Free The Serpent's Shadow by Mercedes Lackey

emergencies; at this point she was probably free for the evening. With an effort, she pushed her hands against the door and levered herself up. The garden would be the best place to settle her mind before she went on her nightly round before bed.
    Charan might have been waiting for her to appear, and Sia and Singhe as well; they all ran to her, Charan springing up onto her shoulder and the mongooses winding around her ankles until she settled into her favorite chair. Sia and Singhe coiled around her feet, pinning her to the spot, while Charan dropped down off her shoulder into her lap, chittering up into her face.
    â€œYou don’t say?” she responded indulgently, as if she were having a conversation with the little monkey. “Well, I’m glad you approve of my handling of the situation.”
    Charan shoved his head under her hand to be scratched. Obedient to his wishes, she obliged him. He was the most fastidious monkey she had ever seen; most of his tribe were filthy little wretches, but Charan was cleanly to a fault, bathing every day in the pool, and depositing his droppings in the same box of sand that the mongooses used. She had never seen so much as a single flea on any of them, which was nothing short of astonishing.
    What were you to Mother? she wondered, not for the first time. You were more than mere pets, that much I know, but what? Charan looked up at her as if hearing her thoughts, and chittered softly.
    She gathered him closely, like a child, and he nestled into her arms. Surya had had so many secrets, but surely she could have divulged this one.
    Maya stared into the shadows, compulsively searching for a slim, slithering one, a shadow that slipped from shade to shade. Blood of your blood, Mother. Why couldn’t you have trusted me? I might have been able to protect Father, if only you had trusted me....
    Two hot tears ran down her cheeks, and dropped into Charan’s fur.
    But perhaps not. Maybe everyone was right, that her father had been so distraught by her mother’s death that he had been careless.
    Maybe he wanted to die. That was something she hadn’t wanted to consider, but it was an inescapable thought. And an uncomfortable one—not just that he had wanted to die, but that he had not loved her, his own daughter, enough to live.
    Bitter, bitter—too bitter to contemplate for long. And not like the brave, stubborn man she had known all her life.
    And I—I am just as stubborn as both of them put together. He left the family to me, as she left her pets, and I swear I will protect them both.
    And with that determined thought, she set her chin, disentangled herself from mongooses and monkey, and went on her nightly rounds to bolster those protections that, she hoped, would keep them all safe.

4
    T HE Thames flowed sluggishly between the tides, making scarcely a sound against the jetties. Errant reflections from lanterns on the prows of scavenger boats out searching for treasure among the floating garbage showed that one quasilegal form of trade was active on the river tonight, and the curses of mud larks along the bank as they slipped and slid in noisome detritus left by the tide at least gave some sign of life near at hand. Peter Scott shivered and pulled his collar closer around his neck, then bound his muffler just a bit more snugly. Oily water lapped at the piers beneath the Thames-side dock beneath his boots, and a hint of damp in the air promised fog before morning. Peter Scott felt it in his knee, and looked forward to getting home to his cozy flat, his sea-coal fire, and the hot supper his landlady and housekeeper would have waiting for him.
    Before he could do that, however, he still had to check the inventory of goods just arrived at the warehouse against the bill of lading. He could have left it to a clerk, but he hadn’t gotten this far in his infant importation business by leaving critical things to a clerk, who had no personal stake in making certain