The False Princess

CHAPTER TEN

I stood, pressed against the scratchy bushes, and tried to think.
Had that really been what I thought it was? Was there no other explanation for what I had seen? Another spell, maybe, one that needed to be done at a certain time, to explain the strange hour. Or perhaps some remnant of the spell that had been performed on us as infants, some unforeseen mistake that needed fixing. Except that I knew the spell had to be renewed every so often, because the king had told me that was what had been done to me. Except that the shielded person had told her to remember none of this, had erased any memory of what had happened. Except that she had been under a spell of control, one that made her unable to resist.
I wrapped my free arm around myself and shook my head. No. I knew it in my bones, knew it in the same way I knew the blood running through my veins. I had lived under that spell my whole life, had seen it pulled off me in the Hall of Thorvaldor. And I knew, I knew that it was the same spell, only being renewed this time, instead of removed.
And she had no idea. I would have known it even if I hadn’t seen the glazed look on her face, hadn’t heard the command to forget this night’s work. I had sat and talked with her just that afternoon, though it seemed a lifetime ago. She had no idea. She truly thought she was Nalia, just as I had thought I was.
There was a snap in the bushes, and I whirled around, getting a face full of twigs and leaves, only to see a bird poke its head out of the foliage. It cocked its head at me, as if surprised to see a human standing there so early in the morning, and then flew off. I took a breath, trying to calm my racing heart.
Someone had lied to the king and queen, had brought them a second false princess, using the very spell that had fooled everyone about me for all those years. A sound, something between a laugh and a sob, croaked out of me. Philantha had been right; it was a clever spell indeed. So clever that someone was using it against the king and queen, knowing that they would never think to check closely to make sure the girl brought to them was the real princess. Who else would she be, after all, when so few people had known?
Only five people, I realized as bile rose in my throat, five people in all Thorvaldor. The king and queen had confided in three wizards: Flavian, who was dead, Melaina, and Neomar.
They might have told someone, I supposed dully. It might be someone other than them. But if Nalia—no, Orianne—was not the true princess, it spoke of a plot conceived long ago, when the infant princess was first switched for not one, but two other babies. If they were not guilty, they would not have told someone else, not then. Not early enough for that imaginary someone else to do anything about it. No, it must be one of them—Neomar or Melaina.
Melaina, with all her beauty and magic, ready to step into a place of power at the college as soon as Neomar retired. A baroness, one of the king and queen’s closest advisors. I felt sick thinking of it.
And Neomar, I realized, the sick feeling strengthening, another close advisor. A man who had refused to tell Philantha about the details of the spell, even after the princess had supposedly been restored, when it would do no harm for other wizards to learn the mechanics of what they had done.
I was shaking, and had been for a long time, if the fatigue that gripped my muscles was any clue. It was light now, the thin yellow light of true morning. What should I do? A vision of myself storming the palace in search of the king and queen, shouting news of my discovery to the rafters, filled my head and was squashed just as quickly. I could see the people of court whispering, murmuring to one another that I was making up stories out of vengeance or that my fall from grace had left me a little mad. I could see the king and queen shaking their heads, then ordering me sent from the city—or worse, locking me up for maligning the name of their lost daughter. I didn’t know that they would do such a thing, but the thought was enough to make me skittish. I imagined telling Philantha, but she was too odd, too ostracized for her strange ways to be believed with such a wild tale. I cast about for someone else, but my world was small now, too small for something like this.
Kiernan, I thought finally. He might not be a wizard or a member of the royal family, but he was my friend. And he was someone who, I hoped, would believe me. For now, that would have to be enough.
Feeling as weak as a newborn foal, I stepped from my hiding place among the bushes, back onto one of the many paths that wound through the palace gardens. But the gardens, usually so beautiful to my eyes, seemed full of dark places where anyone or anything could lurk unseen. I felt exposed as I started off toward the Dulchessy family’s chambers. Whoever the shielded figure had been was playing a dangerous game, and I had no reason to believe that person wouldn’t hurt anyone who found out about it. My neck prickled as I passed several gardeners about their business, and I hunched down, trying to avoid being noticed. I wished I had the power—and control—to place a sight shield on myself, but I didn’t.
Finally, after what felt like hours, I ducked inside the proper wing and turned the two corners to Kiernan’s rooms. He had his own quarters now, not within his family’s but connected to them. I glanced around and, seeing no one, rapped hard on the door four times. I also sent a small thanks to the Nameless God for Kiernan’s reluctance to allow his family’s serving people to stay with him at night—pranks were much too hard to pull with servants hovering around. At least I didn’t have to worry about talking my way past anyone to reach him.
It took a while for him to answer, so long that I was anxiously shifting from one foot to the other by the time he opened the door.
“Sinda?” he asked groggily, blinking at me.
“Let me in,” I gasped, then pushed past him without waiting for him to move aside. “Close the door!” I insisted after turning around and seeing him still standing there, the door half open.
Annoyance flashed across his face, but he shut the door. He was still wearing a long night shirt, and his bare toes curled against the cold stone floor. “I thought we weren’t speaking,” he said. “Have you come to apologize for acting like such a”—he shrugged, obviously looking for a word—“a princess?”
My jaw dropped, just a little. In my fervor, I had completely forgotten that Kiernan might not be happy to see me. “I—yes, no—I,” I stuttered, my tongue feeling thick and useless. “What I mean is—”
“What’s that?” Kiernan interrupted, pointing at the map still in my hands.
I had forgotten that, too. “King Kelman’s map. I translated it, the part we couldn’t read before, but that’s not—”
“You translated it?” The annoyance lessened slightly as a familiar, mischievous light brightened Kiernan’s eyes.
“Yes, I did, but—”
“I can’t believe it! What does it say?”
“Kiernan, please, listen—”
“Does this mean we’ll be able to find it?”
“Maybe, but—”
“We could go now! I’ll get dressed—”
“She’s not the princess!” I shouted.
He had been reaching for a pair of breeches hung over the back of the chair, but he stopped in midreach, confusion tightening his face. “What?”
I was breathing hard, raggedly, and darkness pricked the edges of my vision. Dropping the map on Kiernan’s bed, I grasped my elbows to try to stop the trembling of my arms. “I saw her, just now, with someone. The person did a spell, the same spell that they did on me, only in reverse. To keep it there instead of to take it off. She’s not the real princess, Kiernan. She’s not Nalia.”
Kiernan’s arm dropped heavily to his side. “Start over,” he said, his own voice abruptly raspy. “Start at the beginning.”
So I did. I told him about meeting Nalia and the feeling that had drawn me to her, about realizing that I could translate the runes on King Kelman’s map and what they said, about the way that only someone really royal could have ever opened the door, about coming to the palace and seeing the shielded person place a spell on Nalia. He didn’t speak, not in the whole time that I told the story. When I finished, he stood silently, then went over to a small table by his bedside, where a pitcher of water and a cup sat. Pouring the water into the cup, he handed it to me, and I gulped it down gratefully. It was only when I had drained the glass that he spoke.
“Sinda,” he said. It was too gentle, his voice, not at all like his normal one, and I flinched as if he had struck me.
“You don’t believe me,” I mumbled.
“I—” He ran a hand through his sleep-tangled hair and let out a whooshing breath. “I don’t want to believe you. I’m good with … games, pranks, little things that don’t matter. And if you’re right, this is definitely not little. I don’t want to believe in some sixteen-year-old conspiracy to place the wrong girl on the throne. I want to think that this is just some delusion you’ve made up, because you’re unhappy.”
“But I’m not, or I’m trying not to be.” Crumpling a handful of bedclothes, for I had had to sit down halfway through my story, I stared at my lap. “I know that I’m not the princess, that I never was. I’m not doing this out of … revenge or something. I’m not making this up, Kiernan.”
“But the spell—that spell that drew you toward her—Philantha said it was because part of your … essences being exchanged. Doesn’t that mean she has to be the princess?”
He sounded hopeful, as if I were a history master who had posed a particularly difficult question to which he had finally figured out the answer. “I don’t know. Maybe it just means that they had to put part of the real princess in both of us, and that’s what I’m feeling instead.”
He frowned again, briefly stymied, before saying, another blush of hope in his voice, “No, wait! Here’s a plan. We could ask her to come with us, to that place in the wall where Kelman’s door is. If she is the princess, it’ll open for her, and if she isn’t—”
“Then she’ll know she isn’t,” I cut in. “And then she’ll probably run straight to the king and queen and tell them.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?” Kiernan shook his head at me. “If she isn’t the princess, they’ll have to know, won’t they?”
I jerked to my feet, my hands balled into fists, and starting pacing. “Don’t you see?” I demanded. “Whoever did this, whoever I saw under that sight shield, is powerful, so powerful that they’re about to pull off a coup under the noses of the king and queen with absolutely no one the wiser. And this isn’t some sort of … game. They’ve been planning this for years, probably since before we were switched. And that makes them dangerous. If they see their plans being uprooted, they’ll do something to stop it. They might kill the king or queen. They’ll certainly try to hurt whoever exposed them, whoever found out about what they did.”
Kiernan blanched. “You. They’ll hurt you.”
“Us,” I corrected him. “You know, too, now. They’ll hurt us, or your family, or who knows how many other people. The stakes are too high, and they’ll be too afraid of losing.”
I turned on my heel, at the end of my line of pacing, then stopped. Squaring my shoulders, I stared at Kiernan. I wanted him with me, so badly that it was like a fire in my chest. I didn’t want to walk into this tangle of intrigue and power alone; I would, if I had to, but I didn’t want to. I wanted him, my friend, who had always managed to get us out of scrapes before, laughing all the while.
“I’m not making this up, Kiernan. I wish—Nameless God—I wish I were. But I’m not. And I’m scared. Please, you have to believe me.”
Kiernan bowed his head and closed his eyes, like someone shuttering a house against a coming storm. “I believe you,” he said softly. Then, raising his head and meeting my gaze, he said it again, more forcefully. “I do.”
I hadn’t realized how much tension I had been storing between my shoulders, but it fell away in a deluge, leaving me feeling weak and loose-limbed. For a moment, I couldn’t speak, but then I cleared my throat and said, “Well, good. Now we just have to figure out what we’re going to do about it.”
“Tell me again where the room was,” Kiernan said, glancing up at me from the floor of my room in Philantha’s house. We had left the palace as quickly as possible. I couldn’t help but imagine spells planted throughout its rooms, all designed to let whoever I had seen know of anyone talking as we had been. It was probably silly, but I couldn’t help it. Luckily, Philantha had left me a note saying that she was going to visit a friend in Flower Basket and wouldn’t be back until the evening, so no one would care if I spent the day with Kiernan.
“I was on my way to your room and I was walking by those tall bushes. You know, the ones you hid Laureli Montage’s doll under when you were eight.” Kiernan nodded, a smile twitching his lips at the memory.
“It was the … third window from the corner,” I said, squinting my eyes as I tried to remember.
Kiernan ruffled a hand through his hair. “I think that’s Berend Yari’s room.”
“The scholar?”
He nodded. “But he isn’t here now. He left weeks ago. Some trip to research the properties of Farvaseean lichen.” He snorted. “I overheard one of the librarians saying that she had received a letter from him just a few days ago, and he expected to be there until autumn. And besides, the man is … colorless. You can barely see him even when you’re talking to him. I don’t think he has the stomach for rebellion.”
I scowled. I had known it wouldn’t be that easy. No matter who had worked the spell on Orianne, it hadn’t been done in that person’s own room. “Do you think he would have let someone else use his room, if they threatened him, maybe?”
“I think he would wet himself and then faint if someone even mentioned a coup in front of him,” Kiernan said flatly. “More likely the person just used the room, so no one would see Nalia—Orianne—coming to their own. Which leaves us with—”
“Melaina and Neomar,” I finished. “I know.”
“Wizards. Really powerful wizards. The head of the college and his very likely replacement.” Kiernan groaned, then laid his head against the side of my bed. “Well, you know both of them better than I do. Which one do you think it is?”
It was a question I had been pondering myself. Unfortunately, though, Kiernan’s words were a bit optimistic. I didn’t really know either of them. Melaina was a baroness—her husband, the Baron of Saremarch, had died years before—so she attended court functions and sat in on council meetings. She had never been anything but polite to me, though I had mostly seen her at a distance. And yet she had always made me feel … strange when she looked at me, as if she could see into my thoughts. She was beautiful, as cool as dark water, so lovely that she made me feel even more awkward and shy whenever I saw her. I had never sought her out and, aside from those probing looks, she had never shown much interest in me. And Neomar, though he advised the king and queen in matters of magic, had spent most of his time at the college. He had always been much too busy to do more than nod at me in greeting, rarely even taking the time to meet my eyes. Neither had seemed, until now, a likely candidate to stage a coup.
But, I thought with a shiver, Neomar refused to tell Philantha about the spell. Why? Because he feared that, if she truly understood it, she would see through his plans? Maybe. And he had wanted her to tell him how I was progressing with my magic, wanted to keep an eye on me. Did that have something do to with this? Still, nothing explained why he wanted to place Orianne on the throne instead of the real Nalia.
I sighed and rubbed my temples. I was tired from my night of translation, and my thoughts felt like they were coming through thick sludge. “I don’t know,” I said. “But we have to do something. I can’t get to Melaina—she doesn’t keep regular rooms at the college. But you could … watch her, follow her maybe. And maybe we should go to the college, follow Neomar or break into his rooms or something.”
“Breaking and entering,” Kiernan said wryly. He had been watching me rub my head with a worried expression on his face. “I’m not sure those are the kind of wild oats my parents want me to get rid of, but they’ll do in a pinch.”
I laughed, which I think was what he wanted, but as the laughter subsided, he said, “But you’re sure we can’t go to the king and queen? They’ll be able to … do it properly. Haul people in and question them, search Neomar’s and Melaina’s rooms openly.”
“We can’t. They’ll think that I’m mad, or bent on revenge, and that I’ve—I don’t know—used my wiles on you to make you believe me.”
Kiernan raised an eyebrow. “Your wiles?”
I flushed, but pushed on. “The point is, they won’t believe us. It sounds crazy. And we might end up tipping off the traitor, letting them know that we know.”
Kiernan looked stubborn. “What about Philantha? She really likes you—I can tell. Maybe she could help us.”
I had thought Philantha too outcast from the wizard community to be much help, but Kiernan made me mull it over again. Maybe he was right. It would be a relief to have someone else on our side, and even Philantha would be better believed than me. I had started to nod when he continued, “After all, she’s a wizard. She knows both of them, knows things about—”
But I didn’t hear anything else. I felt cold and hot at once, as I remembered Philantha in her study, Neomar’s head bent close to hers as they looked at an ancient scroll. What had she said? We did start at the college in the same year, and even his prestige hasn’t stopped us being friends.
Could Philantha be part of it?
No. I shoved the thought away from me as soon as it surfaced. Silly, absentminded Philantha, who didn’t even want the prestige that wearing her wizards robes would bring, try to take over a kingdom? It was like trying to believe that a butterfly had designs on the throne. No, I was overtired and muddleheaded to have even thought it.
But she was Neomar’s friend, however improbable that friendship might seem. When she went to the college, I knew, she almost always saw him, if only to say hello. She was much more likely to believe him than me, especially when I had no evidence other than what I had seen. Would she tell him? Warn him that I might make accusations against him, because they had been friends?
Could I tell her only part of it? Make it seem that I thought it could only be Melaina, and have help at least with that investigation? No, I decided. Because it took only a small leap to go from Melaina to Neomar, and Philantha would surely make it. Which led me back to where I had been to start: with her possibly giving our hunt away.
Kiernan had seen that I had gone into my own head and sat waiting for me to come back, I realized. So I explained my thoughts to him. He didn’t like it, but finally he nodded reluctantly.
“So we can’t tell anyone until we’re sure we know who it is, until we have proof,” I finished. “Whoever did this is clever. If we don’t have proof, real proof, they’ll probably find a way to slip out of it. And speaking of proof, we should start by going to the college—”
“No.” Kiernan was standing in a flash, his hands on my shoulders, keeping me from getting up out of my chair. “You’re exhausted. You can barely keep your eyes open.”
“I’m fine,” I insisted, even as a rush of exhaustion rolled over me like an ocean wave.
“You’re not. Look, it’s not going to be as simple as getting into Neomar’s public study. He’s not going to keep evidence of regicide lying around where anyone can find it. You need to rest, and then we’ll go.”
But something Kiernan said stopped me from really hearing the last part of the sentence. “Regicide?” I asked.
Kiernan nodded. “You know. Killing of a monarch? I know she wasn’t a monarch yet, but she would have been, so …”
Slowly, through my fogged brain, it made sense. “You think the real Nalia is dead.”
He let his hands drop from my shoulders. “Isn’t she? If they switched Orianne for you, instead of the real Nalia, it stands to reason that they killed the princess then. So no one would notice a third infant in the switch. And if they’re going to put Orianne on the throne, they won’t want the real princess still alive somewhere.”
I shook my head. “She’s not dead, Kiernan. They need her, to keep the spell going. Without the real princess alive somewhere, the spell won’t work. Philantha told me she was almost sure about that. Whoever did this, they’ll know where she is. They’ll have kept her alive because without her their plan won’t work.”
I rose from the chair and took two steps to collapse on my bed. It was all catching up with me now, the whole long day; I wouldn’t be able to stay awake much longer. I managed to lift my heavy eyes to Kiernan, who stood watching me.
“This isn’t just a matter of finding out who planned this and exposing them,” I managed to say as fatigue washed over me. “Nalia is alive. The real princess is out there, Kiernan, and we’re going to have to find her.”