Palace of Stone (20 page)

“That’s all right.” Miri sniffed and wiped her nose on a handkerchief. “You don’t have to forgive me—or not forgive me—or anything. But you need to get out of here, Britta. The palace guards are gone from their stations.”

Britta’s hands clutched together. “Gone?”

“We need to go somewhere safe. Please.”

“I don’t … I don’t know where to go,” Britta whispered.

Miri felt a hopeless panic rising up on a sob in her chest. She shoved it back down.
We learn and talk and think so that when it’s time to act, we know what to do.

What to do? She thought of History, Ethics, and Diplomacy, as well as Peder and Esa’s ma, who said
Truth is when your gut and your mind agree.

Miri took Britta’s hand and said, “Stay with me.”

Chapter Seventeen

When thoughts aren’t sticking, are thicker than stew

What is true? What to do?

When strife is looming, naught brewing for you

Ask anew, what to do?

Peder was waiting outside Britta’s door.

“Hello, Britta,” he said, taking the clothing bundle from Miri.

“Good morning, Peder. You’re out early.”

“Being friends with Miri has consequences.”

He followed the girls to the king’s wing. It too stood unguarded.

“Something is definitely wrong,” Miri said.

Down the corridor, Steffan and his father were in their sleep clothes, speaking hurriedly. Britta called out to Steffan. He ran to her and they embraced. Britta’s shoulders heaved as she sobbed, her fingers gripping his shirt.

“The bridal edifice in the Green was torn down,” Miri told Steffan. “I’m worried for Britta.”

“There are some pretty threatening leaflets out this morning,” Peder said.

The king pointed a hard finger at Miri. “How did you get in here?”

“The guards are not at their posts, sire,” she said.

“I noticed,” he said, gesturing to the emptiness beside his door. “At the palace entrance?”

Miri shook her head.

“This is unconscionable! The royal guard would not abandon me.”

Miri wondered if somehow the assassin had maneuvered the guards away. If so, the battleground had moved from the streets of Asland into the palace itself.

“We have reason to believe a mob might be forming today in Asland,” Miri said. “We need to keep you all safe, and right now this palace is not feeling safe.”

The king glared. “I do not trust anything you say, you who consort with murderers.”

“I do know some of those who seek change, but I swear to you, I never imagined any of my friends might consider violence—”

“Get out!” said the king.

“No, wait, please. There is a man who arranged the fate of Rilamark’s queen. This assassin is here in Asland, paid in gold to …”

Miri could not bear to continue. She glanced at Steffan.

“They want to kill the prince heir, do they?” said Steffan.

“Not exactly,” Miri whispered.

He seemed confused and then his eyes widened with real fear.

“It’s me, isn’t it?” Britta asked, seeming a little tired. “The assassin is here for me.”

“No,” said Steffan. “No.” He moved between Britta and the open corridor.

“In Rilamark, he got a mob to do his work for him,” said Miri. “I imagine that’s his plan here.”

“I will not be trapped in my own house,” said the king.

“We can go to the Summer Castle,” Steffan said. “Surely the servants and soldiers there are loyal. Besides, it’s smaller.”

He did not say “and easier to defend,” but Miri heard the idea in the silence. Rilamark’s queen had been dragged from her palace into the street. Miri wondered if there was a girl somewhere in Rilamark who would have saved an unpopular queen and let a painting burn.

“Perhaps if we bring a priest with us,” said Steffan, “Britta and I could be married in Lonway?”

“You cannot wed her now,” said his father.

No
, Miri wanted to protest. But she did not speak out, too afraid the king would send her away again. She wondered if Britta would weep, but she just clung to Steffan’s arm.

The king sent a servant to prepare a carriage. Steffan and his father dressed, then fetched the queen and their personal servants, as well as, Miri was sorry to see, the chief official. Gummonth’s eyes darted about as if expecting danger from every shadow.

The group made their way through the eerily quiet palace. When they passed an open window, Miri could hear shouting outside. She grabbed Peder’s hand. They would be safer if they left Britta and the royals behind. Miri knew this. Peder surely knew this as well. But he did not suggest it either.

Every time they turned a corner, Miri’s pulse quickened. But the corridors were empty.

The group hurried outside to the courtyard, where a few months before, Katar had presented the king with Mount Eskel’s carved mantelpiece. A faithful groom had a carriage with six horses ready. It stood not fifty paces ahead, but to Miri, it seemed an unreachable distance.

A mob had gathered.

Held back by the high iron gates that separated the courtyard from the city street, the crowd pressed against the bars, yelling. Every arm bore a blue band. The noise was overwhelming, like the crash of a mountain rockfall. Out of the cacophony, the word “princess” seemed to lift on the wind. Some held muskets and pistols in the air, waving them about like flags. Some pointed them at the royal party. A few fired, too far away to strike anything but the cobbled ground, sending puffs of dust and rock chips into the air.

The queen made a horrible sound in her throat, a choked cry like an animal in pain. Her eyes and mouth were wide open and wet.

“Back inside,” Steffan ordered.

So many people pressed against the gate, there was no way to escape. The hope of the castle in Lonway was dashed.

The shouts and musket shots were spooking the carriage horses. They pranced and shook their manes. The groom let go of the lead horse’s bridle and fled for the palace. The horses tossed their heads, and the carriage rocked.

Miri turned back to the palace with the others. She did not realize that Britta had not until Steffan shouted her name.

Britta was running straight for the gate. Steffan started after her but his father grabbed him and held him back.

“Don’t. They will kill you,” said the king.

“Britta!” Steffan shouted in a blind panic, thrashing to get away. “Britta!”

Miri did not shout. She did not go after Britta. She did not seem able to do anything except watch her friend run toward the muskets, holding the long white skirts of her marriage gown in both hands so she could get there even faster.

Did Britta think that by sacrificing herself she could save the rest of them? This mob’s anger would not be sated by Britta’s blood alone. They would demand the king and queen and Steffan too, and would it stop there? Or would every feathered cap in Danland fall?

The moment seemed slowed. Miri’s hands covered her face, her eyes peering through her fingers—too afraid to look, too afraid not to. A shot would fire and Britta would fall. Would a shocked silence follow, or howls of triumph? The moment was agonizingly long, all of them watching each stride that took Britta closer to the mob, closer to the muskets, dozens of them poking through the bars of the gate, all pointed now at the running princess.

They did not fire yet, as if the shooters, like Miri, were too astonished to act. What was this princess in white running
to
?

And then Miri noticed what she had not before. A boy, perhaps two years old, was standing in the courtyard, his head tilted up as he stared at the palace. His back was to the carriage. The horses pranced and shook, and the jolting carriage was backing up, its metal-rimmed wheels now inches from the child.

In full run, Britta grabbed the boy, and they tumbled onto the stones, rolling away from the carriage. The next moment its wheels lurched over the spot where he’d been.

The crowd stopped shouting. Miri was certain that they, like her, had not noticed the child before. The only sound now was one wailing voice. Miri looked for the source—a woman, her arms extended through the bars toward the child. His mother, surely. Perhaps she’d been screaming for help all along, Miri realized; only who could hear the cries of a mother above the calls of a mob?

Britta stood slowly, as if her fall had hurt and she was testing her limbs. The boy seemed dazed as Britta patted his arms and legs, searching for injury. He did not cry, but his eyes were wide and his chin tense, his breathing visibly rattling his chest. She picked him up and took him to the gate, where he fit back through the bars he must have climbed through. He reached for his mother, and she held him and buried his face in her neck. In the silence, Miri could hear the exhausted sobs of the woman as she said, “Thank you, thank you.”

The crowd parted for her, and the woman carried her son away.

All now was silent. Britta stood alone in her marriage gown, touching distance from an armed mob who’d threatened to cut her skin into ribbons. It would be useless to run, Miri knew. If they wished to kill Britta, they could.

Britta faced them, her hands clasped behind her back, her shoulders rising and falling as she breathed.

“They’ll shoot her,” Steffan said, his voice raspy.

“Wait,” Miri whispered.
Offer silence
, she thought.

Britta met the gaze of the crowd. The crowd looked back. A couple of the muskets lowered.

“Why doesn’t she come back?” Steffan said.

“She’s too scared to move,” Miri said, and her heart ached.

Steffan started, but the king held him still. Miri put a staying hand on Steffan’s arm.

“Not you,” she said. “Not yet.”

Miri took a step forward.

“Miri,” said Peder.

“I can do this,” she said.

The walk seemed eternal. How had Britta run this length so quickly? Miri’s breath tangled in her chest, and she could manage only short gasps. The horses had calmed in the silence, but Miri skirted the carriage just in case. There was something on the ground up ahead, and as she drew nearer she recognized Britta’s gray slippers. They must have fallen off as she ran. Miri picked them up.

She joined Britta at the gate. The fall had shredded some of the lace of her gown and dusted her with dirt. Miri pried one of Britta’s hands loose from the other and held her cold fingers. She could feel Britta shaking.

Fix this, Miri
, she thought.

She straightened her shoulders and lifted her head.

“I am Miri of Mount Eskel,” she said in a loud, clear voice. “I wrote ‘The Mountain Girl’s Lament.’”
Or most of it
, she thought. She wanted to explain that she had not written that final paragraph, and to tell them how she loved Britta, and that it was not merely chance that Britta had noticed the boy when no one else had because she always saw, really
saw
people, and cared about them sincerely, and why a girl was more important than a painting. But the crowd was large and deep. Her voice could not reach them all.

Be as succinct as possible
, Master Filippus had taught of Rhetoric.

She needed to say something that carried great meaning in only a few words. Like a song. Like a poem.

She still had Britta’s slippers. She held them aloft and shouted, “Look! The princess is shoeless!”

The crowd stirred. Some pointed to Britta’s bare, dusty foot peeking from beneath the hem of her dress.

“The princess is shoeless,” a woman repeated.

Others picked up the phrase. And though they had just been shouting for her death, the mob tossed the phrase around with awe and excitement:
the princess is shoeless, the princess is shoeless ….
Miri shivered with the sound.

“Come on, Britta,” she whispered. “I’ll walk you back.”

Squeezing her hand, Miri walked and Britta followed. The return seemed even longer. All it would take was one musket, one pistol, one person who did not care that Britta had saved that child, or perhaps had been too far back in the crowd to see. One bullet would end this. But neither ran, and when they reached the royal group, no shot had fired.

Steffan rushed forward to meet them, pulling Britta into his arms.

“You are so brave,” he whispered. “Too brave.”

She shook her head but did not let go.

“Inside,” said the king.

The group followed him through the door and down the wide central corridor. It was deserted.

“Your Majesty,” Miri said, trying to keep pace beside him. “Please don’t cancel their wedding. Every person who was at that gate feels differently toward Britta now. And those people will talk. People always talk. Word of what happened will pass around the city—”

“Perhaps. But what of the rest of us? The
shoed
?” he added fiercely. “Curse the lot. Gummonth was right. I should have sent troops into each province after their disrespectful gifts. I should have raised tributes and doubled the army. They will feel the wrath of the crown.”