The Fanged Crown

CHAPTER SIX

30 Hammer, Year of Splendors Burnin

(1469 DR)

Winter Palace, the Coast of Tethyr

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.

Evonne had sent Teague and Ysabel to an isolated farm to live with a silent old man who never let them out of his sight, which was strange because the brother and sister were used to little or no supervision at all. The old man was called Filgarth, and he had once been a warrior, or so said the scars on his arms and face. Filgarth was toothless, which troubled Ysabel-how did he eat? — and he had no duties other than to trail them as they played in the fields or forest. Despite their ever-present chaperone, Ysabel liked the run-down farm, which was close to an oak forest and had a leaky barn that was home to a litter of stripey kittens.

After a few months, one of their mother’s servants appeared on the winding dirt road that led to the out-of-the-way property. He took them back to their mother’s house in Darromar, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. A tenday later, they attended Auntie Anais’s coronation, and Ysabel and Teague returned to their normal cycle of spending a few months at each of the palaces scattered throughout the kingdom.

“There’s a fog,” Ysabel told Teague, crossing to the slit in the wall where she could feel a wet mist creeping around the thick stones. “Mama and Auntie had to stop the night in Celleu.”

“Because of a fog?” Teague asked, coming to stand beside his sister at the window. Outside, the sun had set even though it wasn’t even dinnertime. It always got dark early on wintry afternoons, but that night the air was thick and white, almost as if it was snowing heavily. But there were no flakes falling from the sky, just light drops of water that moistened Ysabel’s palm as she held her hand open against the night air.

“It looks … odd,” Teague said uneasily. Peering out into the night, his thin face looked pinched with concern. It was so unlike him to worry about anything.

“Who’s the baby now?” Ysabel teased. “Come on! Let’s find Cousin Daviel.”

“Why are you looking for him?” Teague wanted to know. “He doesn’t want to play hide-and-seek.”

“Master Cardew wants to see him,” Ysabel said. She didn’t like Declan Cardew, the haughty solider who served as Teague’s chaperone. Cardew never talked to her. He acted like she didn’t even exist.

“What’s wrong with Cardew?” Teague asked her as they left the sitting room and padded down the cold flagstones to the spiral staircase that led to the kitchen area in the basement of the palace.

“Nothing,” Ysabel said sullenly.

“Bella …” Teague began as he noticed his sister’s wounded foot and the little blood tracks she’d left all along the corridor behind them. “You really hurt yourself! Go get a bandage. I’ll find Daviel.”

Ysabel stopped as if she were considering his offer, a look of serious concentration on her little face. She knew Teague thought she was slow, but she was really just careful. And she liked to irritate him.

“All right,” she finally agreed, smiling at him brightly when he crossed his arms in frustration. “But when you find him, bring him to our quarters so we can get ready for dinner together.”

“Are we still having dinner, even without Mother and Auntie Anais?”

“Oh, yes,” Ysabel replied as she padded down the corridor in the direction of the infirmary. “Master Cardew said we had to.”