The False Princess

CHAPTER THREE

So began my life in Treb—a life that, in most ways, I was completely unprepared to live.
The first days passed in a haze as I tried to fight my way through the blur of exhaustion and shock that dogged me from waking to falling asleep. I rose in the morning, pushing myself up from the narrow bed we had procured and squeezed into the bedroom beside Aunt Varil’s, then ate a simple breakfast with her. We then, depending on the weather and her mood, went into the woods in search of dye plants, weeded her own garden, or settled ourselves behind her house to actually begin the dyeing process. I dreaded whatever task she chose for us, because Aunt Varil’s scattered teaching methods made learning almost impossible.
“There’s agrimony in this part of the forest,” she might say. “Fill this basket with the leaves and stalks. Yellow flowers, saw-edged leaves. It’s hard to miss. I’ll be by that pond when you’re done,” she would add before striding off, leaving me holding the basket and staring around in confusion. It did no good to ask her to find one of the plants and show it to me before setting off, I quickly learned. All that would gain me was a deep sigh and a sharp shake of her head, as if I were the dullest creature she had ever seen. So I would wander through the forest, basket in hand, looking anxiously over my shoulder at every crack of a twig or rustle of the leaves. The few times I managed to find the plant she wanted, it was not due to my aunt’s teaching but to my recollection of conversations I had had with the gardeners in the palace.
Searching for plants in the forest, however, sometimes seemed like a gift when compared to the dyeing itself. In the forest, at least, I was often alone, something I preferred during the first days of my exile. It was infinitely worse to sit under Aunt Varil’s watchful gaze as she tried to impart the secrets of creating clear, strong colors. To her dismay and, I had to admit, to my own, I appeared to have little aptitude for dyeing. While I could easily remember the amount of mordent to use with black willow bark or the steps involved in transforming ragwort into the deep yellow liquor of dye, I had no eye for telling when the ingredients had steeped long enough or if the color seemed fast in the wool. I was used to quickly learning almost anything my tutors cared to teach me, and this new limitation frustrated me. It also made Aunt Varil sigh even more often.
In the evening, we returned to the house for supper. After we ate, Aunt Varil taught me one of the innumerable tasks that kept a household going when that household did not employ hundreds of servants. My hands, already chapped and discolored from the dye baths, were soon aching and covered in blisters. I learned to sew more than pretty embroideries, to chop wood and move it from the pile behind the house to the hearth, to scour pots and pans, to keep the fire in the hearth burning evenly, to arrange the skeins of wool in the small storage room off the main room, and much more as Aunt Varil worked me to exhaustion each night. That she did as much as I did and more did not make me feel better. I collapsed on my bed—procured with some difficulty from Alva’s cousin—each night and slept deeply until morning, when the calls of country animals would wake me.
In some ways, though, perhaps such a grueling schedule was better than the alternative, because, if my body ached and my head spun with the efforts of remembering how to prepare a stew or porridge, at least I had little time for dwelling on the life I no longer had. It was strange to me, how much of my mind I could fix on the mundane tasks I performed, so that whenever I began to drift into remembrances of Kiernan or the king and queen, I could force myself to concentrate on the pot or ax in my hand. But no matter how hard I tried, I could never quite fill the emptiness inside me. Sometimes, I found myself rubbing at the empty place on my inner arm, just below the crook of my elbow, where my birthmark had been. I wondered if Nalia looked at that spot, too, if the birthmark had appeared on her when it vanished from me, or if the wizards had allowed it to remain on her even through her disguise. I wondered if I would ever stop missing it, missing my life.
It might have been easier to accept my new situation if I had felt any bond with my aunt. Aunt Varil, I soon realized, was not a warm woman. She greeted the other villagers politely enough and offered aid if it was asked, but she had no particular friends, and she never went down to the inn to sit in the common room and chat as so many others did. She remained aloof, content with her own company and suffering mine.
During the first few days, I hoped that, once she was used to me, she might grow to like me. I knew that I was not Kiernan, whom it was almost impossible not to like, but I thought that she might eventually come to view me fondly, once she had adjusted to my presence in her life. But a week passed, then another, and another, all without change. She was not cruel, but neither was she kind. Occasionally, as we sat in the main room at night, I caught her staring at me with a pinched look on her face, as if I were something that had been dropped on her doorstep and of which she wished she could rid herself. In many ways, I suppose I was just that. I did not hold any illusions of being truly helpful to her—my skills at dyeing, cooking, and cleaning were mediocre at best. Still, I knew I was polite, quiet, and generally inoffensive, so, for a while, I continued to hope that she might someday find me agreeable.
But it was only when I asked her about my parents that I understood that her apparent dislike of me ran further than my abysmal cooking or tendency to break dishes while I was trying to wash them. We were inside, hanging plants from the rafters of the storage room to dry. As I reached up to hang some sweet gale, I noticed a carving on the wood of the rafter: a picture of a cat, all curled up in a ball, its tail curved around its front.
“Did you carve this?” I asked, pointing.
Her back was to me, but I could see her stiffen. She didn’t answer, only reached out to arrange some skeins of pale blue wool on their shelves.
“The cat?” I added, but quietly, so that even I could hardly hear the t in the word.
“Your father carved it,” Aunt Varil said in a clipped sort of way. “This was our room, when we were children. Our parents slept in the other.”
I wasn’t able to stop myself from sucking in a breath at her words. She had not spoken of my father, not even once, since I had arrived. She had offered no stories of their childhood, or any explanations of why he might have given me up. And I had not, until now, had the courage to ask.
“What was he like?”
Again, I saw that stiffening in her shoulders, but she didn’t turn around. “He was … quiet. Serious. He knew he wanted to be a weaver from the time he was six years old. He always wanted to believe the best of people.” Something in her voice darkened. “That’s why I worried about him when he went off to apprentice in Vivaskari. He was too trusting, and I was scared he would come to ill because of it.”
My mouth was dry. Something inside me didn’t want me to ask the next question, but I couldn’t help it. “And my mother? Did you know her?”
This time, Aunt Varil did turn. She whirled around so quickly that I had to stop myself from taking a step backward. Her face grew tighter, her eyes narrowed.
“It was your mother who was his ruin.”
“What?” In my head, I heard the king’s words. He did not mention his wife.
Aunt Varil smiled, but it was a bitter expression, one full of old wishes and hurts. “He met her in the city. She was passing through, and she came into his shop by mistake. Her name was Ilania. They were married in the city, almost at once, and he brought her back here afterward, to visit.”
Aunt Varil paused, not looking at me, her eyes fixed on something from the past, something only she could see. “She was quite beautiful. She had dark hair that fell in these loose waves down her back. She refused to pin it up. You take after your father,” she added after a moment, “except that she was just as small as you, and you have her nose, and the color of her hair. I noticed it, that first night you came. But she was … charming. Always moving, always talking, always looking for the next thing to make her laugh. He was completely in love with her. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
“You were born two years later, in the city. They came to visit me just after they found she was with child. I thought that she seemed restless then, like she wanted to be somewhere else, not like a woman who’d soon be having a baby. But your father was so happy that I didn’t mention it to him. I just watched her, and wondered. And five days after you were born, she was gone. Left a note, saying that she wouldn’t be coming back, that she didn’t want him anymore.”
I swallowed, but I couldn’t find anything to say. Aunt Varil’s face was like stone, so hard and cold I thought it wouldn’t feel like flesh if I touched it.
“It broke him. He was never the same afterward. He closed his shop in the city after a year and came here. He died when a fever came through, and the last thing he said was her name.” She sighed. “That’s the other way you seem to take after him. You’re both a little too … accepting. You do what other people want without fighting.”
It caught me off guard. “What do you mean?” I managed.
Aunt Varil gestured toward the north, the direction of Vivaskari. “You left without so much as a peep. Didn’t even complain when they put you in that carriage and sent you off. He let her go, didn’t try to look for her or bring her back. He just gave up, came here, and let himself die.”
Ice seemed to have crystallized under my skin; a particularly large piece had lodged itself in my heart. For a long time, I couldn’t speak, and when I did, it was only a croak. “He thought I was dead, didn’t he? They said they had altered his memory so he wouldn’t remember giving me up.”
Aunt Varil nodded. “That’s what he told me. And I thought, ‘Well, it might be for the best. At least he won’t have something to remind him of her every day.’ But it didn’t matter. He never stopped thinking of her, even without you. It was heartache that weakened him; he didn’t even care when he caught the fever.”
The ice had grown colder, sharper, and I heard myself saying, quite evenly, without any tone, “That’s why you hate me, then. Because of her.”
For the first time, a crease formed between my aunt’s eyes, breaking the stone that had hardened her face. She gazed at me thoughtfully, one corner of her mouth pinched in, and then said, “I don’t hate you, Sinda. I just don’t know what to do with you. Look at you. Sixteen, so old someone should be courting you. But what man would have you, with no skills to bring to his house? It isn’t your fault, I know, but you don’t know anything that’s useful here. And I’m used to being alone. I never counted on a niece.”
I opened my mouth to say, “I’m trying,” but Aunt Varil had already brushed past me to go outside. I didn’t follow her. That night we were silently polite with each other, and we didn’t speak of my parents again.
One of the other things she had said bothered me almost as much as the description of my parents, however. Had I given up too easily? Had I let myself be evicted from my life when I could have fought to keep some part of it? I had never been one for argument, had always shrunk from confrontation. But should I have stood my ground, demanded something in exchange for the sixteen years I had given the crown?
No, I told myself. When the king said you had to go, you went. I wasn’t a princess, or even a noblewoman; I had no power. There was nothing I could have done to change what had happened.
I repeated that to myself, but even then, a small part of me seemed to shake its head, unbelieving.
With the distance between my aunt and myself, I suppose I might have looked to the other people in Treb for companionship. But I found no solace there either. With all of Aunt Varil’s lessons, I had little time to myself, and certainly not enough to spend wandering the village in search of friends. And besides, the three girls my age were quite busy themselves; two were already engaged to be married, one to a boy from Treb and the other to a carpenter in Hathings. Yet it wasn’t this that kept me from doing more than nodding at them when I passed them on the street.
They knew the story. It had arrived just two days after I had, brought by a traveling tinker who had been in Vivaskari when the true princess returned. The king and queen had sent out banns to be proclaimed in every major city, and those too small to have messengers sent to them learned the news the way Treb did. The romance of it, of the princess hidden away with no idea of her true identity, had set fire to the country. In most places, I guessed that to be what the rumors focused on—Nalia, the true Nalia. In Treb, however, they had something else to consider, something almost forgotten elsewhere. Me: the false princess.
Perhaps if I had been another type of girl, I could have made friends because of it. If I had been willing to pour out my heartache at being abandoned, or staunch enough to claim pride at having done the crown such a service, I might have gained many people’s sympathy. But I was as I had always been, quiet and reserved, worried about tripping over my own feet if people were watching. The few souls who gathered the courage to approach me about it gained only a close-lipped smile and a shake of my head.
“I’d rather not talk about it,” I would say. I could always see the disappointment in their eyes, the reproachfulness, as if I had an obligation to answer their questions. But it was too new, too raw inside me, and even saying that much left me shaking as I walked away.
Only two things broke the pattern of my days in Treb. The first was … I didn’t know what it was. Something without a name. Not anything I could lay my hand on, or point to and say, “Ah. This is what has been bothering me.” It was only a feeling, one that came about a few weeks after my arrival.
It started with a sort of tightness in my chest, like when you need to cry and don’t let yourself. At first, I ignored it; it didn’t seem odd to feel that way, not after what had happened. But it changed, after a time, growing and shifting until I sometimes felt truly strange, like I had something hot and fizzy inside me that wanted to get out. My hands and arms seemed to tingle, or shimmer, or pulse, even though they did none of those things. At times, without warning, I had an almost overwhelming urge to do … something. But I never knew what, and after a few uncomfortable moments, the feelings would pass.
I didn’t tell anyone. There was no one to tell, besides Aunt Varil. So at night when I had nothing else to think about, I privately worried that I might be going mad. What else could cause me to feel as though I had fire in my veins, fire that wanted to get out through my hands or my mouth or my eyes? I doubted very much that Aunt Varil would appreciate being told about these feelings. Having a previously unknown niece dumped on you was one thing, but a previously unknown, mad niece was something else entirely. So I worried, which provided a nice distraction from my misery, and didn’t mention it.
The second distraction was quite different, however. It came about one day as I was walking down the dusty main street, a basket of nettle tops in my arms. Aunt Varil and I had gone in search of nettles in the hedgerows that lined the road as it made its way south. I had, for once, filled my basket first, and she had given me permission to go home and begin the dye bath for them.
It was a bright day, so hot that the hair escaping my braid stuck to the back of my neck. My dress felt wet across my back, and my arms stung where the gloves Aunt Varil had given me didn’t cover them. Shifting the basket against my hip, I paused to let one of the village children herd several loose goats across the road and back into their pen. Two of the girls my age—Calla and Renata—were standing outside Calla’s house, their heads together. I tried to make myself small and invisible, as if I could blend into my surroundings like a tiny sparrow. While they had never been rude to my face, there were always a lot of murmurs whenever I passed those two, and I hoped they wouldn’t notice me. As I started out again, though, the toe of my boot caught on a stone protruding from the road. I stumbled, the nettle heads flying out of the basket as I fell to one knee. Across the road, I heard laughter ring out.
Red-faced, I scrambled to recover the nettle heads as quickly as possible, but they had flown in all directions. Keeping my head down, my ears buzzing with embarrassment, I turned to look behind me only to see a young man crouching there, a nettle head in his hand.
“I think this is yours,” he said with a slow smile.
“Be careful,” I said as I reached out to take it from him. “They … That will sting.”
“It’s not so bad,” he said as he dropped another in the basket. He didn’t say anything else as we gathered the plants, though he smiled at me whenever I glanced at him. Even compared to all the people I had seen at court, I had to admit that this boy was very handsome. Black hair framed bright blue eyes, and I could see the evenness of his teeth whenever he smiled at me. The laughter across the street, I noticed dimly, had stopped.
When we had found all of the nettle heads, he offered me a hand up. A slight rash had already sprung up on his fingers and palm.
“That was a bad fall,” he said. “Are you hurt?”
I shook my head, suddenly aware of how dusty and sweaty I was. “My body’s used to how clumsy I am,” I said ruefully. “I don’t hurt easily.”
“I’m Tyr Varanday. My father owns the shop,” he said, pointing at the only general store in Treb. “I’ve been visiting some friends in the city. I only just got back today.”
“I’m … S-Sinda Azaway,” I said, stumbling slightly over my name. Normally I would have flushed even harder, but he was gazing at me with such a friendly expression that I felt myself smiling back at him instead. “I’ve come to live with my Aunt Varil.”
“That explains the nettles then,” he said with a laugh. “But I didn’t know Mistress Azaway had a niece.”
“She didn’t know,” I said. “My father died without telling her about me, and I … I lived in the city until recently.”
His eyes swept over my face, and I saw something register behind them. If he had been in the city, he would have heard the rumors of the false princess and where she had gone. He might have even heard my real name. But he only shook his head and held a hand out toward the main street. “This must be a shock, then, if you lived in the city. We’re a little … rustic here.”
Relief ran through me. For once, here was someone who was not pestering me about my past, not hoping to hear tales of what being a princess had been like. “It’s not so bad,” I found myself saying, but Tyr only laughed.
“I think you’re lying,” he said, but lightly. “Treb doesn’t have much to offer anyone who knows what the world is like. I’ve been trying to tell my father that we should rent a place in Vivaskari and set up shop there, but he doesn’t see things my way.”
He glanced down into my basket, then said, “Your nettles are wilting a little. And if I know Mistress Azaway, she won’t be happy if the sun ruins them.” He paused, frowning slightly, as if he were nervous. “I don’t suppose you think she might let me call on you? I know I said Treb was a backwater, but you might as well get to know it as well as you can. I could show you around.”
“That would be nice,” I said.
His eyes seemed to sparkle in the sunlight. “Then I’ll see you soon,” he said, before turning and walking off toward father’s shop, whistling.
The next day, as I was clearing my bowl from the table after supper, there was a knock on the cottage door. Aunt Varil, who had been slowly spooning through my attempt at stew, flicked her eyes at me, then nodded at the door. I hurried over, trying to keep from biting my lip in anticipation.
“Hello, Miss Azaway,” Tyr said as I opened the door. His voice reminded me of warm honey.
“Who is it, Sinda?” Aunt Varil called, but before I could answer, she had pushed her chair back from the table and come across the room to the door. I thought I heard a pause in her step, the slightest hesitation, but then she was beside me, looking at Tyr with her lips pursed tight.
“Hello, Tyr,” she said. “I’ve told your mother that I won’t have that yellow wool ready for another three days.”
I knew that I tended to shrink a bit when Aunt Varil stared at me so intently, but Tyr only shook his head easily. “I’m not here for my mother, Mistress Azaway. I met your niece yesterday, and I thought she might like to take a walk around the village with me.”
Aunt Varil snorted. “She’s seen all there is to see of the village, Tyr.”
My heart, which had been hammering high in my chest, dropped suddenly toward my stomach. I had been hugging so tightly to the idea of maybe—finally—having a friend in Treb that I hadn’t realized how much I had counted on it until it threatened to disappear.
Aunt Varil looked from Tyr to me and back again. I knew that a pleading expression must be filling my eyes, that the dull ache of wanting must be visible in every line of my body, because she sighed and said, “Fine. But just in town, Tyr. No farther. I won’t have people talking.”
“Of course not,” Tyr said with a smile. Then he held out an arm, gesturing into the day’s fading light. “Miss Azaway.”
It was still fine, though a hint of coolness hovered in the air. The trees and houses cast long shadows across the road, making everything soft and dim. At the end of the road, I could see Ardin, the blacksmith, standing outside his shop, a pipe in his mouth, but otherwise, we were alone. We didn’t speak until we were two houses down from my aunt’s. Then, without warning, Tyr let out a breath. “I’ve always thought your aunt was a hard one, but is she always so strict with you?”
Warmth was seeping through me, like water through the tiny cracks in a stone wall, filling me with something like hope. Still, I tried to keep my face fixed as I said, “She’s very … well, strict is the right word, I suppose.” A few steps later, I mumbled, “She doesn’t like me very much.”
Tyr stopped so suddenly that I tripped over nothing. Throwing an arm out, he caught me by the shoulders. For a moment, we stood like that, his hands pressing against me, and I felt something race up my spine and back down it. Stop it, I thought. He’s just being polite.
“Careful,” he said with a tiny laugh. “You know, I’m starting to think that you’re a danger to yourself.”
The hazy feeling, the little thrill in my bones, vanished. I knew my expression must have changed, because Tyr’s lazy half smile was replaced by a frown of concern, and his hands were abruptly at his sides.
“Thank you,” I said stiffly.
He shook his head. “It’s nothing. Did I say something wrong?”
I bit the inside of my cheek, not sure what I should say. How was Tyr supposed to know that Kiernan had always teased me with just those words? How was I supposed to explain the way that Kiernan’s face had seemed to replace Tyr’s own, and that, in that brief instant, I had missed my friend so much that my stomach had hurt? Or that, for reasons I didn’t understand, I felt strangely guilty about the warmth I had felt when Tyr touched me?
But Kiernan and I weren’t like that, I thought. We were just … friends, even if we had been friends so long that neither of us could remember a time when we weren’t. Even if we were so close we could sometimes finish each other’s sentences or say a joke in the instant before the other did. Even if, every time I thought of living my life without him, it was like stepping off into darkness with no lantern and no chance of ever finding one again.
That hard knot in my stomach clenched again, and I realized that Tyr was staring at me.
“I’m sorry,” he said, eyes wide. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I was just … surprised.” A tentative smile. “You seem very likable to me.”
With a huge effort, I forced my thoughts about Kiernan away. They wouldn’t do me any good here, and I wasn’t going to scare this potential friend—my first potential friend in Treb—away. I would be happy—I would make friends with Tyr if it killed me.
“It’s just—” I said haltingly as I tried to recall what we had been talking about. Oh yes. Aunt Varil. I started walking again, heading out toward the end of town, and Tyr quickly kept pace with me. “She didn’t like my mother. She left my father, you see, right after I was born. It broke his heart, and Aunt Varil says he was never the same. She thinks he was sad enough that he let himself die when a fever came.” I swallowed. “That’s why he gave me up, when the king and queen asked him to. Because he didn’t want to be reminded of her. They changed his memory so he thought I’d died, and that’s what he told Aunt Varil. She didn’t know any differently until just before I was sent here.
“Mostly, I think she wishes I weren’t here. I remind her of my mother, of what she did to my father, and I don’t think she can forgive me for that.”
We had passed the blacksmith’s house. Before us now lay only fields of crops that slowly gave way to forest. Tyr stopped again, though I didn’t trip this time. Turning to face me, he said, “Well, if that’s how she feels, Varil Azaway is colder that I ever thought. I think it would be almost impossible not to be charmed by you.”
I snorted. “You’d be surprised then. I’ve never been popular, not even back at—” I faltered, then forced myself to finished. “At court. Everyone thought I was a strange. Too quiet, too serious. I only had one really good friend there. Kiernan Dulchessy.” There he was again. No matter which way I turned, all my thoughts seemed to lead back to Kiernan.
Tyr puffed out his chest comically, shaking his head so that his shiny black hair flew around his face. “Well, I don’t know anything about this Kiernan, but I can only say that I’ll try to match him. That way, it won’t feel so odd, being here.” His face softened then, and he reached out to take my hand. Again, tiny bolts of lightning shot through me, though I struggled not to show it. “I do want to be your friend, Sinda,” he said seriously. “I want it very much.”
His face was so handsome in the deepening dark that I could feel heat spreading across my cheeks. My heart was racing now, but for entirely different reasons.
“I’m glad, Tyr,” I said. “I’m glad.”