The Book of Shane Page 8

  Grahv appeared growling beside him, and soldiers and animals alike recoiled.

  “Send out your captain,” he commanded. “And the elder from the village you destroyed. Now!”

  The captain appeared in the doorway of the nearest hut, the medals of his station gleaming in the early light. He hastened over, eyes on the crocodile. “On your knees, dogs!” he shouted at his men. “You are in the presence of royalty.” He removed his iron helm and bowed his head. “Forgive them, my liege, but we were not expecting you.”

  “Achi!” called a man, and Shane looked up to see a middle-aged Niloan man approaching. He held a staff much like the one Achi cherished. Shane hadn’t even thought to retrieve it when the boy had fallen.

  The man paid no heed to Grahv, nor the soldiers. He walked right up to Shane, worry etched across his brow. “Achi, are you all right? What happened?”

  “Answer your father, Achi,” Shane prompted.

  Achi glared at Shane. His eyes had gone stony again. Shane had given him Jhi’s talisman and carried him all the way here despite the ache in his limbs. But Achi had refused to speak the entire way.

  Shane handed him over to his father, careful to reclaim the bamboo pendant first. “He got caught in the middle of a fight. A Greencloak ambushed us in the woods. But he’ll be okay.”

  Shane turned to the captain. “You’re responsible for the wrecked village west of here?”

  “Yes, my king,” the captain said. “We met resistance there, but we overcame it.” There was pride in his voice.

  Shane slapped him across the face.

  “Idiot,” he seethed. “Those were innocent people.” The soldiers all around him fidgeted uncomfortably. “Captain, you will return to the village — alone — and you will dig proper graves for those people.” The man stood at attention, acknowledging the order in stunned silence. “And I’d suggest you hurry. You really want to finish before dark.”

  As the captain trotted off, Shane turned to Achi and winked, but the boy seemed unmoved.

  Achi’s father cleared his throat. “Achi. This great man saved you. Carried you to safety. You should show gratitude. He is a hero!”

  Achi scowled. “Sometimes bad people do good things,” he said icily. “It doesn’t mean they’re good people.”

  Shane said nothing, just watched as Achi was carried away.

  He tried to grasp at a fleeting sensation of victory, but it slipped through his fingers and was gone.

  “What if you had been me?” Shane pressed on. “What if you were the crown prince of an island prison — a nation condemned by the Greencloaks for the crimes of their ancestors? What would you do?”

  — Spirit Animals: Book 7: The Evertree

  THE STREETS OF CLAROBO WERE ALIVE WITH CELEBRATION. Men and women danced in the boulevards, their voices mixing with the sounds of musical instruments and sizzling meat and laughing children. Birds circled and sang in the skies above, spirit animals riding the wave of joy they sensed in their partners. There were people in costume, wearing the colorful plumage of tropical birds, or face paint in the likeness of pandas or leopards or wolves. There were jugglers, and a man on stilts, and a woman who ate fire before a crowd of enraptured onlookers.

  The entire town, it seemed, had come out to celebrate the defeat of the Conquerors.

  “Yeah, yeah. We get it,” Shane muttered to himself. “You won. We lost. Do you have to rub it in?”

  He knew sulking wouldn’t help him fit in, but he couldn’t manage to force a smile. The wounds of his defeat were still raw. As he watched, a crowd at one end of the street gathered around a stuffed crocodile and a scarecrow dressed to resemble a man in silver and black armor: the Devourer.

  He wasn’t surprised when they set the straw dummies on fire, but he was astonished by the intensity in their voices as they cheered the flames. There was real hatred there. Real hunger for revenge.

  Shane hiked up the hood of his cloak. He knew no one would recognize him here. Most people didn’t have any idea that the Devourer they so reviled was just a boy. But he wasn’t taking any chances.

  Zhong had been left a smoldering wreck in the wake of the Conquerors’ invasion. Nilo had seen entire villages destroyed, and Eura’s great forests had been trampled and torched as the armies marched west. Amaya’s capital had been taken, but Clarobo had escaped the ravages of war. Its people had spent months preparing for an attack. Now they knew that attack would never come. Clarobo had been spared, and tonight, she celebrated.

  Everything about the place was bright. Bright costumes, bright lanterns, bright smiles. But Shane knew that shadows thrive where light shines brightest. There would be people among the crowd who were not here to celebrate, but to take advantage of the gathering. And those were the people Shane needed to find.

  He did not have to wait long. As he leaned against the wall of a house and watched, a boy with a dirty face and quick fingers lifted the contents of a woman’s pocket. The boy continued walking along nonchalantly, almost blending into the crowd before Shane could react.

  But Shane dodged among the revelers, using all the grace he’d honed on the battlefield. On instinct, his fingers itched to reach for his saber, but he squashed the feeling and left the blade concealed beneath his heavy cloak.

  Instead he let his fingers find the boy, gripping him by the shoulder and pulling him aside.

  “What’s the matter?” the boy asked, making his eyes big, trying to look even younger than he was.

  “Don’t play innocent with me,” Shane countered. “I wrote the book on that particular trick. And I saw what you did back there.”

  The boy tugged free of Shane’s grip but stood his ground. “Fine, take it,” he said, shoving something small and warm into Shane’s hands. “I don’t want any trouble.”

  Shane was expecting money, or one of the jeweled charms of Essix so popular in the region. But that wasn’t what he found himself holding.

  “You stole roasted nuts?”

  The boy shrugged. “They smell good.”

  Shane looked the boy over more closely. He was wearing old, ill-fitting clothing, and the dirt wasn’t just on his face, but caked in his fingernails. He tossed the bag of nuts back, and the boy caught them easily.

  “I’m not trying to get you in trouble. I was just hoping you might give me directions.”

  “Directions?” the boy asked, perplexed. “Why ask me?”

  “Because I need to find the kinds of places the bright, happy people don’t go,” Shane clarified, pointing a thumb over his shoulder as a boar-faced reveler twirled past.

  “I might know my way around,” the boy said. “But my memory’s real bad when I’m hungry.” Then he wagged his eyebrows.

  Shane sighed, digging a coin from his pocket. “I need to know where people go for …” He lowered his voice as he handed the coin over. “Potions. Poisons. That sort of thing.”

  The boy pursed his lips. “There’s a lot of places like that,” he said.

  “I’ve been to several,” Shane said. “Take me to one I wouldn’t have found on my own.”

  “If you say so,” the boy said, and Shane followed him off the bright street and down a twisting warren of alleyways. Here, Shane could relax a little. He took down his hood as the sounds of laughter and music faded away.

  The boy brought him to an unmarked door. “This is it,” he said.

  “Thanks.” Shane considered the coins in his pocket. He had no way of knowing how much money he would need. He’d come to Amaya for revenge, and revenge could be costly.

  But he could always get more money.

  The boy’s eyes widened again, this time in genuine delight, as Shane handed over the entire contents of his coin purse.

  “Don’t spend it all on carnival food,” he warned. “Get something nutritious.” The boy skipped away down the alley, headed back toward the bustling crowds. “And if you see anyone wearing a green cloak out there,” Shane called after him, “kick them in the shins for me!�
��

  The space was cramped and dark, and its smell was unlike anything Shane had encountered before — or perhaps more accurately, its smell was like everything he’d encountered before, all at once. There was incense and the reek of newly flowering plants, scented reeds, and cooking herbs, and the musk of unseen animals. Dried plants hung from the rafters, with living specimens springing up from pots placed on shelves and along the baseboards and even in the middle of the slanted wooden floor. But what drew Shane’s eye were the frogs. There were dozens of them interspersed among the plants, all huddled in glass containers and grouped by color.

  And what colors! Red and silver, blue and yellow, bright pink, and a green the shade of a Niloan oasis. They gleamed like jewels in the gloom of the shop.

  Among the dazzling array, one frog stood out — a solitary golden specimen, alone in its jar upon a low shelf. It had one glossy black eye fixed on Shane and remained perfectly still aside from its throat, which moved rhythmically in time with its breathing. Shane tapped at the glass with his finger.

  “Very deadly, that one,” said a voice, and Shane whirled to see that a woman had appeared from behind a curtained doorway. Her face was lined with age but gave no hint of emotion.

  “Deadly?” Shane echoed. “A frog?”

  “Dangerous things can come in small packages, child,” she said, lifting an eyebrow. “Present company included, I think. Or am I to believe you stumbled upon my shop by accident?”

  “Not by accident, no,” he answered, puffing out his chest a bit. “But I’m not here for a pet.”

  Shane kept his gaze upon the woman’s face as he withdrew an item from his cloak pocket: a small vial of amber-colored liquid.

  He saw the flash of recognition in her eyes. “You know what this is,” he said. Not a question.

  “It’s nothing,” she spat. “Useless. Get out of my shop.”

  “Peace, madam,” he said, holding up his hand. “I suspect we have an enemy in common.”

  She regarded him coolly. “Go on.”

  “I’m tracking a woman. She’s old, and she’s crafty. She was last seen boarding a ship to Clarobo with little but the clothes on her back — and several vials of this liquid. I thought she might try to sell it when she docked.”

  “She didn’t sell it, but she made a trade,” the woman said. “She claimed this liquid was the secret to the Conquerors’ success.” She frowned. “Mind you, this was before word reached us that the Conquerors weren’t very successful in the end.”

  “They came close, though,” Shane said, fighting to keep his voice steady.

  “Of course they did. They say every man and woman in their army had a spirit animal. Can you imagine? Too many of them to be a coincidence. And I don’t much believe in fate. Which leaves one other possibility.”

  Shane allowed her a dramatic pause.

  “I think perhaps someone found a way to change the rules.” She took the vial from his hand. “We’ve all heard the rumors here. That the Conquerors had their own form of Nectar. They called it Bile, and it was even more powerful than the variety the Greencloaks have hoarded so jealously over the years. It would be worth a fortune.” She uncorked the vial and sniffed. How she could make out a single scent among all the others in the shop, Shane had no idea. “This is the very substance I got from the crone. You’re right — she was crafty. She claimed to have no knowledge of it other than that it was taken from a Conqueror camp. She knew I would assume it was the Bile, that I would think it was I taking advantage of her.” She snorted. “I have fed it to animals and to children. I have poured it over plants, boiled it, frozen it, and brewed it into a distressingly bitter tea. Indeed, bitterness appears to be its only notable quality: both bitterness of flavor, and the bitterness of disappointment it brought me.” She poured the vial’s contents out onto the floor.

  Shane frowned. “I wasn’t quite done with that.”

  “You’re in luck.” The woman cackled, bending beneath the counter and producing a box full of identical stoppered vials of liquid. “We have a surplus!”

  Shane whistled. “That would make a lot of tea. What did she ask for in return?”

  “A small thing. An antitoxin.”

  “What?” Shane frowned. “Was she sick?”

  The woman shrugged. “She did not appear so. Yet she requested the antidote for a particular venom found in a particular snake that lives in the jungle west of here.”

  “The jungle?” Shane muttered. “What could she possibly … What sort of snake?”

  “The bushmaster.” She threw up her hands. “More than that, I do not know.”

  “She’s gone into the jungle,” Shane said. “Okay.” He picked up the box of Bile. “Can I take this? It might help me track her.”

  The woman’s forehead crinkled. “How would it —?”

  The box slipped through Shane’s fingers, crashing to the ground, the vials shattering all around his boots. “I’m so sorry!” he said.

  “Idiot!” the woman shouted. “You’re lucky that was nothing valuable. Out! Out before you do real damage.”

  Shane apologized again as he fled from the shop, ducking his head as if embarrassed. Really, he was hiding a smile.

  The Bile was useless. That was true. It had been a key part of Gerathon’s plan, and now Gerathon was dead. Shane had seen the Great Serpent destroyed with his own eyes. Her talisman was gone, too, and with it, every last drop of the Bile had lost its power. But what if it didn’t stay that way? What if it could somehow do more harm?

  The Bile was Shane’s mess. And he was looking to clean up his messes.

  Even if that means making a few new ones, he mused, and he wiped the amber slime from his boots.

  Shane realized he was being followed a few minutes after leaving the poisoner’s lair.

  He wanted to believe it was just paranoia. Being the leader of a disgraced and defeated army, and possibly the most hated person in Erdas, he could be forgiven for being on edge. But as he wove through the darkened alleyways, plunged into the light of the festival, stopped to trade for a bag of roasted nuts (they really did smell good), then turned off the main strip again, he continuously caught sight of a cloaked figure in his peripheral vision.

  Had he been recognized?

  There was nothing to do but confront his pursuer. Anything less, and he risked the person finding reinforcements or calling the authorities. Shane hadn’t technically broken any laws, but he’d seen what the crowd had done to that scarecrow earlier. There were plenty of people in Clarobo who believed Shane was committing a crime just by breathing.

  He took a left turn, and a right, and a left. He picked up his pace, forcing the cloaked figure to do the same. But as he turned a final corner, rather than speed up in an attempt to shake pursuit, he stopped running, drew his sword, and waited.

  A young woman came around the corner moments later. She saw him, saw his sword, and skidded to a stop.

  “It’s not what you think,” she said, holding up her hands. “I want to help you.”

  Shane kept his saber up. “You sound just like a snake I used to know. Pull your hood down.”

  She did as he directed, and Shane could barely make out her features in the low light of the alleyway. She was a stranger, with dark hair cut short, sharp cheekbones, and fierce, unafraid eyes. “My name is Anya. I heard you speaking with my mistress back at the shop. I wished to see if you would really go into the jungle alone.”

  “What’s it matter to you?”

  “It is too dangerous. I spend a great deal of time there.”

  “In the jungle?”

  She nodded.

  “Why is that?”

  The girl bit her lower lip. “The mistress’s frogs. It is my job to collect them.”

  Shane lowered his sword, but he left it unsheathed. “I’m going into the jungle. If you have any advice for me — other than ‘don’t do that’ — I’m happy to listen.”

  “At least wait until morning. To go now would
be a terrible mistake.”

  Shane sighed. “I know. I was hoping to hire a guide, in fact.”

  “I am going tomorrow, in the afternoon. I could walk with you a short way. Show you the paths.” She looked him up and down. “A boy who pursues a woman across the sea in fine boots can afford my services, I’m sure.”

  “I’m sure,” Shane echoed. “But in that case, you work for me. And we’re leaving at dawn.”

  “Very well,” Anya said. “But I must ask: Who is this woman to you, that you would follow her across the world?”

  “Her name is Yumaris,” he answered, sheathing his saber. “She used to be my tutor.”

  Anya laughed. “Your teacher has left you, and you follow her now for your next lesson?”

  “No, I’m following her because she killed my sister,” Shane said coldly. “And this time, I’m the one who will be teaching the lesson.”

  “What separates man from beast?”

  The question had stumped Shane as a child. He remembered sitting in Yumaris’s stuffy stone chamber within Stetriol’s castle, trying to puzzle out the answer.

  He hated his tutor’s room, and he wasn’t much fonder of the woman herself. Yumaris was ancient and humorless, with a dry, rasping voice and sour breath. She complained endlessly of a chill draft in the castle, one only she seemed to feel, and every day she piled a heavy, ratty, hooded cloak over her bony frame, letting it drag behind her as she shuffled along the corridors. She hung thick curtains over her windows, trapping the stale, warm air within her chamber. The curtains blocked out sunlight, too, so all Shane’s lessons were delivered by candlelight, no matter the time of day.

  And it was impossible to predict what those lessons would be. More than once he had stayed up all night reading about some key event in Stetriolan history, only to have Yumaris ignore the assignment entirely and lecture him for hours about rocks.

  As Shane’s parents and sister grew sicker, he was left entirely to her whims.