Palace of Stone (15 page)

Miri was late; Master Filippus’s class was in the library. She found Timon and placed a leaflet over the book he was reading.

He smiled up at her. “Isn’t it wonderful? We’ve gone back to the printer three times. He says it’s the most popular leaflet he’s ever seen!”

“Timon, these were my personal thoughts. How dare you steal them from me?”

“Steal?” He smoothed the paper with his palm. “But I asked if you’d be willing to share it—”

“I thought you meant with
you
, not the entire city!”

He winced, as if surprised by a stab of pain. “I was certain you’d be thrilled at the response. We’ve been in this together. Aren’t we in this together?”

“We’re not in
this
together,” she said, shaking the leaflet. “It makes Britta look like a thieving, dishonorable snob.”

“Isn’t she?”

“No!”

“We are what we do,” he said quietly.

“But the leaflet will make people hate her.” She sat in the chair beside him, planting her head facedown on the desk. “This is really, really bad.”

“I
am
sorry, Miri. I have a tendency to get excited and act without thinking. But your words were so perfect! I added my own at the end, but I believe them true and important enough to risk execution. Is the part you wrote true?”

“Well, yes, but it’s not that simple, Timon.”

“Why not? How can telling the truth be bad? This kingdom is blind. It’s our job as scholars to keep speaking out and describing the world as it is until the people can truly see it.”

“But Britta—”

“People are afraid to challenge a king in his palace surrounded by his army. He seems too large to overcome. But a robber princess? That’s an easy rallying point.”

“She’s my friend!” Miri said.

Timon flipped open a book to a genealogical chart of the kings and queens of Danland.

“History is names on a page. Years from now, your
friend
could be just another meaningless name school-children memorize. Or hers could be the name that ignites the change. You are smart, Miri. You know you can’t support both your friend the princess
and
the commoners’ fight for fairness.”

No, she had not known that. The idea hit her like a stone.

Timon was on his feet, his cheeks flushed. “Let the people question a princess. That will give them the courage to keep asking until those questions shake the kingdom. The people will rise, the crown will fall, noble titles will be abolished, and at last everyone will be equal.”

When Timon spoke that way, her mouth wanted to shout and her feet wanted to march. People rising, kings questioned, a country changed! Her heart beat, but her stomach rolled, sick with guilt. How had things gotten so complicated?

Miri took genuine comfort in studying Mathematics that day. She could sort numbers into two simple ideas: true and not true. Unlike numbers, words were rarely just one thing. They moved and changed, camouflaging and leaping out unexpectedly. Words were slippery and alive; words wrestled out of her grip and became something new. Words were dangerous.

One and one will forever be two
, Miri thought.

She looked at the girl in the painting. Had her expression always been so forlorn? The girl seemed trapped, aching to go explore the world but unable to put that stupid jug down.

I’m sorry
, Miri thought at the girl in the painting, because she needed to apologize to somebody.
I’m so sorry.

Chapter Thirteen

Goodness knows she is too fierce for you

Goodness knows she has eyes for a lord

Goodness knows she yet will prove untrue

Her cheek’s blush is as false as her word

Miri did not wait for Timon at the end of the day, hurrying back to the palace alone. Words tumbled about in her head, but she could not form them into pleasing sentences. Nothing she could think of to say to Britta would make it better. She knocked at Britta’s chamber and cracked open the door.

“Miri, come in!” Britta said with a grateful smile. She was not alone. Britta introduced her guests, Aslandian noble ladies seated primly on the sofas. “And this is my dearest friend, Lady Miri of Mount Eskel.”

Miri curtsied, wishing she could have her dearest friend alone. The truth of the leaflet was a live coal in her gut.

The conversation dallied on the weather, preparations for the royal wedding just days away, and the best toppings for custard. Miri was about to blurt out her confession anyway when one of the ladies, her eyes on the fan in her lap, said, “We saw a leaflet this morning. Normally I wouldn’t read such things, but the servants were in a fervor. We wish to give you the benefit of the doubt, Lady Britta, and so we came in person to allow you to explain.”

“Explain?” said Britta. Her face drained of color.

The woman nodded. “Surely the claims in the leaflet were not true.”

Miri wished the palace would come down over her own head and bury her alive.

“I have little explanation and no excuse,” said Britta. “Some of the things written were, in fact, true.”

“Some?” asked a woman with an arch of her eyebrow.

Britta’s ruddy cheeks deepened into a painful red. “I did go to Mount Eskel. I did claim to be an orphan and attend the princess academy.”

“I see. And what do you think about that, Lady Miri of Mount Eskel?” asked the woman.

Miri sat on her hands, then remembered her Poise lessons and folded them on her lap. “I think … I think that Britta is my friend. And maybe whoever wrote that leaflet didn’t mean any harm. And I don’t think Britta meant any harm, going up to Mount Eskel. And I didn’t want to be the princess anyway.”

Miri winced. Master Filippus would have given a sad shake of his head at the way she’d shambled around the rules of Rhetoric. Confusion and even amusement crossed the ladies’ faces. Britta looked lost.

The ladies reminded Miri of the hungry fish she had seen in the ocean, swimming beneath the fishing boats and waiting for the cast-off entrails of gutted fish. Knowing that Britta’s “dearest friend” had written the leaflet would only give them more fodder for gossip. She excused herself.

In the girls’ chamber, Miri could not meet anyone’s eyes. They’d been right—she
had
written “The Mountain Girl’s Lament,” or at least most of it. But how could she explain without implicating Timon? Sisela’s husband had been executed for as much.

Miri wrapped a cloak around her scholar robes and went outside.

Night had fallen over Asland, flames fizzing in the kerosene lamps like fallen stars. The lamplight drained the color out of the painted houses, making the world as black and white as the starred sky.

In Lady Sisela’s part of the city, the flower beds overflowed with heaps of crocuses and daffodils. Soon wagons would lumber up to Mount Eskel for spring trading. The thought gave Miri a shiver. Though she had written a dozen letters to Marda, she could no longer imagine sending any of them. What could she say of the tribute and the cruel poverty that threatened them? How could she fix anything in time?

She entered the Salon, and all the faces turned, their eyes brightening at the sight of her. She tightened her fists, wanting to hold on to her anger.

“Miri!” said Sisela, rising to take her hand and kiss her cheek.

Clemen played a few bars of a popular song, changing the words for Miri.

Goodness knows she is so fierce and true

Our warrior girl slays giants with words

He pounded out the final notes, and the room applauded—not for Clemen but for Miri.

“I read ‘The Mountain Girl’s Lament,’” said Sisela, “and I understand you better than I ever have before. My sweet, lovely girl, how I adore and admire you!”

“Don’t, please. I didn’t want this. I didn’t mean to betray my friend.”

Sisela tilted her head to the side. “I respect your loyalty, but Miri, this girl tricked Mount Eskel out of the right to have one of your own on the throne.”

“Britta and Steffan are in love …”

“It makes a pretty story,” said Sisela. “But consider it logically. Is this wedding good for
all
of Danland?”

Miri did not answer.

“It is difficult to find a soul in this city who supports Britta,” said Sisela. “Yet I suppose she’ll be princess whether they want her or not.”

“And that, too, is getting people to think,” said Timon. “I know she is your friend, Miri, and I
am
sorry, but people are finally speaking out. The heat of the revolution is spreading!”

He offered her a strip of blue cloth. She took it, not understanding, and then saw they all had tied strips around their upper arms.

“For you, our lady of the revolution,” Clemen said with a bow, “Asland is draped in blue.”

Timon smiled at her quizzical look. “You don’t know your own power, do you? In ‘The Mountain Girl’s Lament,’ you talk of Mount Eskel wrapped about by blue sky. Your words resonated across the capital, and all of like mind are wearing blue bands. The color of the coming change!”

Miri sat heavily on the sofa, letting the blue strip go. It rippled as it fell, reminding Miri of a living thing—an undulating caterpillar, a snake.

“You shouldn’t have taken my words.” She glared up at Timon. “You shouldn’t have used them that way.”

“I know you, Miri,” he said. “You wouldn’t sacrifice the good of all the people for one entitled girl. Please, I’m sorry.”

“I can’t let Timon take the blame.” Sisela sat beside Miri and put a hand on her back. “This is my fault. I encouraged him to print the leaflet. You have fit into our group so easily, you seemed a sister to the cause from the beginning.”

“I am,” said Miri, straightening. “I really am. I think.” Her voice dropped lower. “I don’t know what to do.”

The anger was straining out of her, her hands relaxing. Timon and the rest had grown up in a huge city, reading books and talking in Salons, while she’d been tending goats. Surely they knew better than she did.

Sisela smoothed a lock of hair off Miri’s forehead.

“My poor girl, you’re too hard on yourself,” she said. “Why should you have the burden of doing everything?”

It was true. None of the other girls had come to Asland with so much responsibility. They could relax, enjoy the city, develop interests. But Miri was expected to “go and learn for all of us,” as Britta had said. Miri felt tired just thinking about it. It was a relief when Sisela lay Miri’s head against her shoulder.

“I don’t know what to do,” Miri whispered again.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Sisela answered. “Just let things happen. Everything will happen as it should.”

“In three or four weeks, officials will go to Mount Eskel and demand tribute,” Miri said. “The families are finishing off their winter food supply and counting what coins they have saved, anticipating buying enough food for the season, and perhaps a comfortable chair for a grandmother or new blankets for a baby, spoons and pots, boots and buckets. Instead they’ll give their saved coins to the king—and likely lose their goats besides. They’ll be … they’ll be devastated …
ruined
… and they’ll wonder if there wasn’t something we could have …
I
could have done ….”

Tears stole away her words. She looked at the floor and in the silence felt the compassion of those around her. They, like her, had faced the brutalizing injustice of kings and nobles or they would not be here. She could not sell them out to the king, as Katar suggested, not even to save Mount Eskel. There had to be another way.

Sisela said, “A few weeks can change the world, Miri. I will do all I can. I promise.”

Miri closed her eyes. She wanted to believe so badly, her muscles tensed. Clemen was playing a sweet melody, and the notes softened the edges of everything. The room smelled of lavender and beeswax candles. The music and hum of conversation sounded as familiar to her now as the bleating of goats.

Her stomach still felt tight as a fist, but Sisela’s hand was on her head, motherly, comforting.

She knows best
, Miri told herself.
She is smart and wise.

Miri squeezed her eyes shut tighter.

Winter Week Thirteen

Dear Marda,

I do not know what to write. I stare at this blank paper and wish words wrote themselves, words to tell me how to feel and think and what to do.

There will be a tribute demanded of you all. You and Pa and everyone thought I was so smart to figure out how to trade linder for fair value. But soon you will know that I am useless. Nothing I changed lasted. Everything is falling apart.

I am so sorry about the two gold coins in mother’s shawl. I had imagined them for you when you wed, to fix up your own house with a door and windows, a table and chair, a pot and spoons and such. Gone. And our goats! My heart aches for our goats.