The False Princess

CHAPTER TWO

I stood at the window of the room that was no longer mine. Below me, two of the queen’s ladies walked through one of the formal gardens, their three children scampering back and forth across the paths. One of the ladies stopped to speak to a young man dressed in the green robes of a novice wizard—perhaps a noble student at the college come to visit his parents. It was still pleasant outside, I knew. If I pressed my hand against the window’s pane, I could feel the warmth seeping through the glass. But inside, I was cold, so cold I thought I might shatter if I moved too quickly.
There had been a council meeting, with all of the king’s councillors and all of the high-ranking nobles who were currently at the palace. I had stood beside the king as he explained the true prophecy to the people gathered in the hall. I had held out my arm to show the vanished birthmark, and heard myself say that I was not the princess amid gasps of shock. Then I had been excused. I had heard the king say, as I left the room, that Nalia would be arriving that afternoon.
It had hurt; that had surprised me. I had thought, in the hour or so it took to gather the council and the nobles in the hall for the revelation, that I could not possibly hurt any more than I already did. My chest had felt tight, as if it were being crushed between two giant hands, and my eyes had burned with unshed tears. Surely nothing could make me feel worse, more lost and alone, than I already did. But it had hurt even more when I stood before that crowd and heard the man I had thought my father unname me.
Outside, the lady speaking to the green-robed wizard laughed. I couldn’t hear it, but I could imagine how light and carefree she sounded. By now, the pain I had felt in the hall had faded to a muffled dullness, so that I might have been moving through the world while encased in thick wool. I will never stand here again, I thought. I will never walk in the gardens, or eat at the table with Kiernan, or sleep in my bed.
I had to leave. My father—no, the king, I reminded myself—had explained that there must be no confusion when Nalia arrived. So I must go. My aunt was still alive in Treb, and I could be taken to her. It would be swift, like the severing of a limb, so that the injury would heal more quickly, he had said.
There was a knock on the door, and I started, one hand flying out and banging into the stone windowsill. “Come in,” I called once I had ungritted my teeth, and a moment later two serving women whom I barely recognized entered the room.
“We’re to help you pack, my lady,” said the first. She was the older of the two, her black hair streaked with gray, and she spoke matter-of-factly. The second, younger, goggled at me with wide eyes. Normally, my own ladies-in-waiting would have helped me prepare for a journey. But nothing was normal, not now, and they were probably readying themselves for the real Nalia’s arrival.
“I’m no one’s lady,” I said. “Not anymore.”
The first woman nodded, though a concerned look passed over her face. “As you please, miss.” She glanced meaningfully at the younger woman, and the two went to work, gathering some of my plainer clothes and folding them into a small trunk.
My hand was still smarting, I realized as I watched, and I lifted the other to massage the soreness out. I never was much like a real princess, I thought. I had always been too shy, too clumsy, too unpolished. More comfortable in the library than at a feast, so likely to trip coming down the stairs or bang my shins when getting out of a chair. My hair always messy and in my eyes, and my fingers always covered in ink. A real princess wouldn’t be like that. I should have known. I should have guessed.
It took surprisingly little time for them to pack the things I would be allowed to take. When they had finished, the women lifted the trunk, nodded to me, and left. Since they had not indicated that I should follow them, I stayed where I was, looking out the window. After a time, there was another knock on the door. When I went to open it, I was surprised to find Cornalus there.
“It’s time to go,” he said simply. He leaned on a tall stick, one he had not been using when he had come to fetch me from the garden that morning.
I nodded, took a final look at my room, and stepped out into the corridor.
I had known that rumor traveled quickly in the palace, but I had not realized just how quickly. It had been Kiernan, before, who trailed rumors behind him, not me. But there was no one, it seemed, who did not know that I was no longer their princess. Every pair of eyes locked onto me as I approached, and once I was past, the whispering began. It made my face burn, but I lifted my chin, jaw tight, and marched on with Cornalus.
It was only when we passed a window that looked out onto the grand entrance to the palace that I faltered. As we walked by, I glanced outside for one last look at the great stone causeway that led past the gates and up to the wide stairs at the palace door. At the bottom of the steps, the king and queen waited. As I watched, an elegant carriage drawn by four white horses approached. The driver reined the animals in, and then a footman stepped forward to open the carriage doors.
A girl emerged. She was dressed in a red gown, and her dark hair fell unbound down her back. She moved smoothly, gracefully, like a deer stepping from the forest. She paused for a moment, and the king and queen came toward her, hands outstretched. She turned to offer them her own hands, and I caught a glimpse of her face.
She looks like me, I thought. Then Nalia smiled at something the queen had said. It was an easy smile, one given often, simply because it made her happy to do so. At the window, I curled my own lips inward, my hand going instinctively toward my mouth.
No. I look like her.
Outside, the king and queen ushered Nalia toward the palace doors, where they disappeared from sight. The carriage drove off, leaving the space where the family had stood empty. The pain in my chest started throbbing again, slowly, but with growing intensity, spreading from my chest throughout my body. Only when Cornalus touched me gently on the arm did I move away.
My own carriage waited by the palace stables. It was a simple conveyance, clean and practical, not at all like the gilded one that had brought the princess from her convent home. The trunk of my things had been tied to the back.
“My lady,” Cornulas said, and even through the rushing in my ears I could hear how it shook. “I am sorry, so sorry. I had no idea, and it has all happened too quickly for an old man like me. I wish …” He swallowed. “I have been asked to give you this,” he said, and then handed me a small velvet bag that clinked when I took it. “And this is for your aunt.” A letter written on thick paper and sealed with the king’s signet; I fumbled to take it as well.
“The queen, she asked me to tell you …” He seemed to be searching for the words, his eyes filled with pity. “She will pray for you to the Nameless God. Every day.”
I pictured, for a moment, the queen kneeling before the little altar in her quarters, as I had seen her many times. But the image was immediately replaced by the sight of her welcoming Nalia on the palace steps, and I couldn’t reply for the thickness that suddenly choked my throat.
He shook his head hard. “I have a granddaughter your age. She’s never been to court, but you have always reminded me of her. If I had only known, I would have tried to spare you this pain,” he said. “Somehow …”
The barest strand of comfort, and part of me wanted to grab on to it as hard as I could, but it was too little, and too late. I only turned my face away from Cornalus, not wanting him to see my reaction.
I should be crying, I thought as I gazed up at the palace. The wind picked up, whipping my skirts against my legs and blowing my hair into my eyes. Clouds scuttled across the sky, obscuring the bright light of the sun.
For a long moment I stood there, waiting, though I didn’t know what I waited for. To burst into tears, maybe, or to wake up from the horrible dream that clung to me. But I remained unawakened and dry cheeked, just a girl standing in the shadow of an immense palace.
There was nothing else to do. I nodded to Cornalus and accepted his hand into the carriage. “Take her to Treb,” I heard him tell the driver as I arranged myself gingerly on the seat. “Her aunt is a dyer there.” There was a pause and then, “Keep her safe.”
The driver flicked the reins, and the carriage lurched forward. Pressing my face as close to the glass window as I could, I readied myself for one last look at my home. Just as I did so, I heard a familiar voice yelling, “Nalia! Nalia!”
Kiernan came dashing around the side of the stable, running as fast as he could, his arms waving to stop the carriage. But the horses had already begun to trot, and even his long legs couldn’t keep up with them. As I watched, he stumbled to a stop, breathing hard, his hands braced on his knees. “Nalia,” he called one last time, but the carriage did not halt.
I raised my hand to pound on the window and insist the driver stop, but just before my hand hit the glass, I let it drop. He had been calling to Nalia, to the girl who had thought herself the princess.
I never was Nalia. They just called me by her name.
I fell back against the seat, heavy and tired. The carriage passed through the outer palace wall into Vivaskari, and it was only then that I began to cry.
It was full night by the time we arrived in Treb, and with my eyes used to the city lights of Vivaskari, I could make out little of my new home as the carriage pulled into the tiny village.
I had stopped crying soon after leaving the palace. I had never been much for weeping, not since I was a little girl. A princess, I had thought, needed to remain composed. In fact, I doubted there was anyone besides Kiernan who had seen me cry since I was seven years old.
My stomach clenched as I remembered the way I had last seen Kiernan, his hands braced on his knees, his face red from running. Then I shoved the thought away, my throat closing.
I had tried to pray when the crying was over, but my thoughts kept straying from the Nameless God to Kiernan, or my once-parents, or just to a sort of blank nothingness.
Finally, however, the carriage halted, breaking through my tangled thoughts, and I heard the driver say, “Is this Treb?”
“Aye.” The voice came from the right side of the carriage, and I slid across the seat to peer out the window. The owner of the voice was an old man with a pipe, leaning against the wall of what might have been a smithy.
“We’re looking for the dyer’s house. Can you direct us?”
The man tilted his head to indicate that we should keep going. “Same as I told that courier this afternoon. The Azaway house is on the left, flower garden in front.” He took a puff on his pipe, then added, “Bit strange, so many fancy folk come to see Varil in one day.”
The driver flipped a coin at the man, who reached out with surprising agility to catch it. As the carriage began to move, I sat back, my heart thudding. Varil. That must be my … aunt’s name. It felt strange to think about having an aunt, for neither the king nor the queen had any living siblings. She must be expecting me; the old man had mentioned a courier, who could have reached Treb long before the carriage.
I barely had time to reach a fretful hand to my hair before the carriage stopped again, this time in front of a small house. I heard the footman on the back of the carriage hop down, then saw him make his way up the short path that cut through the garden growing around the front of the house. He had gone only a few steps, though, when the door of the cottage opened and a woman appeared, a lantern in her hand. The footman stopped, apparently taken aback, then hurried back to the carriage. My heartbeat sped up, if that was possible, as he reached for the handle on the carriage door.
“Your High—” He faltered, reddening enough that I could see it in the dim light. “I mean, my lady, we’re here.”
“Thank you,” I said as I stepped down from the carriage. The weight of the darkness seemed to press on me, and though part of me longed to run toward the light of the cottage, part of me also wanted to run as fast as I could in the other direction. But I sucked in a breath and imagined myself walking through not the Hall of Thorvaldor—that hurt too much—but the Great Hall, the eyes of all the people in it upon me. That allowed me to raise my head and slowly set one foot in front of the other to walk down the path toward the cottage.
My aunt was a tall, thin woman with an angular set to her bones. Her hair was light brown, with strands of gray running through it, and her nose was long and sharp. I didn’t see much of myself in her. We studied each other for a moment, and then she exhaled a puff of breath through her nose.
“You look like her,” she said. “Your mother.”
In my mind, I saw the queen, who was all softness and grace, whereas I had always been small and dark.
As if she could see my thought, my aunt pursed her lips. “I mean your real mother.” It was a dry voice; it reminded me of reeds clacking together.
“I hope …” I licked my lips to wet them. “I hope that I have not inconvenienced you too much. It seems that you are my only living relative, and they could not think where else to send me.”
My aunt looked at me for a long time, then barked at the footman, “Bring her things in, if she has any.” Then, to me: “Well, you might as well come inside, too.”
She turned, the light from the lantern suddenly hidden behind her body, and I followed, wanting whatever scrap of brightness I could find to push back the dark.
I awoke the next morning knowing exactly where I was. No moment of confusion, no thought that I was still in my bed in the palace. Even before I opened my eyes, I knew what had happened and where I was. What I didn’t know was who I was.
Sinda, I thought into the darkness behind my closed eyes. It sounded hard inside my head, without the fluidity of my … of the princess’s name. But it was mine now, the only name I had, I reminded myself before grinding my teeth together and opening my eyes.
I was lying on a narrow bed on a faded mattress stuffed with straw, a brilliantly dyed red blanket above me. Aside from the bed, the tiny room contained only a battered-looking stool with a shallow bowl of water perched on it. The trunk that held my things sat in the corner, my dress from the night before heaped on top of it. Long lines of light seeped in through the slats of the small shuttered window. I stood, rubbing my eyes, and stumbled over to my trunk. The dress I had worn the day before wasn’t dirty, so I struggled to pull it on over my shift. It was one of the simplest dresses I owned—or had owned—but I had rarely dressed without the help of at least one of my ladies, and it took some time to arrange it properly. Luckily, the shoes I had worn were thin slippers, with no buckles or ties, and I simply shoved my feet into them. I straightened up, not sure whether I felt proud or frustrated by my ability to dress myself, when I noticed something else sitting atop the trunk.
It was the small bag Cornalus had given me the day before, lying beside the letter for my aunt; I hadn’t looked inside it all the way from Vivaskari to Treb. Now, putting the letter aside on the bed, I reached down and picked the bag up, weighing it in my hand before pulling open the ties that closed it.
Gold. A small pile of gold coins winked back at me from inside the bag.
My chest constricted suddenly, as if the phantom hands from yesterday were squeezing me hard around my middle. I stared at the coins for a moment longer as I tried to remember how to breathe, before throwing my trunk open and shoving the bag into the deepest corner. I slammed the top shut and whirled away from the trunk, my arms around myself.
Conflicting emotions tore at me, so that I didn’t know what to feel. Anger, that they had seen fit to pay me for my “service” to the crown. Humiliation, that they had viewed sixteen years of my life as worth so little. For it wasn’t much, the money that filled that bag. Enough to impress a common woman, perhaps, but I had been a princess once, and I thought I knew how far that money might go. It would have given me enough to live on for a year, if my aunt hadn’t taken me, enough to keep me in food but not enough that I could have caused trouble, if I had wanted to.
It was that thought that cleared my head. I knew the problems a pretender to the crown could cause. Thorvaldor had been nearly torn apart by war four generations ago when one royal son decided he was a better candidate for the throne than his older sister. If my once-parents felt the need to protect their real daughter by making sure that I did not have the funds to start a rebellion, I could understand that. I might have done the same, if I still lived in the palace. It still hurt, but perhaps it was only meant to save Nalia from danger, and not to injure Sinda. Yes. I forced myself to breathe calmly. That was what I would think.
I wavered then, wondering if I should give the money to my aunt. She had taken me in, after all, when she might have turned me away. And from what I had seen of Treb last night, even that much money would be a generous gift indeed. But something stopped me from going over to the trunk and taking out the bag of coins. I still had the letter from the king, and who knew what that said. Perhaps it was a gift for her, something to make up for dumping an unknown and unlooked-for relative on her doorstep last night. I stared at the trunk, twisting my hands together, before taking up the letter and opening the door to the rest of the house.
I had gathered, even in my dazed state last night, that there were three tiny rooms to the house—the main room, mostly taken up by the hearth and kitchen, and two other rooms. Aunt Varil was not in the main room, and the room I had not slept in was shut tight. I didn’t have the courage to sneak a look inside it. Kiernan would have, of course.
No. I shook my head, wrapping my arms around myself. I would not think of Kiernan.
So I was standing there, unsure of what to do, when the front door opened and Aunt Varil entered, her arms green up to the elbow.
“I’ve been working around back,” she said by way of a greeting. She went over to the hearth, where a large bowl of water stood, and plunged her arms into it, scrubbing them furiously, though when she removed them, I couldn’t tell if the color had actually faded.
She studied me for a moment, her sharp eyes flicking over everything from my shoes to my face. I glanced down, cheeks hot, and remembered the letter in my hand. “This is for you,” I managed, and held it out.
Aunt Varil took it in a greenish hand and broke the seal. She stood while she read, then tossed the paper down on the table. “Do you know what it says?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“The king has granted me the right to come to the Royal Forest five days out of each year, to search for any plants I might not have access to. In exchange for taking you on, I suppose.”
I flushed harder and made myself meet her eyes. A thank-you, or a guilt gift, like the money they had given me? Payment, for the burden that had been dropped on her lap? It made me want to shrink with embarrassment. Still, I would try to put a happy face on it, as I had my own “gift.” After all, the Royal Forest, which lay to the north of Vivaskari, was reserved for the royal family alone. No one else could hunt any animals or gather any plants there. “That’s kind of them, isn’t it?”
Aunt Varil snorted. “It might be, if I had the funds to get to the capital even one day a year. Which I don’t. Or if I thought there would be any plants there that don’t grow here. Which I also don’t.” She shrugged with a sigh. “No matter. I don’t expect that kings know much about what will help common folk like me. Nor do they much care.”
I wanted to protest, to say that the king and queen did care, but the words wouldn’t come—just the thought of them sending their own baby away and accepting another, common one to perhaps die in its place. That, and a niggling, uncomfortable sensation that perhaps, on some level, my aunt was right.
“I expect you’re hungry,” she said abruptly, and I could tell the matter of the gift had been dropped. “It won’t be what you’re used to, but there’s some bread and cheese on the table.”
She was right; it was not what I was used to. But I smiled gingerly—my face didn’t quite remember how to complete the motion—and nodded. “Thank you. I am hungry.”
There were two chairs set around the small table, and we settled ourselves into them. As I began to eat, Aunt Varil watched me like someone observing a strange, newly uncaged animal.
“We’ll have to see if anyone has a bed to spare,” she said. “Alva Mastrom might. Her daughter’s just moved to Greenwater with her new husband.”
Startled, I glanced involuntarily at the door to the other room, which I had assumed was Aunt Varil’s bedroom. But then my eye caught sight of the blanket folded on a chair beside the hearth. I could feel heat suffusing my face and knew I must be going red again. I had slept in Aunt Varil’s bed last night, I realized with shame, and she had slept on the floor.
“It’ll be tight in there with two beds, but I don’t think we’ll both fit in the one,” she continued. “Though we might be able to find a larger one, of course. And some clothes, boots. You won’t be able to do much in those.”
Now my gaze fell onto my lap and the blue fabric of my dress. I had thought it plain just a few moments before, but now, comparing it to the dress my aunt wore, I realized it must seem extravagant.
Aunt Varil was still peering at me with great intensity. “Which brings us to the question. What can you do?”
I chewed the piece of cheese in my mouth, trying to think. “I can speak four languages,” I said slowly. “I can sew some embroidery and I can paint. I’m well versed in Thorvaldian history and custom, and mathematics and theories of war. My tutors said I write a fair hand …” I trailed off. There were other things, but I doubted that knowing the intricacies of Wenthi greetings or a dozen Farvaseean dance styles would be much use here. “I’m willing to learn,” I said finally. “I don’t … I don’t know about dyeing or cooking, but I can learn.”
“You’ll have to,” Aunt Varil said without any mirth. “Summer’s coming, and that’s the busiest time for me, what with everything growing. I have to harvest enough materials to keep me busy for the winter. You’re too old to be an apprentice, but there’s nothing to do about that. You’ll have to earn your keep. I can’t feed someone who doesn’t work.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said, a little stiffly.
“Good,” she said. “Then let’s walk down to Alva’s and see if her daughter left any clothes behind.”
The village was exactly as small and humble as it had seemed from the carriage window the night before. A single dirt lane cut through the center of town and then meandered off toward the great road some distance away that led back to Vivaskari. Treb consisted of perhaps twenty houses, an inn with two rooms for rent to passing travelers, a tiny temple to the Nameless God, and one small shop that sold the few things not made among the village’s inhabitants or brought in by traveling tinkers. An apartment, larger than many of the houses, sat over the shop, and I assumed the owners lived there. A few outlying farms could be seen in the distance, backed up against the looming forest, though all of the village’s small houses had their own tiny gardens or pens for goats or pigs.
Like Aunt Varil, the people of Treb seemed to have been up for hours. I could hear the clank of metal on metal coming from the blacksmith’s house, and most of the gardens had women bent over in them, pulling weeds or tending plants. Several children darted out in front of us as Aunt Varil and I left the garden that encircled the front and sides of her house. Three of them would have run by without even looking at us, but one, a little blonde girl with a dirty face, slowed to give a wave to Aunt Varil. When she caught sight of me, however, she stumbled to a stop so quickly that one of her friends collided with her.
The girl stared at us, then suddenly whirled around and ran down the street with the others trailing after her. “Mama!” she screamed. “Mama! There’s a girl at Mistress Azaway’s house!”
Aunt Varil frowned. “Well, that’s that,” she said. “The whole village’ll know you’re here by noon.” She sighed heavily.
“Is that bad?” I asked tentatively.
She looked at me down her long nose. “It’s talk,” she said finally. “I don’t like talk. There was enough of it after your father ran—” She broke off then and shook her head slightly, like she was rebuking herself.
I couldn’t help it. “After my father what?” I felt a sick yearning inside me, a desire to know something, anything, about the man who had given me up. And yet I also wanted nothing to do with him, as if by pushing away such knowledge I could remain myself, the self I had been, a little longer.
“Never mind,” Aunt Varil said, an edge in her voice. She pursed her lips together and marched off down the road so quickly that I had to hurry to catch up. As we walked, I could feel eyes on me as people paused to stare. Whispers followed as we marched past, making my cheeks go hot, but Varil only raised her chin and ignored them. That gesture, at least, I recognized.
Alva’s house stood several properties down from Aunt Varil’s own cottage. Aunt Varil didn’t bother knocking on the door, but strode assuredly around the house toward a small vegetable garden, where a woman was attacking the ground with a hoe.
“Morning, Alva,” Aunt Varil called.
The woman stopped what she was doing and leaned against the hoe. “Morning, Varil. What brings …?” She trailed off as she saw me, her eyes widening as they swept over my dress. “Who’s this?” she asked.
“My niece.”
Alva licked her lips. “Ardin said that a fancy carriage came through last night, looking for your house. I thought he might have gotten into too many cups at the Hollyhock. But here she is, and us never knowing you even had a niece.”
Aunt Varil looked even more forbidding than usual as she said, “It’s a long story, and gossip travels fast. I’m sure you’ll hear it soon enough. But for now, the girl’s come … from the capital. We’re looking for an extra bed, and some other things. She’s not used to country living, and her clothes …” She trailed off again. “I don’t suppose your daughter left anything behind when she married. I think they might be of a size.”
Alva’s eyes traveled over me again, but with a calculating look this time. “They might be. And Saree’s husband’s family, well, they own that tailor shop in Greenwater. They gave her four new dresses as wedding gifts, so she did leave some old things here when she went. I’ve been meaning to cut them down for Neda’s girl, but if you need them …” She paused, as if uncomfortable. “Of course,” she said to me, “they’re nothing like what you’ve got on now. Plain, if you know what I mean.”
I wasn’t sure I did, but I nodded anyway. My own clothes were apparently so outlandish here that they stopped children in the street; I wouldn’t care if Alva gave me a potato sack to wear, so long as it stopped the staring.
The dresses were as plain as she said—one a faded blue and the other something that might have been green once. They had obviously been much mended. But they wouldn’t call attention to themselves, and that was all I cared about as I struggled into the blue one. We left Alva’s house with a piece of my past trailing over my arm, and when we got home, I folded my old gown into my trunk of belongings.
As I smoothed the fabric down, I could feel panic building in me, my throat tightening so that I had to struggle to swallow. When I closed the trunk, it would be real. I would be Sinda Azaway, in all the ways that eyes could see. But what did I know about being Sinda, except that she lived in a tiny, nowhere village and wore someone else’s dresses?
My hand hovered over the trunk’s lid, and I could see it shaking. For a wild moment, I thought about running away, just so that closing the lid would mean something else—the beginning of something, instead of the end. But where would I go, and what would I do when I got there?
I closed my eyes and, a few tears leaking out onto my cheeks, blindly pushed the lid shut.
I would stay in Treb, I knew, with Aunt Varil. I would try to make a life here. After all, what was the use of running away when what I really wanted to run away from was myself?