Palace of Stone (10 page)

“I guess that’s true. But we can’t worry about everyone. Even you can’t change the whole world.”

He said it lightly, as if to goad her into a smile, but she could only shrug. She was definitely not going to tell him about the threat of tributes now.

She left him to his work and started back to the palace, scanning the streets for any gathered mobs, listening through the bustle of traffic for chants of “No, no!” Nothing seemed changed. Nothing besides Miri herself.

She tensed at the palace entrance, but the guards accepted her password without hesitation. Perhaps news of the riot at the docks had not spread that far. Perhaps no one knew she’d been involved at all. She felt relieved and yet a little disappointed too.

When Miri entered the girls’ chamber, they gathered for Miri’s Salon.

“Liana, we’re starting,” Esa said.

Liana stayed on her bed, her feet resting on the headboard. “I. Don’t. Care,” she said through gritted teeth.

Bena rolled her eyes. “She’s been in a mood
all day
. We had tea with some ancient courtier, and she made the mistake of saying Liana was
almost
as pretty as her granddaughters.”

“Must be hard for her, being in Asland with so many other girls,” Gerti whispered. “On Mount Eskel, she was always the prettiest.”

“I can
hear
you, you dolts,” said Liana.

“Go on, Miri,” said Esa.

“Today I … Today we …” Miri stopped. What if one of the girls mentioned Miri’s involvement to someone else? The academy girls were no longer isolated in their room, sewing and spinning. The wedding official had seemed displeased with their work and stopped bringing them tasks. And lately Inga spent much of her time sneaking around outside after a tall, gray-haired gardener, so the girls could do as they pleased.

Liana and Bena often visited courtiers in their palace apartments, eating dainty food and gossiping.

Frid had made friends with the workers in the palace forge. They called her “mountain sister” and let her pound red-hot steel on the anvil.

A palace musician had overheard Gerti singing to herself in the garden and invited her to sit in on symphony rehearsals. They were delighted with her ability to improvise songs—a common activity in the quarry—and asked her to sing to their music. A young man gave her a six-stringed lute, and Miri joked it had become her third arm.

Gerti clutched the lute now, gently plucking the strings as if unaware of her action.

“Some people believe noble titles cause harmful divisions—” Miri started cautiously.

Now Liana sat up. “I
love
being a noble. Anyone who doesn’t is
stupid
.”

You’re stupid,
Miri wanted to say, but stopped herself. A rule of Rhetoric: Attack the argument, not the person.

But Liana’s comment filled Miri with more unease. What was safe to say?

“Um … This week Master Filippus introduced us to Rhetoric—the art of communicating. He said if you learn the rules, it’s easier to explain your thoughts and persuade others. The basics include listening, expressing your own opinion as succinctly as possible, offering stories instead of lectures, and allowing silence for consideration.”

Sometimes talking about communicating was easier than actually doing it.

Winter Week One

Dear Marda,

You must be thigh-high in snow. My mind knows it is winter, yet my eyes cannot believe it. Although I count some lowlanders as friends, I have to admit they are a flimsy lot. A breeze rises from the ocean, and all shiver as if ice rain were falling. Nobles go about in thick fur coats. And the shoeless … well, they put on shoes, if they have them.

Today was amazing. Something bad was going to happen, but then someone took a stand and dozens joined him. I want to be one of those people. The standing ones.

I have been afraid lately, too afraid to talk to anyone about it. Afraid that all the changes on Mount Eskel were useless. That things will soon go back to the way they were, the linder sales buying barely enough food for survival, nothing extra for warm clothing or better tools, every moment working, no time for the village school or making music or anything. Like that, or worse. I have been afraid. But today I was not.

It feels good, Marda, not to be alone, to be surrounded by people who want and think the same as I do.

I should be asleep but my thoughts blaze, and I do not want to douse them yet. I am so full of hope and ideas I might float right off my bed.

Ships are bigger than houses and yet they sail with the speed of
the wind and the power of a hundred horses. I rode a ship with Timon today. He noticed my callused hands and thought they were beautiful.

This is from your very silly but always hopeful sister,

Miri

Chapter Nine

King Dan sat on his stallion fierce

Swords did slice and spears did pierce

But in a tree upon the field

Perched a small, keen-eyed blackbird

And the blackbird did not sing

No, the blackbird did not sing

Miri’s sleep was fragile that night. The rhythmic snores of the other girls mimicked a slower chant of “No, no …”

In the morning, Miri dressed and left without breakfast. She passed the corner where she usually met Timon, her feet too impatient to wait. She weaved between carts and carriages, wagons and horses, feeling as sleek as a ship on water. Change was coming, and she was part of it.

Surely all the scholars at the Queen’s Castle would be readying for the next action.
Revolution
. What an exhilarating word. She wanted to ring it like a bell; she wanted to pound it like a piano. She wanted revolution to be a song she could sing so loudly all the world would hear!

But at the Queen’s Castle, the scholars in blue were gathered in their room as usual. No changes in sight.

“An interesting experiment yesterday,” Master Filippus said when Timon entered late, his shoulders stooped. “The will of the people versus the king. History shows us several examples of the common people attempting to overthrow the crown. Each failed.”

“But it worked at the docks,” Miri said. “People said no, and the official ran off.”

“The royal guard visited merchants later yesterday afternoon and seized jars of oil,” Timon said, slumping into a chair. “No one protested.”

“It’s exciting in the moment, mmm?” Master Filippus said, his eyes half closed. “But you, my hasty young scholars, forget History. You must study the past to know what will work in the future.”

Miri rubbed her face. She’d felt so strong yesterday as part of that mob, but it had been a false strength after all. One day later, nothing had changed. There was still a king who could take whatever he wanted—jugs of oil, wagons of grain, two gold coins wrapped in a shawl. She glared at the girl in the painting. What was she about, gawking at the moon while pouring precious milk? If she did not pay attention, she would spill it.
Stupid girl.

Master Filippus took the class down to the Queen’s Castle library, lecturing as they walked.

“Yet one must study carefully to uncover truth. For example, Dan the Hearted, beneficent first king of Danland? You know the stories of his wisdom and compassion.”

Miri nodded with the others. She had grown up singing “Dan and the Blackbird,” in which the king stopped a battle to save a blackbird’s fallen nest.

“Such stories are likely myths. The actual records we have from Dan’s time reveal nothing more than his skill in warfare. In fact”—Master Filippus hummed a little laugh—“one historian claims he was called Dan the Hearted because he wore his enemies’ hearts around his neck.”

Miri was about to say “ugh,” but they’d entered the library, and she could do nothing but stare in wonder.

Once she’d thought all the knowledge in the world was contained in the princess academy’s thirteen books. Now she faced thousands. She wondered if she should curtsy as if she were entering a chapel.

Filippus directed them to select a volume of history, read it, and write a paper questioning some part of the historian’s account.

“Choose a history of a province other than your own,” he said. “That will not be a problem for you, Miri, as Mount Eskel has never inspired a historian.”

He led them to the History section, and Miri searched the shelves, eager to prove him wrong. Perhaps just a general volume of Danland history would have a section on Mount Eskel? But she found nothing.

All the others except Timon had selected their volumes and gone off to read.

“You’re upset,” said Timon. “Perhaps there’s no record in this library, but surely Mount Eskel keeps its own history.”

“Until the princess academy, we had no books. No one could read or write.”

“History can be found outside books,” he said, his smile hopeful. “In graveyards, for example, you can find names and dates.”

“We don’t bury our dead. We wrap people in their own blankets and lower them into the Great Crevasse. There are no grave markers. There’s no means to mark the passage of time at all, except empty quarries abandoned by previous generations. Our only history is holes.”

Timon had no response but to lay his hand on her shoulder before turning away.

She paged through various books but felt too discouraged to choose one. According to this library, there was no Mount Eskel.

Tragedy
, she thought, a word she had learned only the week before.

She had seen a play with Britta, another story of two lovers kept apart, this time a brave soldier and a girl who was betrothed to another. Expecting this play to be like the first and end with marriage and laughter, Miri was stunned when the soldier was slain and the girl died of a broken heart.

“Oh,” Britta had said as the curtain closed, “I didn’t know it was going to be a tragedy.”

It’s just a story
, Miri had reminded herself that night, curled up in bed and crying over the lovers.

She felt similarly struck now, her belly cramped, her head heavy.
Tragedy.
Because no one on Mount Eskel had learned to read or write, their history was lost forever.

She realized Master Filippus was at her shoulder.

“Having trouble selecting a volume?” he asked.

“There are so many,” she mumbled.

“Well I know it. I’ve read them all.”

“Really? How long did it take?”

“Mmm, half of my life. One must, to reach master status.”

Miri swallowed. She had less than a year left in Asland. The weight of all she did not know felt like a boulder on her back.

“It is a shame you plan to go home after the summer. With just one more year you could become a tutor. Cat’s-eye green would become you, Miri of Mount Eskel.”

“Just one more year?” she asked.

He nodded. “Or stay two years, don the honey-drop robes, and become the first historian of Mount Eskel. You have a keen mind. One day you could wear raven’s head.”

She was glad when he walked away. His compliment did not cheer her. Rather, she felt even more pressed down by that boulder, the heaviness of impossible expectation.

Still determined to find something about her home, she turned to the massive Librarian’s Book on its pedestal. The librarians over the years had cataloged the contents of every book in the library. She located a mention of Mount Eskel in a royal treasurer’s account book, over a century old, and she hunted down the volume.

I find not a record of linder’s strange history, so I relate here what others have spoken. Two hundred years past, workers were recruited to quarry a linder cache on Mount Eskel. The stone minister reported to the king that “working with linder has altered the people,” though the details remained mysterious.

King Jorgan abolished the stone-minister post, leaving the Eskelites to fend for themselves. Only the hardiest of traders risked the trip up the cursed mountain, lured by the promise of reselling the stone to the king himself, who began building a linder palace.

When I was a lad, a common game named one child the Eskelite. If the Eskelite touched another child, he or she became infected and turned into a monster. It seems to me children no longer play this game. People do forget to fear Mount Eskel and the poisons of raw linder.

Poisons? Surely not. For much of her life, Miri had breathed in linder dust and drunk stream water white with it. Besides, if past scholars believed linder was dangerous, then why did the kings build their palace from it? Clearly the royals were not afraid of the stone.