But then, as we reach the bottom of the staircase, a regal young woman with auburn hair, a purple gown, and a face as perfect as a doll’s breezes out of a side room with a nobleman I recognize as Lord Taggart trailing behind her. I remember her from the group of ladies accompanying Celeste the other night. She glances at our party and her eyes brighten.
“Celeste,” she says. “Where are you going so early this morning?”
Celeste smiles with ease, ignoring a hulking Grym behind her. It seems as if she’s completely oblivious of my presence, too. “Hello, Ora. I’m taking a walk. Siles likes me to take a guard, and I brought a handmaiden for company. I twisted my ankle in the forest not long ago. It was an ordeal. I’ve learned not to go walking without an escort.”
“That’s a wonderful idea,” Ora says. “The weather is perfect today. Can I come along?”
“I’m sorry,” Celeste’s smile slips. “I’m not feeling up to company.”
“Next time, then,” Ora says breezily and begins moving up the stairs.
As she passes me, she stops. Her gaze falls on me curiously. “A new handmaiden, Celeste? Whatever happened to the last one? This one looks dead on her feet.”
“Yes, she has many responsibilities,” Celeste interjects. She sounds slightly shrill. “If you will excuse us, Ora? Let’s plan to meet for lunch later today?”
Ora nods, but her eyes narrow slightly. She glances up the stairs. So do I. Cydra is standing at the top of the stairs, arms crossed, staring at me with abject confusion on her face.
Ora’s mouth opens. “Guards!” I hear her shouting and pointing. “Grab her.”
Celeste half turns and so does Grym. A host of guards descend on Cydra. That’s when I remember that everybody thinks Cydra tried to poison King Siles last night. I don’t know for sure if she’s guilty, or how Ora knows about it, but now is my chance. I make a run for it.
Grym pulls me back by my neckline. I gasp for air, but no one hears the sound. All eyes are fixed to Cydra’s fighting form as the guards wrestle her toward the dungeon. Grym’s solid hand presses me toward the exit. I comply, glancing once more behind me.
While everybody else is fixated on the scene with Cydra. Lord Taggart is watching us. He looks distracted, like he’s not really watching even though his eyes are on us. Before I have time to signal to him, Grym pushes me forward. I turn a corner and then Taggart is out of sight.
Did Cydra really poison the king? If she did, why was she standing there in the middle of the staircase, watching me? Wouldn’t she have run as far as she could—to another country, perhaps? Wouldn’t that be logical? Why return looking like she wanted to scold me?
I wait to ask until we are well into the forest, traipsing along under a canopy of maples and elms. “Did you attempt to poison the king last night?”
Celeste and Grym exchange a discreet look. “Of course not. It wouldn’t make sense for us to kill him now. We need him and Malandre alive until after the wedding.”
“And then, once you’re queen, you’ll conveniently depose them?”
“Not right away. I need to have his child, first. To have a rightful heir so we aren’t challenged by others. After a short while, we would have to remove the king from office, yes.”
“Your child could have the disease.”
“I’m aware. But as Queen Regent, I could pass laws before my child is of age to take the crown. We could establish ways to adjust to our new reality. By the time any child of mine ascended to the throne, no one will be disputing the existence of dragons. No one will be questioning the problem with changelings. My children will know that if they are changeling, they won’t be eligible to serve in politics.”
“And you’ll be able to happily continue to serve in their stead?”
Celeste dips her chin incrementally. “If that’s what’s required of me.”
We pass the tree, the place I once found Celeste nursing a swollen ankle. Then deeper still into the forest, until the castle is far behind us, shrouded from view.
Grym gets on all fours and crouches low, like an animal.
“Stand back,” says Celeste, sidestepping a root. “He’s big when he’s changed.”
I want to tell her I know all about it, but I bite my tongue. I’ve never seen Adom on the ground like a dog when he changes. Something I’m learning is that the changelings have had to make their own way, alone, because one doesn’t talk about being a dragon in polite society.
When he shifts, my smugness dissipates slightly, because at first he is black like midnight, and then his coloring distorts until I can’t see him at all. He isn’t camouflaged, like the Tree Hopper. He is a...nothing color. The shrubs move around him and dirt rises as he stamps his claws, but there is nothing to see where his body should be.
I reach out and touch him, and feel warm scales vibrating beneath my fingertips.
“Why can’t I see him?”
Celeste puts a hand on his side and pats him roughly. “The changelings we know all seem to have independent traits. Grym’s dragon armor is a color that can’t be perceived by human or dragon eye, except for when he’s shifting, he transitions to a black color first. I’ve heard of a dragon whose scales are literally gold, and there’s a hermit who can dig deep into the ground in seconds, like a monstrous mole.” She swings up on his invisible back like she’s done it a thousand times, and reaches out to me. “I thought you were the dragon expert?” she says, and again I’m left wondering how she knows anything about me.
I accept her hand and clamber up Grym’s nothingness back until I am settled in front of Celeste, holding tight to his invisible neck. He doesn’t have a mane the way Adom does, so it takes greater skill and no small dose of faith the moment he leaps into the sky. All I see below me are trees and brooks and ancient rocks, not a hair or a scale in sight. It is unsettling.
“The changelings choose dragon names that are separate from their human names. Grym goes by Zero when he’s in this form.”
“Do they all choose names?” I ask her, thinking about Slayer and Firebreather. Before, I’d assumed those were code names to keep correspondences discreet.
“Yes,” says Celeste. “I don’t know why they do it. It is almost like instinct for them to compartmentalize their dragon and human forms. It identifies them to other changelings, too.”
No wonder Adom and the king haven’t added Grym—Zero—to their list of changelings to uncover. With this incredible ability, he truly is invisible.
It isn’t long before we reach the mount, the same one Celeste pointed out to me on the day she injured herself. Grym lands abruptly, which sends me careening through a brambleberry bush. Celeste manages to hold on and slides off his back elegantly.
“This way,” she says, flattening her already perfect hair as she rounds the corner. “Come quick. Grym needs to take a moment to assemble himself. He has clothes hidden away.”
I follow her with speedy footfalls, not interested in waiting around for Grym to change back into a naked human. On the other side of the mount, ferns cover the entrance to a diminutive cave. I still don’t feel like myself, and wish I had another one of Patience’s biscuits to consume to keep the nausea at bay. Taking a deep breath, I plunge into the cave’s darkness.
Only it is not so dark. I can already see a lantern’s light glowing not too far ahead.
“I should warn you,” says Celeste. “The man is completely mad. Grym found him in the middle of the sea on a sinking boat. He was escaping the dragon island. And he said he wouldn’t talk until we found you and brought you to him.”
I race ahead of her and enter the dwelling place. He’s seated at a desk, solemnly writing on a piece of parchment, looking dignified with a white wig and fancy clothing. I throw my arms around his neck. “How I’ve missed you!”
“Clever girl,” Muuth chirps, ruffling my hair. He rotates in the chair and s
miles up at me. “Look how pretty you are with those nice clothes. You look like one of them.”
“You clean up nicely yourself.”
“The queen is taking marvelous care of me.”
The queen? I glance at Celeste who shrugs and points to her head as if to say he’s made up that title for her. “I should hope so. Has she hurt you?”
Muuth’s wig goes a little lopsided as he crooks his head to look at me. “What do you mean?” He stares at me with confusion. “My lady, won’t you have a seat?”
My smile fades. I can’t tell if he’s feigning confusion for Celeste’s benefit or if his mind has degraded more rapidly in the weeks I’ve been gone. Is that why he tried to escape Onyx? Did he know his mind was leaving him? I put a tender hand on his knee.
“I brought you the girl you asked for,” says Celeste to Muuth. “Like you said, I found her working among my staff, close to the one you call Adom. Now, give me the list.”
Muuth stares at me with vacant eyes. “Be a dear and fetch me my stockings, Jamie? My feet are so cold after all this standing.”
“It’s Elanor,” I correct him. He ignores me. Sad, I straighten and regard Celeste. “What information do you need from him?”
“We want names,” she says. “Muuth lived on that island for decades. Surely he knows—surely he overheard—the names of other prominent changelings Count Malandre has working for him. Nobles, and wealthy businessmen. Anyone who could have used their abilities to gain power and riches.”
Rhydian, I think, but I keep this to myself. “What will you do with the information?”
“That isn’t your concern.” Celeste’s eyes flicker to Grym as the massive guard bends almost in half to enter the small room. “Get him to talk and we won’t need to hurt either of you.”
“There’s another way to save Trana,” Muuth coos softly. “Eliminate the dragons.”
Grym silently slides his sword out of his sheath and begins inspecting the blade.
I swallow. “Can you give me some time alone with him? I might be able to coax it out of him without others in the room.”
Muuth points at Grym. “They are a danger to us. Their blood is a danger to us. Nature has given us sun’s acid as a way to cull them.”
“Let’s go,” Celeste says to Grym curtly. To me, she says, “We’ll be outside.”
When it is just Muuth and I, I turn to him suspiciously. “You’re riddling them, aren’t you? Tell me you know what’s going on. That you know who I am.”
He offers me a brilliant smile. “Of course I know you, Jamie. I only wish your mother would hurry home from the McCready’s house. She spends too much time in the lab these days, not that I’m complaining, but then she’s out all evening visiting her pregnant patients.” He lets out an ugly, hacking laugh. “It’s just you and I these days isn’t it, sweetheart?”
“Muuth, I’m Elanor,”
His smile sags. “But Elanor is dead.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes. I saw you die. It was such a shame, you changing like that in the middle of the field. Burning up everything in sight. You murdered that poor family. And then you turned to stone, and I took a chisel and cracked you apart until you were nothing but dust.”
I lean against the wall, my breathing shallow and my body quivering. He saw me die? No. None of this is the truth. He’s just confused. He thinks I’m his daughter. Or he thinks I’m a changeling. Or maybe…maybe his daughter was the changeling.
“What happened to Jamie?”
“She’s right here,” he says, pointing to me. Then his whole face sags. “No. She’s in ground. The fog got her.” He winces, and then rocks back and forth. “Oh, Jamie! Oh, Jamie!”
I try a different tactic. “Muuth, would you like to play a game?”
“I adore games,” he says earnestly.
“Let’s do a riddle.”
He nods eagerly. “I love riddles.” His wig slips off, revealing a hairless, speckled head.
“We are the ones who feast on fire, who spell with smoke your doom, our ire subdued by the shackles of a human wrist; human names on a hidden list.”
Muuth yawns. “That one is easy. You mean the changelings.”
“That’s not the answer.”
“Oh?”
“The names are the answer.” I don’t want to give Grym and Celeste a list of all the changeling families Muuth might remember. But I don’t know what else to do. I don’t think I can overcome Celeste and Grym. And if I don’t give them something they’ll probably kill both of us. I’m certain they won’t let us go. We could warn the king if she did that.
I don’t know enough legitimate names to falsify such a list. Worse, any name I toss out to Celeste could put innocent people in harm’s way.
I can only hope that Muuth has sense enough to mislead them somehow while still generating a list that looks believable. There’s a part of me that thinks this whole insane act is just that—an act. Muuth hasn’t really lost it. He’s playing to confuse our enemies.
He points to his head, knocks it like a squirrel cracking a nut. “But I have all the names. The list is right here. I see no reason to share it.”
“If I told you a riddle and the answer was water, you wouldn’t be satisfied if I said the answer was ‘liquid’. It wouldn’t count if I’m not specific.”
“The twenty-third of Haymonth,” he replies.
“What?”
“The dragons will die on the twenty-third of Haymonth.”
That’s a fortnight from now. I’m stunned to speechlessness. What does he mean the dragons will die?
“My turn,” he says. “I am a house made of stone and blood, live inside me, keep safe from the sun; live inside me, don’t open the door. With one touch I crumble, I am no more.” He leans forward, at the edge of his seat. “What’s the answer, El?”
I let out a small breath of relief. At least he recognizes me now. “A house of stone and blood?” He nods with gusto. “Could it be a cave?”
He frowns. “Fail.”
“The mountain on Onyx Island.”
“I thought you were good at this?”
“I’m out of practice. Give me some time to think about it, old man.”
He groans his disappointment. “I solved your riddle without fuss.”
“No you didn’t. You didn’t give me the names.”
He picks up the parchment on his desk. “Of course I did. They’re right here.”
My heart slams against my chest. “May I see it?”
“You didn’t answer my riddle, El.”
I force my mind to focus. A house of stone. I keep thinking of the caves in the mountain on Onyx. But that does make any sense. How would the caves be made of blood? An image of Adom’s blood splattered on the floor in the central cave manifests in my mind, and I shudder. What else is made of stone? “I own a mine where the ‘scales’ are found in abundance,” I hear Rhydian’s voice in the back of my mind.
Gemstones.
A house of stone.
I bite at my lower lip.
All the changelings were affected during the last sun’s acid event. But not all the dragons. Why?
Because the scales—Rhydian’s valuable stones—could have protected them from the fog. But when they were exposed in their human skin, they turned to stone. Only the dragons with wounds from the battle died.
“It’s the scales,” I say thoughtfully. “The changelings could live through the sun’s acid fog if they know to change into dragons before the event occurs.”
Muuth grins. “Your prize, Lady Malandre.” He flaps the parchment in front of me.
I glare at him and snatch the list from his hands. I’m dying to lay it out flat and read through it right here, but Celeste and Grym enter at just that moment.
She holds out a hand. �
�Thank you, Elanor.”
I cling to the list. “I can help you.”
“You already have. You’re free to go.”
“I have the date of the next sun’s acid fog. If you’d just let me look at the list—”
“It’s the twenty-third of Haymonth,” says Celeste.
My shoulders droop. I glance at Grym. “He was listening in, wasn’t he?”
“I enjoyed your riddle,” he says, a note of humor buried beneath layers of disaffection.
Celeste slides a small letter opener out of her dress pocket. She sidles close to Muuth and lets the tip of the opener slide along his cheekbone. “If you breathe a word of this encounter to King Siles or Count Malandre, Elanor, I’m afraid we’ll have to dispose of your friend.”
“You’d kill an old man just to keep up this charade of doting fiancée?”
Her face becomes hard, and it is suddenly quite repugnant. “He’s not an innocent old man, either. I’ve heard some of his stories. I know you were kept as a prisoner on that island to keep him from devolving into the dragon-killer again.”
Her words spark a recent memory. Hadn’t Siles said I was kept on Onyx to keep a monster in check? I’d just assumed he meant Adom. Was he really referring to Muuth?
I hold out the parchment. “I won’t say anything. Just leave him be.”
Celeste tucks away the letter opener and is suddenly serene and magnanimous as she removes the parchment from my fingers. My spine tingles with disgust.
“I’m sure it will be thrilling reading,” I say. “Muuth never knew who specifically was affected by the changeling disorder. It’s probably a list of surnames, and you’ll have to track down the families and determine for yourself who is changeling and who is human.”
She bobs her head. “Grym and I are prepared to do that hard work.”
“You might want to pause your efforts against Hunter and the Tree Hopper—”
“—we’re calling it Chameleon.”
“Well, you might want to stop trying to kill changelings before you know who it is you’re actually pursuing. There’s one surname I know with certainty will be on that list.”
Slither Page 27
