Beast & Crown #2 Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Joel Ross

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  A BEE LANDED on a twig six inches from Ji’s nose. He froze. The jagged leaves of the wasp pepper bush had already scratched his face and scraped his arms—he didn’t need a bee sting, too.

  He took a breath and crawled deeper into the prickly bush. The bee flew off, thank the moons, and he grabbed the cluster of juicy peppers.

  “Got them,” he called, squirming into the open.

  “Finally,” Sally said.

  Ji pushed to his feet on the rocky hilltop that rose above the forest. “You could’ve helped.”

  “I get burs in my fur,” she said.

  “Yeah, well—” He squinted at her fuzzy hobgoblin coat and shaggy hobgoblin tail. “Good point.”

  “Unlike you,” she said, taking a few peppers, “I can’t shed my skin.”

  “I’m not half snake,” he told her. “I’m half dragon.”

  “I’m half-starving.” Sally popped a pepper into her mouth, chewed twice—and started crying. “Ow! Hot-hot-hot!”

  Wasp peppers looked bland and boring on the outside, but inside they raged with fire: every bite felt like a sting.

  “They’re not so bad,” Ji said, taking a bite and weeping.

  Sally shuddered. “Not if you like chewing on broken glass.”

  “We have to steal real food soon,” Ji said, when he could speak again.

  “Roz won’t let us.” Tears soaked into Sally’s furry cheeks. “And stealing is wrong.”

  “It’s not so bad for Roz. Trolls can eat bark.”

  “And Chibo eats sunbeams,” Sally said.

  “I don’t eat them!” her little brother, Chibo, called from where he was sprawled across a sun-dappled boulder. “I absorb them.”

  The Diadem Rite had transformed him into a half sprite. He usually kept his emerald wings folded inside his hunchback, but at the moment they were spread wide to catch the sun’s rays for sustenance. He was skinny and bald, with bright green sprite eyes.

  “The next stagecoach that comes through,” Ji told Sally, “we’ll raid for picnic baskets.”

  Sally took another bite of wasp pepper. When she stopped coughing, she said, “You know we have to wait for the Royal Library Coach.”

  “You can’t eat books,” Ji said, flapping his hand in front of his mouth to cool his tongue.

  “Roz probably can.” Sally wrinkled her nose. “Wait. I smell knights.”

  “How far away?”

  She tilted her muzzle into the sky. “Delicious.”

  He blinked at her. “What?”

  “What?” she said.

  “You said ‘delicious.’”

  “I did not.”

  “Stop thinking about food! How far away are they?”

  Her nostrils flared and her ears twitched. Not only did she have a hobgoblin’s furriness and ferocity, she also had hobgoblins’ superkeen senses of smell and hearing. “I can’t tell.”

  “Go get a closer sniff.”

  She leaped onto the trunk of an elegant lacebark tree, then swarmed into the high branches overlooking the leafy expanse of Isalida Forest. Her tufted ears swiveled. She cocked her head, sniffed a few more times, and lowered herself to the ground.

  “Maybe ten miles?” she said.

  “You can smell people ten miles away?”

  “Not usually,” Sally said. “But they’re riding horses.”

  “So it’s the horses that smell delicious?”

  “Oh, shut your ricehole. I never said ‘delicious.’”

  “Yeah, but now you said ‘rice.’ I’d polish a hundred boots for a half bowl of rice.”

  She flicked him with her tail. “The reason I can smell them is there’s a lot of horses, and they were ridden hard.”

  A bubble of fear rose in Ji’s chest. “Do you think the knights know where we are?”

  “How could they know where we are?”

  “They can’t,” Ji said, shifting nervously.

  “There’s no way.” Sally gulped. “Is there?”

  “Nah. They’re—they’re just riding in circles, hoping they stumble into us.”

  She cocked her head again and exhaled in relief. “You’re actually right for once! They’re heading away from us.”

  “Whew. Even ten miles is too close.”

  “Forget horses,” Chibo called. “Sunlight is great, but I miss food.”

  For the past few weeks, they’d been surviving on pine nuts, unripe berries, and wild chilies—and one glorious feast of stolen steamed buns. Sure, they’d been downtrodden servants back when they lived at Primstone Manor, but at least they’d been well-fed downtrodden servants.

  Ji was the youngest child in a family of servants. He’d worked as a boot boy for years, scrubbing filth from footwear. Sally was his best friend. She’d tended horses in the stables and dreamed about saving her brother, Chibo, who’d been sold to the tapestry weavers. Roz—his other best friend—was different. She hadn’t been born a servant, but when her family fell on hard times her sister trained her to work as a governess.

  A young noble named Brace also lived at Primstone. Brace was bullied by his cousins, Lady Posey and Lord Nichol. He’d been a timid, awkward, lonely kid, and Ji had befriended him—at least until their friendship was discovered. A servant and a noble weren’t allowed to be friends.

  Still, when Brace was invited to the Diadem Rite, the ritual that chose the heir to the Summer Realm, Ji and his friends were ordered to join him. They were told to help, not knowing that “help at the rite” meant “transform into beasts and die so Brace can wield magical power.”

  For some reason, nobody had mentioned that part.

  The three friends rescued Chibo, but they didn’t get to celebrate long. At the Diadem Rite, the Summer Queen summoned a water tree with killing branches, sharp enough to impale sacrifices and magical enough to drain their souls into the heir.

  Ji and his friends—along with Nin, an ogre they’d met—were the sacrifices.

  Brace was the heir.

  No longer awkward, no longer lonely, and no longer a friend, Prince Brace believed that the Diadem Rite was the only way to save the Summer Realm. He believed it was the only way to save the human realm from the ogres and goblins and trolls. Ji didn’t care about any of that. All he knew was that Prince Brace and the Summer Queen were trying to kill him—and his friends.

  So he ruined the rite.

  Instead of dying, he and his friends had been twisted into half beasts: Sally into a half hobgoblin, Chibo into a half sprite, and Ji into a half dragon—which meant faint scales on his skin, lizard feet with sharp claws, and the ability to shoot fire from his eyes if
he touched gold or gemstones.

  With the help of a scholarly mermaid named Ti-Lin-Su, they’d escaped Summer City and vowed to find the Ice Witch, the only person who could break the spell. (Well, the only person other than the Summer Queen, but she wanted to finish the Diadem Rite by impaling them on the branches of a new water tree and absorbing their souls.) The problem was, they didn’t know where to start looking for the Ice Witch—other than in a library. Roz figured she could unearth some hints in old tomes, but the army had chased them into Isalida Forest, a dense woodland crisscrossed by carriage roads.

  They’d been living there ever since, hiding from patrols, foraging for food, and waiting for the Royal Library Coach. Fortunately, Roz knew the route. Unfortunately, she didn’t know the schedule. So the mobile library would roll through Isalida Forest eventually, but she didn’t know exactly when.

  “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse,” Ji said.

  “We’re not eating horses,” Sally growled. She loved horses, even the really tasty ones.

  “I’m kidding,” Ji lied, wiping hot-pepper tears from his eyes. “But the knights have food with them, right? So if we don’t catch the library coach by tomorrow . . .”

  “You want to steal from knights?” Sally asked. “No way.”

  “I could grab the food and fly away,” Chibo offered.

  “You couldn’t grab an acorn at a squirrel feast,” Ji told him, because Chibo’s eyes didn’t work so well. “And anyway, we can’t let the knights know for sure that we’re here. If they spot us, they’ll search every inch of the woods.”

  Chibo stretched one wing. “Which means you can’t steal from them, right?”

  “I guess,” Ji grumbled. “Though if we—”

  “Do you hear that?” Sally peered down the hill. “Roz is knocking over a tree! She must’ve spotted the coach.”

  Ji’s breath caught. “Where? Which way? Which road?”

  “Down there.” Sally pointed with one claw-tipped finger. “The trap near the stream.”

  “Piggyback time!” Ji told Chibo. “You remember the plan?”

  “Of course I remember,” Chibo said, his green wings flaring like gossamer curtains. “It’s barely a plan—there’s nothing to forget.”

  “Then put your wings away and climb on.”

  Chibo clambered onto Ji’s back, his skinny arms around Ji’s neck. After two weeks of subsisting mostly on sunlight, he weighed less than a hummingbird’s daydream.

  “You coming, Sally?” Ji asked, even though he knew she wasn’t.

  She straightened the tattered shirt that fell to her knees. “I’m not a bandit.”

  “You’re a fugitive and a hobgoblin,” Ji told her. “And we need this stupid book to find the stupid witch to break the stupid spell.”

  “Maybe so,” she said. “But I’m still not a stupid thief.”

  “You’re not smart enough to be a stupid thief!”

  “I’d rather be honest than smart.”

  “I’d rather be dishonest than hungry.”

  “You’d rather be dishonest than honest!” she said triumphantly.

  He snorted a laugh, tightened his grip on Chibo’s legs, and trotted downhill toward the carriage road that ran alongside the stream.

  Leaves whisked past his face. He jogged through prickly shrubs that snagged his trousers but didn’t scratch his scaly calves. When the slope steepened, he dug into the forest floor with his claws, while Chibo spread his wings, slowing their helter-skelter descent. Twigs snapped, leaves fluttered. Ji almost fell but managed to catch himself on a mossy tree trunk—with his face, because his hands were holding Chibo’s calves.

  He groaned for a while, then heard a crack scrat-crrrt.

  “That’s Roz,” Chibo said into his ear. “Moving the tree into place.”

  “Okay,” Ji panted, and continued downhill.

  He stumbled from the woods onto a carriage road: two muddy ruts cutting between the trees. He stopped, listening to the forest. The stream splashed. The leaves whispered. He couldn’t hear the crrrt of Roz dragging the tree anymore, but a faint squeak and rattle rose from lower on the hill.

  “That actually sounds like a coach,” he said, feeling a spark of hope.

  “What else would a coach sound like?”

  “I don’t know. I never expected the plan to work!”

  Chibo giggled and spread his wings. “I’ll tell Roz we’re on the way.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I am full of care!” Chibo piped, launching into the air from Ji’s back.

  He swooped a foot above the path. He couldn’t see farther than an arm’s length, so he felt his way with his wings: tendrils of green light that flicked around him like antennae.

  Ji trotted after him. Their plan was simple. When the Royal Library Coach stopped at the tree Roz had pushed over, Ji would sneak inside and steal a book. Not just any book, though: the right book. Which was tough for someone who couldn’t read.

  Roz had spent hours teaching Ji to recognize the important words—“Articles,” “Splendid,” “History”—by scratching them into the forest floor with a twig. She couldn’t steal the book herself because she wasn’t as sneaky as Ji, and she didn’t look as human. She was a foot or two taller than she’d been before the Diadem Rite had turned her into a half troll. Her skin had become granite flecked and a horn grew from her forehead. On the other hand, Ji still looked normal—at least his face and forearms did. So if the librarians caught him stealing, he’d pretend he was lost in the woods. Roz had promised him that if he said “I’m learning to read,” the librarians would give him a book—and probably a snack, too.

  Ji didn’t believe that, of course. Roz always expected everyone to be as kind as she was. And anyway, librarians were spooky—they knew too much.

  After jogging for a hundred yards, Ji spotted the cypress tree lying across the road, lacy branches brushing the ground. A stream burbled to his left, while the hillside rose steeply to his right.

  A good place for a trap.

  He scanned the woods until he spotted Roz standing beside a moss-covered boulder. She looked a little like another boulder, with her broad shoulders and stony skin—though most boulders didn’t have horns, or gentle, clever eyes.

  She lumbered through the trees, her beaded handbag swinging by her side. “There’s a carriage at the bottom of the hill,” she rumbled. “With a team of six horses.”

  “Is it the Royal Library Coach?”

  “Almost certainly. The coach is rather special. Twice the size of an average stagecoach and roughly seven thousand times as valuable.”

  “Because it’s full of doolally books?” he asked.

  Roz shot him a governess-y look. She was good at those: she’d learned them from her older sister, who’d been a governess at Primstone Manor and needed a glare that could scorch wood to keep the arrogant Lady Posey and Lord Nichol in line.

  “Just remember, we need Articles from a Splendid History.” Roz eyed him carefully. “It’s the only book that will do.”

  “I know, I know,” Ji said. “You told me a dozen times.”

  “I don’t want you to get confused. Ti-Lin-Su wrote so many books.” Roz smiled dreamily. “She’s a poet, an essayist, and a historian. The most impressive author of the age.”

  “Do you think mermaids can write underwater? I bet they use squid ink.”

  Roz furrowed her brow. “I’ve no idea what they use, but they have a long tradition of literature and philosophy.”

  “You’d make a good mermaid,” Ji told her. “Except if you lived underwater, we’d never have met. Mermaids don’t need boot boys.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Because they don’t have feet,” Ji explained.

  The governess-y look returned. “In any case, Articles from a Splendid History is the only collection in which Ti-Lin-Su mentioned the myth of the Ice Witch.”

  “I’ll find it.” He looked toward the base of the hill. “If we get away with t
his, we’ll be proper highwaymen.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Roz told him. “I won’t ever be a highwayman.”

  He groaned. “What’re you, Sally? You don’t want to steal, either?”

  “As a matter of fact, I don’t,” Roz said. “Stealing is wrong and reprehensible, not to mention dangerous. However, I see no alternative.”

  “Then what’re you talking about?”

  “If we get away with this, I shall be a highwaywoman.”

  He laughed in relief. “So you’re ready? You’ll pelt the coach guards if I get in trouble?”

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  “How’s your throwing arm?” he asked.

  Even before Roz had been transformed into a half troll, she could outthrow anyone Ji knew. And now she could toss thirty-pound rocks around like kumquats. She was strong enough to juggle boulders, and her skin was as hard as granite. But she’d never thrown anything at anyone before, and Ji worried that she’d lose her nerve.

  “My arm is feeling quite well, thank you,” she said.

  “You’re ready to pelt?”

  “These are librarians, Ji. There is rarely a need to pelt librarians.”

  “It’s a royal coach. There’ll be guards and—” Ji shrugged. “The problem with you is that you’re not very, y’know . . .”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I’m not very what? Human?”

  “You’re not very mean,” he said. “You’re not mean enough, Roz! Just remember the backup plan. If they grab me, first try raining death down upon them like some kind of—”

  “Savage troll?” she said. “Is that what you want?”

  “That’s exactly what I want! I need a troll with a lust for battle, not a love of poetry.”

  “I shan’t let them capture you,” Roz said.

  “You better not.”

  “Neither will I!” Chibo fluted from above.

  Ji looked toward the treetops. “Where are you, Chibo?”

  “Here!”

  “Where?”

  “Here!”

  “Where is ‘here’?” Ji asked. “I can’t see you.”

  “Really? Because I can see you perfectly with my perfect vision.”

  “Right, sorry.” Ji scanned the trees. “Shake a branch!”

  A clump of needles trembled at the top of a tall, skinny pine. When Ji squinted, he saw a slender shape against the cloudy sky. Chibo was standing on a branch that looked too narrow to hold anything heavier than a shoelace.