the sleeping prince (excerpt)

8/17/2019 The Sleeping Prince (Excerpt)

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For James Field. For, amongst other things, getting opening-

night tickets to The Cursed Child . Thank you, Strdier.

Copyright © 2016 by Melinda Salisbury Map by Maxine Plasse

All r ights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc.,

Publishers since 1920 . scholastic, scholastic press, and associated logos aretrademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanica l, photocopying,

recording, or otherwise, w ithout written permission of the publisher.For information regarding permission, wr ite to Scholastic Inc.,

Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are eitherthe product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual

persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

ISBN 978-0-545-92127-5

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 16 17 18 19 20

Printed in the U.S.A. 23

First edition, June 2016

Book design by Christopher Stengel



9

C h a p t e r 1

I keep my eyes fixed on the door ahead as I approach it, not look-

ing at the soldiers on either side, doing my very best to seem bored,even a little vacant. Nothing special here, nothing worth paying

any mind to. Just another villager, attending the assembly. To my

immense relief they don’t even spare me a glance as I step out of

the drizzle and into the run-down House of Justice, and I exhale

slowly as I pass them, some of my tension easing.

It’s no warmer inside, and I pull my cloak tighter around me asI walk to the chamber where Chanse Unwin, self-appointed

Justice of Almwyk, will brief us on the latest word from the

Council of Tregellan. Rainwater drips from my hair, down my

nose, as I look at the rows of wooden benches and chairs lined up

to face the podium at the front of the room; far too many seats for

the remaining villagers to fill. Despite how few of us there are, the

room stinks and I wrinkle my nose at it—unwashed bodies, wet



10

wool, leather, metal, and fear, all creating a soupy, musty perfume.

This is what despair smells like.

Those of us who are still clinging to life here are wet and shiv-

ering. Bitter air and autumn rain have seeped through our thin,

threadbare clothes into our skins, where it feels as though they’ll

remain for the whole of winter. The soldiers lined up neatly against

the walls, on the other hand, are bone-dry, and look warm enough

in thick green woolen tunics and tough leather breeches, their

watchful eyes roving throughout the room.

There is a scuffling behind me and I turn, in time to see them

stop a man and force him against the wall, patting him down and

examining his cloak and hood before releasing him. Heat rushes to

my face as I look away, pretending not to have seen.

Ducking my head again, I slink along the back row, taking a

seat on a bench a good six feet away from my nearest neighbor. Shegrunts, possibly a greeting, though more likely a warning, and her

hand rises to touch a charm hanging on a leather cord around

her neck. I peek at it from the corner of my eye, watching the gold

disk gleam between her gnarled fingers before she tucks it inside

her cloak. I know what it is, though I doubt it’s real gold. If it were

real gold, someone would have had it off her neck by now—gods,if it were real gold, I might have had it off her neck by now; at

least if it were gold, it would be worth something.

My friend Silas laughed when I told him the villagers were wear-

ing charms to protect themselves from the Sleeping Prince, and I

laughed with him, though I secretly thought it wasn’t all that strange

to put faith in eldritch magic, under the circumstances. Crescent

moons made of salt and bread are hung on almost every door and

window in the village; medallions etched with three gold stars are



11

tucked inside collars. The Sleeping Prince is a thing of magic, and

myth, and superstition. If I’m generous, I can see why it seems natu-

ral to try to fight back with magic, myth, and superstition. But I

know, deep down, that no amount of cheap tin pendants will keep

him from coming if he wants to. No salt-strewn thresholds or holly

berries and oak twigs hung over windows and doors will stop him if

he decides to take Tregellan. If a castle full of guards couldn’t stop

him, a metal disk and some shrubbery isn’t likely to.

Before he came back, hardly anyone in Tregellan would have

put their faith in something so irrational; it’s not the Tregellian way.

There might be the occasional crackpots who still believe in the

Oak and the Holly and paint their face and their arse red with

berry juice every solstice, but that’s not how most of us live. We’re

not Lormerians, with their temples and their living goddesses, and

their creepy royal family. We’re people of science and reason. Or atleast I thought we were. I suppose it’s hard to remain on the side of

reason when a five-hundred-year-old fairy tale comes to life and

lays waste to the castle and the people in the country next door.

Be a good girl, or the Bringer will come, and then the Sleeping

Prince will eat your heart, that’s what girls in Tremayne were told.

He was a fairy-tale monster, a story to make us obedient, a cau-tionary tale against greed and autocracy. We never dreamed that

he’d wake up. We’d forgotten that he was real.

I turn away from the woman and begin my catalog of who’s left

in Almwyk, accidentally catching the eye of one of the soldiers,

who nods at me, causing the ever-present tightness in my chest to

squeeze a little more. I nod back curtly and break the eye contact,

trying to stay calm, resisting the urge to pat my pocket and make

sure the vial is still there.



12

I’m really not cut out for drug smuggling. I checked the vial at

least six times on the way here, despite the fact I didn’t see a single

other soul, let alone have someone come close enough to pick my

pockets. Then again, you can’t be too careful in Almwyk.

Almwyk, by and large, isn’t the kind of village where you’re

friendly with your neighbors. Here asking for help or showing

weakness of any kind is likely, at best, to result in being laughed

at. At worst, it could mean a knife in your kidney if you ask the

wrong person at the wrong time. Before the soldiers came it wasn’t

uncommon for a body to be hauled into, or out of, the woods and

we all turned a blind eye to it. You learn quickly to be blind here.

The derelict cottages that make up Almwyk are home to the

desperate and the damned, those who lost their real homes and

lives in other parts of Tregellan for crimes they’ll never, ever con-

fess to. People always say in times of great need, like war anddisease, that communities come together, support one another.

Not in Almwyk. As the war has crept closer, the cottages have

slowly evacuated, and those remaining have descended on them,

ripping out whatever they can for their own needs. I bet it’s a mat-

ter of time before occupancy isn’t an obstacle to the scavengers,

when the instinct to grasp at anything that might make survivingeasier will be stronger than basic courtesy. Even now I glance

around the room, noting who remains, who is the likeliest threat.

It’s a game I like to play sometimes, trying to guess the crimes

of the people still here. The worst criminals—murderers and the

like—evaporated the moment the soldiers arrived, which leaves

the middling dregs: the debtors, drunks, addicts, gamblers, and

liars. The poor and the unlucky. The ones who can’t leave because

there is nowhere else for them to go.



13

This isn’t a place people come to live; it’s a place people

come to rot.

I bunch my fists under my ragged cloak and watch my frozen

breath hover in the air as I exhale, before it scatters, mingling with

everyone else’s, adding to the damp fug in the room. The thick

glass windows are rimed with condensation, and I hate the feeling

that I’m breathing in my neighbors’ breaths, hate knowing that

even the air I breathe these days is secondhand, or stolen. I can

hardly breathe as it is.

When it seems everyone who’s coming has arrived, sitting dot-

ted around the room like the last of the raisins in a sad plum

pudding, Chanse Unwin—surely the realm’s most ironic Justice—

strides into the room, chest puffed out, scanning every face. When

his eyes land on me he half smiles a greeting, and my skin crawlsas his smile rearranges itself into a concerned frown, or a parody

of one. He looks so sweaty that I’m surprised the frown doesn’t

slide clean off his face.

He’s flanked by the two grim-faced, green-coated soldiers who

were manning the door outside, and they’re joined, unusually, by

their captain, a red sash across his barrel chest. When six moresoldiers follow them and position themselves around the edges of

the space, the atmosphere in the room ripples and tightens.

Instantly I sit upright, alert as a hare, and around me every

single one of my neighbors does the same; even the woman who

grunted at me when I sat down unfurls from her crone-like hunch

to glower over at Unwin. As my hand glides to my belt to check for

my knife, I see other hands moving to boot tops and waists, all of

us wanting the reassurance that we’re armed.



14

Whatever this meeting is about, Unwin clearly expects the

news to be taken badly, and my heart sinks because there’s only

one thing he could possibly say at this point that would make us

mutinous. The already scant air feels as though it’s congealing in

my throat.

Chanse Unwin looks around the room once more, taking us all

in, before pressing his palms together. “I have news from the

Council in Tressalyn,” he says, his voice unctuous and self-

satisfied. “And it is not good. Three nights ago the Sleeping

Prince’s golems attacked the Lormerian town of Haga. They

destroyed the two temples there, and once again left no survivors.

They slaughtered anyone who refused to bend the knee to him,

some four hundred souls. This attack follows the sacking of the

temples in Monkham and Lortune, and brings his army within

fifty miles of the border between us and Lormere. Based on thispattern, the Council believes he’ll march on Chargate next.”

At this everyone turns to their neighbor with raised eyebrows,

petty local arguments and generations-old feuds forgotten as they

begin to murmur to one another. I don’t look at anyone. Instead I

squeeze my fingers around the hilt of my knife and take a deep

breath. Chargate is on the other side of the trees; it’s Almwyk’sLormerian counterpart. It would put the golems merely hours

away from us, the other side of the wood.

Unwin clears his throat, and the whispering dies away.

“The Council concludes that its attempts to negotiate with the

Sleeping Prince have failed. He has outright refused to sign a

treaty of peace with Tregellan and will not deny that he plans to

invade.” His gaze flickers briefly to the captain, who smirks and

glances at one of the other soldiers, making me wonder how much



15

Unwin truly knows of what he’s reporting, and what he’s merely

been told to relate. “Because of this,” Unwin continues, “the

Council has sat in emergency session, and unanimously decided

that we have no choice but to declare a state of war in Tregellan.”

He pauses dramatically, as if expecting us to make some protest.

But we say and do nothing, remaining stony faced and silent, saving

our reactions until he gets to the crux of the matter, the part that

affects us and warrants fifteen of the newly mustered Tregellian

army’s finest in a room where we barely outnumber them.

Realizing this, he continues. “Last night the Tregellian army

sealed the border from the River Aurmere to the Cliffs of

Tressamere. Including the East Woods.” He pauses and the whole

world narrows to this room, to these words. Don’t say it. I concen-

trate as hard as I can. Don’t say it.

“All trade and traffic between here and Lormere is prohibitedfrom now on. The border is closed. Anyone caught trying to cross

it will be killed on sight.”

We draw in our breath as one, taking all the air from the room.

“Given its strategic position, the village has been requisitioned

as barracks and base of operations for the garrison defending the

border. Almwyk is to be evacuated. Immediately.” No. There is the tiniest fragment of a moment in which the

news filters into the brains of the occupants of the room.

Then all hell breaks loose.

the sleeping prince (excerpt)

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