days of the war, when the Reptile King’s soldiers had bonded with any animal they could get their hands on.
It boggled the mind. Shane couldn’t imagine willingly bonding with an animal. But that was a different time — a time before the bonding sickness.
Many of the cages still stood. His mother had disguised them as best she could with creeping vines and well-placed shrubs. But with the old dungeons long flooded, the king had insisted she leave the cages intact. Just in case.
And now, not for the first time since Gar had become regent, the gardens held a prisoner.
He’d expected to find Zerif pacing his cell or pulling defiantly at the bars. But the man simply reclined against the far wall, seemingly unbothered and lost in thought. He watched as Shane approached. This time, he did not bow.
“The life of a royal,” Shane said. “It’s so tedious.”
Zerif watched him without moving.
“Most people don’t realize that,” Shane continued. “They assume it’s nothing but feasts and dances and horseback riding. But there’s a lot of work involved in running a kingdom. Taxes, for instance.” Shane waved a stack of parchment paper in the air as he walked up and down alongside the iron bars. “Without taxes, the king is broke. We take it very seriously. We keep records — we write down who pays what, who owes what, going back to when their father’s mother’s father was granted the little patch of dirt their family still harvests to this day. And in all these many records” — Shane let the stack of papers fall to the ground — “no Zerif. Not a single mention of anyone by that name. How could that be?”
Zerif blinked once, twice, then smiled an oily smile. “I suppose I never got my little patch of dirt.”
Shane crossed his arms. “And those poor, freezing children of yours? You don’t seem terribly anxious to get back to them.”
Zerif shrugged. “So I lied. It is notoriously difficult to get an audience with the king of Stetriol. I gambled that violating his edict would get his attention.”
“And what would you do with the king’s attention once you had it?”
Zerif rose to his feet. “I have a message for him. Information. I have traveled far and seen much, and I would tell him of the secrets I’ve learned.”
“Tell me,” Shane said. “I have the authority to act in my father’s absence, and —”
“You?” said Zerif. “Or should I speak perhaps to Gar instead? It is confusing to me, who exactly is in —”
“I am in charge!” Shane shouted. “Gar is only regent.”
“The king is dead,” said Zerif. “Isn’t he?”
“He is not dead,” said Shane. “But he will die before he wastes time on the likes of you.” And with that, Shane turned to walk away, content to have the last word.
Or he would have been. But then Zerif said: “Tell him I know the cure.”
“What cure?” Shane said without thinking, but when he heard his words he realized he already knew the answer. There was only one cure that mattered — the cure for bonding sickness. In the silence that stretched out then, as Zerif stood there with a smug expression on his face, Shane felt an ache in his stomach. His mouth went dry. He fought to keep the fury in his eyes, as if Zerif didn’t have him exactly where he wanted him. As if a cure meant nothing to Shane.
“Tell me,” he said at last, his voice breaking on the command.
Zerif sat down again, leaning against the far wall of the cage. “I will speak only to the king.”
Shane clenched his fists and his teeth, his whole body becoming a hard knot of muscle and bone. He could feel his heartbeat raging in the small cut on his cheek. “We’ll see how you feel after a day with no food.” And he stormed out of the gardens, tattered tax documents swirling in his wake.
Shane dreamed he’d summoned an ostrich.
It didn’t appear in a burst of light. Instead it grew slowly from his own body. First there was just the tip of its beak, a tough spot on Shane’s skin, like a fingernail, where his neck met his shoulder. Slowly the beak grew outward, and then there were eyes, and the feathered head, and the animal’s neck, long and sinuous like a snake.
Something went wrong then. The ostrich stopped growing; it was stuck. It was just a head and a neck straining against Shane, desperate to be free from him, screeching and pecking at him and anyone who came close. People kept their distance. But for Shane there was no escape from the ostrich, because the ostrich was him.
Formal occasions were always awkward for Shane. He didn’t enjoy being on display, and it was particularly embarrassing in the prince’s traditional costume. The outfit was mostly purple velvet, with puffy shoulders, frills at the wrist, and a long, trailing cape. He felt like one of his sister’s old dolls.
Still, he smiled big and waved small and tried not to shoot dirty looks at Gar. As regent, his uncle wasn’t required to wear any costume at all. Yet the man had chosen to wear the heavy steel breastplate of Stetriol’s army.
Stetriol had not had an army in hundreds of years. The breastplate was obviously just for show, brand-new and shining in the sunlight. Shane knew his uncle looked far more impressive than he.
They’d traveled on horseback from the castle and now made their way through the throngs of commoners gathered at the docks. It was not a proper parade, but surrounded by mounted guardsmen, Shane and Gar quickly became the center of attention. The people stepped aside and cheered as they passed, and Shane held his hand aloft and waved as his mother had taught him.
“This isn’t a pageant, boy,” Gar said under his breath. “What are you doing?”
Shane kept waving and kept smiling. “I’m acknowledging my people. They appreciate it when their leaders smile.”
Gar grunted. “In times of peace, maybe.”
“We are at peace,” Shane said. “We’re the most peaceful nation in Erdas. The rest of the world pretends we don’t exist.”
Gar gave no response.
The ship, of course, was impossible to miss. Shane had only ever seen such vessels in drawings, and they somehow didn’t do justice to the sight of the thing in life. It was far larger than he’d imagined, five times the size of any dwelling he’d passed on the way here, and made entirely of wood. Its vast sails billowed dramatically, blocking out a huge swath of the sky.
There were several other ships along th
e waterline, in various states of construction, but there was no question which would be the pride and joy of the fleet. Gar beamed up at it as if he’d built it with his own two hands. He launched himself from his saddle and made his way to the gangplank, leaving Shane to shuffle after him. His velvet suit was not built for speed or agility, and he eyed the plank warily. Finally he had to reel in the heavy purple cape and drape it over his arm, for fear that it might get snagged, or stepped upon, or otherwise manage to trip him up and drag him into the water below.
A tall woman in white leather was there to greet him on deck. She bowed shallowly and said, “My prince.”
“This is Admiral Faye,” Gar said by way of introduction, and Shane took special notice of the title. A captain was the leader of a ship. An admiral, he knew, was a captain of captains, with command of more than one ship. Stetriol had no captains, let alone admirals. It hadn’t had a navy since the great war.
“It’s a pleasure,” he said.
“King Irwyn sends his regards,” said Gar. “He’s quite pleased with what you’ve accomplished here.”
The admiral’s lips turned up slightly. Her smile was as tight as her steel-gray ponytail. “I am gratified to hear it,” she said. “Everything is prepared.” She motioned with her fingers, and a man stepped forward to hand her a gleaming silver chalice. She lifted it toward them and then hesitated, seemingly unsure whether to hand it to the prince or the regent.
Gar grunted, stepped forward, and took the cup from her. Red wine sloshed from the rim, dotting the deck like spatters of blood.
“Come on, boy,” he said to Shane. “Watch and learn.”
It took all of Shane’s self-control not to make a face.
Gar and the admiral stepped to the stern, and Shane followed. As soon as they were at the railing, there was a sound of trumpets from below, and the jostling, chattering crowd fell silent and turned their faces upward.
“Good people of Stetriol!” Gar shouted, and his voice echoed in the sudden stillness. “It is my honor as regent to stand before you today to christen this fine ship — the first in Stetriol’s new naval fleet!”
A polite cheer rose up, and Gar raised his chalice and waited for the noise to die down. When he could be heard again, he continued: “The war is long over. Long, long over! And yet Stetriol continues to suffer all these years later.”
There were a few boos and disapproving whistles from the crowd.
“On this very site, many years ago, we were invaded. Foreigners in green cloaks came to our shores, uninvited and unwelcome. They set our forests on fire. They salted our fields, so no new trees would grow. They put our people in chains, and they murdered our great king.”
Shane felt a chill as Gar paused and the silence stretched out.
“The four other kingdoms of Erdas came here together,” Gar continued, “to our land, and they told us: You, Stetriol, you may not have an army. You, Stetriol, you shall not rebuild your great ships. You shall never leave these shores, and none shall ever visit them. And for generations, we listened. Now I say, no more!”
The crowd began to cheer again, but there was a wholly different tenor to it now. The noise was louder, coarser, and it went on for much longer. This time Gar did not wait for the noise to subside; he raised his voice and shouted over it.
“We have been ignored for long enough!” he said. “It is time we do as we please within our own borders. And it is time the rest of the world takes notice. Stetriol will not be ignored!”
The layers of velvet wrapped around Shane felt heavy and hot. The sun beat down from above him. The fury in the faces of his people radiated up from below, giving off a heat of their own.
“This ship!” Gar cried out, and Shane wondered how anyone below could hear him now, how anyone was capable of listening. “This ship will henceforth be known as Prince’s Honor!” He took a sip from the chalice, then splashed the remaining wine onto the deck, making the name official. “For it is our king’s will that your own prince, Shane, will command this vessel. And with it, he will sail to the island of the Greencloaks and ensure we are never ignored again!”
Trumpets blared and feet stamped. The crowd chanted their names: “Gar! Gar! Gar!” and “Shane! Shane! Shane!”
Shane looked up at his uncle, who grinned madly back at him, then he turned to regard the crimson-colored wine spattered all across the deck. His deck. He knew in that moment that Stetriol would be going to war again. It was inevitable. And he felt certain it would be the death of him.
The first time he’d gone to war, Shane had been eight years old.
It had started quietly. Privately. There had been no great speeches. Instead it came to him like a revelation: It was up to him to wipe out all the snakes of Stetriol.
Thanks to his mother’s quick thinking, the venomous bite he’d suffered in the field hadn’t been too serious. Still, he was bedridden for several days while his body worked through the toxins. Fevered and nauseous, his dreams were full of sharp fangs and eerie slithering scales. His sister dozed in the chair beside him while Shane felt his pulse in his leg, hammering at the twin puncture marks and the cut the healer had made to bleed out the worst of the venom. And he wondered: What is the point of a snake?
He found he could not answer that question. They were worthless and cruel, and he would be the end of them.
Days later, when he was well enough to be on his own, he didn’t return to his toys or his wooden fort or his rambles about the castle. Instead he went to the gardener for a shovel. And he went to the tinker for scraps of metal, which he fastened around his shins and calves and forearms. No snake would be able to bite through. He was armed for war.
Shane prowled the castle grounds over the course of a long afternoon, moving slowly and carefully through the grass. He never found a single snake. But as dusk fell, his mother found him.
“Oh, my dear prince,” she said, and he turned to see her approaching. “What have you been doing out here?”
Shane shrugged, suddenly worried that he may have done something wrong.
“He wants to hurt the snakes,” Drina said, peering out from behind their mother’s dress. “Because they hurt him.”
It wasn’t tattling, exactly. Shane hadn’t meant for his war to be a secret one. So why did he feel like he’d been caught?
His mother knelt down to his eye level, but he kept his eyes on the ground. “Most snakes are harmless, Shane. And the one that bit you was only surprised. You don’t want to hurt snakes for being snakes, do you?”
Shane shrugged again. “Maybe,” he said.
“One day, my love, you will be king. And if you’re to be king, you must know mercy.”
“But I hate them,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t think you hate them,” said the queen. “I think maybe you’re afraid of them.”
“I am not!” Shane yelled. “I’m not afraid. They’re stupid and I hate them.”
His mother tilted her head. “Well. Sometimes hate and fear are the same thing.” She unstrapped the piece of tin at each of his forearms, letting them fall to the ground. “Sometimes they go together, walking hand in hand.” She removed the guards from his legs. “If you want to prove you’re not afraid, then learn to walk among snakes in peace.” She winked at him. “But it’s always wise to watch your step.”
Shane waited anxiously for Magda to leave the room. She was going on and on about some ridiculous story the kitchen staff was spreading about a wild dog stealing meat from the kitchens. “An entire ham!” she exclaimed, and Shane widened his eyes as if he cared.
Finally she took Drina’s tray away and Shane slipped into the chair. He kept one hand on the hilt of his sword, just in case, and with his other he shook his sister lightly. He hated to wake her, and he had promised Magda he wouldn’t. But this was important. It couldn’t wait.
She came to consciousness slowly, blinking at him as if unsure he was really there. “Shane?” she said. “What is it?”
“If I
had to leave … would you come with me, Drina?”
“What?” she said, looking even groggier than before. “Shane, what are you talking about? Where could we possibly go?”
“Away,” he said. “Just … away.”
He took a moment to steel himself before ascending the tower. It wasn’t a steep climb, and the many windows along the spiral staircase meant there were no menacing shadows to contend with. All the same, he was not eager to return to the room at the top of the stairs.
He climbed the stairs anyway.
When they were younger, Shane and Drina had been inseparable. They’d also been natural-born troublemakers, treating the entire castle as their fairground and the harried castle staff as captive playmates. But their father was a stern and serious man — a stern and serious king — and there were days when the safest place to be was out of his way.
So their mother had built them a fort. It was a miniature castle all their own, made entirely of wood. Shane hadn’t appreciated at the time just how precious that made it. Surely it was the only one of its kind in Stetriol.
The planks that made up the fort had been painted pink and green — Drina’s and Shane’s respective favorite colors. The result was garish to Shane’s eyes as he looked upon it for the first time in years, but it had seemed perfect back then. There had been just enough space inside for the two of them. Now Shane marveled at how small it was. He hadn’t been aware just how much he’d grown in the two years since his sister’s panicked screams had signaled the end of their childhood.
He trailed his hand along a pink plank, curled his fingers into the gap, and with sudden violence ripped the board free.
To accept Gar’s gift would be madness. It was obvious that his uncle intended to send him into danger, far from the castle. If Shane refused to sail with the fleet, he would look like a coward. If he sailed and somehow managed to survive, by the time he returned, Gar would have solidified his power and crowned himself king.
No, Shane could not accept Gar’s gift of a ship. But maybe he could build his own boat. A boat big enough for two. If the old maps of Erdas were correct, Nilo was not so very far away.
The Book of Shane #1 Page 2
