Page 1 of Embrace the Serpent

Part 1

The Girl

1

You can’t be hurt if no one knows you exist. That was the last thing my mother ever said to me, though not exactly in those words. “Hide, darling,” she whispered. “The djinn mustn’t find you.” And she pressed into my little hands a sapphire ring, the stone cloudy and speckled, a jewel of power meant for thieves and pranksters and a shy duchess who preferred blending into the wallpaper over socializing. Once on my finger, its power settled over me like a damp chill, and I became nearly invisible—not invisible like a vanishing act, but invisible like a third footman at a palace gala, or a mouse in tall grass.

But for it to work, a footman must not step out of line, a mouse should not squeak, and a five-year-old hiding in her mother’s wardrobe had better not cry. The djinn found me, because even though the ring made me appear as interesting as a bundle of clothes, it was hard not to notice a bundle of clothes that was sniveling like a girl who’d just been demoted to the rank of orphan.

I spent the next twelve years of my life getting better at being invisible, getting so good at it, in fact, that I was certain the djinn who found me that day would never find me again.

The rickshaw rattled along with me from where I sat in the low backward seat, wearing my usual armor: sacklike livery in the trademark dusty purple and gold of Master Galen’s Jewelsmithery, buttoned all the way to my neck despite the heat; my mother’s ring on my left pointer finger; the vacantly attentive smile of a servant who wasn’t too bright.

Galen was happy. I could tell because he was lecturing. “Lemme tell you one thing, Saphira,” he said, speaking loudly to be heard over the rickshaw’s wheels rattling across pavement and the excitable hum of a city on festival day. “Lemme give you a pearl of wisdom. You know what it is we’re selling?”

“Jewelry,” I said.

He laughed like I was a dog who’d done an excellent trick. His flask peeked out from his jacket pocket. “Jewelry isn’t jewelry, kid. Jewels are”—he leaned in for emphasis—“ideas. How’d you think I sold that nasty pair of emeralds? I told that Lady—that Lady Whosit, Whasshername, you know the one, face like a pig on a horse’s neck—I said, ‘Can’t you just imagine going to the first garden party of the Season, and the flowers opening just as you walk by—can’t you see all the handsome ladies and pretty lords coming to ooh and ahh over you? No one has these, not a thing like them in all of Gem Lane. Why, you’ll be the center of attention. They’ll be green with envy!’”

“So wise,” I said dryly. Those emeralds had left twin patches of moss and mildew on my worktable and I feared for Lady Whasshername’s gowns.

Somewhere between Gem Lane and the posh streets of CaelanHill, our rickshaw slowed to a crawl. A palanquin jogged by; it was so majestically proportioned and of such a striking red, that all one saw was the pale, long-fingered hand parting the gauzy veil. Hardly any of the passersby glanced at the four strapping lads jogging in perfect unison, on whose shoulders the palanquin rested.

“You know what sold those baby bracelets?” Galen was saying. “I said to her, ‘Look, these little rubies will make sure your grandbaby always has a little warmth with her. She’ll grow up feeling the warmth of her grandma’s love.’” He snapped his fingers. “Sold like that. Love is our number one customer. Well, maybe number two. This clasp has been doing numbers, kid. We’re gonna get the Emperor’s commendation this year, I know it. Hey, what’s the holdup?”

Our rickshaw driver—who had done a very decent job of making himself beneath notice—scowled. “It be the Season, good sir. Them’s all want a glimpse. They sayhe’sbeen seen not a day’s ride away.”

“He?” Galen said.

The driver looked doubtfully at Galen. “Don’t you know?”

“Spit it out, man.”

“The Serpent King,” he hissed, and then made a sign of protection.

“I’ll believe that when I see it.” Galen clicked his teeth. “On foot, then. Let’s go. Keep a good grip on that, now.”

He disembarked. I grabbed the jewel box from the seat and slipped it into the folds of my livery, which was oversized for the purpose of carrying everything we might need. Galen strode down the pavement without a care, clad in pristine ivory, with his salt-and-pepper hair teased into a wave that rose toward the sky, and swinging a lavender and gold enameled cane with the aplomb of aman who needed no such aid to walk. He was as easy to ignore as an eyelash in the eye.

I put some distance between us. A good walk, an invisible walk, has to be a little slow ’cause some people get competitive if you walk faster than they do, but it can’t be a mincing, shy sort of walk either, for the same reason that a cat can always tell when a mouse is trying to hide. You don’t want to turn it into a hunt.

Two pickpockets stumbled into Galen, groping for a purse that wasn’t there. They skulked back into the crowd to bump into someone else. A woman too young for Galen batted her eyelashes at him, but he didn’t take the bait. There were a few other bids for Galen’s attention, but nothing noteworthy.

We were almost to the customer’s house when I finally noticed him.

He was very tall, in the way of someone who had just turned the corner from gangly to graceful, and his face had that same sort of quality, of bold features that had not yet come to play nicely together but had at least called a truce on all-out warfare. His hair was dark, his clothes of perfectly middling color and quality.

I recognized him, the way a traveler in a strange land recognizes a whisper of their hometown dialect. He was like me. A pretender.

He was watching Galen; he wasn’t obvious about it, but with every casual sweep of his head, his gaze rested ever so briefly on my dear boss.

Was he a thief?

Something came over me, and I slowed down to follow him. We wove through the crowds, Galen’s fluff of hair our north star. He was humming to himself; what kind of thief hums?

He stopped abruptly at a street vendor pushing a steaming cart. An expression of delight crossed his face as he exchanged a coin for a brown thing on a stick. The right corner of his mouth tilted up higher than the left.

What kind of thief stops for a snack?

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