A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,12

take your stultifying stench to the nearest baths and keep your grubby paws off me.”

One of the guards doffed his helmet, revealing sunburnt Wesley, the teenage pirate who’d tormented her in Jaunt Jolie. “King gave us orders to take yer to the Map Room. Don’t trust yer to git there on yer own, case you run like that wench Agatha did,” he sneered, flashing a squalid set of teeth. “So either we walk yer nicely like we were doin’ or we git you there a little less nice.”

The three other guards removed their helmets and Sophie came face-to-face with the pirate Thiago, bloodred carvings around his eyes; a black boy with the name “Aran” tattooed in fire on his neck; and a supremely muscular girl with shorn dark hair, piercings in her cheeks, and a lecherous glare.

“Your choice, Whiskey Woo,” growled the girl.

Sophie let them drag her.

As they goaded her through the Blue Tower rotunda, she saw a cadre of fifty workers, repainting columns with fresh Lion crests, refurbishing marble floors with Lion insignias in each tile, replacing the broken chandelier with one dangling a thousand tiny Lion heads, and switching out frayed blue chairs with spruced-up seats, the cushions embroidered with golden Lions. All remnants of King Arthur were similarly replaced, every tarnished bust and statue of the old king usurped with a buffed one of the new.

Sun sifted through the curtains, setting the circular foyer aglow, the light dancing off the new paint and polished gems. Sophie noticed three skeletal women with identical faces moving across the room in matching silk lavender robes. They handed each worker a satchel that clinked with coins, the three sisters gliding as one unit with imperious stiffness, as if they were the queens of the castle. The women saw Sophie watching them and gave her a simpering smile, bobbing together in a tight curtsy.

There was something off about them, Sophie thought. Not just their fake monkey grins and that bungled bow, like they were freak-show clones . . . but the fact that under those clean pastel robes, they weren’t wearing any shoes. As the women continued to pay workers, Sophie peered at their grimy, bare feet that looked like they belonged to chimney sweeps, not ladies of Camelot.

No doubt about it. Something was definitely off.

“I thought Camelot had no money,” Sophie said to the guards. “How are we paying for all this?”

“Beeba, say we cut her brain open, what we gonna find,” Thiago asked the girl pirate.

“Worms,” said Beeba.

“Rocks,” countered Wesley.

“Cats,” offered Aran.

The others looked at him. He didn’t explain.

Nor did they answer Sophie’s question. But as Sophie passed sitting rooms, bedchambers, a library, and solarium, each being renovated with Lion crests and carvings and emblems, it became clear that Camelot did have money. Lots of it. Where had the gold come from? And who were those three sisters acting like they owned the place? And how was this happening so soon? Rhian had barely become king and suddenly, the whole castle was being remade in his image? It didn’t make any sense. Sophie saw more men shuffle by, carrying a giant portrait of Rhian in his crown and asking guards for directions to the “Hall of Kings” where they were supposed to hang it. One thing was for sure, Sophie thought, watching them veer towards the White Tower: all of this had to have been planned by the king long before today. . . .

Don’t call him that. He isn’t the king, she chastised herself.

But how did he pull Excalibur, then? a second voice asked.

Sophie had no response. At least not yet.

Through one window, she saw workers rebuilding the castle’s drawbridge. Through another, she glimpsed gardeners reseeding grass and pulling in brilliant blue rosebushes, replacing the old dead ones, while over in the Gold Tower courtyard, workers painted gold Lions in the basin of each reflecting pool. A commotion disturbed the work and Sophie spotted a brown-skinned woman in a chef’s uniform ushered out of the castle by pirate guards, along with her cooks, as a new young, strapping chef and his all-male staff were guided in to replace them.

“But the Silkima family has been cooking for Camelot for two hundred years!” the woman protested.

“And we thank you for your service,” said a handsome guard with narrow eyes who was in a different uniform than the pirates—gilded and elaborate, suggesting he was of higher rank.

He looks familiar, Sophie thought.

But she couldn’t study the boy’s face any longer because she was