The Betrayer’s Serpent
THE BETRAYER’S SERPENT
The Wraiths arrived early for court.
The throne room had obviously been Omniel’s favorite part of the castle.
It was so long that Esme herself had once spent ten very annoying minutes trying to dramatically leave it.
Seven enormous glass chandeliers, each holding seventy candles, hung from a cloud-high ceiling.
A red rug trimmed with gold ran from the throne to the doors.
It had taken seven lives and two years to weave. And there was a lord wiping snot on it.
The right wall was almost entirely stained-glass windows, each depicting a scene ripped from the pages of the Asterui Bukkai, Micrea’s only historical record and Esme’s favorite source of kindling.
At nine in the morning, the orange sun lit the vile god of damnation, Muhnir, as he crafted his malicious monsters, the Nuk.
At eleven, light crowned Ramniel, the gods’ chosen and Omniel’s father, who prayed his perfect son into his wife’s belly.
At noon, she died in blazing childbirth.
At two, Omniel subjugated his seven Wraiths, former slithering beasts of Muhnir’s design, with the sun at its brightest. The artist had got her cheeks wrong, and Esme had half a mind to accidently elbow the panel out so they’d be forced to fix it.
At four, the lazy day shone through Omniel using those Wraiths to best the Nuk, and at five it lit the brutal fires Omniel hurled the Nuk princess Brawna and her terrible band of bear-riding warriors into.
At six, the waning sun glinted off Omniel’s crown as he received a ship full of settlers from Fortuna, the continent across the Wyvern Sea, and established the country of Micrea.
Only in the summer did the sunlight pass through the first Wallain, with Micreans dancing above Muhnir feasting on the bodies of the Nuk below the earth.
Esme hated that story. Another thing artists could never get right.
Like an overgrown weed desperate to prove it belonged before someone plucked it out, Isobel rooted her feet to the floor and gripped the arms of the gaudy gold throne at the head of the room.
Belchin, Turiel’s oldest friend and the kingdom’s richest idiot, bent greedily to her ear, whispering something very important.
Esme could tell by how one hand chopped the other.
Hallel stood beside her mother, not hiding her utter confusion at everything Belchin said.
Mak’kon stood a few feet behind the girl, not hiding his utter indifference to anything that did not concern the princess.
It was impossible to enter silently, and Isobel shut up when she spotted Esme strolling up to the dais.
“Glad to see you could make it,” the queen said, clearly not at all glad that Esme had made it.
Esme dropped into a dramatic bow. “Thank you, my queen. I can see you’ve been grieving.
I hope you look better soon,” she said. Truthfully, Isobel had never looked ugly a day in her life, and a dead husband wouldn’t change that.
She was the very embodiment of Micrean womanhood, slender in body, with a wide forehead and a sloped nose.
She had the neck of a swan and shoulders sharp as blades.
She’d cut every man who had ever held her as proof.
She didn’t have to dye her hair to be beautiful; that crimson shade bled from her head naturally, her thick hair sorted out into sets of intricately pinned braids and tucked under a black veil.
“Alas, I fear the grieving has hurt me,” Isobel said. “It’s made me older, almost. Is this what you decrepit, ugly hags feel?” she asked, throwing one leg over the other under her giant black skirt.
Esme snorted. If she had a talon for every time Isobel called her a decrepit, ugly hag, she could buy all that hideous jewelry right off her neck.
Realistically, when her first husband had left her, Isobel should have fallen into poverty, caught a cold, and croaked in an alley.
Instead, she’d grabbed onto anyone useful and climbed the ladder of influence all the way to Turiel.
Mak’kon must have liked how her heel tasted, considering he was still letting her stomp on him to this day.
“We decrepit, ugly hags tend not to feel,” Esme said. “I suppose your petty emotions are a reminder that you are finite and your tiny, weak heart will stop soon.” She curtseyed and Isobel held up a finger. This was the most civil they’d been to each other in years.
“You smell like shit,” Isobel said. Mak’kon laughed from behind her, and Esme just barely withstood the urge to poke him with a shadow knife.
He was a summer storm made flesh, taller than most men, and with shoulders so wide it was a wonder he fit through the doorways.
His eyes were so red that Esme swore they were pure blood.
Most of his hair was black save for one errant streak of crimson at his temple.
Today, that hair was braided back with a small blue ribbon that softened the innate severity of his heavy brow, square jaw, and thin lips.
His skin was warm and tan, lighter than Esme’s, though he could never pass as Micrean.
Esme pulled Isobel’s black necklace out of her pocket and tossed it to her. The queen’s green eyes burst open, and she clutched the thing to her chest with a sigh. Was such an ugly necklace really so important?
As if sensing Esme’s curiosity, Isobel snatched back the hint of emotion. “It was a gift. From Turiel, I mean. His last one,” she explained with grief knotting in her thin throat. For just a second, Esme asked herself if Isobel Asterou had actually loved that man.
Perhaps…
But that didn’t matter now. All that mattered was the Bond finally losing its grip on Esme’s throat. The last decree of Turiel Asterou had been fulfilled.
Slowly, others dripped into the throne room, black shawls thrown over otherwise colorful frocks where they couldn’t be assed to change into mourning attire.
The only person who’d given a shit that Turiel was dead was the fussy captain of the guard, who pulled his black embroidered tunic down as he scrambled up to the dais.
“Why are we holding court before a council meeting?” he demanded. “We must formulate a plan to pursue the killer!” He wasted no time on wishing Turiel’s ghost well, his eyes flashing as he whisper-shrieked at Isobel and Belchin.
Isobel raised an eyebrow that looked more confused than anything. Then she sighed. “Take a Wraith and figure it out. You can use that one.” She pointed to Esme.
Of course she did.
“Actually, no need for Wraiths at all,” Belchin cut in with a voice like licking a cheese grater, his face screwed into a sneer at a silent Esme and Urias. “Sir, I will be the one to head up the investigation into… this.” He looked unsure as to what “this” was.
Good Sir Belchin seemed to revile Wraiths because they’d managed to pull off a feat he’d yet to master: being useful.
When Turiel became king, he’d invented a job with a fancy name and told Belchin all he had to do was attend court thrice a year to keep it.
Belchin wanted more, though. He wanted a seat at the big table, with the big minds, making the big decisions.
He didn’t understand why Urias and Esme sat at that table, or why Turiel didn’t give him a chair.
The captain’s mouth dropped and he leaned forward. “Sir Belchin, please. Only I have the resources and men to launch a formidable investigation—”
“Then give me those resources,” Belchin said, shrugging a single shoulder. He stepped down from the dais like a self-important housecat. “Wraith, take him out, please.” He waved him to Esme.
Esme didn’t move.
“Did you not hear me?” Belchin turned to her sharply. He poked his face into hers and Esme just resisted biting him. When she would be almost-free after today, she promised to do something mean to him, just for fun.
“I only respond to orders from the sovereign, sir,” she said evenly.
Belchin nearly blew the V-shaped flap of pubic hair he called a wig off his shiny bald head.
“Surely you are not the sovereign, are you?” Esme prodded at him again, attention passing clear over his head to Isobel behind him.
Isobel’s face burned red. “Belchin, you have no place in this court anymore. It would be wise for you to remember that.” Song’s balls, it was fun to pit them against each other.
Belchin spun on Isobel, mouth agape. “You will work with the captain on this investigation. That is the end of it,” Isobel said. He looked like she’d just whipped him. Esme didn’t dare grin.
Before he could bitch and whine, more courtiers filtered into the throne room, but the crowd was thin. Urias’s earlier prediction had been correct—there weren’t many nobles just randomly visiting the castle.
“Mourners” dropped to their knees against the hard stone floor, a law Turiel had made so he could stare down women’s dresses.
The only people who didn’t kneel were Urias and Esme, his queen, and his council, who all got to sit like poodles on fancy red stools near the back of the dais.
Esme dramatically threw herself down on hers while Urias took a stiff seat beside her.
Isobel made herself a pathetic little woman now that they had witnesses, shrinking into the throne and bowing her shoulders.
In a second, she went from the greedy widow vying for her husband’s power to an emaciated, grieving wife.
She faked a sob theatrically louder than everyone else’s.
Esme and Urias traded a look. The act didn’t matter.
Their plan was moving into action. Urias nodded, and Daphna covertly shut the throne room’s doors.
“I know not what to say,” Isobel choked out, clutching her chest and throwing herself over the right arm of the throne. “My husband is dead!”
Song’s balls, those fucks could weep. Esme plugged little shadows in her ears to protect them from the onslaught. She passed Urias a pair of plugs too, and he took them with silent thanks.