Palace of Mirrors (21 page)

I am still mad at Harper. I don’t like the way Desmia is glaring at me. It would be rather satisfying to just pitch myself down to the ground and beat my fists and kick my feet, to throw a good, long, royal tantrum. But, for all that Sir Stephen must have been wrong about me being the true princess, I still have everything that he taught me rattling around in my head.
You know how to handle this,
that annoying little voice cheers in my head.
Think. Ten Ways to Turn Potential Enemies Into Friends. Twelve Ways to Cement an Ally’s Loyalty. Five Ways to . . .

I see that the finger Desmia has pointed at me is shaking. I see that the corners of her mouth are quivering. I see that she’s having trouble holding her glare, and has to squeeze her eyes tighter and tighter together to keep the fierceness in her gaze. I think about how frightening it must be to have absolutely no one to trust. I think about how she’s already begun to fight back against her advisers. A little.

“I won’t lie to you,” I say, and somehow my voice comes out sounding dignified and calm. Almost royal. “I don’t know who deserves to wear the crown. It may be you. It may be me. It may be one of those girls down there in the dungeon. But I think all of us deserve to know the truth. I think Suala deserves to know the truth. I can’t promise
you what I’ll feel like when we solve all the mysteries. But I can tell you—I can swear to this—I’ll do whatever’s best for my kingdom.”

Desmia’s eyes widen, the menace slipping out of her stare.

“That’s good enough for me,” she says. She smiles at me, hesitantly. Then the smile turns wistful. “But what can we possibly do?”

Ella steps up into our little circle.

“A lot, actually,” she says. “I have some ideas.”

She drapes her arms around us—one arm on Desmia’s shoulder, one on mine—and the four of us begin to plan.

  22  

I squat on the hard stone step, my ear pressed against a chink in a stone wall. This is my role in our little plot: eavesdropping on the palace officials. It makes sense that this is my job—I am the one who must stay hidden, and there’s no better hiding place than the secret stairways. Ella and Desmia have to appear at state dinners and such (you know, the entire kingdom would probably fall to pieces if Desmia didn’t appear on the balcony at noon each day) and we agreed that Harper is the best person to try to sneak out of the palace to look for Sir Stephen and Nanny and Harper’s mam.

In truth I was eager for this assignment. I wanted to hear everything the advisers had to say. It’s not that I don’t believe Desmia—it’s not that I don’t trust her. It’s just . . . well, maybe it just comes down to Point Nine of the Guidelines for Wise Rulers: “Trust, but verify.” I
can remember being baffled by that one, when I used to huddle over my books back in Nanny’s cottage. But now I do want to hold up what I hear from Lord Throckmorton’s room against what Desmia told me about life in the palace, against what Sir Stephen told me about how the palace power structure is supposed to work.

Someone is coming into Lord Throckmorton’s office. The chink I have my ear against is at floor level, so I hear footsteps particularly well.

“Sign here, sir.”

There’s a rubbing sound, undoubtedly from a quill pen traveling across parchment. Then a growl: “Dismissed.”

I sigh soundlessly. I
was
eager for this assignment, but that was hours ago. So far, that “Sign here” / “Dismissed” conversation is about the most significant one I’ve heard. And now my legs are cramped and my back is stiff from not moving, and—you wouldn’t think this was possible—even my voice box aches from not speaking to anyone in so long. I plan what I will tell Harper about this tedium when I see him again: “It was like all the worst parts of fishing without any of the fun. Or the tasty fish.”

Or, no—I will not complain to Harper again. I remember what he said last night in Desmia’s room:
You had days and days and days in the tower to get over yourself. . . . Aren’t you done yet with all that caterwauling?
I know what he thinks. He thinks I’m a spoiled whiner, a selfish brat. I can imagine what else he might have wanted to say:
You
know, I’ve known all my life that
I
wasn’t royalty, that I wasn’t anyone important, and you don’t see me crying about it. . . .

“You don’t know how it feels,” I whisper, and I actually dare to make the
s
sound audible. If Lord Throckmorton hears me, on the other side of the wall, he’s going to believe the palace is infested with snakes.

No footsteps tromp over toward me, so I think I’m safe. I go back to imagining how I could explain this to Harper. All I can think of is the beef that Nanny used to buy from the village butcher for special occasions. She could only afford the gristliest, toughest cuts of meat, so when she got it home she’d pound it with a spiked mallet, beating it for hours sometimes, until it was soft enough to chew.

I feel as though someone’s used that mallet on my heart. I feel as though I’ve been cut open and bloodied and beaten limp. I feel like if I think about this much more, I will start screaming and wailing again, and I will be discovered here in the secret stairway, and . . .

Footsteps sound on the other side of the stone wall again. I hear a door creaking shut.

“No one suspects, do they?” This is Lord Throckmorton’s growl.

Suspects? Suspects what?
I wonder. I press my ear harder against the chink in the wall.

“Well, sir”—it’s another man’s voice, higher pitched with anxiety—“surely the jailer must realize—”

“No, dimwit, no one who
matters.
”

“Well, there’s your answer, then. No one matters but the people in this room, do they?”

There’s a cackling laugh in response. Lord Throckmorton doesn’t seem like a cackler—is there a third person in the room?

I turn my head and try to peek through the chink in the stone, but I see nothing but the brown wood of a table or desk leg. Then a heavy black boot kicks against the wall, covering over my chink. Even though the stone wall is at least a foot thick, I react as though I’ve been kicked in the eye. I reel back, smashing my head against the opposite wall of the stairway, the jagged stone tearing into my scalp. It takes all my willpower not to cry out. I press my hand against the wound, which is already sticky with blood, and dizzily force myself back to the chink. If Lord Throckmorton knows I’m here—if he kicked the wall on purpose—I need to be prepared to run. Desmia showed me several entrances and exits from the secret stairway: Should I scurry back to her room, even though it’s still two flights up? Or should I try for the door in the hallway behind the theater where the music competition is, amazingly, still going on?

I press my eye back against the hole in the wall. The boot has swung away again. Ah. Lord Throckmorton’s desk is right beside the wall, and he only happened to scrape his boot forward. I’m safe. I turn my ear to the chink again.

“—find the last one?” Lord Throckmorton is asking.

“It appears that she knows we are looking. She’s vanished.”

Are they talking about me? I press my ear so tightly against the chink in the wall that I think I’m going to have permanent indentations in my head from the stone. Still, I’m afraid I’ve missed something, because the next thing I hear is, “Yes, and someone must have warned Sir Stephen, because he left right after we searched his house.”

“Idiots!” This is definitely Lord Throckmorton’s growl again. “Should have captured him right away and been done with it!”

“They’re using him as bait, sir, following him, watching who he talks to, where he goes. . . .”

I jerk back again, but this time I manage to avoid bashing my head against the wall. I barely notice. If Lord Throckmorton’s men are using Sir Stephen as bait, I know who they’re going to catch.

Harper.

  23  

It suddenly seems as though there is no air in the secret stairway. I scramble up anyhow. I can run without breathing, if I have to. And I have to. For I can’t stay here listening to their plotting—I can’t. I have to go find Harper, to warn him, to keep him safe.

I rush down the stairs, my desire for haste warring with the need to be quiet, the need to keep from slipping and plunging to the ground. Desmia gave me a new pair of shoes last night, and they’re not as slick as my now-discarded filthy felt. But they’re a little big, and my feet slide forward and back inside them, like unmoored boats. I force myself to watch my step and concentrate on the directions Desmia gave me to that ground-floor door, the one in the hallway behind the theater.

Turn left at the corner of the stairs where there’s a red ribbon tied on the post—yes, there it is. Then go down two
flights and turn right. . . .
But was it left then right or right then left? Was it two flights or three? I can’t remember. I’m too panicked. If I thought my heart was flayed open before, learning that everything I’d always believed was a lie, learning that I’m just one of twelve girls making unfounded claims . . . well, I was wrong. That was nothing.
This
is what it feels like to have my heart pounded into a pulp, to feel utterly crushed. Harper is in danger, and it’s all because of me.

I remember how I rushed back to find Harper on the street corner after I saw the boy kidnapped by the press gang and carried off to war. I’d been worried about Harper then, but that was only the possibility of danger. This is worse. This is all but certain.

Oh, Harper. There are things I should have said to you—not just my secrets about being a princess. . . .

The stairs below me are completely dark. I’m carrying a lantern, but its dim light seems so easily devoured by the inky blackness around me. I feel like I’ve been descending these stairs forever. Surely I’ve climbed down more than two flights since the post with the red ribbon. Haven’t I? The stairway veers, dropping into a jagged dip to the right. I don’t remember that from before. Wouldn’t I have noticed? I crouch down, holding the lantern close to the steps. Ahead of me the uneven stairs jerk right and left, forming a zigzag path down into the darkness. My heart sinks. This is totally unfamiliar.

Nothing to do but turn back,
I tell myself.

I race up again, taking steps two at a time. I feel something wet on my cheek and touch it—
oh, yeah,
I think vaguely.
Blood from my wound.
It doesn’t matter now. I turn at the landing, but I can’t find the post with the red ribbon anymore. The next time I see stairs going down, I take them. These, too, seem to descend endlessly.