The False Princess

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The next few days passed in a haze. I knew that I should be on my guard, should be watching out for another assassination attempt by Melaina or, at the very least, her spies. Perhaps, though, she felt it too dangerous or too soon for another large-scale attack, because no ill befell me. But even without that worry, I knew I should be thinking about Nalia. I was going to have to sneak out of Vivaskari without Melaina realizing it and go looking for her in the very seat of danger: Saremarch, Melaina’s own holdings. I should be thinking about protecting my own skin and saving the kingdom.
I couldn’t think about anything but Kiernan. Sometimes it was in anger, over his leaving me. He had betrayed me, I sometimes felt. But most other times, I understood. I was set on this course, one that had so little chance of succeeding. Even the oracle had given me only a one in three chance of surviving. I could see that he wouldn’t want to watch me die. So I was torn between feeling betrayed and wanting to throw myself into his arms and demand that he love me forever.
It had been different when I was the princess. Then I had looked at his flirtations with other girls and at least told myself that his heart lay there. It had been easy to think that, even though he always returned to me after every infatuation, he wanted only my friendship. And he must have held it in, kept his true feelings to himself, knowing that I would never have been allowed to marry a minor lord of Rithia, no matter what his parents might hope. I would marry for political reasons; we had both known that. There had been no reason to acknowledge that we could ever be anything more than friends. But still, it had been a thin fa?ade, one that I could have seen through, if I had wanted to.
And when I was no longer the princess? Had I known? If I really looked, had I known? Yes, I had to admit, I had. But it was like knowing that you need air to breathe or water when you’re thirsty. Something I knew, but without ever thinking about it, without even really considering it. I had held Kiernan’s heart for so long that I had forgotten I had it, tucked away beneath my own.
So, yes, I had known. Hadn’t his face inserted itself between Tyr and me, no matter how I tried to forget it? Hadn’t I felt somehow guilty when I’d kissed Tyr, as if I were betraying Kiernan? And hadn’t he come looking for me in Treb, hadn’t he been with me every day he could since I returned to the city? I had told Philantha otherwise, but hadn’t I felt strange with him for weeks, awkward, knowing somewhere inside me that things between us were changing?
Or maybe they weren’t changing. Maybe they were just now becoming what they had always wanted to be.
What I wanted them to be.
Because I did. I had felt it in that one kiss, how things could be. And I wanted it. Oh, how I wanted it.
But I had thrown it all away, by putting that spell on Kiernan against his will, by keeping him from doing what he thought he must do to protect me. I had seen the look of shock on his face when I used my magic on him. I didn’t know how he would be able to forgive me, after that.
I had destroyed my chance at happiness with the one person who had always understood me.
All to save the kingdom that had abandoned me, or maybe just to prove to myself that I was worth something.
But if I thought I could wallow in my own problems for long, I was mistaken. I learned that five days after the storm, as I stood in line at the apothecary’s shop.
“It’s the king,” the woman in front of me was telling the apothecary. “He’s ill. His physicians are all at the palace, and half the wizards from the college, too. They aren’t letting much out, but I heard a rumor about redvein fever.”
The apothecary leaned forward across the counter. “Redvein fever?” he exclaimed, shaking his head. “When it comes on so quickly, the patient is likely to die. I—” He broke off, staring at me over the other woman’s shoulder. “Young lady, are you all right?”
For I had swayed without realizing it, reaching out blindly to steady myself against the wall. Redvein fever. I closed my eyes and shivered. Neomar. He had gone to the country because of redvein fever. And the oracle, she had died of it as well. One who could have threatened Melaina’s plan and one who knew of it, and felt guilty. So strange, that they should catch the same disease. It was a rare disease, after all. Stranger, that the king should catch it as well.
Too strange.
I shook myself. “Fine, I’m fine,” I said. “But the king—did they say if it was bad?”
The woman looked troubled. “Aye, child. They say he’s slipped into fevered dreams already, and none can call him out of them. The queen and princess are by his side, day and night.”
I bought the herbs Philantha wanted without even glancing at them. On the way home, it seemed that around every corner I found people talking about the king. They whispered that the physicians could do nothing, nor the wizards. They murmured that the princess looked so grave and beautiful, even in her grief, so much older than her years. And with every step, I became more sure.
Melaina was behind this. She had sent the illness by magic, killing her sister all those years ago, so she wouldn’t have a change of heart and tell their secret. She had caused Neomar to become ill so that he would have to leave the city for the country, where he would never have the chance to notice the spell they had created still active on Orianne. Perhaps he, too, lay dying even now. And now she would kill the king, so that Orianne could become queen, making her that much more bound to the throne.
I had not moved quickly enough.
Kiernan, I thought suddenly, I wish you were here. Here, walking beside me, to tell me that it was not too late, that we would go and find Nalia and put everything to rights. To put his arm around me so that I could press my face against his shirt and shake with worry for the man I had thought my father. To smile his reckless smile and say that, together, we would find a way.
The yearning in me was so strong that I looked up, almost believing that he would be standing before me. But he wasn’t there. I could only hunch my shoulders and press my way through the crowds of whispering people, feeling small and all alone.
So while the city held its breath, waiting for the king to live or die, I prepared to dethrone the girl it thought was the princess. I did so carefully, sneakily, always looking over my shoulder for Melaina or her spies. It slowed me down so that what should have taken little more than a day took four. I bought food supplies under the cover of running errands for Philantha’s cook and convinced Philantha that the entire household should have new boots so that I might have some, too. I arranged to rent a horse from a stable while visiting one with Tarion, under the pretence of helping him carry home several bags of feed. During a trip with Philantha to the college library, I found a map of northern Thorvaldor, one that showed Saremarch in detail, and felt no qualms about tucking it under my cloak and leaving with it. I hid the pages I had ripped out of the genealogies under a loosened floorboard under the bed in my new room, along with the copper container that held the oracle’s confession. After a second thought, I put King Kelman’s map with them, just to keep it safe. I practiced spells that would make me appear older or younger, blonde or red-haired. Even then, though, with such high stakes in front of me, I could feel the magic clenched inside, stoppered up so that it was almost useless, and my letting it out only a dribble at a time.
Finally, though, I decided that I had done all I could, short of mounting a horse and riding out the gates of Vivaskari. The only thing I had not done was tell Philantha I was leaving.
If I could have, I would have dithered and put off telling her for as long as possible. I had no ready lie this time; I had deliberately not fabricated one because I felt, somehow, that it might taint my quest. But I couldn’t tell her the truth either. Finally, though, when all my things were packed, I forced myself to walk down the hall to her study and knock on the door.
“Come in, come in! Look at this,” she demanded as soon as I had shut the door. She held up a long snakeskin, thin and papery. “Now, I think that, if we apply Tabitha’s law, we’ll be able to—well, it’s hard to explain, but I’ll show you and then—”
“I’m leaving, Philantha,” I interrupted softly.
She paused, blinking once, and then hurried on, “Well, I have to say it is an inconvenient time—I’d much rather you stayed to help me with this. In fact, I insist. You can go see Kiernan this evening. Now—”
I shook my head and laid a hand on her thin arm. “No. I mean, I’m leaving the city. I have—I have something I have to do. I wish I didn’t, but I can’t ignore it anymore. I have to go, and I don’t know when I’ll be back.” I felt miserable—scared and alone and deserting Philantha in the process.
Laying the skin down on a table, Philantha turned her bird-bright eyes to me. They searched my face, and I wondered if she would be able to see the truth there. Melaina would have ripped the facts from my mind with magic, but Philantha only nodded. “I can see that,” she said. “But never fear. All this”—she swung a hand out to indicate her study—“will be here when you get back.”
No judgment, no questions, just simple acceptance. It made me want to tell her so badly that I nearly spilled the entire story there at her feet, just to have someone else behind me, to let someone else know.
I wavered, unsure, teetering on the brink of telling or not telling. But finally, when I should have opened my mouth, I didn’t. Whether from fear for her safety, or what Kiernan had said—that I wanted to find the princess all alone—or both, I couldn’t tell. Whether that was weakness or strength on my part, I couldn’t tell. So I only smiled a shaky smile, nodding in agreement, and left the study as quietly as I had come. I picked up my bag from my room and walked out Philantha’s door toward the stable where I had arranged to rent a horse. I didn’t look back at the house, or behind it, toward the palace where the king lay dying and the second false princess sat worrying over him, and where Kiernan surely walked the halls, wondering if I had gone. I did not look back at all. I was scared that, if I did, I wouldn’t have the courage to go on.
The holdings of Saremarch lay just two days’ journey from Vivaskari. I wanted to fly down the road, but I feared that a lone girl in a hurry would attract the wrong sort of attention. I also had a healthy sense of my own vulnerability; the roads near Vivaskari were generally safe, but lone travelers could still tempt thieves and other desperate sorts. So I traveled moderately, trying to stay near farmers’ wagons or merchant caravans, people who might help me if I started screaming. I knew that, if I were really attacked, my magic might decide to assert itself in my defense, but I didn’t feel like I could count on it.
For most of the first day, I rode with my shoulders hunched, starting whenever I heard someone approaching from behind. It seemed almost ludicrous to think that I could have escaped the city without Melaina’s spies warning her, but no pursuit came, and I began to think that, for once, my luck had held, that I had slipped by them. I stayed the first night in a roadside inn after telling its owner that I was going to visit my sick father in a town quite far from Saremarch’s borders. The next night, dusk fell before I reached a true village, so I begged shelter from a farmer and his wife whose house sat along the road. They didn’t have an extra room, but they piled blankets in front of the fire and I slept well enough, leaving them a coin at my departure.
On the third day, I reached the edge of Melaina’s lands.
The holdings of Saremarch were not large. A little farmland, enough to bring some money to the Harandrons. Mostly, though, woods covered Saremarch. From the map I had pilfered from the wizard’s college, I saw that three small hamlets dotted the farmland, forming a rough semicircle around the only true village, March Holdings, which lay on the edge of the farmland and the beginning of Thorvaldor’s northern forest. The village had grown around House Sare, the seat of the Harandrons, and that was where I planned to go first.
It took only until midday to reach March Holdings. Smoke rose from chimneys, and the thin trails made my hands tremble so much that my horse tossed her head and sidestepped in confusion.
What was I going to do? I had no real plan, I finally had to admit, other than to ride into town and start looking for a girl my own age with a triangle of red spots on her arm. I needed a story, but Kiernan was the one who could invent elaborate reasons for being where you weren’t supposed to be.
My heart spasmed at the thought of him, clenching in on itself, and I had to force myself to breathe in and out slowly. He isn’t here, I told myself. You’re going to have to do it on your own. If you don’t find her, no one will.
Which wasn’t, I thought, the most heartening call to arms I had ever heard. But it was enough, somehow, to make me tap my heels against my horse’s side and start toward March Holdings.
As I entered the village, I thought I must look like a ghost riding on horseback: pale and drawn, with shaking arms and legs. Surely strange enough to make people suspicious. Still, though I drew first glances, no one spared a second. There was a traveling tinker, his wagon stopped in the center of the village, who had attracted the attention of most of the villagers. Women stood examining pots and pans, while children ran underfoot, or waiting in line with items to be mended. Locating a tiny stable, I paid a copper to tie my horse there and breathed a sigh of relief when the stable boy provided a story for me.
“You from Hol’s Landing? Come down to see the tinker?” he asked.
I nodded cautiously.
The boy grinned gap-toothedly. “Told my auntie there he said he’d be coming through this week. She tell you?”
I nodded again, but was luckily spared from having to actually produce details about his auntie when the stable manager whistled him up. I ducked outside into the sunlight, thinking. It looked like most of the village was nearby, either haggling with the tinker or gossiping together. And if word of his arrival had spread, there was a chance that Nalia might come to see him herself. Maybe all I would have to do to find her was wait.
So I waited. A bench stood alongside the one tavern, and I sat there, trying to make it look as if I were merely waiting my turn with the tinker. I glanced back and forth slowly, attempting to appear merely curious about each new person walking across the road, but I studied them all closely. Once my heart leapt into my throat, only to plummet when I realized that the girl I had seen was too old to be Nalia. The sun moved across the sky so that I had to shift on the bench to stay in the shade, but I didn’t see anyone who looked like she could be the lost princess.
For a while, I tried to occupy myself thinking about what Nalia would be like. I imagined her looking like Orianne, with that same grace and surety of movement, stately even in the common girl’s clothes she would surely be wearing. They were related, after all, so it figured that I ought be looking for someone similar.
Picturing what Nalia would look like took only so long, though, so my thoughts eventually turned to what I would do when—and if—Nalia ever appeared. I had spent so much time worrying about sneaking out of the city undetected and reaching Saremarch without mishap that I hadn’t given a great deal of attention to how, exactly, I was going to get Nalia to come with me.
Should I just lay the entire truth out before her? But what if she didn’t believe me? I had spent enough time worrying about being believed that it seemed entirely likely that she would listen to my story and think me mad or stupid. Or perhaps not. What girl wouldn’t like to be told that she was really a princess? But still, thinking about telling Nalia the whole truth made my stomach flutter uncomfortably. Maybe a … modified version of the truth would be better. I could say that I was the representative of an unknown relative in Vivaskari, one who had recently died and left her an inheritance. There could be papers that needed to be signed, but that could only be dealt with in the capital. That should get her to come with me, at least. Then, on the trip back, as we began to know each other better, I could slowly tell her the truth.
That plan fixed in my mind, I settled back on the bench and resumed my vigil. But if I had thought coming up with a plan would somehow make Nalia appear, I was wrong.
This isn’t working, I thought as the shadows cast by the buildings lengthened across the village. The tinker’s crowd had dwindled as people began to make their way home for supper. One of my legs had fallen asleep, and my stomach was calling vigorously for food. What should I do? I wondered as I stood up and, for no other reason than curiosity, walked over to the tinker’s wagon. Go to each door and ask if anyone knows a girl about my age, who might or might not look a little like me? I didn’t like the idea of drawing any attention to myself; this was Melaina’s village, after all, and who knew what sort of spies she might have in it? But I didn’t have time to wait, merely hoping that Nalia would walk up to me.
The tinker’s wagon held nothing of real interest, and I had turned away, wondering how much a meal at the tavern would cost, when something seemed to reach out and yank at me. I staggered to the side so that a man bartering with the tinker put out a hand to catch me.
“Miss? Miss, are you all right?”
I nodded without looking at him. I couldn’t have looked at him if I had tried. Because there, staring at me from the middle of the road, her shocked expression surely mirroring my own, was the princess.