The False Princess

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

We had to hurry to reach the city before the coronation, but we also had to stay off the road. We kept to the woods as long as we could, then cut across farmers’ lands, following the tracks they used to see to their fields. There was no time for long conferences, and at night we nearly fell to the ground with exhaustion. So I heard Kiernan and Mika’s story only piecemeal, during the times when we had to walk the horses or stop to eat or relieve ourselves.
They had fled into the woods that first night, Mika threading her way down animal paths she knew and Kiernan following behind her. There had been a cave some distance from her house, and they had hidden there for over a day, fearful that Melaina’s guards would still be searching the woods. After that, it was Kiernan who ventured into March Holdings to buy food and see the lay of the land. The soldiers hadn’t been able to see him clearly in the night, he had hoped, but he spent little time in town in case they were looking for strangers. But he managed to glean that a villager, whose house lay closest to the road that led to House Sare, had seen a troop of men heading toward the manor, the baroness with them.
They had held as little hope for me getting out on my own as I had. So they had snuck closer to the house one night, and together formulated the plan to start a fire and try to flush me out.
“I almost refused,” Kiernan told me. “What if Melaina had just left you chained up and we ended up killing you? But then I thought that, if she had wanted you dead, she would have killed you outside Mika’s house, so she’d protect you from the fire. So we did it. I went into town and bought up a bunch of food for the road, and some oil, supposedly for a lamp. We wrapped up my spavel cloak in a ball and dipped most of it in the oil, set it on fire, and chucked it over the wall toward the stable.” He shook his head. “I didn’t think the fire would get that big, though. But they opened the gates as soon as they saw how bad it was, and we slipped inside. You know the rest.”
I never did ask where they got the horses that Mika and I rode.
It was strange, our flight back to the city. In some ways, I thought of nothing but what would happen when we reached Vivaskari. I needed two plans: one to get into the coronation and the second to convince the people there that they were about to crown the wrong girl. I had neither. It worried me, because I had only two days before we reached the city. And on the third day, the coronation would begin. I thought about it constantly, creating and rejecting ideas with so much concentration that I was glad my horse only had to follow Kiernan’s.
But in another way, I treasured those two days. I rode with Kiernan, who had come to find me. When this was over, I was going to have to tell him that we had to forget that he loved me, forget that I loved him, because the world would never let us be together. That, Melaina had been right about. But for now, I could pretend that day would never come, that we would always be as we were now.
And then there was Mika. The princess of Thorvaldor, whom I had found.
My first impressions of her proved to be utterly accurate. She was as wary as a fox, suspicious of most everyone, and quick to lash out with her sharp, often rude tongue. She could also be as prickly as a hedgehog, leaving you full of spikes after what started as a simple conversation. Still, she cared for her horse with surprising tenderness, giving it little treats from her own supper the two nights we camped. She endured the aches and sores that riddled her legs stoically. My own pains were bad enough, but I had ridden regularly once, and so I couldn’t imagine how Mika, who had never been on a horse, must have felt. Still, aside from grimacing whenever she mounted or dismounted, she showed no sign of complaint. And she liked Kiernan, joking with him even in the midst of our flight. But she didn’t seem sure about me. She had helped rescue me, of course, but she seemed to view me like a wind that had blown her far from her home to a place she wasn’t sure she liked.
It was no wonder, I told myself. She had had a hard life, from the few stories she told when we stopped for the first night, all of us unable to sleep. It had been so dismal, in fact, that it made me slightly ashamed to think of how I bemoaned my own change of circumstance. At least I had Philantha, and Kiernan, and even Aunt Varil, whereas the only person who had truly cared for Mika had been the woman Melaina had given her to. I wondered how Melaina had gotten Mika to the woman, and what she had told her. Mika didn’t know. The woman had claimed to be her grandmother, and Mika guessed that she had actually thought she was. They had lived together in the tiny house, scraping a living by scavenging the forest and making wood remedies that they were sometimes able to sell in town. The townspeople had mostly looked down on them, and Mika had few friends. It had made her tough, unflinching, willing to look at a situation and speak the truth about it no matter how painful.
Which meant that she rode to Vivaskari with a kind of resigned fatalism. I had warned her about the oracle’s prophecy, to which she had snorted and said that she never expected to live much past twenty anyway. In some ways, I was surprised that she agreed to come with us at all. When I asked her about it, though, she only shrugged.
“What’s waiting for me at home but a cottage that Melaina’ll be watching forever? At least this way, if we win, there’ll be something worth doing for the rest of my life.” One side of her mouth twisted. “I had time to think about it, while we were waiting to try and free you. There’re other people like me out there, people that the king and queen never thought about. Hard workers, but without even a piece of luck to call their own. If you can make me queen, I could help them.” Then she narrowed her eyes at me. “They taught you about how to be a queen, right?”
I raised my eyebrows wryly. “For sixteen years. I learned all of it, and I was good at it. Not that it’s done me much good since.”
She hunched her shoulders. “Well, I suppose you think it’s silly. Me going along with you just for that.”
I thought about the way the wizards’ college took only nobles and people with money. I thought about how the king and queen had picked a common girl to replace the princess, ready to sacrifice her without her consent if need be. I thought about their gift to Aunt Varil, which had been a nice thought, but nothing truly helpful, given without clear understanding of her situation. I had never noticed those sorts of things when I had been the princess. Oh, I had given charity to the poor on certain feast days, had thought I cared for the plight of those living in Two Copper district. But it hadn’t really touched me. And I certainly hadn’t worried about the people who might not be starving but still weren’t really living. Now, though, I had seen the divide between the crown and the people it was supposed to serve. I had, to a small extent, lived in the crack it made.
I shook my head. “No. I don’t think it’s silly.”
We regarded each other silently, as still as a person and her shadow. Finally, Mika tossed her head and laughed. “Not that the diamonds and soft beds and feasts aren’t enough reason.”
“Of course,” I agreed with a laugh of my own.
After that, something eased a little between us. We were on the same mission and, I felt, learning to like each other in the process.
Even avoiding the roads, we reached Vivaskari at the end of the second day, just as the sunset painted the distant city walls orange and yellow. Kiernan went ahead to an inn and livery stable that stood just outside the walls while Mika and I waited behind a hay barn at the edge of one of the last farms. Even though Melaina knew he had come for me, he was the one she would have the most trouble arresting, since he was an earl’s son.
“Don’t worry about him,” Mika said after we had been waiting a time. She sprawled on the ground, her back against the side of the hay barn. The horses stood tiredly in its shadow, neither inclined to wander off. “He’ll get the lay of the land and then he’ll come back.”
I picked at a piece of grass, slitting it with my nail. “I can’t help it. I think that, if we live though this, I’ll sleep for two years, just so I don’t have to worry anymore.”
Mika’s dark eyes glimmered in the dim light. “For two years, hmm? And whose bed’ll you pick to sleep away two years in?”
My cheeks went hot. She had sharp eyes, I realized, a way of noticing things while you thought she was paying attention to something else. Good qualities, for a queen. “It’s not like that,” I mumbled.
Mika arched her eyebrows. “Why not? He watches you, Sinda. Like you’re his best treasure, only he can’t think of a way to slip you into his pocket. Hasn’t he-of-the-throwing-daggers been brave enough to mention it?”
“He did, once,” I said. “Right after Melaina sent a storm to try to kill me. He didn’t want me to go look for you. He was scared—well, scared I’d get caught, or hurt. I told him I had to try, and I put a spell on him to keep him from betraying our secret. He kissed me, and then he left. Then the king got sick, and I came looking for you.” I leaned my head back against the barn’s side. “So everything’s … strange, now. And he hasn’t … he hasn’t said anything about it since he found me.…” I trailed off, biting my lip. I had spent so much time worrying about how to tell him he couldn’t love me anymore, but it hadn’t escaped my notice that he hadn’t mentioned the subject since finding me. Maybe the things I had worried about in Melaina’s cell were true. Maybe I had hurt him too much, using that spell against him. Maybe he had come after me only because we were friends, because he felt guilty about letting me go off alone.
“He hasn’t said anything,” Mika repeated flatly. “While we’ve been racing across the countryside with Melaina’s guards behind us or in front of us, and me sleeping an arm’s length from the both of you each night.” She shook her head in disgust. “For a girl who’s supposedly got all this learning, you can be sort of stupid, Sinda.”
“Excuse me?” I said stiffly.
Mika leaned forward until her face was close to mine, and then she said, slowly, as you would to a child, “He loves you. It’s plain for anyone to see. He came after you, didn’t he? Admitted he was wrong to abandon you?”
I shrugged. “We’ve been friends since I was born, or almost.”
“He doesn’t look at you like he thinks you’re just his friend.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I insisted. The doubts that Melaina had stirred up, that I had had so long to contemplate in her cell, flared inside me again. “What can come of him loving me? He’s still an earl’s son and I’m … a scribe girl. His family would never let him marry me. They were lining up girls at court for him to pick through before we left. Girls with titles and land … noble girls. It doesn’t make any difference if he loves me. We can’t be together.”
Mika pushed herself back as she blew a breath upward to stir the hair on her forehead. “What makes you think he’ll ask their permission?”
I gaped at her. Kiernan, not marry who his family wanted? It wasn’t done, not in the noble families of Thorvaldor. You married to create ties to other nobles, to strengthen your family’s position. Sometimes you got love as well, but that was just luck thrown into the bargain.
“And you. You’re willing to fight an impossible battle to get me on the throne, but you won’t fight for him?”
“I never said that,” I said, stung. “I just—” But I could go no further, because just then I heard the jingle of horse tack, and then Kiernan rode into view.
He slid down off his horse after glancing around to make sure no one was nearby. “I don’t think anyone noticed me,” he said. “I had a drink in the inn and got some information from the people there. The king was buried just two days after he died.” He paused, his eyes on me.
He hadn’t been my father, but he had been the closest thing I had to one. It hurt, to know that I would never see him again. But I didn’t have time to mourn him, so I only breathed against the tightness in my chest, motioning for Kiernan to go on.
“They hardly let him lie in state at all. Something about keeping the fever from spreading. And the coronation is tomorrow, just like Melaina said. They’re not even waiting for the delegations from Wenth and Farvasee. They’ll just pay their respects when they arrive in a few weeks. And the coronation won’t be open to everyone—each person entering the palace gates will have to be checked by a palace guard and a wizard from the college. To keep the princess safe.”
He sat down on the ground, his legs stretched out in front of him as he tugged off his boots. “Which is all that we knew. But there’s more. The city gates are being watched, too, to make sure no ‘dangerous elements’ enter the city. I think,” he said, raking a hand through his hair. “I think that Melaina’s people got here before we did and told her you escaped. If a courier took two horses and rode them hard, he could have beaten us. So she’ll probably be looking for us at the city gates.” He stopped, watching me. He looked as tired as I suddenly felt, as ragged as a torn sail in the wind.
For a long time, none of us said anything. My mind was whirring again, but without results. Finally, though, Mika said, “But you’re a wizard. You could … disguise us, or turn us invisible. Something to get us in the city and the palace.”
“I’m an unpredictable wizard,” I countered with a sigh. “I don’t know if Kiernan told you, but I’m not exactly in control of my magic. There’s too much of it, and it was buried under the spell for too long. Half the time, when I try to use it, it comes roiling out and I blow something up.” I shifted, trying without success to get comfortable on the ground. “I might be able to do a spell to get us through the city gates,” I admitted finally. “But magic won’t work at the palace gates. The wizard will be watching for magic, waiting to sense any whiff of it. They’d notice us if I tried to get us in under magical disguises, and the guards will certainly catch us if we try it without.”
“Well, you spent your whole life in that palace. Are you telling me there aren’t any secret passages or tunnels that you found? Something no one else knows about.”
I shook my head. “There isn’t anything—”
I snapped my eyes to Kiernan as ice suddenly formed under my skin, only to find him staring hard at me as well.
“Nameless God, we’re stupid,” he whispered. “King Kelman’s Door.”
“It will open from either side,” I said quickly. “And we have her now. It’ll be there if she’s there. ‘Royal blood.’ But we need the map—without it, I’m not sure I can find the exact place the door is from the other side of the palace wall.”
We were grinning at each other, so wildly we must have looked insane.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Mika drawled out of the darkness, “but what’s this door you’re talking about?”