Palace of Lies (24 page)

“Maybe you're right,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “But why don't I be the one to go talk to the guards? I've got the most experience talking to palace types.”

Neither Janelia nor Tog objected, which surprised me. Maybe they thought I had the best fake Fridesian accent. Or maybe they saw some danger in my original plan that I'd missed.

Is it worth the risk of trying to talk to a palace guard, if that could mean we get to Jed and Ella faster
? I wondered.

We entered the palace square, which was filled with extravagant flower beds of pansies and asters and ostentatious orange blooms that I didn't recognize. The aroma was overwhelming. But I didn't have time to stand around smelling flowers.

Which of the palace guards over there looks the most approachable?
I asked myself.

None of them did. They all looked fierce and forbidding, standing before palace doors that rose the height of two or three men.

If you sound like a Fridesian, you'll be fine,
I told myself.

I took a deep breath and stepped past the last flower beds.

And then Herk yanked me backward. No—he tackled me, smashing me down flat onto the cobblestones.

I lay with grit on my face and pebbles pressing into my skin.

“What did you do that for?” Tog scolded Herk, trying to pull the little boy away from me.

“What if you'd hurt her?” Janelia asked.

Herk held on tight. And for some reason, he kept pressing my face against the ground.

“You can't go over to the palace right now!” Herk hissed in my ear.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because,” Herk whispered, “Madame Bisset is standing right by that front door!”

Tog reacted first. He scooped
up Herk and me and pulled us to the other side of the flower bed. And then he peeked out from the behind one of the giant orange blooms, toward the palace.

“Herk's right,” he reported. “That is Madame Bisset.”

“What's she doing here?” Janelia asked, crouching alongside me.

“Is this proof that she's the same Madame Bisset Ella told me about?” I whispered. “Because she's back in Fridesia, back at the palace where she was so mean to Ella?”

“Then why was she in Suala with you the day after the fire?” Tog asked.

No one seemed to have answers for these questions.

Madame Bisset was trying to manipulate me, but I don't know why
, I remembered.
And she said all my sister-princesses were dead, but then there were those rumors that they were all going to Fridesia. . . .

What was the connection between those facts?

I raised my head just high enough to peer out past one of the giant orange flowers. I studied the scene before me. Madame Bisset was most recognizable for her posture: I had never seen anyone else stand so erect and prim and proper. She wore what seemed to be a gray silk gown, and carried a gray parasol to keep the sun off her face. The parasol looked so severe I could imagine it being used as a weapon. Though she stood near the row of guards, she acted as though she were entirely alone. She also looked past the crowd of commoners in front of the palace as though they were all beneath her notice.

“She probably wouldn't even see me if I walked past her to talk to the guards,” I suggested. “It's not like I look like a princess anymore.”

“Yes, you do,” Tog said softly.

My heart beat a little faster. I wanted to ask,
You think so? Even in this cotton dress, even with sunburned skin, even with ragged bandages still on my feet?

“Don't worry,” Janelia said, patting my back. “
I
can go up and ask the guards about Ella and Jed, even if the rest of you can't. Madame Bisset has never seen me, like she did you and Herk and Tog.”

This was true.

“But Madame Bisset would recognize a Sualan accent—” I reminded her.

“I won't talk like I have stones in my mouth,” Janelia said, demonstrating her best Fridesian imitation. “I've got it.”

She stepped out from behind the flower bed before the rest of us could offer any more advice. Watching Janelia walk away brought me an oddly familiar feeling. It took me a moment to identify it.

This is like being back in the fire, worrying about Cecilia and Harper and the other sister-princesses, wanting to get all of them to safety . . .

I saw that Janelia had the sense to approach the guard the farthest away from Madame Bisset. Janelia's light green peasant dress looked all the poorer next to the guard's spiffy blue-and-gold uniform. Janelia was saying something. . . . Was she succeeding? The guard
didn't
instantly grab her by the arms and scream,
Impostor! How dare you try to pass yourself off as a Fridesian! I can tell you're from Suala!
Actually, the guard barely seemed to be listening to her.

“She looks so small by those guards and those giant doors,” Tog whispered beside me. “I guess it's true, what you told me about palaces.”

I opened my mouth to object. I'd only described the way the Sualan palace made people feel small; I hadn't been talking about palaces in general. I'd only ever been in the Palace of Mirrors. But maybe the Fridesian palace was the same. Maybe all palaces were.

I tilted my head back, taking in the entire view. For the first time I noticed black bunting hanging from all the palace windows—why? And though the front part of the palace looked very similar to the Palace of Mirrors, the back part of
it looked more like a fortress. Maybe the Fridesians had first built a castle for defensive purposes, then decided to go in for frills and furbelows when they expanded. That was different from the Palace of Mirrors, which had never had any purpose but showing off.

Maybe we Sualans should have thought about defending our palace a bit more
, I thought ruefully.

Just then somebody grabbed my shoulder.

“What are the three of you doing?” a bearded man in some sort of police uniform barked at us. “Pickpockets looking for your next mark, I'll warrant! I'll haul you off to prison, I will!”

“Please, no!” I cried. “You've
misunderstood!”

But how was I supposed to explain? Saying we were from Suala would probably land us in prison too.

“We're only waiting on our mam,” Tog said. He pointed toward Janelia and the guards. “See, we lost our father because of the war, and our farm, too, and Lord Jedidiah Reston helped us so much, with his refugee camp and all, and we came to the cap—er, Charmeil, to thank him.”

“But none of us have palace clothes, exactly, and Mama was ashamed of how we look, so she told us to wait here,” Herk added. He poked his finger into a hole in his shirt—how had he already gotten a hole in his new shirt? “See?”

The police officer—some sort of constable?—looked confused. Then something like disgust slid over his face.

“And your mam wanted to see Lord Reston all by herself?” he asked. “She wanted to entice him to some pub, I'll warrant, and then—”

“No, no,” Tog interrupted. “That's not—”

The constable clapped his hand over Tog's mouth.

“Silence!” he growled. “I don't want to hear your lies. I can tell you've got the gift of gab, you and your brother both. I want to hear from
that
one.”

He was pointing at me.

I made my eyes wide and innocent. And maybe ignorant, too. This was a look I'd perfected with Lord Throckmorton, although I'd always wondered if he could see right through it and was just toying with me.

“What, sir?” I asked, as if I were slightly stupid and hadn't followed the question. Or his implications.

“Why did your mam want to see Lord Reston alone?” the constable asked, slowing down his words a bit. So maybe he did believe I was stupid.

I thought fast.

“Why, sir,” I said. “She heard he was getting married. She wanted to meet his bride and offer to be her . . . washerwoman.”

The constable tugged at his beard. Did he believe me? Would he ask some other question to trap us in our lies?

“Sir? Is there a problem?”

It was Janelia, coming back toward the flower bed. I couldn't tell from her expression what she'd heard from the guards. Or if she'd heard anything the constable or I had said.

Wouldn't Jed come and save us from this constable?
I wondered.

What if the constable threw us all in prison before Jed and Ella even knew we were in Fridesia?

“Are these your children, ma'am?” the constable asked.

“Oh, yes. Please—”

“Just tell me this,” the constable said. He'd switched to stroking his beard in a crafty way. “I understand you're a widow. How is it that you earn money to support your family?”

Why didn't I make up a different story?
I agonized.
Why didn't I talk about the baskets we're carrying?

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Herk making fists behind the constable's back. The constable probably outweighed him by a couple hundred pounds. Did Herk think fighting was a good idea?

I wanted to frown and shake my head, but the constable was looking right at me and Janelia.

Herk didn't hit the constable. Instead, the little boy began moving his fists up and down, pantomiming scrubbing his shirt.

Did Janelia even see him?

Her expression didn't change.

“Why, sir,” Janelia said, “I wash clothes. I'm a laundress.”

The constable's face fell.

“So I reckon you were telling the truth, after all,” he mumbled. His countenance brightened a bit, as if he'd thought of something else. “But I'll warrant that Lord Reston and his new wife won't be hiring you.”

“Er, no,” Janelia said. “The guards said Lord Reston is still in Suala, of all places.”

Was that true, or just something Janelia was making up for the constable's benefit?

The constable looked more confident.

“Then begone with you,” he said sternly, pointing away from the palace. “The likes of you don't belong in this part of town. Don't let me see you back here. Now go!”

“Yes, sir,” Janelia said.

She grabbed Herk's and my hands and began walking away. Tog followed close behind.

“Don't look back,” Tog whispered to me. “Don't give him a reason to change his mind and arrest us after all. . . .”

And don't give Madame Bisset a chance to get a glimpse of us
, I reminded myself.

I already felt as if everyone on the street was watching us. We walked a block away, then two, then three.

At the start of the fourth block, I felt safe asking, “Was that true? Did the guards really say Jed's still in Suala?”

Janelia collapsed against the side of a building.

“Yes,” she said. “They said he hasn't been in Charmeil in months.”

I wanted to weep. I wanted to scream every bit as loudly as I had back in the desert, with that first glimpse of empty sky.

Instead, I pulled Janelia back from her slump. To my surprise, Tog was doing the same thing.

“Don't make us stand out,” Tog whispered.

We already stood out. We were four Sualans in the Fridesian
capital. We were four people dressed in country-peasant clothes on a street full of dandies in brocaded jackets. We were carrying baskets that looked plain and rustic and simple, in a place where everything was frilly and overdecorated and complicated. We were children and women, and I didn't know where Fridesia kept their women and children, but it mostly wasn't in the blocks surrounding the palace.

Except for Madame Bisset, who stood on the palace steps like she owned it.

“Did you ask about Cecilia and Harper—or any sort of delegation from Suala?” I asked Janelia. “Is
anyone
we know here besides Madame Bisset?”

“No, I didn't ask,” Janelia said, “I saw the constable grab the three of you, and I thought you needed help.” She made a wry face. “I'm not sure the guards would have told me the truth, anyhow. I'm not sure even
they
believed what they said about Jed and Ella. They were just trying to get rid of me.”

“So we wait to go back after Madame Bisset and the constable are gone,” Tog suggested. “This time I'll go up and talk to the guards.”

“There could be some other constable there then who doesn't like us any better,” I said. “What are the laws here? That man acted like it was a crime to be poor!”

None of the others bothered to reply. They didn't even look surprised.

Because . . . people always treated them like it was a crime to be poor back in Suala, too
, I realized.

That was the danger Janelia and Tog—and even Herk—had seen in my original plan. That was why, if I ever got back to my own kingdom, I needed to change how people in Suala were treated.

I couldn't think about any of that right now. I went back to focusing on our immediate problems.

“And, even if we don't see Madame Bisset standing outside the palace, she could be inside, looking out a window,” I continued. “It's too dangerous to go back to the guards.”

“Do you have any better ideas?” Tog challenged.

I tried to think, but my mind kept looping back to,
You stand out. Worry about that first! Look at all these people watching you!

Tog had asked me weeks ago if I missed the palace, and I said I didn't. But I did miss the secret passageways, where I could hide and watch and not be watched. I needed that now, a place to observe and think and figure things out.

It's a pity I can't just sneak into the Fridesian palace
, I told myself.
I bet they have secret passageways too.

I didn't have my sister-princess Ganelia's knowledge of architecture, but something clicked in my brain. The one section of the Fridesian palace looked so similar to the Palace of Mirrors. What if it was completely similar—even down to the secret passageways hidden inside?