Palace of Mirrors (17 page)

“Bawk! True princess!’

Harper is standing at the door beside me now, and, heartlessly, he’s laughing. I whirl on him.

“How dare you laugh at that!”

“Don’t you get it?” Harper says, between snorts and giggles. “The bird learned that from you—you said it so often. ‘True princess, I’m the true princess,’” he imitates.

“True princess,” the bird agrees from just below us on the spiral stairs. “Bawk.”

“Well, it’s not funny,” I say huffily. I frown, forcing the corners of my mouth down. Anytime Harper laughs, it’s really, really hard not to laugh with him. And I can see how, if this had happened to one of my stuffy, long-dead royal ancestors, I would have laughed just as much as I laughed at Queen Rexalia’s amazing fertilizer discoveries. But this is happening to me.

“Anyway,” I say, “how can you laugh when we’re trapped in here and we’re going to starve to death? Or no, we’ll probably die of thirst first. Yeah, that’s hilarious.”

Harper laughs harder.

“You don’t see very well, do you?” he says. “We’re not going to starve.”

“What do you mean? Of course we are.” I almost sound smug, like that’s what I want if it’ll prove Harper wrong. But then I look down, my eyes following the path of the rope from the knot in my hand, over the rim of the barred window, down toward the stone floor on the other side of the door. Maybe the rope’s long enough to . . . no, it stops before it even reaches the floor. But it stops because it’s tied to the handle of a basket out there on the other side of the door. And in the basket I can see a jug, a long loaf of bread, a wheel of cheese, a cluster of grapes, and apples, pears, peaches, and berries.

“I knew there’d be a feast in the castle!” I tell Harper.

“The ‘true princess’ bird must have ordered it!” he counters.

We’re giddy hauling the basket up, hand over hand, so we can reach in for the bread and cheese and fruit. The jug proves to be too fat to bring in between the bars, so we take turns reaching out to tilt it back, letting the other person gulp down the sweet, cold lemonade as if from a fountain. We toss grapes in the air and catch them in our mouths; we let the juice from the peaches dribble down our chins. In our glee we almost forget that we’re still trapped, behind bars. At least we have food. At least Desmia’s not going to let us starve.

At least we know now that she’s not that kind of princess.

  19  

Harper and I fall into an odd pattern over the next few days. We live for the sound of someone approaching on the stairs—we’re constantly listening for footsteps and birdcalls. But somehow the birds are always quiet until
after
our food appears; we never make it to the door in time to catch more than a glimpse of our food deliverer dashing away from us. Eventually I suggest that we take turns at guard duty, watching beside the door so that at the first sign of someone bringing food we can begin pleading our case:
Oh, please, listen to us. We mean no one any harm. We were trying to do the right thing, coming here. . . .

No one shows up for an entire day. We are hungry and thirsty and tired, and when we hear the clock tower far below us chiming midnight, we give up. In the morning the basket is waiting outside our door, full of food again,
and there’s a note in elegant handwriting tucked between two apples:

Do not watch for me. I cannot bring your food if you are watching.

The note is not signed.

“Couldn’t she have given us a few more details?” I ask, studying the note. “Reasons? Explanations? Maybe some indication of when she’s going to let us out?”

Harper shoots me a sidelong glance.

“I think maybe that was all she wanted to say.” He takes a bite of an apple, the skin crunching against his teeth. “Can you tell from the writing if it’s Desmia or someone else who wrote the note?”

“How should I know?”

“Would a princess leave a big blot of ink like that?” He points to the tail of the
g
in “watching,” where, indeed, too much ink has pooled.

I think about my own struggles with ink blots.

“Quill pens aren’t that easy to use,” I say. “You’d have to be a professional scribe, practically, not to leave any blots at all.”

“Well,” Harper says, patting my shoulder, “we know something, then. She didn’t hire out the writing of this note to the castle scribe.”

He tosses me an apple, but I don’t lift it to my mouth.

“What if she’s the only one who knows we’re here?” I
ask slowly. “What if she’s keeping us secret?”

“Why would she?” Harper asks. “If she’s going to have us executed for treason, don’t you think she’d lop off our heads in front of everyone and be done with it?”

I don’t know how he can keep such a light tone in his voice, talking about that, like it’s all a joke.

“We are not treasonous!” I yell out, between the bars of the window, just in case someone—Desmia?—is listening. “We don’t deserve to be executed! We deserve to be set free!” I stop short of adding,
I deserve to be wearing your crown!

“How many people do you know who get what they deserve out of life?” Harper asks.

I bite into my apple then, and shrug, pretending my mouth’s too full to answer.

But later on, after we’re full and Harper has wandered over to pluck at his harp, I’m still thinking about his question. Harper has an intense look on his face I’ve never seen before; he’s totally engrossed in the way his fingers speed across the strings. He looks . . . happy. Is Harper finally getting what he deserves from his music, after all those years of hated harp lessons? Doesn’t he deserve to have the whole world know how incredibly he can play, instead of being locked up in a tower?

Did Nanny deserve to have me disobey her? Did Sir Stephen deserve to have me run away, after all his efforts to keep me safe?

I decide that thinking about what people deserve is a
stupid way of looking at the world. But I can’t stop myself.

Don’t I deserve to rule as princess, after all the time I spent studying and preparing? After all my courage in coming here? I don’t deserve to be locked in a tower! I don’t deserve to be mocked by a parrot!

But . . . what does Desmia deserve?

I’m thinking about Desmia differently now. The way she creeps up here to deliver our food—like she’s afraid of us, even though we’re locked away—that makes me view everything else I know about her differently too. I don’t know why, but I am sure that she’s the one delivering the food. And I’m pretty sure, somehow, that she hasn’t told anyone else that we’re here. Otherwise I think there’d be curious maids wandering up here to look at us, to laugh at the sight of a princess in rags. Or there’d be advisers and ministers and judges, full of opinions about what Desmia should do to me—or what I should do to her.

Perhaps Desmia, with her pale yellow silks and pale pink satins, her delicate, dainty waves, is not just well-mannered and adorably doll-like. Perhaps she is also timid and unsure. Perhaps she doesn’t trust her advisers and ministers and judges. Perhaps she doesn’t even trust her maids.

I think about how Desmia darted into the secret passageway, about how she was so desperate to make sure that we wouldn’t be heard. I think about how she ran ahead of us. She was afraid. I’m sure of it.

But what is she afraid of? Is it something that I should be afraid of too?

Harper has his music to keep him busy. I have no books, no quill pens, no pots to scrub, no eggs to gather, no cow to fetch from the meadow. I have nothing to do but think and wonder.

As the days pass, I do more and more of my thinking and wondering while looking out on the courtyard, far below the tower. I especially can’t stop myself from watching during Desmia’s noon waving show each day. It is truly frightening to lean out far enough to see Desmia on her balcony. And, anyhow, her routine is as unvarying as the paleness of her dresses. So usually I just lean out once to see the color of her dress—pale peach one day, pale lavender the next—and then focus my attention on the crowd below. I’m too far away to see individual faces, but I can pick up on patterns. I’m sure that the group of people in top hats and tails must be contestants in the music contest. I think that the cluster of women in matching skirts and aprons must be milkmaids from the same village, all on the outing of a lifetime to see Cortona and Princess Desmia. I wonder at a cluster of men in a foreign military uniform—not the spiffy blue and gold of the Sualan army, but a dignified gray with scarlet trim. They stand in a huddle throughout Desmia’s waving and then seem to be escorted into the castle immediately afterward. Their plumed hats make them easy to spot.
Then I realize that they’re actually surrounding a small delegation of officials without plumes, without uniforms, but nattily dressed, in fabrics that shimmer in the sun.

I can’t quite see well enough—I can’t quite tell—but . . . is one of those officials a girl?

I watch for days, but no one from that unusual group returns.

I’m so intent on watching for the soldiers or officials to come back that I almost miss noticing two women who come into the courtyard late one afternoon a few days later. They are easily overlooked, just an old woman in a peasant kerchief leaning on a younger woman’s arm as they hobble across the stones. But there’s something familiar in the way the old woman stops and stands and looks around every so often, something familiar about how the younger woman seems so weighed down, even when she’s standing alone.

I know who they are.

“Harper!” I screech. “I see Nanny and your mam!”

“What? Where?” Harper drops his harp and jumps up to look out the window beside me. “Mam! It’s me! I’m up here!”

I wave my arms—not daintily, like Desmia, but extravagantly, desperately, stretching out so far that I rip the armpit of my dress, matching the rip at the back.

“Nanny! Oh, please, Nanny! Come and save me!”

They don’t look up.

A man in a cloak appears behind the two women, his gait arthritic but sprightly.

“Sir Stephen!” I holler. “Get us out of here! Tell Desmia the truth! No—tell the palace officials. . . .”

The wind whips my words back at me. Below me the birds, at least, hear us and begin screeching their usual mocking chorus: “Bawk! Watch out!” “Bawk! Be careful!” “Bawk! I’m the true princess!” But even their squawks and squeals don’t carry down to the courtyard. No one tilts back their head to gaze in our direction.

“Oh, please! Oh, please! Nanny! Can’t you hear me? Sir Stephen?”

I am sobbing now, every bit as hysterical as I was that first day.

“Please!” I scream.

“Eelsy,” Harper says softly, pulling me back in through the window so I don’t fall. “They can’t hear us. They’re leaving now.”

And they are. I watch as they turn around and hobble out of sight, around the corner of a row of shops.

“No!” I wail, heartbroken.

“Shh,” Harper mumbles. “It’s okay.”

He’s pulling me close to his chest, comfortingly. This is a new thing—who knew Harper could be so tender? But I don’t feel like being comforted right now. I push back against him, breaking his grasp on my shoulders.

“How can you be so calm?” I fume. “Don’t you even care
that they’re leaving us? Don’t you want to be rescued?”

Harper looks at me. His sandy hair still sticks up, and his freckles have only faded a little during our time trapped inside, in this tower. But he looks older somehow. Older even than he did a few weeks ago, when we set off from our village.

“I think you’ve always expected more from your life than I do,” he says, finally.

“What do you mean? That it’s okay just to give up? Why did you bother shouting at all if you knew they couldn’t hear?” I demand. I am so mad at Harper—mad at him, mad at Nanny, mad at Sir Stephen, mad at Harper’s mam. . . . Why didn’t a single one of them look up even once? Why couldn’t a single one of them listen harder?

“Look, I want to be rescued just as much as you do,” Harper says sharply. “But . . .” He swallows hard. “What if them trying to rescue us just puts them in danger, too?”

I gasp and step back, my knees weak. I have to put my hand out and hold on to the stone wall to keep from falling down. I’m suddenly dizzy, a delayed reaction to Harper’s having to pull me back from the window, when I was in danger of tumbling down to the ground. No—I correct myself—it’s not that danger I’m dizzy from. I’m dizzy because Harper’s right. If his mam and Nanny and Sir Stephen had heard us, it might have been like we were luring them to their deaths. They would have done anything they could to rescue us. They would have been foolhardy.
They would have taken risks. They love us that much.