Where Serpents Strike (Children of the Falls Vol. 1) (66 page)

“There is not a woman in the kingdom who
doesn’t envy her beauty,” whispered a woman in the crowd behind
Scarlett.

“And not a man that doesn’t crave her,” said
another.

Scarlett tried not to lock eyes with King
Dagart. He remained stern in his practical black attire that was
topped with a magnificent gold crown.

Next to him, Lady Catherina, the epitome of
piousness and arrogance, held her head high atop a tiny neck.

Scarlett sniggered to herself as she
imagined the weight of the queen’s crown pulling her head clean
off.

As sickly as Catherina’s face and neck
appeared, the dressers had done well to hide the hideousness of the
rest of her body under a padded gown of white and pale blue. Still,
Scarlett thought the queen looked miserable and fake.

The rest of the State Hall was crowded with
Tay’s wealthiest and most well dressed, a sea of velvet and silk
fabrics entombing arrogant men and overly-perfumed women. They all
stood beneath long twirls of white and violet ribbon that hung from
the rafters alongside bunches of mint and lavender that scented the
air. Wall hangings and vases of cut flowers brightened the austere
whitewashed angles and the fluted pillars of the massive room.

Scarlett observed the events from the front
row of standing spectators where she struggled to keep herself
awake. She could only imagine the reprimand she’d receive from the
queen if she were caught yawning.

The celebration that followed the formal
ceremony was no less dull. Scarlett had hoped there would be some
dancing, but instead the central floor of the State Hall was
rearranged with tables for dining. People filled their seats and
indulged in rich meats, spiced wines, and conversational topics
that were far from interesting for a nine-year-old girl.

Tristian appeared to be happy, she observed,
or least he was making a good attempt at pretending.

As for Princess Arrahbella, her hands had
hardly left her husband’s body since they shared their first kiss.
Her fingers danced along his shoulders, twirled with the strands of
his hair, rubbed his forearms, and held his hands.

Scarlett left the State Hall when she was
sure no one was looking. She moved away from the entryway and
breathed a sigh of relief once she was alone in the hallway
outside.

One of the guards, Glendan Riverstone,
smiled at her as she past. The man had developed a fondness for her
in recent months. He had the shape of an ox, but he was sensitive
and funny.

“Had enough for today, Little Red?” he asked
as he stood straight and tall against the wall with a long
halberd.

Little Red. Glendan was the only one who
called her that. She rather liked it.

As she walked by him she slouched her
shoulders and tried to exaggerate how weary she was of all the
chattering rich people in their pompous clothes.

Glendan chuckled. “Give it a few more years,
Little Red. It will be you in there.”

Scarlett hoped he was wrong. If Tristian’s
marriage to Arrahbella was any indication of what getting married
was like she was content to live without it.

She dug her fingers into the front pocket of
her dress where she always kept her blackboard, but she found no
chalk. Realizing she must’ve left it in Tristian’s chambers she
trotted up the majestic steps of the castle’s main entryway and
down the southern corridor toward his bedroom.

She slowed when she heard voices inside.

Scarlett approached the open doorway and
peaked around the corner. She saw the queen speaking to a young
woman who was seated on the bed and wearing very little clothing.
Her wrists and neck were adorned in beautiful gold rings and her
hair was laced with flowers. A prostitute.

Lady Catherina stood over her holding a long
metal needle and a piece of white fabric. “If you get him drunk
enough he won’t feel a thing.”

The young woman reached out, taking the
needle and fabric in careful fingers. “You want me to smear his
blood on the rag?”

“Just enough to leave a deep stain.”

The prostitute looked shocked. “I’m not sure
I dare hurt the prince, my lady.”

Catherina reached out and caressed the
woman’s face. “I told you, get him drunk, pleasure him with every
inch of your body and pain will be the last thing on his mind.”

“And you are sure this will, um, satisfy our
lord?”

“The high king believes my son could be the
key to his endeavors, but the truth is in his blood. With his
blood, Demulier will be able to look into his past and see if he
truly descends from the ones who imprisoned Bodach.”

The prostitute’s face lit up. “And if he is,
will our god live again?”

Catherina’s fingers danced across the
woman’s lips. “In all his glory.”

The young woman nodded. “I will do this, my
lady. For you, for Tay, for the high king, for Lord Bodach.”

Catherina bent down and kissed the girl on
the lips, a gesture that startled Scarlett with its sudden
passion.

When the queen turned toward the doorway,
Scarlett launched herself back down the corridor. She hurried
toward the stairs, desperate to get out of sight before the queen
caught her eavesdropping. She turned left at such a sprint that her
padded shoes slid across the floor. Catherina emerged from
Tristian’s bedroom just as Scarlett disappeared around the
corner.

Pattering down the stairs and trying not to
trip over her purple gown in her rush, Scarlett sprinted for the
State Hall in search of Tristian.

He had never listened to her before, but he
would have to listen to her now. His mother was planning to hurt
him, or so she thought. Truthfully, she didn’t know what the queen
was up to, but she knew Catherina’s intent was not for the good of
her son.

Realizing anew that she still had no chalk
for her blackboard, Scarlett derided herself. She tried to think of
a way to communicate with Tristian before he retired upstairs for
the night.

When she wheeled around the corner into the
State Hall, she was struck with the lively ruckus of music and the
cheers of a standing crowd. She saw Tristian and Arrahbella being
escorted off the main stage by Prince Taggart and a bevy of
attendants. The newlyweds were brought down into a throng of people
for the traditional exit ceremony. Arrahbella began plucking petals
from her flowers and tossing them into the crowd to bless lucky
catchers with a year of good luck.

Scarlett pushed her way through the mob,
desperate to find Tristian. In her mind she saw the prostitute
waiting for him on his bed with that long metal needle. Why did
they need Tristian’s blood? What would they do to him
afterward?

And who was Bodach?

Between a man in a puffy blue vest cloak who
looked like a blueberry and a fat woman in a maroon dress who
resembled a grape, Scarlett saw the velvety sleeve of Tristian’s
navy tunic. She reached for him when the grape jumped up for one of
Arrahbella’s petals. The woman’s wide hips slammed into Scarlett
and knocked her to the floor.

She scrambled to her feet, hoping she
wouldn’t be stepped on.

The people moved out of the State Hall like
an ocean current, fanning out behind the newlyweds like water
around a pair of rocks. They sloshed around at the foot of the
castle’s central stairway, applauding and whistling as the young
couple ascended the steps—Arrahbella lifting the hem of her long
skirt, and Tristian limping on his feeble leg.

Scarlett punched through the crowd to the
foot of the stairs. When she looked up, Tristian and Arrahbella had
disappeared down the hall. She sprinted up the steps and hurried
after them. Never in her whole life had she wished more for the
power of her voice.

Stop!

They were at the end of the hall. Tristian
opened the latch to his bedchambers and Arrahbella stepped
inside.

Wait!

Tristian moved to follow his bride when a
second glance down the hall made him pause.

“Red?”

She ran to him, almost plowing him over when
her little body collided into his hips. Her arms embraced him and
held him close, threatening to hold him forever so long as it
prevented him from entering his room.

“What’s wrong?” he inquired.

Like an icy wind the voice of the queen
echoed out from the darkness of the adjacent room, “Young Red
couldn’t bear to see you leave, my son, not without one last
goodnight.” Catherina strode out into the torchlight of the
hallway, swirling a glass of wine.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Red, I will see you in
the morning,” Tristian said.

She stepped back, shocked at his tone of
voice. She saw his eyes, puffy and glazed like moist glass. He was
drunk, or close to it.

“My son has grandbabies to make,” Catherina
said, “that is if impotence doesn’t prove to be yet another of his
many maladies.” She tossed back the last of her drink.

Arrahbella slipped an arm around Tristian
and pulled him toward the bedroom. “Oh, I don’t think that will be
a problem, my queen.”

The prostitute lay stretched out nude on the
bed within.

No!

Scarlett reached for Tristian when the bony
hands of the queen dug into her shoulder. “I think you should give
them some privacy, my dear. It’s something a mind as young as yours
wouldn’t understand.”

Arrahbella shut the door.

Slapping the queen’s arm away, Scarlett
whirled around, her tiny fists balling.

Catherina’s amused demeanor twisted into a
suspicious scowl. Like a clamp, her hand landed onto the nape of
Scarlett’s neck, fingers pinching tight. “Come, child. Let’s you
and I have a talk.”

Scarlett tried to twist out of the queen’s
grasp, but her thin fingers were painfully strong. Her grip
tightened as she steered Scarlett down the hallway.

“I’ve long wanted to have a heart-to-heart
with you,” Catherina said as she led Scarlett down the hallway of
the second floor.

She tossed a glance back at Tristian’s
bedroom door, her mind desperately trying to figure out another way
to warn him.

“I was also very small when I was your age,”
Catherina began. “I could go places most people couldn’t, places
most people would never even expect to find a young princess. I
learned many secrets, you know. Watched my father kill a man in his
throne room when I was just a wee bit younger than you.”

Catherina led Scarlett up onto the third
floor. She pushed through a heavy wooden door that led out onto the
castle’s western wall walk overlooking the ocean and the setting
sun. The air chilled her as a bitter breeze from the sea whisked
by. It would be autumn soon, and not long after that the choppy
waters of winter would begin to lash the rocky shores.

The heavy door swung shut with a loud
thud.

To Scarlett’s relief the queen’s grip around
the back of her neck relaxed. It didn’t matter though. She was
trapped. She couldn’t open the heavy doors at either end of the
wall walk on her own.

“Can you guess what I did with all that I
learned?” Catherina went on. “I killed my father, for one.” She
offered a cocky smirk. “He had overstayed his welcome as king. He
was an annoyingly arrogant man who never let me have what I want. I
pushed him over this very wall when I was just thirteen.”

Scarlett looked over the parapet. It
provided a view of a road far below edging a steep escarpment of
tall grass. The sun was setting over the ocean in the distance,
casting dramatic shadows across the textures of the land.

“Truth be told, I had discovered that my pig
of a father had seen me engaged in a tryst with one of my dearest
friends. I was embarrassed, and so very frightened that he would
put an end to our happiness.”

She put her arm around Scarlett’s shoulders,
and together they leaned between one of the stone crenellations,
looking down at the road several stories below.

“I asked to speak with him alone up here
atop the wall.” Catherina pointed to nothing in particular. “I said
‘Look, father! Down there!’ And when he leaned over the edge I
helped him lean a little too far.”

Scarlett felt a sudden nervousness rise in
her chest.

The queen brought her lips close to
Scarlett’s ear, and she whispered in a voice tinged with scorn, “I
know a little spy when I see one.” She grabbed Scarlett by the
waist. “And you, Red, see far too much!”

Scarlett’s world tipped upside down as the
queen lifted her over the edge and dropped her. She tumbled two
stories to the wall’s sloped batter where the angled skirt
violently slowed her fall, peppering her tiny body with a hundred
scrapes and bruises. Her right arm snapped above the wrist. Her
joints popped and her back twisted. The rough stone slope kicked
her out into the road where she rolled and skidded to a brutal stop
on the cold hard gravel.

For a moment, she lay still. Her mind didn’t
register at first that she was hurt. When Scarlett lifted her head,
pain shot down her spine. When she tried to push herself up, her
right wrist screamed in agony.

She looked over her shoulder and up at the
castle wall, expecting to see Lady Catherina staring down at her.
The queen was gone, however, and the wall walk looked deserted.

For a long moment Scarlett remained on the
ground, sobbing, trying not to move and wondering if she was going
to die.

Before long it occurred to her that
Catherina might send someone down to ensure that she was actually
dead.

With small movements, Scarlett inched off
the road and down a grassy embankment. She could feel her toes
dragging behind her, scraping the bare ground. She must’ve lost her
shoes. Her head felt dizzy. In her mouth she tasted blood, like
warm copper.

She rested a moment in the tall grass,
trying to keep her sobs quiet, not daring to move out of fear of
feeling more pain elsewhere on her body.