Where Serpents Strike (Children of the Falls Vol. 1) (28 page)

Taggart was himself again, giggling as he
veered into the last bedroom on the right. Though wide and tall in
size, the room contained none of the fancy decorations that
permeated the rest of the castle. The bed in this room had no
posts. The wood floor was scuffed and warped, and the furniture
looked old. The room carried the faint aroma of mint leaves.

Taggart set her down on a hard surface, and
Scarlett flinched when he began to remove her clothes. Paden and
Rab came in, each carrying two buckets of water and snickering like
schoolboys about to prank their teacher. When they approached her,
Scarlett cringed, fearing they were going to dump the water over
her head, but then she realized what she was standing in—a
porcelain washtub. The two men drained the buckets into the tub and
hurried out of the room, snickering.

“Get down in there,” Taggart said, tossing
Scarlett’s ratty dress aside. “Sit!”

She did as she instructed and lowered
herself into the lukewarm water.

“Stay there,” Taggart said. “Do not come out
until I say. Understand?”

Scarlett was too afraid to move. She watched
Taggart skip out of the room, laughing in hushed tones with his
companions. Whatever they were up to, she didn’t understand what
they thought was so funny.

She waited, her body still, too afraid to
move. Her eyes roamed the high walls with their dark wood panels
and antique tapestries. A nearly extinct fire crackled in its
hearth across from the bed.

Behind Scarlett was a trio of huge windows
half covered by blue drapes, through which she watched the
afternoon sun begin to set.

Still, she waited.

The water turned cold, but out of fear of
Prince Taggart she refused to move. The blue sky outside changed to
purple and the room began to get dark. She started to wonder if
they had forgotten about her, or if maybe their intention was to
leave her there in the cold water until she drowned, just like that
little girl Taggart had told her about.

Scarlett looked like her, Taggart had said.
On the day he bought her from Mungo back in Perth, he marveled at
how much she resembled his baby sister, a girl he had called
Priscilla, the girl his deformed brother had allegedly drowned.

Night came. The bath water was freezing,
but, still, Scarlett waited.

She was shivering uncontrollably when the
door to the bedroom opened. A man slunk into the room, limping as
if hurt. He carried a candle over to the bed and used it to ignite
a three-branched candlestick. As the light in the room grew, and
Scarlett saw more of him, she concluded that this must be Taggart’s
brother, a man whose name she had not yet heard.

He had begun to undress when he noticed
Scarlett sitting naked in the porcelain tub. When their eyes
locked, he screamed, which startled her and made her start to cry.
He ran from the room as fast as his gimpy leg would allow.

And then Scarlett was left in the silence
and cold once more. She sobbed, shivering, wishing she could get
out of the tub, but doubting she could even move.

A few moments later a young woman shuffled
into the room. She was small, like Dana, with a tiny waist and
compassionate eyes that looked upon Scarlett with a certain
horrified shock.

“Oh, of all the cruel…” her voice trailed
off as she ran toward the tub. She grabbed a towel from a shelf
next to the window and hurried over to Scarlett. “Come,” she said.
“Up you get. Come now, it’s all right.”

It almost hurt to move, but once she got to
her feet Scarlett indulged in the soft embrace of the towel and the
young woman’s warm arms. She rubbed Scarlett up and down, her eyes
sad.

“By the gods, you’re frozen,” she said. “Let
me look at you. Purple lips. Wrinkled hands. Damn those fools. Damn
those proud fools.”

Taggart’s deformed brother limped back into
the room. His unnatural profile was haunting. He moved toward her,
and she pressed herself into the young woman who shot the man a
contemptuous glare.

“This is all your brother’s foolishness,”
she said.

“I know,” he replied. His voice was smooth,
like water, kind and genuine. His stooped back made him look short,
and his hair was much darker than his brother’s. He had haunting
eyes encroached with dark circles that frightened Scarlett at
first, but she couldn’t deny that despite his horrible appearance
he had a gentleness she found calming.

“I’m sorry if I frightened you,” he
continued. “You–you look… unbelievable. You look just like her.”
His good hand went to his mouth as he gazed at Scarlett,
stunned.

“My lord?” said the young woman. “She looks
like who?”

“My sister,” he said in a heartbroken
whisper. “Priscilla.”

The woman looked appalled. “Is that why they
did this? How long were you in there, love?”

Scarlett just looked from the woman to the
man, helpless to explain anything.

“Aamor, why don’t you go fetch her some
clean clothes,” the man said.

“Right away, my lord.” The woman hurried out
of the room, much to Scarlett’s dismay.

The strange looking man sat down on the bed,
grunting as though it took great effort to do so. He gestured in
the direction of the young woman. “Aamor,” he began, “one of the
gentlest souls I have ever known. Beautiful. Smart. Worthy of so
much more than a life serving a crippled, crotchety curmudgeon like
myself.” He paused as though waiting for a laugh that never came.
“My name is Tristian. Tristian Elle. What is your name child?”

Scarlett reverted to the universal symbol
for voice by patting her throat. Everyone in Aberdour knew of her
disability, and so it had been a long time since she’d had to
communicate with someone who knew nothing about her.

“You can’t speak?” Tristian guessed.

She nodded.

“Well, it seems we have two things in
common,” he said. “We both are broken, and we’ve both been
humiliated by my idiot brother.” He adjusted himself on the bed,
pained by something in his left hip. “Regardless, there must be a
way to learn your name. Perhaps I should guess it?”

Scarlett felt the beginnings of smile
forming at the corners of her mouth. She always enjoyed a good
guessing game.

“Is it Dingo?” Tristian asked.

Scarlett huffed out a laugh, a
stupid-sounding laugh she had always hated. No voice. Just air
passing through her mouth. It had always embarrassed her, until
now. In the face of Tristian’s deformities, her shortcomings didn’t
seem so bad.

“No? Well, how about Spotty? No? Shorty?
Beanpole? Wait, wait. I’ve got it. Dandelion!”

She shook her head, huffing her strange,
stupid-sounding laugh with no reservations.

“I think perhaps you should give me a hint,”
Tristian said. “I’m not very good at these sorts of games.”

Scarlett looked about the room for something
to use as a clue. She noticed a bookshelf and shuffled over to it.
While still snuggled in her towel she scanned the spines of the
many books. She did not find the word Scarlett, but she did,
however, find a book with a red binding. She pulled it off the
shelf and brought it over to Tristian. She ran her index finger up
and down the length of the color.

He looked at the book perplexed. “
Night
Tales of Old
.” He looked up from the book cover. “I doubt that
is your name. Is your name in this book? No.”

She pointed to the color of the book
again.

“The color?”

A voice from the doorway said, “Scarlett.”
It was Aamor. The petite young woman walked over to them with an
armful of clean clothes.

“Scarlett,” Tristian repeated.

But the moment he said her name, she
flinched. Othella had told her and Brynlee not to use their real
names. Keep it a secret, she had said. Though the reasons behind
the young woman’s warning were a mystery to Scarlett, it was one
she intuitively felt she had to obey.

Slowly she shook her head.

“No?” Tristian said. “Your name isn’t
Scarlett?”

Again, she shook her head.

“How about Red? Do you mind if I call you
Red?”

She nodded.

“Now tell me…” He paused. “Sorry. Poor
choice of words.” He thought for a moment. “What are you good at,
Red?”

Scarlett scrunched her face as she thought
about what few things she could do, but all that came to mind were
the things she wasn’t good at. She wasn’t pretty and brave like her
oldest sister, Dana, who could loose her arrows better than any of
them. She couldn’t fight like her brother Brayden, or run fast like
Broderick. Even Lia and Brynlee had more wit and wisdom than little
Scarlett. If there was anything she was good at, she hadn’t
discovered it yet.

She responded to Tristian with a shrug and a
frown.

He patted her shoulder. “We’ll learn about
you soon enough, I suppose,” he said. “For now, I think it’s time
for bed.”

Tristian had Aamor make up a temporary
mattress for Scarlett of thick blankets, bearskins, and pillows on
the floor near the fireplace. She donned a linen shift and burrowed
under the warmth of the blankets. Aamor lowered herself to her
knees and helped tuck her in.

“I’m so sorry, love,” she said, stroking
Scarlett’s hair. “What they did to you today, they… they had no
right to—”

“Aamor,” Tristian said, “a hand please.”

“My lord.”

Aamor rose and went over to Tristian who was
sitting on the bed, his weak left hand caught in the tangles of his
shirt. Scarlett watched as Aamor gently untied the knotted strings
and helped him remove the garment. Tristian thanked her and
dismissed her.

With a slight bow, the girl left.

“Well, Miss Red,” Tristian started to say,
“I hope you can sleep well tonight.”

And sleep well she did. All at once the
exhaustion from months of travel, of physical pain, and heartache,
washed over her, buried her in her cushy mountain of blankets and
pillows and drowned her in an ocean of rest. She dreamed wild and
crazy carefree dreams, and woke to the sun as it caressed her
cheek.

Awlin returned to the campsite half-dressed
and dripping with water. She giggled at herself as she stumbled
over the low-hanging folds of her dress, and backed up to Merek
where he sat on a log by the campfire munching on a piece of
bread.

“Can you button this up, please?” she
asked.

He stood, amused by her clumsiness. “Did you
fall in?”

“No, I wanted to wash,” she said. “The river
was cold, but I needed to bathe.”

“I’m sorry,” Merek said as he reached for
the buttons on the back of her dress, “I thought we’d be safe by
now, but, I promise, in another day or two we’ll—”

When he saw the scars on her back he
stopped. A feeling like ice trembled through his body as he
examined the whip marks. His mind conjured horrible images of a
cruel slave master abusing his sister, Awlin screaming in pain as
she tugged against her bonds. The thoughts drained the blood from
Merek’s face because he knew that regardless of who put the scars
on Awlin’s back that he, Merek Viator, was ultimately at fault.

“Brother?” Awlin asked.

He cleared his throat. “Oh, sorry.” He
continued fastening up the back of her beige dress, a far too
simple gown for someone worthy of so much more.

Merek sat back down on the moldy log,
fearing he would soon lose control of his own shame and burst into
tears. For months now he had been hiding it. Ever since he had
freed Awlin, he had been ignoring the nagging feeling inside him to
tell her the truth. He knew that at some point he would have to
admit his guilt, bear her hate, and have it over with, but he
couldn’t bring himself to do it. Having already been shunned by the
rest of his family, losing Awlin was a thought too difficult to
bear.

“What were you saying?” Awlin asked as she
sat down next to him in front of the fire. “Something about a
couple more days.”

Her words yanked Merek from his inner
misery. He found himself lost for a moment in her delicate eyes
that still retained so much of the innocence that he
remembered.

“Um, yes,” he said. “We should be at the
cabin late tomorrow.”

“A cabin?”

“I inherited it from a friend who also used
to do my kind of work.”

“You mean stealing stuff?” Her voice, the
way she said it, so naive and unassuming, almost fascinated in a
way.

“But much more successful than I’ve ever
been,” he said, which wasn’t entirely true. Anyone who knew him
would attest that Merek was one of the best thieves in the
business, but he lacked the one attribute that made the best
thieves notorious: greed. “I have a stash of gold at the cabin that
should be enough to buy passage.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to see mama and papa
again.” Awlin’s eyes crinkled when she smiled and looked toward the
sky at the stars visible through the gaps in the cozy forest
canopy. “Some nights I can still smell papa’s pipe, or mama’s
hands, like oil and flour. Mmm, frosting!” She closed her eyes,
licking her lips. “Father always said she should open a bakery.”
Awlin reclined on her hip, propping herself up with her elbow. “How
are things at home? Is Edhen still at war?”

“The Black King conquered Aberdour several
moons ago.”

Awlin’s cheerful disposition began to
recede. “So is it over?”

“Hardly. There are pockets of resistance,
but I doubt they will survive long.”

Awlin counted out four of her fingers. “Four
years. He landed in the kingdom of Perth four years ago, and in
that time he conquered the entire realm. Amazing. Where did he come
from?”

“No one knows. They say he is an Edhenite,
but he speaks Efferousian, Fellian, and other languages that few
have ever heard. Some call him a demon, others say he is doing the
work of a demon.”

Awlin curled her lip. “I’m not so certain I
want to go home now.”