Chapter 1
Perfect weather for a shopping trip, I thought as I passed through the gates to the serpiente open-air market.
A fine, chilly drizzle was falling from the overcast May sky. Like everyone else in the market, I kept my head down so the hood of my cloak could keep the rain out of my eyes. Unlike everyone else, I had good reason to hide my face regardless of the weather: like most members of the Obsidian guild, I was wanted for treason. I did have the distinction of being guilty based on my own actions instead of just by association, which was the charge on most of Obsidian’s members. I had been convicted at a trial I had declined to attend three years ago--wisely, since the sentence would have been death despite my age.
I was fifteen now, and grateful for the rain.
Under the cloak, I felt half naked in the clothes of a casual serpiente trader: a loose blouse under a half bodice, and trousers that hugged my hips and thighs, then laced even more tightly at my calves. The bodice was low-cut, and dyed a brilliant shade of emerald, leaving the majority of my chest exposed.
A good way to catch your death by lung fever, I thought, then shook my head. The concern was a remnant of another time, another life. Serpent shapeshifters like me were immune to human diseases like that.
Maybe that was why they were so comfortable wearing so little clothing.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spied the black and crimson uniform of a member of the palace guards. His gaze drifted over me as he scanned the crowd in the marketplace, but he paid me no attention. Why would he? I was just another shopper.
Unfortunately, “shopping” was made difficult by the fact that I had no trade goods or currency that I dared use. That meant I had to get creative.
Once, I would have balked at stealing, but these days, my hands were swift. As I moved casually through the marketplace, I took advantage of absentminded shopkeepers--those who were busy flirting, or whose eyes had caught on the brightly dressed dancers who flitted through the crowd. A salt horn, a bag of dried peas, a sack of cornmeal, and a log of goat cheese all disappeared into the haversack that hung at my hip.
I didn’t take much from any individual merchant. I couldn’t quite resist a warm lamb pie, which smelled of rich spices, but I slipped a blood coin onto the merchant’s table where he would find it later.
Midnight called the currency it minted trade coins. However, since Midnight was just as quick to trade in slaves as in these pieces of metal, the more evocative name was far more popular. The vampires’ empire protected the coins’ value, so they were valid even here in the serpiente market, but there was no reason the local trader I was pretending to be would have them. I couldn’t afford to draw attention to myself by using them openly, but I didn’t like to outright steal something I didn’t really need.
I was aware that this was a narrow distinction, but I made it anyway.
Food was a necessary resource, but that wasn’t the only reason I risked coming to the serpiente market, which was open to the air and sky above but surrounded by high walls on all sides. The only way in or out was through the public areas of the palace, where being caught meant death, but ignorance was even more dangerous. While “shopping,” I kept an ear out for gossip. Information was more valuable than gold.
This spring had resulted in a larger than normal number of healthy lambs born, which was good news. Wool was one of the serpiente’s key trade goods. Last year, a winter fever had ravaged the flocks, leaving the serpiente king unable to pay bills owed to masters with neither the patience nor the kindness to offer lenience.
The king had blamed the Obsidian guild. We were already guilty of treason, so why not add a charge of sheep poisoning? It gave him an excuse to send guards into the woods. It gave him an excuse to pay his bills with our flesh and blood: Shkei and Misha.
I had to stop there in the spitting rain and take a deep breath. Serpiente were very sensitive to the emotions of those around them, and nearby merchants and shoppers had started glancing at me with concern. I couldn’t afford the attention. I was here because I was normally better than most of our guild at blending in and hiding any anxiety I might feel.
The memory, still raw less than a year later, had taken me by surprise. That was all.
I pretended to examine the trinkets at the nearest merchant’s stall as I brought my emotions under control.
A group of dancers, two women and a man, came up beside me. Their bodies were wrapped in brilliantly colored scarves and little else, the cloth just enough to accentuate bare skin that had been painted with henna designs and in some places decorated with tiny rhinestones.
“I’m sorry,” the merchant said. “I know I said I would try to get more of those bone combs for you, but I haven’t managed yet.”
Bone combs? I wondered. I had seen a few dancers wearing fancy carved combs in their hair but hadn’t given much thought to the silly things until now. The Shantel were famous for their bone and leather goods, but the Obsidian guild had a few talented carvers as well, and bone was a material easily acquired through hunting. If this was a popular item that had suddenly become rare, it might be a way to earn a few coins the next time we went to Midnight’s market.
I chanced a glance up, and sure enough, one of the women was wearing one of the apparently coveted combs. It had been carved to resemble--what else?--a serpent, with an emerald-green body and a white diamond pattern down its back. The bone had been dyed and polished to such a shine that it glittered like a gem, brilliant against the dancer’s dark hair.
As I watched, the snake moved, shifting its coils and blinking its eyes.
Magic, I thought with disappointment. There were people in my guild capable of making and selling a clever carved comb decorated with fancy dyes and varnish, but we couldn’t compete with the Shantel magically.
Oh, well.
It was time to move on.
The distraction had helped me compose myself, anyway. I was walking away when I overheard the words Obsidian guild. They hadn’t recognized me, or there would have been more shouting, and I knew better than to give myself away by visibly reacting. I discreetly kept my attention on the merchant who had spoken, even as I pretended to stop at another booth.
“I don’t know all the details,” the merchant said. “All I know is they were involved. They set fire to the Shantel trade stall in Midnight’s market. They must have been working with Midnight in some way, or else they would have been picked up by the guards right then for disrupting trade. The Shantel stormed off before I got any more of the story--well, I suppose they had no reason to stay, what with all their goods going up in smoke. Long story short, hopefully they’ll have more of those combs next time I go north to market. They might cost a little more,” the merchant warned, “since the Shantel lost profitable wares in that fire.”
My blood ran cold, in a way that had nothing to do with the rain.
Others had drifted closer, drawn by the gossip, and I let myself join that crowd.
The Obsidian guild was the serpiente boogeyman. While it was certainly true that we lived outside serpiente law--my bag was proof of that--it would have been physically impossible for us to be responsible for every crime the serpiente laid at our door. We were blamed for everything from sick sheep to missing children. Every disaster that befell the serpiente people was put before us, added to a constantly growing tally of unforgivable crimes.
We had been actively hunted ever since the serpiente queen, Elise, had died in a fire. Her three-year-old daughter, Hara, had cried arson, and on the basis of that child’s hysterical testimony, every member of the Obsidian guild was suddenly guilty of treason.
This time, though . . .
I had helped set fire to the Shantel market stall. I had done so with their blessing, to make a pyre for the dozen blackened, rotting bodies of human slaves, who had been collateral damage in a Shantel plot to murder the masters of Midnight. The corpses had been piled on the Shantel stall as evidence of their failed treason.
I was one of a very few who knew how close the Shantel had come to succeeding, and what part our guild had actually played in the plot. Malachi, Vance, and I had breathed in the acrid stench of charred blood after magic slew the Shantel witch responsible--the witch we had encouraged to take the attack one step further so he could destroy Jeshickah herself. I had feigned ignorance, of course; we all had. Miraculously, Jeshickah had believed us. Her continued belief in that lie was essential to our survival.
I listened long enough to confirm that the current rumor, while unflattering, was no more dangerous than the dozens of crimes of which we had already been convicted. According to the serpiente, we were bloodtraitors in fact if not by law; we had betrayed our own kind, and were working for the vampires. Rumor said that the Shantel had attempted to fight Midnight, but we had turned them in.
I turned away with my stomach rolling. The merchant, who spoke with the exaggerated drama for which serpiente were famous, made his living trading with Midnight. Yet he called us traitors? He probably hadn’t complained when the serpiente king sold two of us into slavery less than a year ago.
I returned to the palace gates with my mind heavy but no hesitation visible in my step. I swallowed thickly as I passed the guards, but they saw nothing.
Time to go home.
Hunted, hated . . . being in the Obsidian guild wasn’t an easy life, but it was a good life. I returned to the main camp directly, occasionally pausing to make sure I hadn’t been followed, until I passed between two tall fir trees and breathed in the scent of our campfire a little past dusk.
An outsider could have walked through the center of the Obsidian main camp without realizing it was anything but more forest. Even the longhouse, which was large enough for our fifteen members to all sleep there at once--as long as no one wanted privacy or personal space--seemed to blend into the dense evergreen trees and thick, brambly underbrush.
Most of my kin were probably inside now. The sky had darkened to a dusky purple, and rain was falling heavily enough to make a proper fire impossible outside, so they would have gathered around the longhouse’s central hearth to share warmth, as well as the suffocating closeness that serpents always seemed to crave.
I pushed back the oiled skins that served as the longhouse door and was greeted by the heady smell of simmering stew.
“Any problems?” Torquil asked as he extracted himself from the pile of people sprawled in front of the hearth and stood to take the heavy sack of food supplies from me.
Though a simple rat snake, without any of the many strains of power that could be found in our world, Torquil was often jestingly referred to as our “kitchen witch.” He possessed the magical ability to turn camp rations into something delicious, even in the latest dredges of winter or now, the earliest bloom of spring, when the nights still tended to drop below freezing and few edible plants were yet available. The stew currently simmering on the hearth smelled like heaven.
“No problems,” I answered. “We’re being blamed for supposedly betraying the Shantel to Midnight, though.”
“Damn.” The curse came from Farrell, who had founded the Obsidian guild when he was almost as young as I was now, based on a tribe described in ancient serpiente myths. “I’m sorry, Kadee.”
I shrugged. Farrell himself had been accused of everything from theft to murder to treason and rape--the last being a crime the serpiente viewed as so vile, it did not even merit a trial before execution. He knew what it was like to be vilified for something he hadn’t done, without any way to speak up to defend himself.
“We didn’t, right?” one of the others asked, sounding half serious. Farrell replied with a glare sharp enough to cut. “Sorry,” he said. “If we’re going to make the Shantel into another powerful enemy, though, I would like someday to hear the whole story.”
“No,” Farrell answered flatly, “you wouldn’t.”
The serpent held Farrell’s gaze a moment longer, considering, and then looked at me. “Sorry, Kadee. I know it was bad.” He glanced back at Farrell. “I’ll trust you. That’s all I need to know.”
He went back to whittling.
This winter, I had come very close to dying in a cold, dank cell with a bloodstained dirt floor. That cell occupied my all-too-frequent nightmares these days. I had told Farrell the whole story when I returned to the Obsidian camp by the grace of God, and had afterward heeded his advice to keep the details otherwise private, even from the rest of our guild. If the story of our complicity with the Shantel’s failed plot ever reached Midnight, we would all be executed, so the fewer people who knew, the safer we all were.
I shoved the sack of supplies at Torquil, then backed out the door. No one chased me, for which I was grateful.
Normal serpiente were never alone. Children stayed with their parents until they were old enough to join communal nurseries. Adults slept in nests with friends, piled on large pillow-like beds without proper form or boundaries, and later took lovers. When distressed, they sought others of their kind and found comfort in the press of skin against skin.
But I was half human, and sometimes I needed to be alone. The other members of the Obsidian guild were the first serpiente I had ever known who respected that decision.
On my way to my own tent, I almost tripped over Malachi, who was sitting in front of the cold, sodden ashes of the central campfire. He seemed to be gazing into a phantom flame only he could see with his pale, blue-green eyes.
Malachi was something like a prophet and holy man and something like an ill relative one takes care of out of a sense of familial responsibility. Despite the damp chill in the spring air, he was wearing nothing but buckskin pants and a dagger at his waist; his shirt, vest, and other weapons lay discarded beside him. His fair skin and white-blond hair looked like silver in the rain, as if he had been carved from precious metals instead of born to a living mother. Glowing indigo symbols writhed across his skin, writing and rewriting themselves on his flesh like slow-moving lightning. Unlike his half siblings, Misha and Shkei, who claimed ignorance of magic, Malachi had undisputed power inherited from his falcon father.