Venom in Her Veins Read Online Free PDF Page A

other birth defects always come along with it—facial deformities and the like. This child appears perfectly ordinary and healthy otherwise, except … it’s the oddest thing … she doesn’t appear to have a navel. Her belly’s all smooth. Isn’t that strange?”
    “I never saw the need for a bellybutton,” Krailash rumbled.
    “We humans do. Though if she were born premature, the navel might be very small, perhaps there’s a tiny depression after all. But, really, I’m less concerned about the absence of something ordinary than the presence of something abnormal. Those scales worry me. I suppose it may be a nasty fungus, or …” She half-smiled. “Perhaps she’s just got a little dragon in her ancestry, hmm?”
    “That would be a blessing, wouldn’t it?” Krailash said. “You can have one of the family healers in Edgwater examine her when we return. If nothing else, they can cut the scales away.” He stood. “I should go.”
    “Yes,” Alaia said, wrapping the child back up in the blanket, and cooing to her gently. “Go, and rain hell on the monsters who made this poor girl an orphan.”

    Krailash went down the steps from Alaia’s wagon and started toward Quelamia’s trailer. After half-a-dozen steps he stopped, frowning at the ramshackle, black-painted cart that had suddenly appeared before him. How odd. Where had it come from? A fourth wagon inthe camp’s center, as big as his own, with windows in the shape of oversized humanoid skulls with glass for eyes, a metal chimney pipe jutting crookedly from the roof, and a clacking mobile of animal bones dangling by the door?
    The door banged open, and a tiefling leaned out. Purple hair stuck up in ill-tended tufts from the back of her head, sharp horns jutted from her pale red forehead, and her dark eyes twinkled with amusement. A long black pipe dangled from the corner of her mouth, and she exhaled smoke through her nostrils, making her look even more infernal than she might otherwise.
    “Hello, Rusty,” she said.
    Glory . Another of the important figures in camp, but one whose existence had slipped Krailash’s mind entirely, as it almost always did unless he were standing face-to-face with her. He hadn’t even noticed her wagon until he’d nearly walked into it. Because she hadn’t wanted him to. She was not invisible but forgettable , slipping from the minds of everyone who met her except Alaia and other leaders of the family. That forgettable quality meant that Krailash’s security plans seldom involved protecting her, but Glory liked it that way. She could, she said, protect herself, and what better protection than going unnoticed? Now that he saw her, all his memories about her returned, and most of them weren’t particularly fond.
    “There might be trouble coming,” he said. “You’d better go back to … whatever you do in there. For your own safety.” The dragonborn and the tiefling races had a long tradition of enmity, though the clash of their respective empires was lost in such dim mists of history that thedislike between Krailash and Glory was more theoretical than practical. The fact that she was a psion—a master of meddling with minds—troubled him far more than her infernal ancestry. Krailash was a warrior, and a person of honor, and Glory’s ability to scramble the memories and motivations of her enemies struck him as cowardly.
    She took another deep puff on her pipe, the foul smell of burning herbs wafting into Krailash’s face. “Nice of you to worry about me. What is it this time? Giant centipedes? Another troop of apes guarding a temple no one even remembers?”
    “Someone from the Underdark abducted several nearby villagers, and they may attempt to attack the caravan. Alaia would be annoyed if I allowed you to be kidnapped.” Krailash was uncomfortable with Glory’s role in the caravan, but he understood her powers were necessary to protect the family’s trade secrets from the many would-be rivals who