Palace of Mirrors (4 page)

“Thanks, Dancer,” I mutter. “You’re a great guard cow.”

It’s not like I can plunge into the woods and hide, not with an eight-hundred-pound cow strolling beside me. I wish I’d brought the fish knife with me. I wish Dancer were a steed I could hop onto and gallop away. I wish Harper were with me, with or without the harp.

Then the dark figure moves, and turns into someone familiar: Harper.

“What—you didn’t even wait for me?” he shouts at me indignantly.

“I—I thought you weren’t coming,” I stammer. “You were so late.”

“Mam made me practice extra, because I kept messing up,” Harper says. He glares at me, and even in the dying light I can see the fury in his eyes. “I wasn’t
that
late.”

He’s right. On a normal day I would have stood there where the paths split forever, if that was what it took to get to walk to the pasture with Harper. He’s had to practice extra before. And I’ve never minded leaning against a tree, waiting. Sometimes I braid flowers into my hair, or fill my apron pockets with acorns to throw, or just ponder which new fascinating fact to share with Harper. Once or twice I’ve even walked down to the village myself to fetch him, freeing him from his musical torture with the excuse, “Really, Mrs. Sutton, the sky’s getting so dark, and Nanny says her bones feel the rain coming—don’t you think we should bring the cows home before it storms?” Harper loves it when I do that.

“I’m sorry. Today—it just—I—,” I sputter.

“Never mind,” Harper says, brushing past Dancer and me.

“Wait! I—”

“Grease is going to founder on all that grass if I don’t get there soon,” Harper says impatiently. And then he takes off running, his bare feet slapping hard against the dirt.

I think about tying Dancer to a tree and chasing after him, or just standing there for another eternity and
ambushing him when he comes back with Grease. But what am I supposed to say? How can I excuse myself? How can he understand anything if he doesn’t know that I’m the true princess?

How can I stand here in the near dark, alone, when I know someone might be lurking in the trees, ready to get rid of the true princess?

  5  

The Great Xenotobian War started because of a dispute over a shipment of tacks.

The Second Sachian War began after King Gertruvian the Third overheard King Leolyle of Sachia insulting his wife’s taste in flower decorations.

As for the Alterian War—there’s been only one so far, and, admittedly, it wasn’t all that great, but still—it started mostly because King Gustando was a little sensitive about his height, and the Alterian ambassador mockingly suggested that he should wear shoes with a thicker sole and heel.

I used to giggle over those details. Even when Sir Stephen stared disapprovingly at me and intoned, “The art of foreign relations is a delicate thing. One must learn from the past, rather than mock one’s ancestors,” I could do little more than duck my head and hope he couldn’t
see that I was still laughing. What kind of idiots fight over tacks? Who cares about flower decorations or shoes?

But now, spooning up Nanny’s delicious fish stew without even tasting it, I’ve lost my sense of humor. I keep thinking,
How can Harper and I be fighting over a musical instrument?

I remember a long, long time ago when Nanny and Sir Stephen had an argument about me. I can close my eyes and relive the awful feeling of listening to the two most important adults in my life fighting above my head. It all began because Sir Stephen arrived early for his weekly visit, and Nanny and I weren’t waiting at our cottage.

“Where have you been?” Sir Stephen demanded, as soon as we stepped through the door. “I was beginning to believe that our enemies had found the princess, found her and carried her away. . . .”

“We were in the village, buying flour,” Nanny said, giving him a glare that even I, a little child, could read:
Don’t go talking about Cecilia being carried away when she’s standing right here listening! Do you want to give the girl nightmares?
Nanny plopped the sack of flour onto the table, and it sent up a puff of white, which then settled back over the sack and the table and Nanny’s skirt like snow.

I wanted to say that I wouldn’t have nightmares—that I knew they would keep me safe. But I was distracted by Sir Stephen’s reaction. He was clutching his heart in alarm.

“You took the princess with you?” he asked in such a horrified voice that I wondered if there were some rule about princesses avoiding flour, just like there was about princesses not being allowed to fidget or twirl their hair around their fingers or yawn without covering their mouths. Back then Sir Stephen had only begun teaching me about what it meant to be royal.

“You let the villagers know the princess is here?” he raged. “You let them see her?”

“What would you have me do?” Nanny shot back, her voice nearly as sharp as his. “Leave her alone in the cottage while I’m out? A young girl like her, curious about fire, curious about the bottles on my shelves?” It was true—I was curious about everything, especially the bottles of herb potions and tonics and cures lined up around the cottage like jewels behind glass.

“I know not to touch your bottles!” I defended myself shrilly. Both of the adults ignored me.

“Can’t you just stay home?” Sir Stephen asked, almost pleadingly.

“Aye, if you hire me a man to bring me foodstuffs and other goods from the village, to bring in the cow from the pasture and such like—surely there’s a knight you can spare for that,” Nanny Gratine replied, her tone cutting even though this was a funny thought. A knight couldn’t go after the cow, I thought. He might step in a cowpat! Wouldn’t that make his armor rusty?

Sir Stephen furrowed his caterpillar eyebrows together, missing the humor.

“Of course we don’t have a knight to spare for that. Knights don’t do chores for peasant women.” He shook his head disdainfully. “That’d be like hanging a sign on your door: ‘This place isn’t what it seems. The princess is here.’ It’s the same reason we can’t risk posting a guard here, because people would notice. I thought you could keep Cecilia safe and out of sight—your cottage is so perfectly remote, apart from every other human habitation. That’s why we chose you.”

“And was that the only reason?” Nanny asked, with a fury I didn’t understand. “Would you have let any slattern raise the princess, as long as her cottage was isolated? Do you care how Cecilia turns out, as long as she can stay alive and look the part and curtsy properly and spout the right genteel phrases?”

“I—,” Sir Stephen tried to interrupt, but Nanny wasn’t finished.

“You would have a princess sit upon the throne who doesn’t know anything about her kingdom? Who doesn’t know her own people? Who’s never had a friend—or been a friend? Who doesn’t care about anyone but herself?” Nanny asked. “Is that what you want?”

Sir Stephen blinked.

“What do the villagers know about Cecilia?” he asked, sidestepping her questions. “Who do they think she is?”

“They think she’s just an ordinary orphan child I’ve taken in,” Nanny said. “Plenty of orphans in the kingdom nowadays.”

Her dark blue eyes dared Sir Stephen to argue with that. But he backed away.

“Well, then,” he mumbled, looking down at the dirt floor of our cottage. “No harm in that, then, I suppose.”

“Oh, there’s plenty of harm in children growing up without their parents,” Nanny said, still angry. “Plenty of harm in all your murderous wars, leaving widows and orphans in their wake—”

“That’s enough,” Sir Stephen said sharply. “Princess Cecilia, you will open your book and begin reviewing your letters. Now.”

But I’d been infected with some of Nanny’s fury. I didn’t understand everything they were saying—I’m not even sure I remember it all correctly now, or if I’ve melded this argument in my mind with other opinions they’ve expressed, other times. But I understood enough. I knew what Sir Stephen wanted to take away from me.

I pushed back the book he handed me, and it skidded across the table, coming to rest against the flour sack, getting showered with its own dusting of white.

“If I don’t go to the village, I can’t see Harper!” I said stoutly. “And he’s my friend! You can’t stop me from being friends with Harper!”

Back then our friendship consisted of dropping pebbles
in puddles together, scratching out pictures in the frost on the village store window, making faces at each other while Harper’s mam and Nanny shopped. But I already knew Harper was worth fighting for.

Nanny and Sir Stephen laughed off my defiance.

“Aye, she’s a true princess, all right,” Nanny said, her own anger gone. “Already trying to boss us around!”

Now, as I bite down on an unyielding sliver of fish—oops, left some scales on that one—I turn over a new question in my mind. If I was willing to defy Sir Stephen when I was five, just for the chance to drop pebbles into puddles with Harper, what am I willing to do to save our friendship now?

Am I willing to tell him the truth?

I carefully remove the fish scales from my mouth and glance across the table to see if Nanny has somehow noticed that I’m contemplating the ultimate disobedience. But Nanny isn’t watching me. She’s watching the door, then the window, then the door again, her eyes darting back and forth. There’s a faint rustle outside—a squirrel stepping on a twig, maybe, or the wind blowing branches against the thatch of the roof—and she leans forward, her eyes narrowed, her hand cupped against her ear. She sees me watching her, and puts her hand down. She attempts a laugh.

“I’m an easily spooked old woman tonight,” she says. “I’m sure that was just Dancer brushing up against the wall.”

Dancer’s “barn” is just a little shed attached to our cottage, so that’s certainly another explanation.

“Why?” I ask. “Why are you easily spooked tonight?”

For a moment I think she’s going to tell me. Her eyes meet mine, and they’re so deep and wise and kind that I can tell she regrets keeping secrets from me. But she shakes her head.

“You’ll understand when you’re my age,” she says. “Old women like me—we’ve seen too much. We worry too much.”

“But what if I want to understand now?” I ask. “What if I
need
to understand now, for my own safety?”

I am proud that I’ve managed to keep my voice level. I may not sound imperial and queenly, but I think maybe I sound like an adult, calm and rational.

Nanny rewards me with a half smile.

“If you needed to know, I’d tell you,” she says. “But you don’t, so . . .” She reaches across the table, clasps my hands between her own. “Stay a child. Enjoy your daydreams and wishes, your fun and games . . . Sir Stephen and I can do the worrying about your safety.”

Nanny’s hands are soft and warm and comforting. I can remember a thousand times she’s soothed away my fevers with those hands, wiped away my tears, held me and hugged me and calmed me. But right now her hands feel like a cage, overly confining. I jerk mine back, and I’m ready to scream out angrily,
But I’m not a child
anymore! Stop treating me like a little girl!

Just then something else happens. The door bursts open, shoved so hard that it slams back against the wall. Both Nanny and I jump up. I’m casting about for a suitable weapon to use to defend myself—the fish knife’s too far away; would the stew pot do in a pinch, slammed down over somebody’s head? Then I hear Nanny say, in a puzzled voice, “Nobody’s there. It was just the wind.”

Both of us rush over to stand in the doorway. A strong breeze tugs at us, teasing my hair loose from my kerchief, sending Nanny’s apron strings dancing behind her. But this isn’t exactly a gale-force wind. The door has withstood much stronger gusts before; it’s held tight against storms when the rain slashed sideways, beating ceaselessly against the wood.

Nanny seems to be thinking along the same lines.

“But why . . . ?” she murmurs. She reaches up for the leather latch we’ve always used to fasten the door at night. It fits tightly over a wooden peg near the top of the door. I remember feeling very proud when I was first tall enough to reach the peg, when Nanny trusted me enough to fasten the door at night all by myself. Now Nanny yanks the leather latch away from the wall.