Page 56 of Embrace the Serpent

“In theory,” I said. “I presume you sit on it.”

“Come. It’s simple. We’ll ride together, for now—we need to make haste.”

I inched closer. The horse’s nostrils flared, and I sensed a hidden malice in its big doleful eyes.

“But still, walking is healthy—” I yelped as hands gripped my waist and lifted me into the air.

I swung a leg over the horse’s back and wrapped my arms around its neck. Its muscles rippled under me like it wanted me to know how much stronger than me it was.

The Serpent King took his seat behind me—how I don’t know, I didn’t dare twist to look, lest the beast throw me off—and he was a sturdy weight pressed against my back. I shuffled forward to put some distance between us.

“Let’s go,” he said. His arms came around my body and his warmth pressed against me.

I shut my eyes, and the horse’s shoulders shifted under me as it picked up speed. I was thankful for the Serpent King keeping me steady, for there was no saddle. Then again, I doubted I’d have known what to do even if the horse came with a saddle.

I opened my eyes once and found it to be a mistake, for one, because we were going so fast the world was a blur of color, andtwo, because I saw that there were no reins, nor any way at all to control the beast.

The monstrous water horse finally fell still. Hands gripped my waist again, and the Serpent King pulled me off the beast’s back. On trembling legs, I waddled over to a nice boulder, plopped down, and rubbed the feeling back into my thighs.

I blinked the wind from my eyes. We were on a hill, shielded from the road by a thicket of trees, with a grand view of a town below.

The Serpent King pulled the hood low over his head. “Things are more dangerous, now that they know who you are. The story has changed. They say I stole you from the Imperial City.”

He stood like kings in paintings, one leg up on a fallen tree, peering down at the town. All the roofs were a mottled pale turquoise-green.

“Copperton,” the Serpent King said.

Oh. Of course it was green. The picture in my head was of a town all pinkish-orange, like clean polished copper. But any piece of copper turns that distinct blue-green in about seven years, if left unlacquered or unwaxed. It takes a lot of elbow grease to polish the green away—a lesson I learned when I was nine, when Galen had to take just about any job, including restoring old pieces. I could still conjure up the sweet and earthy scent of the wax.

“You have never been here?” he asked.

“No,” I admitted. “Have you?”

“No. I have read that it is famously built on a spoke and wheel design,” he said.

I squinted. Just barely, in the heart of the town, I could makeout a cluster of buildings that might fit that description, but streets wandered aimlessly after that point, buildings crowding each other and climbing up a hill in the distance.

“And,” he continued, “that in the fourth age, Prince Adi the Watchful, built a small palace and lined the walls of his banquet hall in lead. He was deeply paranoid, deeply hateful of the power of jewels, and he insisted all his visitors meet him there, including when he met his bride, so he could be assured that her intelligence and beauty were not unduly enhanced. If I remember correctly, it was in that very same banquet hall that he was poisoned, on the eve of his thirty-ninth birthday.”

He had the demeanor of a boy reciting his lessons, and for a brief heartbeat, an image of a small, scowling boy-sized Serpent King flashed before my eyes. I shook my head. “That’s, uh, very interesting.”

He stalked off, an irritated set to his lips.

It was a very old book he had read all this from. But of course, how would they have records of recent history in the Serpent Kingdom?

I followed after him. He was standing with his eyes closed.

A transformation fell upon him, his skin turning smooth, his cheekbones widening, his shoulders slimming and torso thickening. A lantern-jawed man in an Imperial Guard uniform stood before me.

I clapped hands over my mouth.

He startled, eyelids flying open. “What is it?”

“I didn’t know you could—I thought only Rane could do that.”

He gave me a withering look. “Do not think so highly of Rane and so lowly of me.”

“His illusions are better.” Rane’s had a bit of reality to them. There was something waxy about the Serpent King’s. Rane was like me, working for someone who didn’t really appreciate what we could do and yet was jealous of what we did.

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