The False Princess

CHAPTER TWENTY

Two more meals came. Did that mean one day had passed, or two? I had no idea, not knowing how often Melaina chose to have me fed. Or even if she would have me fed at all much longer. I had little appetite, but I forced myself to eat anyway, unsure if more food would be coming.
What to do now? I couldn’t help thinking of it, even though I knew that all my thoughts would make no difference. The king was dead, had been dead for days. Normally, it would be weeks before the coronation of a new monarch, after the country had had time to mourn the passing of the old one. But now, with Melaina stoking the queen’s old fears for her daughter’s safety, probably no one would look askance at a hasty coronation. They might not even wonder at how cut off the queen and princess were from everyone but a few councillors. The country was still in love with the idea of Nalia, the princess who had been hidden and then found again. No one would want to risk her.
Which meant that Melaina was right. Even if Kiernan had gotten Mika to Vivaskari, he would find no one to listen to our story.
We had failed, I realized miserably. Orianne would be crowned, and Melaina would then have the time to hunt down Mika and toss her away in a cell like this one. And I, well … what good would there be in keeping me alive at all? Probably she would keep me alive until she found Mika, on the slim hope that I would help her locate the real princess. But afterward … A triangle, one side falling away.
Perhaps, I thought dully, I should take Melaina up on her offer. I could pretend to have a change of heart and vow to protect Orianne instead of Mika. She would have me watched, of course, so closely that there would be little chance of my finding a way to subvert her. But there would be a chance. At least then I would be alive, and not trapped or dead. The thoughts swirled in my head until I had to shake myself out of them. Truly, I doubted that I could make Melaina believe I had given in to her. She had seen the vehemence in me already, and I had never been a good liar. I had always had Kiernan for that.
Kiernan.
I had been foolish, I supposed, in those few days after he had said that he loved me. Foolish even to let myself relive those words. Melaina was right; his family would never let him marry me. Philantha had told me how they were searching for a bride for him, now that there was not even the slim chance that the princess of the realm would choose her best friend. I had never asked him about it; something in me, unknown at the time, had always balked, hadn’t wanted to know. No, I would never be allowed to marry Kiernan. Not even in a few years, once I felt old enough to marry, even if I had managed to learn enough by then to gain the rank of Novice wizard. I would still be poor and common and not good enough.
If he still loved me at all, that was. Hadn’t I pushed him away, laid a spell on him that might have wrung all the love out of him? Even if he had come after me, it might have been out of pity, or the old debt of friendship between us. Probably he had stopped loving me, had seen how dangerous it would be to love someone like me.
I tried to push the thoughts away, but they sucked at me like a swamp. I had to be strong, I told myself. I had to think of a way out of this.
But there in Melaina’s cell, try as I might, I could not see one.
I had been dozing when they came for me. Heavy footsteps on the stone floor of the hall and the sound of chain mail clinking woke me.
I pushed myself up from the pallet, lips and throat dry. Maybe I had been wrong about Melaina keeping me alive until she found Mika.
The footsteps paused, and I heard a voice say stubbornly, “The baroness said she wasn’t to be moved.”
“She also said she was to be kept alive. If that fire gets down here …”
“They’ll have it out before that,” the first voice argued.
“I’m not taking the chance. You might be willing to face her with that chit charred to a cinder, but I’m not. She’s just a girl, Kev. A thief or somewhat. What can she do?”
A fire? House Sare was on fire? I sniffed the air but smelled nothing. Still, House Sare was large, and the smoke might not have reached … wherever I was.
The voices stopped, and then the door to the cell flew open, banging against the wall. One of the men shouldered his way inside, then gestured to me. “Show me your hands,” he ordered. I raised my hands slowly. “We’re moving you. Don’t try anything. Just come with us, and you won’t be hurt.”
I nodded back at him and didn’t flinch when he grabbed my upper arm and hauled me forward. The other man, Kev, glared at me as we stepped into the hall, then took hold of my other arm. Together, they hustled me down a narrow hallway toward a set of stairs. Through one open door, I saw wine bottles stacked to the ceiling, and I shook my head. I had been in some converted room of Melaina’s wine cellar.
Up the stairs and down several more hallways. The men didn’t speak; their bruising grips on my arms said enough. I had to take two steps to every one of theirs to keep up, so I didn’t have a chance to find my bearings. Finally, they pushed on a set of doors that opened into a stable yard, and into chaos.
There was a fire. It blazed on the rooftops of the buildings across the stable yard, lighting the night so that I could see everything inside it. A line of people with water buckets had already formed, but it looked almost too late for their plan. Several servant women were trying to organize a group of scullery girls and stable boys, herding them toward the gate that led to the lawn and woods beyond the house. Men from the stables, where the fire seemed to burn most wildly, hauled frightened animals toward the gates. The entire household looked to be in the stable yard or fleeing it.
“Where should we take her?” Kev asked.
“Out the gate,” the other man said. “We’ll tie her to a tree, keep a watch.” With that, they yanked me into the fray.
The stable yard was a large square, made up on three sides by the house and stable and on the last by the open gate toward which I was dragged. The fire roared furiously into the night sky, moving faster than the people trying to stop it, and the heat from its flames felt like desert wind. Glowing cinders rained down, and we had to dodge the people racing around with blankets to smother them. One landed on my arm, burning me, and I cried out, but my captors didn’t even slow their steps.
Suddenly, shouts filled the air, followed by the sound of some part of the stable crashing down. Sparks flew higher, showering the stable yard, and then a pile of hay only a few feet in front of us exploded into flames. I tripped as the two men jerked me backward and landed in a heap at their feet. The blaze that had been the pile of hay shot upward in a column of fire, spewing flames and smoke. I felt dazed by the noise, smoke, and heat, by the crackling menace of the fire, but the men holding me showed no mercy. They pulled me up and, tugging on me, took a few more steps toward the outer wall and gate.
But I let my feet drag, as if the fall had stunned me even more than it had. Because there, at the edge of the stable yard, where no one noticed them in the confusion, stood two cloaked figures who were not fleeing or attempting to fight the fire. One had the hood of the cloak up, face hidden, but the other had pushed his hood back and was scanning the crowd so intently he looked like he was trying to memorize it. The wind that whipped the fire into more and more frenzy blew a piece of blond hair into his eyes, and I thought my heart might stop as he hastily brushed it away.
At just that moment, Kiernan’s eyes locked on mine.
I didn’t think, or worry, or hesitate. For once, the magic was there when I reached for it; maybe it rejoiced at being unfettered by the blocking spells in Melaina’s cell, or maybe I was so desperate my own fears didn’t get in the way. Whatever it was, the guards holding my arms flew suddenly forward, propelled by the wind Philantha had taught me to call up to float feathers across her study. They slammed into the wall before us and, before anyone else noticed, I picked up my skirts and ran.
Kiernan didn’t speak as I reached him. He simply reached out and grabbed my hand so tightly that I thought the bones might snap. Then we were running, Mika’s tiny, cloaked form on his other side. We dashed past a contingent of servants hurrying the same way, but they hardly seemed to notice three more people fleeing from the fire.
Behind us, the fire enveloping House Sare burned higher and higher as we disappeared into the night.
We ran for perhaps a quarter hour, Mika now leading the way. She slipped between trees and over rocks so easily it seemed like she had been born in the forest. She might have been able to run forever like some night creature, but I had been living in a cell five paces across for who knew how many days, with who knew how many meals a day. Finally, I had to yank my hand from Kiernan. Then, doubled over and gasping, I stumbled to a stop and braced myself against a tree.
The two stopped without a word, though Mika immediately set herself looking back toward House Sare, shoulders tense. It took long minutes, but finally I managed to breathe normally. Raising my head, I found Kiernan staring at me, a fierce grin splitting his face.
“You did it,” he whispered fiercely. “You made the magic work. You tossed those guards away like they were pillows!”
I felt like I might laugh until I couldn’t stand, or cry until I couldn’t see. “You rescue me, and the first thing you say is about my magic?” I managed.
Kiernan hardly seemed to hear me. “I was wondering if I should charge them, and probably die doing it, and then they just flew away from you. You did it: you called it up just when you wanted it.” He laughed delightedly, and I found myself laughing, too. “So we didn’t rescue you,” he added. “We just set the fire, made the diversion. You rescued yourself, Sinda.”
Almost, I took the step across the space that separated us and threw my arms around him. But then, just before I raised my foot, Melaina’s taunts in the cell seemed to echo in my mind.
You’re nothing, a nobody. A fake, meant only to be replaced by the real thing.
Even flushed from running, his tunic dirtied from the dash through the woods, he looked so beautiful, so … noble. Melaina had offered me the chance to stand on equal footing with him, to be powerful enough that it would be possible to have him. Not just for kisses stolen here or there, but forever. And I had refused her.
I pushed the thoughts away, but that hint of doubt made me hesitate, and I saw Kiernan’s face grow still when I didn’t say anything.
“I thought you weren’t going to help me,” I blurted out. Kiernan’s shoulders hunched slightly, but I pressed on. “I thought you said I was on my own.”
I could see Kiernan flush even in the darkness. “I know what I said. But it was all a bluff. I wanted to … slow you down. I hoped that, if you thought you’d be alone, you would hesitate. And that if you hesitated, I could come back in a few days and talk you out of it. Stupid, really, because I knew how important it was to you. But honestly, I didn’t think you’d go alone. I just wanted to stop you, keep you safe. I didn’t ever really intend to abandon you. I would have gone with you, if I’d realized you were really leaving.
“But then, before I knew it, the king was sick, and you were gone. And just after I found out, the day before the king died, I overheard someone saying that Melaina was planning a trip back to Saremarch. Some sort of emergency with her estate, something so bad she had to go, even with the king so ill. I figured that she knew you were gone, that she was coming for you, and I realized how just stupid I’d been. I thought I was protecting you, but I just put you in more danger. So I slipped out before her—left a note for my parents saying I had urgent business outside the city and had to go. I expect they’re combing the countryside in a panic for me right now. Anyway, I took a horse and rode faster than the Nameless God’s breath to find you. I figured you’d come here first. I stopped in the tavern in March Holdings, and some of the locals were talking about a girl they’d never seen who scared another girl into running out of town. So I took a chance that it was you. But I was too late again.” He gripped me by the shoulders, his hands hot. “I’m sorry, Sinda. I truly am. I should never have left you.”
He hadn’t really abandoned me. Maybe he had underestimated my strength of will in this, but he hadn’t abandoned me. Sweet, the words should have been sweet. But all I could hear was Melaina’s voice in my ear, telling me that it didn’t matter, that I would never be good enough for him, never good enough for his family.
I shook my head, pulling back out of his hands. “You were right, at least about what happened. She did catch me—she could have killed me. You were probably right to want to threaten to leave me, even if it was a bluff.”
“No, I—”
I shifted away from him, my head down, but I could see the hurt in every line of his body. “Let’s not talk about it now, Kiernan. Please, I’m glad that you came. You have no idea how glad. But we have other things to worry about.”
I turned to Mika, who had been staring off toward House Sare during our exchange, as if she couldn’t hear it at all. “What made you believe me?”
Mika snorted. “The soldiers. Why else’d they have come for us, unless you were telling the truth? And the baroness with them. I saw her, just before we ran off. I’ve seen her before, from a distance, but she’s never come to my house. So I figured you weren’t as crazy as you sounded.” She grinned and jerked her head at Kiernan. “Your friend’s a good convincer, too.”
Kiernan snorted himself, shaking his head, but I felt a wash of relief knowing that the spell I had laid on him had broken just when I’d set it to—after I found the true princess. My relief was quickly replaced by another revelation, though. They’re friends, I realized with surprise. But maybe it shouldn’t have been so surprising. After all, he had been friends with Orianne, too.
“Then we all understand,” I said. “Melaina told me that the king’s dead, and that there’ll be a coronation for Orianne in four days.”
“Three days now,” Kiernan interrupted. I could still see the hurt I had dealt him with my coldness, but, true to his nature, he had squashed it down until only I could have noticed it.
Then it had been just two meals a day, I counted ruefully before continuing. “She said that they’re keeping Orianne away from almost everyone. Something about how whoever failed to hurt her before—the prophecy and all—might try now, before she’s crowned. Which means we only have one time that we’ll be able to see her and the old queen.”
“The coronation itself,” Kiernan said. “They’ll have to let people in for that.”
I nodded. “But even then Melaina will have set precautions. Her people will reach the city before we do. She’ll be watching for us.”
“So how’ll we get into the coronation?” Mika asked. “Won’t there be guards and soldiers?”
“A lot of them,” I said grimly. I bit my lip. “I don’t know how we’ll get in. I’ll figure it out on the way there. Maybe Philantha will have an idea; we can go there first.”
“We have horses tethered just a little farther on,” Kiernan said.
“Not that I can ride mine worth the Nameless God’s toe-nails,” Mika put in.
He waved a hand to shush her. “Can you make it?” he asked me.
I smiled. I was tired and hungry, scared almost out of my wits at what we had to do. But for now, I was with him again, with my best friend, and that was enough to give me strength.
“Lead on,” I said.