Page 20 of Embrace the Serpent

Palms up, placating, Rane said, “I’m afraid you are mistaken—”

“I saw you whispering sweet little nothings in her ear.”

Sweet what? “Wait, what—”

Galen talked over me, shooting daggers at Rane. “I know your game. I’ve been in your shoes. Find yourself a plain little girl, an easy target for a bit of charm, use her to get what you want—”

Rane drew himself up. His smile was gone, his eyes cold. “That is not my game, sir. You dishonor your assistant. And I see that perhaps I was wrong. You are not the man for the job.”

Galen said, “Leave, before I call the guards.”

“Goodbye, Saphira,” said Rane. “I doubt we’ll meet again.”

He whirled on his heel, and left through the gate.

Galen dove into a lecture the minute I was inside. “This isn’t the time to take a lover, Saphira. I understand—and perhaps I’veoverlooked it—that you’re a woman grown now. You may want certain things... but surely you know the work must come first. If you want marriage, a wedding... well, we shall see....” Galen went on, a strange, panicked look in his eye. “Remember, we’re a team.”

“Of course, Galen,” I said vaguely. I didn’t bother to tell him how wrong he was. Something Rane said stuck in my ear.It is as right as the sun rising in the east.“Sounds great. I think I—I have to go.”

He sputtered as I ran upstairs.

The jewel box on my worktable. I lifted the lid, and the yellow tourmaline glittered at me.

Why was Rane’s comment sticking with me? The sun did always rise in the east. That was an immutable fact.

I’d taken some things about the jewel as fact. The way it was put in the box, for one. I turned the jewel upside down. The backside of the jewel had facets that came to a flattened plateau.

There. The angle of the facets didn’t make sense. They should’ve come to a point, and the jewel would’ve been worn with the point directed at the wearer’s vocal cords. Some time, long ago, the jewel had been recut by a second jewelsmith. I’d taken what Lady Incarnadine said as fact, that the jewel had been untouched and only the setting needed to be fixed.

I had to recut the jewel. The setting would then need to lower the drawbridge, so to speak, of a person’s mind. And then the jewel could do the rest.

I drew up a dozen designs. Feverish, mad with inspiration, desperate to hold on to the idea, the feeling, the inspiration—like bottling a whisper.

They were allso close—I knew in my teeth that they were almost there—it was like... like I was plotting a path on a map. One route dropped into a deep gorge, another hit an unscalable mountainside, yet another ended at a rockslide that destroyed the way. Dead end after dead end.

But I finally understood where I had to go. Where the path had to lead. A fog shrouded the path, but I had to find it. Lady Delphina smiled at me from the sketch, and I drew closer.

An image, a waking dream, a vision. Lady Delphina shrouded in milky veils, nothing distinct about her but the yellow jewel at her throat. It glittered and glimmered and drew me in. I wanted to lift her veil. My fingers brushed the edge, and I drew it up by inches. The veil rose over the curves of her chest, then over her collarbones, then—there it was.

The necklace. Whole and distinct.

I jolted back to myself. I needed—a new parchment. The stub of charcoal flew across it, my memory flowing onto paper. I didn’t breathe. But the design had seared itself into my mind. I couldn’t forget it, even if I wanted to.

There it was.

I sat looking at it for I don’t know how long and then I stumbled downstairs, lightheaded.

Galen dropped his glass on his foot, splashing amber liquid on his trousers. He cursed. “Saphira?”

I met his worried eyes. “I think I’ve figured it out.”

5

Galen took the news well; so well in fact that he decided he no longer had to play the part of an eccentric artist cooped up in his workshop and instead went shopping. Packages upon packages were delivered on our stoop, the couriers lingering as if they could snatch a peek of Lady Incarnadine’s jewel from the front window.

Galen showered himself with gifts, as was his way, but he also bought Grimney a whole pile of semiprecious stones that Grimney popped like they were sugared sweets.

To my surprise—really, my absolute astonishment—Galen bought me several articles of clothing—two fine skirts with matching tops, nicer than anything I’d ever had, close enough to my size but a little long in the leg, like he’d bullied a dressmaker into selling him pieces meant for another, slightly taller, customer. And then there was the gown. It was horribly ornate, in pale lilac, heavily embroidered. I assumed he had temporarily lost his mind and would take it back shortly. He also bought me boots, a pearl hair comb, pots of carmine and kohl—strange things that had begun to take over a corner of my room with the steadfast forward march of an invading army.

---