The False Prince (18 page)

V
eldergrath’s men decided to begin in the dungeons and work their way up. So we made our way to the upper floor, keeping ourselves as far from the men as possible.

“This is a terrible idea,” Tobias whispered as we walked. “If they do get into the tunnels, we’ll be trapped.”

“Then we go onto the roof and make our escape there,” I said.

Roden’s eyes widened, but he nodded his agreement. Tobias seemed even more anxious. “The roof? And fall to our deaths?”

“I’ve been there,” I said. “We won’t fall.”

“Then let’s go now,” Roden whispered.

“There’s too much chance of us being spotted if he’s sent men to search the grounds or guard the doors. Veldergrath is no fool, so we must expect that he’s done that. Going onto the roof is our last option.”

We reached the upper floor using a tunnel that put us near the nursemaid’s bedroom. I wondered if any children who once lived here had used the tunnels to play tricks on their caregivers. It’s what I would’ve done.

Temporarily safe from Veldergrath’s men, Roden nodded at the emerald box in my hands. “Is that the box Veldergrath was talking about?”

“Probably.”

“What’s in it?”

“It’s locked.”

“You don’t seem curious,” Tobias said.

“I’d have to break the box to get into it here, and I won’t do that. Whatever its contents, we’ll find out soon enough.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Roden asked, “Sage, did you know you looked so much like the prince?”

“I always felt I looked more like myself than anyone else.” I grinned, then shrugged. “I’m too scarred for a prince. Too many calluses and rough edges. A similar face may not be enough. Besides, what we saw is only a painting, an artist’s interpretation of what Jaron looked like. Have either of you ever seen the royal family in person?”

Neither of them had. Roden observed, quite accurately, that royalty rarely visited orphanages, or invited poor orphans to state dinners.

“The king came through Carchar about a year ago,” I said. “So I stood on the street to see him. He looked right at me as he passed — I could’ve sworn he did. Everyone was supposed to bow to him, but I didn’t.”

“Why not?” Tobias asked. “Honestly, Sage, have you no respect?”

“An Avenian bow to a Carthyan king? Wouldn’t that dishonor the king of Avenia?”

Tobias’s groan was muffled by Roden, who asked, “So what happened?”

“A soldier clubbed me across my calves. That sent me to my knees, and I was in no hurry to get up again. For a moment I thought King Eckbert would stop the entire procession, but he didn’t. He only shook his head and continued on.”

Roden chuckled softly. “It’s a wonder you’ve lived so long. If Conner doesn’t choose you, it will only be because you’re too reckless to trust on the throne.”

“I can’t deny that. My point is that people don’t always look the same in real life as they do in their paintings. My resemblance to a five-year-old painting doesn’t matter. Facing the regents is the real test.”

We immediately fell silent when footsteps clambered up the stairs near us.

“How many?” Tobias mouthed.

I shook my head. Maybe four or five men, but it was impossible to tell for sure. We heard several other men still on the floor below us.

They spread out, each of them taking one area of the upper floor to search. One of Conner’s servants was with them to open any locked door or cupboard.

“There’s a lot of storage up here,” one man said.

“All the better for a hiding place,” another said. “Check every trunk, beneath every bed.”

“He wouldn’t hide a prince in a dusty room like this.”

“We search everywhere,” the first man ordered.

My spirits lifted a little. There was no mention of secret passageways, which there would have been if any entrances had been found downstairs. It didn’t appear they even suspected these tunnels were in the house.

Suddenly, Tobias grabbed my arm. He leaned very close to me and whispered, “I hid papers in our room. If they find them, they’ll know we’re here.”

I threw out my hands in a gesture to ask him where the papers were.

He leaned in again. “I cut a small hole in the side of my mattress. If they move it, feathers will fall out and they’ll see the hole.”

He drew back with an apologetic look on his face, but I could only shake my head. Judging by the thoroughness of the search on this floor, it was too much a risk that they might find those papers.

I motioned for them to stay where they were. My feet would move quietly enough that I could pass through the tunnel undetected. Tobias and Roden might not.

I crept down the narrow stairs of the tunnel. One of the steps was loose, and I was concerned that when I pulled off the wood plank it would make too much noise, like it had before. There were a few small squeaks, but I moved so slowly they didn’t seem to draw any attention.

The imitation of Prince Jaron’s sword was lodged inside. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use it, but I wasn’t about to go out there without a weapon of some sort. With the sword in my hand, I inched open the door to our bedroom. A few men still remained on our floor, but they seemed to be nearer to Conner’s room. I didn’t think they’d come my way yet.

Our bedroom had been scrubbed of any evidence of our having been here. Now it looked like a little-used guest room. The wardrobes were empty, our books were gone, and the beds were pushed into a line of three near the wall.

Tobias’s bed was the farthest from my hiding place.

I crept along the floor, hardly suitable for a gentleman or whatever Conner had turned me into, but very familiar from my life as an orphan. Once in a conversation with Mrs. Turbeldy, I compared myself to a caterpillar that went wherever I wanted with barely any notice. She compared me to a cockroach instead, who ran about freely in the darkness and scattered in the light. It was meant as an insult, but I thought it was a fair comparison, even a compliment judging by how hard they are to catch.

I crawled beneath what had been my old bed and then Roden’s. Finally, to Tobias’s, the last in the line. I was about to reach my arm up to feel around his mattress, and then froze. Footsteps were coming down the stairs.

“We’re going to search this floor now,” the man in charge of the others said.

“Julston! We need your men in here now,” someone called from the hallway near Conner’s room. “There’s a lot of heavy furniture in here.”

“So we get the sore backs and he gets the glory in whatever we find,” someone outside my bedroom complained. But they went anyway.

I only had a few minutes. It was simple to find the hole in Tobias’s mattress. He’d cut it well, so that it would always remain covered and so that no feathers would fall from it unless the mattress were overturned. The papers were right inside, tightly folded. I tucked them into my pocket and then crawled back to the doors. I was about to dart safely into the tunnels when a voice said, “Did anyone hear that? Like footsteps inside the walls.”

I rolled my eyes. Was it Roden’s or Tobias’s carelessness that would reveal us?

It sounded as if the man began to call out someone’s name, then he cried out in pain. I pressed myself against the wall, and only a second later, Imogen ran into my room, looking for a place to hide. In her hands was a fireplace poker. She must have hit the man with it.

My heart pounded. Imogen had successfully distracted him from the tunnels, but she was about to pay dearly for having saved us.

W
here are you?” the man growled. Imogen back-stepped as he entered the room, holding the poker like it was a sword.

He was a big man, with a belt that had been stretched to its limits to fit around him. Even to protect us, Imogen never should have attacked him. She had no chance against this man.

He advanced and she swung at him, but this time he grabbed the poker. With one twist, he pulled it from her hands and yanked her toward him. “Who are you hiding here?” he asked. “Veldergrath will want to talk to you.”

Imogen tried to resist his grip, but it was pointless. Finally, she wrenched up her face, then stomped on his foot with all her strength. He released her only for a second and she tried to run, but he grabbed her again and shook her by the shoulders.

“Oh no, you’re coming with me,” he snarled.

By that time, I had crept to within only a few feet from him, my sword out and ready. Imogen didn’t mean to betray me. She glanced my way for only a second, but it was enough. The man pushed her to the floor and with surprising agility swung around with the poker, swiping hard enough to make a swishing noise in the air.

I ducked to avoid his attack and thrust my blade deep into his gut. He gasped as blood leaked from his wound, then for the first time really looked at me. “Prince Jaron?” he whispered.

“Perhaps soon,” I said as he toppled over.

Imogen ran into my arms, holding me so tightly that she nearly knocked me over. Her entire body was shaking, so I put my arm around her to try to calm her. One hand clawed into my wounded back, which I couldn’t have tolerated if it was anybody but her causing me the pain.

Then she darted back from me, hearing a sound behind us. I swung around, ready with the sword, then lowered it when I saw Mott in the doorway.

Mott’s eyes went from the man on the floor to the sword to me. “Drop the sword and get out of here,” he whispered. “Now.”

I gently set the sword on the floor, then took Imogen’s hand and pulled her into the tunnel. Before I shut the door behind us, I saw Mott use the dead man’s knife to stab himself in the arm. Reeling, he pulled the knife out, then fell on the floor.

Several of Veldergrath’s men ran into the room. “What happened here?” one of them, a leader of the group, asked.

Mott rolled over. Whether he was exaggerating his pain or not, I believed his performance. “Your man attacked me,” he mumbled. “I might have startled him when I came in, but it was only to assist him with unlocking these doors.”

One of Veldergrath’s men knelt down to examine Mott’s injury. “You’re lucky it wasn’t deeper, or in a more vital area.”

“I tried to dodge out of the way. He was aiming for my chest. I had to defend myself.”

“You must have provoked him!”

Mott shook his head. “You saw me walk in here. I had no reason to attack this man. Perhaps I should report to your master and mine exactly how this search is going.”

“Get rid of that body,” the leader said. “Veldergrath doesn’t want damage done to Conner’s property. One of you clean up this blood.”

A few men went to look for cleaning supplies, and after wrapping him in sheets from Roden’s bed, it took most of the rest of them to haul the body out of the room. Mott assured them he could get himself bandaged and was soon left alone.

He glanced at the crack of the opened passage door I’d been staring through, then nodded at me.

I closed the door tightly and sank against the wall with my arms wrapped around my knees. Imogen sat silently beside me. I vaguely felt her presence, but took no notice of it. As it was, all I could do was stare into the darkness and try to keep breathing.

Conner said he would let the devils have his soul if it meant succeeding with his plan. I had the feeling that when he did, the souls of all the rest of us would go to the devils too.

I
mogen and I remained there until the search ended and Veldergrath’s company of men left. Conner himself came to claim us in the tunnels. He found Tobias and Roden first, and then they walked downstairs through the tunnels to find us.

Conner offered me a hand from where I still sat on the floor, numb. I’d never killed before, not even accidentally or for defense or for whatever label they would attach to it tonight. My only intention had been to stop him from harming Imogen, and without alerting anyone else in the house to my presence. That at least had been accomplished, but it had come at a heavy price.

And as hard as I tried to avoid the comparison, in that moment, I had seen myself as Cregan, sending a deadly arrow into Latamer’s chest, all to protect Conner’s unholy plan. Every feeling within me was pain, so I hollowed it out and barely acknowledged Conner’s greeting when he saw me.

I took his hand, but he did more work in pulling me up than I did with any effort to lift myself. I could tell from there that the imitation of Prince Jaron’s sword was gone. Mott must have taken it with him when he went to get bandaged. Conner led us into the bedroom, where I sat on my bed. Roden sat next to me, Tobias took a stool for himself, and Imogen stood, keeping herself apart from the rest of us. Mott was already in the room when we entered. His arm was bandaged and his face was grim. It was obvious where the floor had been scrubbed of blood.

Conner addressed Imogen first. “May I assume that you were in the tunnels because you were somehow involved in the death of that man?”

Imogen nodded, slowly.

“It was my fault,” I said. “I thought I struck him low enough to avoid any major damage.”

“It was for good reason,” Mott said. “We all know what would’ve happened if you hadn’t acted, not only to Imogen but to you boys as well.”

I knew, yet even that was not enough to make me feel better.

“But why were you out of the tunnels in the first place?” Conner asked. “You so easily might have been found.”

Imogen drew in a breath and opened her mouth. She would speak to take the blame, but reveal the one secret that had protected her ever since coming to Farthenwood.

Cutting her off, I withdrew Tobias’s papers. “These were left in this room, and if found, would have been damaging evidence about us.”

Mott took the papers and handed them to Conner. He opened them, read a little, then said, “You wrote these, Tobias?”

“Yes, sir.” His voice trembled when he spoke, and I wondered what was in them.

“You are a thorough record keeper. More fit to be a king’s scribe than a king, I think.”

Tobias lowered his eyes. “Yes, sir.”

Then Conner turned to me, his expression different from before. Was it respect? Gratitude? I’d so rarely been looked at in any favorable way, I couldn’t recognize it. He said, “If these papers had been found, none of us would be here tonight. Veldergrath’s men were exceptionally thorough, but Mott was able to cover up your presence through his own brave act. Veldergrath left here embarrassed and disgusted when his most tedious search turned up no evidence of either you or that emerald box.”

“But he was right,” I mumbled. “You are plotting a false ascension to the throne, and you did steal that box from King Eckbert.”

“Neither of which I make any apologies for.” Conner’s expression cooled. “Do you want the throne, Sage? Do you want me to choose you?”

It wasn’t in me to care how I answered. “I accept the throne if the alternative is for Veldergrath to take it.” My voice sounded as tired as I felt.

“That’s not the same thing. Tell me that you will be a good and noble king, that you want to claim the hand of the betrothed princess, and that you are glad I’ve done this for you. Lie if you must, but tell me that you want it.”

I stared at him with a blank expression. “Aren’t you tired of lies? I am.”

Conner sighed heavily. “I would choose you, Sage, but for that. There is one thing that you must never tire of, not for the rest of your life, and that is the lie. The person I choose must have the lie so settled in his heart that he truly believes he is king, that he ceases to think of his own name and answers only to Jaron’s. He must become so convinced of his lies that, were his own mother to appear at his side and call to him, without shedding a single tear he would tell her he is sorry she’s lost her son, but he is the child of Eckbert and Erin. The person I choose must recall memories of a royal upbringing that never happened. And he must do all these things, every day, for the rest of his life, never once regretting the lie that brought him there.”

I barely heard him and only stared at the scrubbed area on the floor. Imogen caught my eye and offered a grateful and sympathetic smile. At least she was safe.

Conner turned to Roden. “Can you tell the lie, Roden, for the rest of your life?”

He sat up straighter. “I can, sir.”

Conner motioned to Imogen. “Bring the boys a supper here in their room. Each of you get a good night’s sleep because morning will come early. Roden, you are my prince. You and I depart for Drylliad after breakfast.”