The Rat Prince (12 page)

“Eeek!” said Rose, shrinking back.

“At last you are properly frightened by a rat, my lady.” I smiled at her before turning to close the door. Then I took the velvet-cushioned seat opposite her and leaned forward. “We must talk.”

She brightened, smiled back at me, and took my hands in hers. “Oh, Blackie—I mean, Char—look at you! Why, you are so
human
. Does it hurt?”

“No.” I tried to think what to tell her first.

She saw my hesitation and misinterpreted it as confusion. “You must be wondering how this came to pass. You also must think I rejected the beautiful gown you gave me! Not so. Wilhemina destroyed it, and left me behind when she took her daughters and my father to the castle.”

Outrageous! I suppressed a strong desire to curse.

She squeezed my hands. “I'm sorry the goddess, er, changed you and your friends like that. Please believe me, I did not ask it of her.”

The tenderness in her voice gave me an odd feeling in my chest. “Thank you, Lady Rose. The change was disturbing, unsettling, yet I'm fast becoming used to it.” In fact, I was beginning to realize I may have misjudged humans my entire life, which is a hard admission for a rat to make.

“Truly? You're very brave. I was so worried about you,” she said with an admiring glance. “And Frump-Bum, too, of course.”

“His name is Swiss,” I replied absently, my head full of the need to get past Ashiira's spell and warn Rose about Prince Geoffrey. “And the coachman is Truffle. She is—or was—a female. See here, though, we have more weighty matters to discuss.” I leaned back and let go of her hands.

Her face fell.

“That is to say,” I amended, “I am deeply honored to make your acquaintance in this magical manner, but I must tell you most pressingly—” My tongue ceased to move. I had run up against Ashiira's boundary of bewitchment. “My lady—” I struggled to form my thoughts in a way that could outwit the spell.

“Please call me Rose. After all, we're old friends, you and I.”

The interior of the carriage was not large, and her nearness was having a disconcerting effect on my thinking. To be precise, it was most difficult to think at all. So rather than showing appreciation and elaborating upon the theme she'd raised, I said the first thing that sprang to my lips.

“My lady, I appear to the world to be your servant. I believe it is not the done thing for a footman to call his lady by her name.”

She sat up. “Very well,” she said in a lofty voice. “If you do not wish to be upon familiar terms with me … Sir.”

This would never do. “On the contrary, Rose. I shall use your name in private, with great joy.”

At that she laughed, grew a bit pink, and then gave me a confused look. “You called me your lady. How do you know about proper forms of address, and … and everything? You have been a, well, a rat.”

“We rats know your world. We watch. We listen.”

“So every one of you understands human speech?”

“Some of us can even read.”

“Of course you read. I ought to have realized! You gave me my ancestor's book and showed me the relevant passage. My goodness, Char. How could I have been so blind to the fact that you and your people are, well … people? I fear I've been quite foolish.”

“No, no, my lady, do not say such things.” I reached out to touch her hair. It was fine as spun sugar. I quickly dropped my hand. “You deserve great praise. You are resourceful and persevering—like a rat.”

She blushed and appeared pleased with my compliments.

I would have given her more of them, but this was not the moment. We were hurtling toward potential disaster. I needed information, and I needed it now. I reasoned that although the goddess had forbidden me to prevent Rose from attending the ball, I would nonetheless be allowed to question her. “My lady, do you truly desire to marry Prince Geoffrey?” There. The spell had not stopped me from asking. I'd been right.

The pleasure left Rose's face and she folded her arms across her chest, while I felt the collar around my human neck getting uncomfortably tight.

Then she replied, “Before today, I might have considered marriage with Prince Geoffrey if it turned out that we were suited, because it would solve my family's worries. But I could not marry him now in any case.”

My heart leapt. “Why not?”

Her eyes widened. “Need you ask? Just look at what the goddess Ashiira has done!” She glanced down at her shimmering self. “I would be ashamed to marry someone who fell in love not with me, but with an enchantment. To ensnare a man's heart without his free will—why, it's the sort of thing my stepmother would do. In fact, it's exactly what she did to my dear, confused papa.”

“I assure you, Prince Geoffrey does not require or deserve your sympathy. Rather,
urgh
—”

Canines and cattails! Ashiira had stopped my mouth again.

Rose misinterpreted my sudden silence. “Are you in pain? Perhaps you require time to get used to your new, er, human mouth.”

Time was just what we didn't have. “Rose, I wish to be your champion. How might I best serve you tonight?”

“Thank you! I am in the most desperate trouble, Char,” she said. “You are aware of how bad things have been since Wilhemina came to Lancastyr Manor.”

“Yes, indeed,” I said with feeling.

“At the ball, I hope to find someone to help save my father—maybe even the prince himself will come to my aid.”

Stay away from him!
I wanted to shout.

“And there is more,” she continued. “While you were a rat—listening and watching, as you say—did you ever overhear the rumors that my stepmother might have had a hand in her first husband's death?”

“What?” I gasped. “No.” I wondered how on earth we'd missed this.

She quickly explained, and suddenly a number of things made sense that had seemed mysterious before. “So that is why you hang about the kitchens!”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Did you, like everyone else, think me a coward and a cloth-head?”

I coughed and avoided the question. “Rose, I honor you. You are most courageous and intelligent and— Wait, let us think.”

She tilted her head to the side, causing her silky hair to dangle in fetching loops.

I forced myself not to gaze at her openmouthed like a fool. Instead I said, “I think you cannot expect help from Prince Geoffrey if he falls in love with you, and then you reject his hand in marriage. He will likely be angry.”
And I shall break his neck if he tries to take a sword to yours.

“Hmm.” She appeared to consider this. “I'm afraid you're right. Still, if my father's old friends Sir Tompkin and Lord Bluehart are there, we may approach them instead of the prince.”

I replied, “I don't think so, my lady. We rats noticed that those ‘friends' never even took the trouble to visit you after your father remarried. Why would they help us now? Let us instead take decisive, permanent action. You lure Lady Wilhemina out to the darkest part of the garden, where Swiss and Truffle and I will be waiting. We'll dispatch her and leave her in the bushes. No one will suspect us. And even if they did catch us, what could they do once we turn back into rats at midnight?”

“Char!” she shrieked. “You cannot mean to kill her?”

I stared. “Of course.”

“But you must not.”

She took hold of my shoulders and brought her delicately curved face right up to mine. This had a dizzying effect.

“Char, I understand you want to help me, and that you want to be rid of Wilhemina to protect your fellow rats. As for the latter, Wilhemina does not realize that rats have souls and personalities of their own. She doesn't think of killing rats as murder.”

I clamped down on my emotions. I already was cognizant of these unhappy facts and replied with bitterness, “But my people are in fear for their lives, Rose.”

“You speak truly, and Wilhemina must be stopped. But some other way. Think of Jessamyn, and even the dreadful Eustacia. They would be orphaned,” she said.

I hardened my heart. “Better to have no mother than a mother like that one.”

“Do you think Jessamyn and Eustacia would agree?”

I said nothing. She hadn't convinced me. The more I considered it, the more I was sure that Ashiira had given me human form in order to save the house of Lancastyr as well as my fellow rats.

How could Rose not see?

I heard Ashiira's voice in my memory:
Become a man.
I thought I'd understood what she had meant, but perhaps there was more to it.

“As you wish,” I said at last. “I will not take Wilhemina's life tonight, nor will Swiss or Truffle.” The words were carefully chosen, for I already had a notion of who might be maneuvered into carrying out justice this evening if I played the game with precision. “Instead, I will help you seek aid from your father's friends to rid ourselves of Wilhemina. How do you propose to get me inside the castle?”

She narrowed her eyes, assessing me. “Your attire is so fine, you can certainly pass as a gentleman. Remain inside the carriage here with me. When we arrive, I shall introduce you as my very distant cousin, from a far kingdom, whose ways are somewhat strange.”

“Will being your distant relation allow me to follow you wherever you go?”

“It depends.” She arched a brow. “Perhaps we should make you a member of the nobility for tonight. What honorary title shall we give you?”

“I already have a title,” I answered. “A real one.”

“You do?”

Her surprise was somewhat insulting. “I am Prince Char, ruler of the Northern Rat Realm.”

Her huge eyes, a far clearer green than the emeralds about her neck, grew even larger. “You are a prince?”

“
The
prince. There is never a king of the rats. Or, you might say, the prince is the king. And that would be me.”

I waited for her reaction to this news. I'd hoped at least for an
Oh, Char, how marvelous!
or perhaps,
Well done, you!

But after a few moments elapsed and it seemed she would make no comment, I concealed my disappointment and said, “Right, then. Is there any human kingdom called the Northern Realm of which you are aware?”

“No,” she said in a faint voice.

“Then we will be safe. I shall mingle with the humans and use a slight variation of my real title, Prince of the Northern Realm. Allow me to inform Swiss, my royal councillor, of our plans.”

I made as if to return the way I'd come, but she grabbed my coat to hold me back. “Forgive me,” she said, “but you cannot mean to climb out there again?”

“Why not?” I shrugged. “It was quite enjoyable the first time.”

“I shall ask the driver to stop,” she said.

“If you insist.”

She did so, and I took a moment to let Swiss, Truffle, and even the mice-horses know what we were up to. I instructed Swiss to follow me and Rose into the castle, in the guise of my personal guard. As a precaution, I had Swiss switch his tunic with Truffle, to make us look less like a matched set of footmen, and I untied the ribbon holding back my queue, letting the longish dark locks fall about my shoulders. Then I reentered the carriage with my lady, and we approached the castle at a more sedate pace.

There was a strange quiet between us. I was sorry for it. “Have I offended you in some way, Rose?”

“Oh, no, Your Highness.”

“I thought we'd agreed to call each other by our first names when alone.”

“Prince Char, why did you give me the magic ring?”

“I wanted to comfort you and give you courage.”

“Yes, Char, but why?”

Had she not figured it out yet? Even though she had no real sense of smell or the aid of sensitive whiskers, I should think the truth would have been more than obvious to her by now.

“Because you are as kind and noble as the best of rats,” I began.

“Oh!” she cried. Her hand went to her breast.

I hesitated. Was that a good sort of
Oh
, or a bad sort of
Oh
? Should I go on, or should I leave my deepest feelings unsaid?

The coach came slowly to a stop. I moved aside the blue silk curtain from the window and saw looming stone towers, blazing torches, and many well-dressed people being helped from their conveyances.

I looked over at her. I could not read her expression. “I did not know it at the time, but there was another reason I gave you the ring. I am in love with you, Rose. My heart is yours.”

Her apple-pink lips parted and she drew in a breath.

I added: “And may I just say, I quite admire those pretty glass slippers.”

 

C
INDERELLA

He loves me.

The handsome, dashing, noble prince I had always dreamt of was sitting right across from me in this coach.

He'd befriended me when I was a menial in my own father's house, and he'd given me everything in his capacity to give. Kindness, loyalty, hope, food. When he told me why he admired me, he had mentioned not my beauty, but my character.

He loves me.

And witness his bravery! Thrust into a man's body and a human world, he seemed confident of his ability to master whatever came his way. His concern was not for himself, but for me and the lives of his people.

He was everything a girl could ask for.

He also happened to be a rat.

Earlier, when Char had boldly reached out and touched my hair with tender reverence, I'd made no protest, though I doubtless should have.

I shivered with secret delight.

He is in love with me.

But before I could respond to his declaration, the doors of the coach were flung open, the steps were unfolded, and Swiss handed me down to the red carpet leading up the grand staircase of Castle Wendyn.