Where Serpents Strike (Children of the Falls Vol. 1) (27 page)

Brynlee lost control. Sprinting after her
sister she took two steps before the chains bit into her feet and
pulled her down. She screamed and thrashed against her bonds. She
beat on the metal links and tugged at the shackles until bloody
cuts developed on her skin, the pain of which lost all significance
when measured against the agonized cry in her chest.

She felt Maidie’s hands embracing her and
pulling her out of the street.

Brynlee called her sister’s name again and
again. Eventually the sight of Scarlett being carted off into the
market crowed evaporated into a blur by the tears in Brynlee’s
eyes.

Scarlett Falls flinched when Rab dropped a
white plate on the ground in front of her, which bounced, sending
the few pieces of roasted ferret scattering onto the forest
floor.

“Give her a break, will you?” said Paden as
he lounged against a mossy log.

“She won’t eat it anyway,” Rab said. “Stupid
kid.”

As predicted, Scarlett ignored the food,
just as she had done for the past two nights. She was too tired to
eat, too angry, and, more than anything, too heartbroken. Not a
moment went by that she didn’t long for the comfort of Brynlee’s
embrace or the look in her compassionate brown eyes reassuring her
that everything was going to be all right.

Now the property of Prince Taggart Elle, of
the western kingdom of Tay, Scarlett had become the object of
torment for his traveling companions, Rab and Paden, both of whom
were young men with too much money and not enough wit.

“How would you like it if you were tied up,
helpless, and at the whim of a man three times bigger than you?”
Paden asked. He at least had a sensitive side, even though his
mannerisms were strangely feminine.

Rab smiled a stupid, playful grin. “Mmm, I
might actually like that very much.”

“Oh really?”

“Uh-huh. Really.” Rab winked.

Paden sat back against the log, rubbing his
face. “By the gods, what I would give to be back at the castle
right now, in a room somewhere with you. Oh, what I would do.”

“We’ll be there soon enough,” said a third
man as he trudged up the slope and reentered the campsite. Taggart
Elle. Prince of Tay. He was a dignified and handsome man,
clean-shaven with a strong jaw and dimpled chin framed by a head of
dirty blond locks. He walked past Scarlett as he retied his
breeches, and then sat down in front of a small campfire.

“Is the princess not eating again?” he
asked, casting a glance at Scarlett.

At the word princess, Scarlett felt her
heart shudder. Othella and Brynlee had told her to keep her
identity a secret, but it appeared Taggart already knew who she
was, but how?

“I think she means to starve herself,” Rab
said. He sat down on the ground next to Paden.

“Speaking of princesses,” Paden began, “I
heard in Perth that the children of Kingsley and Lilyanna Falls are
still alive. Word reached the rebellion that they escaped the
attack on Aberdour and there’s this big secret campaign to try and
find them.”

“Who cares?” Rab said, stretching his hefty
legs out and yawning. “A bunch of children. Not much of a
threat.”

Scarlett felt her nerves calming. Maybe they
didn’t know who she was after all.

“Eat up, child,” Taggart said. “I don’t want
you to go wasting away on me.” He sat down cross-legged in front of
her. He scooped up the pieces of ferret meat and offered her some.
“Go ahead. It’s tasty. Cooked it myself, you know.”

“That’s hardly selling her on it,” Paden
joked.

Taggart leaned toward Scarlett. “Look, we
have a long journey ahead of us and I need you healthy and fit for
my brother.” A mischievous glint flitted across his face. “You see,
we want to plan a little surprise for him.”

“You should tell her,” Paden said.

“No, don’t tell her,” said Rab, groaning.
“Just make her do it.”

“Will you two stop being unhelpful?” Taggart
said over his shoulder. He shifted his attention back on Scarlett
and tore off a nibble of the roasted ferret meat. “My brother is…
oh, how should I put this?”

“A moron?” Paden said with a smirk.

“He is not the sharpest sword in the
family,” Taggart finally concluded. “A bit of a clumsy fool, quiet,
like you. Doesn’t have many friends.”

“Did the doctors really break his foot when
he was little, or is that just some sob story his mother tells?”
Paden asked.

“It’s true. My brother was born deformed—a
curved back, a weak left arm, and a leg, his left leg, grew
backwards.”

Rab hobbled in a straight line behind
Taggart, hunched over, clutching his left arm, and dragging a
twisted foot. He scrunched up his face and made gagging noises as
he performed an imitation of what was, apparently, Taggart’s
brother.

“When he was a little younger than you,
doctors tried to correct his leg by breaking the ankle and twisting
it back around,” the prince exclaimed. “Well, I’m sure you can
imagine just how painful that was. And it didn’t help.”

“It actually made things worse,” Paden said.
He tossed a bit of meat into the air and caught it in his
mouth.

“Show off,” Rab said.

“I called him my pet,” Taggart said. “He was
like the family dog, except he looked like a boy. Sort of.”

“Looked like a freak,” added Rab.

“The only one who ever made him smile was
our little sister.” At the mention of his sister, Taggart’s eyes
grew sad. Whatever enjoyment he had been receiving from telling his
tale faded away. He cleared his throat, and then continued. “She
was, uh, about your age, a little younger maybe. One day my brother
was supervising her as she was taking a bath. They got to playing
some game where he would dunk her head under the water and she’d
pop up spitting a stream of water at his face. She would laugh and
laugh and laugh. Then, one time, he dunked her and WHAM!” Taggart
slapped his hands together so loud it made Scarlett flinch.
“Slammed her head against the side of the porcelain washtub. She
slipped under the water and never came back up.”

“That’s where you come in,” Rab said,
pointing to Scarlett and lifting his eyebrows in rapid
succession.

“Quiet, you halfwit,” Taggart said.

“Or what?” Rab goaded.

“I’ll tell you what!” Taggart jumped up and
tackled the man. They fell to the ground and wrestled around, with
Rab giggling as Taggart dominated him.

Ignoring them, Scarlett found herself
haunted by Taggart’s story. She didn’t wish to meet a deformed
halfwit. She quivered at the thought of seeing him dragging his
crooked foot down the corridors of a strange castle, his gnarled
hand at his side, leering at her through an evil gaze.

Scarlett winced at the hunger pang that
swept through her. For the first time she caught herself eyeing the
food they had given her, now strewn in the dirt in front of her. On
Edhen, it was considered a huge insult to be forced to eat food off
the ground. Only the lowest of the low ever did so. Still, Scarlett
could not longer ignore the ache in her stomach. With an unsteady
hand, she picked a piece of the roasted meat off the dirt and
brushed it with her tiny fingers. She spent the next few moments
nibbling at it until the savory meat ignited her desire for food,
at which point she popped the whole thing into her mouth and
reached for another.

“That a girl,” Taggart said once he’d
finished tormenting Rab. “We’ve got another thirty days on this
road, and I want to see you eat something every day.”

Like she had done for the past two nights,
Scarlett slept little. Without Brynlee’s lap to curl up in she felt
cold and exposed. In her mind every forest sound became a hungry
creature sneaking up to devour her, and every creaking limb a
hiding predator. She didn’t sleep much the following night either
and her weariness made her feel sick all through the next day.
After about a week, however, she surrendered to a sleep so heavy
that it took a physical shake by Taggart to rouse her the next
morning. He smiled, amused, his blue eyes appearing kind and
friendly for a moment behind a few strands of blond locks.

Scarlett continued traveling north with the
prince and his two companions for another three weeks, enduring
more restless nights and further mocking from Rab. Her legs and
buttocks grew sore from riding on the back of Taggart’s saddle.
Thankfully, the young prince had been kind enough to remove her
tiny shackles, though only after he’d made it clear that if she
tried to run she should would be eaten by a forest monster.

When the city of Tay came into view, Rab and
Padden shared moans of relief.

“A warm bath,” Paden said, “some oil for my
rough feet.”

“And a bed,” Rab said. Then, with a wink
toward Taggart, he added, “Right, m’lord?”

Taggart smiled.

Scarlett’s eyes swept over the city before
them. Tay looked much different from her home. Its walls were
almost twice as tall and built of clean bright stone, none of that
dark gray rock from Aberdour.

“Tay,” Taggart said, pointing. “Have you
ever heard of it?”

Scarlett nodded, wondering if he thought she
was a moron.

“Many are put off by its ferocious symbol of
a leopard,” he said, “but do you know why the leopard was chosen to
represent the city?”

Actually, Scarlett did know, but she had no
way of communicating it to the prince, so she remained quiet and
waited for him to continue.

“The leopard is considered to be the
strongest and most sensual of all the big cats,” he said.
“Likewise, Tay is the strongest and most sensual of all the
kingdoms on Edhen.”

“Is that so?” Rab asked with a sly grin at
the prince.

But Scarlett already knew this. She had
learned much about Tay, thanks to Brynlee verbally repeating
everything she learned. But Scarlett learned things differently
than her sister did. Where Brynlee memorized information by
repeating it, Scarlett memorized things simply because she could.
She often heard something only once and never forgot it. In fact,
she knew more about Tay’s flag than the prince did, like the fact
that it wasn’t technically a leopard featured on the flag, but a
close cousin of the big cat, a cougar. There weren’t any leopards
on Edhen, but cougars were known to roam the wilds of the
north.

Scarlett knew enough about Tay to know that
she never wanted to go there, and after entering through the city’s
main gate she saw first hand all the decadence and excess she had
heard of. A large tavern sat to the right of the entrance, and not
just any tavern, but an impressive three-story building with
balconies on every floor occupied by loitering drunkards and
whores. Nearly nude women lounged on a water fountain in the
square, while hagglers bartered for pricey gems and jewelry in loud
voices.

To the left of the city’s entrance, across
from the bar, stood a row of crosses used for execution. All of
them were barren, except one, which bore a man who had been
stripped of all his clothes along with some of his flesh. A sign
hung around his neck declaring, “Krebber vermin.” Scarlett had
never heard of a Krebber before, but she wondered if it had
something to do with the realm of Krebberfall, a continent that sat
across the sea to the west of Tay.

And then she saw the legendary Russell
Basin, a gold-plated bowl roughly the size of a wagon cart sitting
on a stone pedestal in a large stone court. The basin, named for
the sailing captain who had built it from the gold he’d plundered
elsewhere, was filled daily with a mixture of brandy, wine, sugar,
limes, lemons, and nutmeg. The intoxicating drink was available for
anyone with a cup to scoop some.

But the thing that gave Tay the most renown,
the reason it was beloved by male travelers everywhere, was its
broad assortment of prostitutes. Tay boasted women from all corners
of the known world, of every language and skin tone, versed in the
sexual practices of so many cultures that not even a lifetime in
Tay could exhaust the wealth of pleasures the city contained.

Though Scarlett knew some of this because
she had heard it, she understood little. She knew that men liked
women with no clothes on, knew they often acted like fools around
them, but she had never given much thought as to why, nor did she
really care.

She rode through the city on the back of
Taggart’s horse, watching the women on the streets toss him flowers
and praises as he entered. He kissed some hands, blew kisses up
into balconies, smiled and waved like a returning champion. His
demeanor, Scarlett noticed, was quite different from the prince
that she had spent the last month traveling with. He looked, to
her, like an actor playing a role as he strutted through town. The
real Taggart Elle was a very different man, one who, by her
estimation, didn’t enjoy the company of women nearly as much as he
did men.

At long last their horses stopped in front
of the entryway to the Elle family castle, a tall light gray
structure fronted by a wide series of stone steps ascending to a
white portico at the entrance. The castle walls looked nothing like
the rugged stone of Aberdour. These walls were bright, almost
white, pristine, majestic, and huge.

Taggart dismounted, groaned at the stiffness
in his legs, and then picked Scarlett up off the back of the horse
and set her down.

Rab clamped a hand on her shoulder and spun
her around. “Now remember,” he said, “this is a surprise, so be
quiet. Oh, wait. I’m sorry, I forgot who I was talking to.” He
walked away, chuckling at his own cleverness.

A stable boy came out to collect the horses.
Scarlett caught him eyeing her curiously, but she had little time
to eye him back as Taggart picked her up and sprinted up the castle
steps.

Inside, Scarlett’s jaw fell open in awe. The
castle was far more splendid and massive than anything she had ever
seen. Taggart carried her up a flight of wide marble stairs onto
the second floor. He took her down a broad hallway containing many
displays of armored suits sequenced by tall paintings of mighty
sailing ships. She peaked into a couple of the adjoining rooms to
see ornately decorated bedchambers with four-post beds and long
heavy curtains.