Palace of Stone (27 page)

Oh land of farms and green hills mild

Once formed by giants rough and wild

With massive paws they gripped and tore

With one great rip they formed the shore

Where heavy boots left prints so deep

Blue lakes remain ’tween summits steep

The giants fought beneath our skies

And from their bones our mountains rise

The night before facing the delegation, the girls smuggled Peder from his sickbed into their chamber. Miri felt fragile and afraid, and yearned to keep all she loved near. Accustomed to late nights debating the charter, and too nervous to sleep, they all talked into the dark hours, not of laws but of home. Miri could almost hear the sleepy mumbling of goats, sense the ice-tipped winds coming off the peak, smell snow melting and miri flowers blooming, and feel spring as it is on the mountain—full of promise.

In the morning they dressed and pretended to eat breakfast.

“No matter that we could be beheaded for this,” said Esa. “Heads are overrated.”

“Yes, they are
so
unfashionable,” said Miri, imitating an Aslandian accent. “This spring, ladies of style are wearing their feathers in their necks.”

They laughed, but not for too long. Gerti rubbed her own neck.

“Katar and I can do it alone, if you’d like,” Miri said.

But when Katar rose to go to the door, even Bena followed.

Miri left last, pausing to look back at Peder, lying on Liana’s old bed.

“Get some rest. I’ll send news as soon as there is any.”

“Just make sure it’s good news,” he said. “If you happen to be killed, I’d rather hear it from your own lips.”

“Absolutely. I’ll roll my decapitated head back here to bring you word.”

Peder’s teasing smile faltered. “Please be careful.”

She nodded and left but returned a moment later to give him a last quick kiss on his lips. He touched her hair.

The Delegate House waited on the other side of the Green from the palace. Hordes of people were gathered around the yellow-brick building, the murmurs tense.

“Quite a crowd,” Katar said.

“Unusual?” asked Miri.

Katar nodded.

The procession of the king’s carriage and his attendants stopped, the road clogged with people. The royal guard yelled for passage, and very slowly the people edged backward. Their gazes were somber. Miri rubbed her arms to dispel the chills. As she squeezed through the crowd, she was grateful she wore her scholar robes, free from the mark of nobility.

The entire building was a huge open chamber. The floor was linder, but the walls were yellow brick, leading to a domed ceiling, painted with a starred sky. The round delegation table took up the center of the chamber and was surrounded by sixteen high-backed chairs, one for each province’s delegate. Miri noted that the table was large enough to add sixteen more chairs for the commoner delegates. If the charter passed.

Three galleries opened off the central chamber. The king sat upon a dais facing the delegates, the Court Gallery behind him. The Mount Eskel girls climbed the stairs to claim seats in the Noble Gallery, which was half empty. Opposite, the Commoner Gallery overflowed.

Miri handed Katar the couple dozen handwritten copies of their charter. Katar wore her reddish hair in a bun, perhaps imagining it made her look older. But beside two white-haired delegates, Miri thought she looked like a child who had sneaked into a meeting of the village council.

“She’s here, at least,” Katar whispered.

Queen Sabet waited in the Court Gallery. Her face was in shadow, and if she noticed Miri, she made no signal of greeting. Britta sat beside Steffan. It seemed she tried to smile at Miri, but her expression was taut. She had thought the charter a wonderful idea, though she had not been able to hide the fear in her eyes.

“It’s not too late—” Miri started.

“I’ll do it,” said Katar. “Someone has to.”

Miri tried to think of a hopeful thing to say, but her stomach hurt with worry.

“Your face is making me even more nervous.” Katar put her hands on Miri’s shoulders and turned her away. “Go where I can’t see you.”

Miri found a seat with the girls. Esa held out her hand and squeezed Miri’s.

“I’d rather face bandits,” Miri whispered.

The session opened with the singing of Danland’s anthem. The first verses told of giants fighting, the fall of their bodies pounding out Asland’s valley, their kicks pushing the trees together to make the forests. Miri did not believe it was real history, but she liked the idea of it. She had felt part of a giant once, on the docks protesting the oil tribute.
Any group united creates a giant
, she thought. Could their little group actually reshape Danland?

The chief delegate acknowledged the king’s presence and introduced extremely boring laws for debate. An hour went by. Then two. In Miri’s mind anxiety warred against drowsiness. When would Katar speak?

Miri’s gaze wandered over the Commoner Gallery. No one she recognized, but all wore blue bands on their arms. Messengers were constantly coming and going, perhaps carrying news of the debate to the crowds outside and returning with messages they whispered in ears.

The building was full of nobles and court members, not to mention the king, queen, and prince.

Drowsiness drained out of Miri with a chill that washed from her head through her legs.

“What if they mean to attack here today?” she whispered to Esa.

The royal guard had searched commoners for weapons before allowing them into the Delegate House, but there were enough commoners outside to qualify as an army.

“Speak to the guards,” Esa whispered back.

Miri nodded. She was making her way out of the Noble Gallery when she heard Katar’s voice pierce the dome of the chamber.

“Mount Eskel wishes to speak.”

The chief delegate acknowledged her.

Miri froze where she was, her body iced with anticipation.

Katar walked around the table while speaking on the need for change, handing each delegate a copy of the charter. When she passed one up to the king, Miri could see her hand shook. But her voice was steady.

When she returned to her seat, the delegates and the king were absorbed in reading the charter. Katar opened her mouth, then shut it. She handed extra copies into the galleries and then stood, waiting for them to finish, her heels quietly bouncing. Whispers noised around the hall like the flap of bats.

“You are of Mount Eskel,” the king said slowly, “and I have reason to favor your province of late. So I will ask you politely. Who sponsors this charter?”

Katar looked into the Court Gallery. There was no movement.

The king swung around. “Who dared this yearling to present such a betrayal? Who challenges the power of the crown? Who?”

The members of court all seemed to have loose threads on their cuffs or pieces of fluff on their skirts that required immediate examining.

The queen stood. She was up behind the king, and with the members of court occupied with threads and fluff, no one saw her.

Speak
, Miri quarry-spoke. The word traveled through the stone, slick as a fish in water, and though Miri knew the queen would not understand, perhaps she could feel the rumblings of support through the linder at her feet.

Speak
, said Esa, with an image of the time Miri spoke up to the village council.

Speak
, said Frid, and Gerti and Katar too.

Speak
, came the soundless voices of the academy girls. It was a word of encouragement—a mother bird chirping to her young to flap their wings; a child impatient at a window, wishing for spring.

Miri saw Britta silently mouth the word.
Speak.

The queen took one step forward.

“I do,” she said, as quiet as a feather lands.

“What?” The king whirled in his chair to face her. “Did you say something in my Delegate House?”

His wife flinched. She glanced up at something on the wall that Miri could not see, but it appeared to give her courage. Her shoulders straightened, and she nodded.

“I sponsor this charter.”

The king looked about as if for something to hit. Queen Sabet descended the steps and grabbed his hand, holding it between both of hers. Miri noticed for the first time just how beautiful the queen was. She wore a deep purple dress, embroidered along the hems and sleeves with white flowers. Her black hair was up, also stuck with white flowers and a graceful plume. Gems sparkled at her ears and throat. Even in that crowded room, she stood out. And Miri realized that she must have chosen her attire with that intention. She had not come to the Delegate House to be forgotten in the corner. She had come to speak.

“It’s for you,” the queen said in a whisper, perhaps believing no one else could hear. But the rotunda picked up the sound and trilled the echo to the entire chamber. “Because I love Danland, and you are Danland. Because I love you, Bjorn.”

The king stared at her. The room was silent.

“Do you wish to voice displeasure?” the chief delegate asked the king.

Katar had said that if the king voiced displeasure for any motion and the delegation’s vote was not unanimous, the king had the right to remove the motion entirely.

“No,” he said, and leaned back heavily in his chair.

He knows
, Miri thought.
In order to preserve the monarchy, he must bend.

So the delegation debate began. It was not slow and accommodating as before. It was choppy and violent as a river thrashing white against rocks. Miri could barely follow the debate. It became noise to her, just cries in the air. The strain of waiting almost hurt, and she wished they would just vote.

Every person in the Commoner Gallery was standing up, many on tiptoe. The copies of the charter were passed from one to the next with a hungry urgency. The crowd seethed with energy and anticipation, their power like that of an ax raised up, poised to fall.

What would happen if the vote failed? Miri moved again toward the royal guards by the door. If she warned them, perhaps they could defend the Delegate House from an outside attack.

Messengers were sprinting now between the Commoner Gallery and outside. The leaders of the blue-banded would wait till the vote, Miri hoped. Moments after the charter failed, the thousands of commoners outside would know, and the delegates might as well throw a firebrand onto a heap of straw.

This is the spark
, Miri thought. She had created the spark for the revolution after all—the commoners would be enraged at the nobles for voting down the charter and so decidedly denying them rights. War would begin. And it would begin with killing, just as Sisela had predicted.

Miri reached the nearest guard.

“Sir,” she whispered, “I’m worried the crowds will turn violent.”

He tilted his head, meaning he could not hear her.

“Sir,” she said more loudly.

He shook his head and put a finger to his lips, and his attention returned to the delegates. She realized the guard must be a commoner and as eager to follow the debate as any.

“Please,” she said. “It will be a massacre. They’ll kill the king and the delegates and—”

“A vote!” the chief delegate cried. “A vote. Lords and ladies, rise if you support this charter.”

Not yet! Miri was not ready. Nothing was ready. She saw Katar stand and raise her hand to vote. Another female delegate followed, and a man with white at his temples. Three. Three of sixteen. That was nowhere near a majority! Miri stumbled forward, hoping to reach Britta and warn her to get Steffan away. Walking through the chamber was like trying to run underwater. The press of bodies was hot and tight, and she could no longer see the delegation table or the Court Gallery. Suddenly the noise level rose with shouts of surprise and alarm.

“Britta!” she cried, but the clamor doused any sound from her mouth.

The doors from outside flung open, and more blue-banded commoners pressed into the chamber. Miri choked back a scream. She pushed harder through the people and the noise that echoed off the rotunda in an ear-shattering shriek. The bedlam made her feel tipsy, as if she were on a ship. The shouts were high and tense, like the call of gulls. The shoves tore at her like wind.

She squeezed between two large men who were yelling with fists pumping the air, and suddenly the delegation table was before her. None of the delegates had been killed yet. She counted—sixteen, all standing there.

Sixteen. Standing.

Miri looked again. Yes, they were standing, each with the right hand raised in unanimous vote. Many of them were smiling. The shouts from the Commoner Gallery wound up the walls like smoke, and she recognized now the tones not of terror but of jubilation. They deepened, heightened, cheers rolling over cheers.

The chief delegate was speaking to the king, who nodded solemnly. The nobility in the Court Gallery looked stunned, even angry. But the delegates—nobles themselves—seemed relieved. Miri wondered if they had considered such a charter in the past, but had not dared.

Katar broke from the table and ran straight to Miri.

“It passed?” Miri asked, yearning for it to be true but too afraid to believe.

Katar nodded, her smile huge and dimpled. She clenched Miri in an embrace so tight Miri coughed for lack of breath.
She just needs practice
, Miri thought. Miri squeezed her back.

As if by some signal, the cheering slowed and then silenced. The building was full to bursting, hundreds of blue-banded commoners filling the floor and entrance. A commoner near the king bowed. Then he turned to face the queen and lowered one knee to the floor. In silence, hundreds of commoners did likewise—a bow to the king, a knee to the queen.