The False Princess

CHAPTER FIVE

A long time later, I pushed myself up from the ground. I was shaking as if I hadn’t eaten in two days, my face puffy and sore from crying. Dusk was falling, and Aunt Varil had still not returned. I should try to see if there was anything I could do to save the dye, I knew, or go inside and start supper. I stared at the tub of water for a moment, then walked away without touching it. After a second thought, I went back for King Kelman’s map.
Once inside, I walked straight into the bedroom, opened my trunk, and put King Kelman’s map on top, where it wouldn’t be crushed by my things. The trunk had no lock. I worried about that for a moment, but then decided that there was no one in Treb who would realize how valuable the map was, so I gently closed the lid. There was still water in the bowl by my bed; I had used it to wash my face that morning. Dipping my hands in it, I splashed my face and scrubbed halfheartedly at my arms, though little of the dye came off. I pulled the soiled dress off and dropped it at the bottom of my bed before putting on my other one.
I was in a sort of frenzy, I realized, moving as quickly as I could so that I wouldn’t have to think about what I had done. In fact, the only thought I allowed myself was: Tyr. I would find Tyr. He was supposed to be back tonight, and I would go and find him. He was my friend now, my only friend, the one from whom I should be seeking comfort. Never mind that my heart seemed to be calling out another name in slow, aching beats; never mind that I knew, deep down inside, that seeing Tyr could never heal the hurt I had dealt myself. I pushed the thoughts away and, when I finally thought I was presentable, left the house and started down the street to Tyr’s family’s shop.
Few people meandered about Treb that night. Tomorrow was the Nameless God’s day, and most people would be preparing for the large family meal they would eat after visiting the God at his temple. So there was no one to see as I knocked on the main door and, getting no answer, slipped around toward the back entrance that led to the family quarters above the shop.
As I reached the corner of the building, however, I stopped, hearing voices coming from the small garden where Tyr’s mother kept plants that Aunt Varil called “decorative nonsense.” I waited, listening, before recognizing Tyr’s voice, along with those of Renthen and Jorry, two other village boys our age. But I still hesitated. I didn’t know Renthen or Jorry very well, and I didn’t want to air my troubles in front of them.
I had almost decided to go back home when I heard my name.
“… finally getting there,” Tyr said.
“What, with Sinda?” That was either Renthen or Jorry. Whoever it had been, something in the tone of the voice made me catch my breath.
“Naturally. I told you that it wouldn’t take long.”
One of the others snorted. “I’d say it’s been long enough.”
Tyr’s voice was scornful. “Don’t be stupid. She’s like a mouse. I couldn’t scare her off. But now …” He laughed, and it wasn’t like his usual laugh. “Now I have her. You should have seen her when I kissed her. So soft, so willing. It won’t be long now.”
My heart was beating fast and so loudly I wondered why they didn’t hear.
“I don’t care, Tyr. I’m not sure anything’s worth kissing someone like that. She’s so … skinny and dark. And there’s not even a mouthful to her bosom.”
There was a sound of scuffling, as if Tyr had shoved the speaker. “I said, don’t be stupid. What does that matter when I’ll be able to say I’ve bedded the girl who was the princess?”
I couldn’t breathe. Air was entering my mouth but it didn’t seem to be getting to my lungs, and my legs were suddenly too weak to hold me up. I felt myself sag against the wall of the shop and I reached out to grab on to anything that might keep me from falling. A vine, heavy with purple flowers, snaked up the side of the building, and it was onto it that my fingers closed.
I have friends, I heard myself telling Kiernan. But I didn’t. All Tyr wanted was to be able to say he’d conquered a princess. I saw Tyr’s face in my mind, laughing and full of pride, and Kiernan’s, pained and shocked as I had hurled my poisoned words at him. I was the one who had been stupid. I had no one now. No one at all.
The piece of vine that I was holding on to crumbled into black dust in my hand.
The entire vine held for a moment, made of fine black ash, and then it began to fall like snow. I stared upward, shocked and horrified, before I heard a sound like something sizzling in a fire. By the time I looked down, the grass around my feet had turned brown and wilted. The very air around me seemed to warp and twist, filled with heat. And suddenly the feeling, the trapped sensation that had been in my chest all these weeks, was loosed. It broke free from inside me, coiling around me like a snake as it dissipated into the night, and hissed yes.
Magic. What I had been feeling all along had been magic, magic that I had not known I had.
I ran. I ran all the way back to Aunt Varil’s, not caring if Tyr heard me or anyone else saw me. I ran with my arms pumping and my legs trembling as they carried me, my hair whipping free of its braid. Only when I had reached the cottage and rushed around the corner to hide did I stop, panting, to think.
I had done that. Somehow, I had killed the plant, changing it from something living into ash in an instant. I had charred the grass where I had stood. The only way to do things like that was by magic. But I didn’t have any magic, no one in the royal family did. It was a well-known fact that there hadn’t been magical king or queen for hundreds of years.
I put one hand to my chest and the other to the cottage wall, suddenly realizing my error. I wasn’t royal, so there might be magic in my family after all. But why had I never known it before? Why had nothing like this ever happened before?
My mind immediately began whirling, trying to find an answer, but I forced it to slow. No. As tempting as it was to fall back into the realm of academics, to ponder the reasons that the magic should have remained hidden all these years, there was another question I had to ask first.
Aunt Varil was pacing across the floor of the main room when I entered. She stopped with a stamp of her foot as I came in.
“Sinda!” she barked. “Where have you been? The dye was ruined, and you weren’t anywhere to be found. This isn’t—”
“Where does it come from?” I interrupted. I felt raw, scraped down to the bone. First Kiernan’s disastrous visit, then Tyr’s betrayal, and now this. It was too much; I was as tightly drawn as a bowstring ready to be shot. I didn’t feel shy or quiet right then. I just felt angry and sick at heart.
“Where does what come from?”
“The magic.”
Aunt Varil’s eyes widened and her hand went to the base of her throat. Not in shock, but like someone who has just received news that she has been waiting for, and dreading.
“You knew,” I said, though I didn’t want to believe it. “You knew this might happen, what I’ve been feeling, and you didn’t warn me.”
“I didn’t know. You didn’t tell me. And I hoped …” For the first time since I had known her, she looked lost, unsure of herself. “I hoped that it would pass you by. That you wouldn’t inherit it.”
“Well, I just killed a plant by touching it,” I said. “So it looks like I did.” The door was still standing open, and I closed it with a bang. My legs were shaking, but I didn’t think I wanted to sit down. “Where does it come from? My father or my mother?”
Aunt Varil’s eyes flicked downward as she muttered, “Your mother.”
My mother, the one who had abandoned me, who had sent my father into deep enough grief that he had willingly given me up. I had hoped, a little, that it would have been my father. At least then my aunt might have known something about magic. But in this, I was alone.
I looked up toward the ceiling as my throat tightened. Alone. Always alone. No matter what I did, I was doomed to end up alone, without anyone to turn to for comfort. And why? Because of a prophecy that had nothing to do with me, because I happened to be born at just the right time to a man too unhappy to want to care for me. Just for that, I would never—
“Sinda!”
Aunt Varil’s rapier voice yanked me out of the morass of feelings engulfing me. It was only then that I saw the wind swirling through the house, pulling Aunt Varil’s skirts, my hair, the bunches of herbs scattered across the table.
More magic. But I didn’t know how to control it, how to stop it. I kept very still, hardly breathing in my shock, and gradually the tight feeling of magic in my chest eased again as it flowed out of me. Slowly, the wind died down, and when it had disappeared altogether, I sagged into the nearest chair.
Nameless God, I was a danger to myself and to everyone around me. Just look what I had done in a few moments of hurt and anger. Would I set fire to the house by accident next time I lost my temper? With that thought, I swallowed hastily. What if I did it now? It seemed unlikely; I felt spent, as worn out as if I had run to Vivaskari and back. But I had no one who could tell me what to expect, no one who could help me control myself.
Aunt Varil cleared her throat. “As I was saying, Ilania, your mother, had some power. Mostly, from what I saw, she used it to ensnare people, to get them to do what she wanted. It’s one of the reasons I … disliked her. I always thought that she had used some magic on your father, to make him fall in love with her.”
I didn’t look up from my lap. “Was she trained?”
I felt, rather than saw, Aunt Varil shrug. “Not by the college in Vivaskari. She claimed to have studied with a Farvaseean mage during her travels. She said the folk there stood on less ceremony than the ones here.”
Which was true, from what I knew of Farvaseean magical practices. They had no college there; instead, those with an aptitude for magic simply found a wizard who would take them on as an apprentice. The wizards in Vivaskari had always put their noses up at such an idea, saying that it was an undisciplined approach and the reason there hadn’t been a truly famous Farvaseean wizard in two centuries. Either way, it didn’t help me.
“You should have told me,” I said wearily. “I’m … I’m dangerous now. I killed a whole flowering vine. It just went to ash in my hand. I almost started a windstorm in here without meaning to. If you had told me …” I trailed off, uncertain. What then? I still would have had no one to turn to. There wasn’t even a village hedge witch in Treb. “You just should have told me.”
“I don’t like magic,” Aunt Varil answered.
I looked up at her. I had never heard someone say such a thing. You didn’t like or dislike magic. It was like saying you didn’t like air; it was something that was here, something you couldn’t do anything about. Some people had it and some people didn’t, like red hair or poor eyesight.
“I don’t like it. I haven’t, not since your mother. So I didn’t tell you. I guess I hoped that, if I didn’t, it would stay away.”
A crooked, mirthless smile twisted my mouth. “Well, it’s here.” I stood up slowly. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew that I couldn’t think about anything else tonight. “I’m going to sleep. I’ll figure out what to do in the morning, assuming I don’t set fire to the beds while I’m dreaming.”
Aunt Varil didn’t even nod. She just watched as, magic thrumming under my skin, I went into the bedroom, lay down on the bed, and fell asleep.
The next morning, I rose knowing what I had to do. I had been confused the night before, but when I woke everything seemed … not clearer, but sharper. So many things had collided in one night, and they jostled with one another so that I hardly had any room to breathe. There were edges all around me now, a hedge of thorn-tipped bushes that would snag me if I went the wrong way, and only one path seemed free of them.
Aunt Varil had already left her bed, or perhaps she had not even slept there last night. I had crawled under the blanket, still in my dress. Now I pushed myself up and went over to the chest sitting in the corner. A lump the size of a fist caught in my throat at the sight of King Kelman’s map perched on top of the other things inside, but I removed it with only slightly shaking fingers. Near the bottom of the trunk I found what I was looking for: a dark green dress I had brought with me from the palace and the thin, flat slippers that went with it. As I pulled them from the chest, my hand brushed against the small bag of gold wedged in the corner. A flutter of guilt rustled in me. Maybe I should have offered it to my aunt when I arrived, or maybe I should offer it now. Then I shook my head and folded one of the other dresses so that it covered the bag. No, I would need it for what I was about to do.
It wasn’t long before I was dressed, but I dithered about, brushing my hair and washing my face even after I knew both were presentable. After all, knowing what you have to do and doing it are two different things. But I finally forced myself to stop, to straighten my shoulders, and go in search of Aunt Varil.
I found her outside behind the house. A tub of water sat before her, along with several baskets of plants and a pile of wool skeins, but she had apparently not touched any of them since placing them there. She was staring off into the woods and looked around only when I cleared my throat loudly.
“Sinda,” she said without looking at me. Her voice sounded creaky, and I couldn’t tell if she had slept. “I’ve been thinking. About what you said last night. And I think that you’re right. It wasn’t fair of me to just hope that you wouldn’t have any magic.” She spoke in her particular clipped way, with little in her tone to tell me this was an apology. “There’s a woman in Widevale, a hedge witch. I bought some remedies from her when your father was sick. They didn’t work as well as I had hoped, but they seemed to give him a little relief. If we went to her, she might agree to teach you.” Brushing some invisible dust off her dress, she stood up briskly. “Now, there’s a cart going that way tomorrow, and—”
She had continued to speak as she rose, but she stopped suddenly when she caught sight of me. Her eyes flitted from my slippered feet to my hair, which I had braided and then looped around my head. Her tongue darted between her lips, and I saw her throat flash as she swallowed.
“But you aren’t staying, are you?”
I had prepared a speech, a long explanation that I thought I would need when I confronted her. It fell away now, and I was left searching for words. So I only nodded.
“You’re going back to the city?” Another nod. “Today, if you can?” Nod. “I assume you have some sort of money to pay a carriage if one comes through?”
It was only then that I seemed to remember how to speak. “I’m sorry. They gave it to me when I left. For my ‘service to the crown.’ I should have given it to you, I know, but I thought …” I held out my hands and shrugged. “I thought I might need it.”
Aunt Varil only jerked her head, but I couldn’t tell whether it was a nod or not. “Understandable. And it’s yours. After all, I didn’t spend my whole life standing in to be killed in someone else’s place.”
I blanched at the directness of her words, even as I knew they were fair. “But you took me in.”
She shrugged her thin shoulders. “Only because you had nowhere else to go. And because I knew my brother would have wanted it.” She sat back down on the stump where Kiernan had placed the map yesterday. “I have not been warm with you, Sinda. I have not comforted you, or tried to make your adjustment easier, or even liked your friends.”
“He wasn’t truly my friend,” I said quickly, my cheeks going red.
She blinked then, looking almost as though she would ask me about it, but she just continued, “I am sorry if I made things harder for you. I can only say that I wasn’t expecting you. I was used to my life as it was, and I resented the intrusion. Still, I’ve wronged you twice now. I didn’t welcome you, even when I knew you were barely getting by, and I let you stumble into your magic instead of warning you it might be there. I’m sorry for it.”
I didn’t know what to say. There was too much distance between us, so much that I thought I would never be able to cross it to reach her. But she was my only living relative, and I felt a dark well deep inside me, empty, where it might have been full. If only things had been different, if we had been different.
“Thank you,” I said finally. “I’m sorry, too, that I couldn’t make myself fit in here.”
Aunt Varil snorted without warning. “Don’t be silly. You don’t belong here. You never did. They ruined you for a normal life, but that’s not your fault. There was nothing you could do about it.” She sighed, like someone rolling into bed for the first time in weeks. “You’ll be better off in Vivaskari. But what will you do there?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I think I’ll go to the wizards’ college and see what you have to do to be admitted. If they won’t take me, well …” The fear I had been trying to squash grappled at my throat so that I couldn’t speak for a moment. “I’ll figure out something. I know the city; I’ll be more at home there.”
Aunt Varil’s eyes were dark when she looked at me. Maybe it was the newly discovered magic running through me, or maybe it was just that she thought it hard enough that anyone would have seen it on her face, but I could hear the words she didn’t say. I looked away, north, toward Vivaskari.
There might be nowhere I would be at home. I might always be straddling two worlds, and finding solace in neither.
A day later, I was back in Vivaskari.
As the hired carriage clattered into South Gate district, I was unable to stop myself from twisting my neck to look up at the city walls stretching overhead. Luckily, my fellow travelers—a skinny woman from a village south of Treb and her equally thin husband—were also staring out the windows and so didn’t see my bumpkinlike reaction. I managed to restrain myself from any more displays as we rolled through South Gate into Flower Basket, where we left the husband and wife, and on into Guildhall district, but I couldn’t stop the thumping of my heart. Home, home, home, it seemed to beat. Luckily, it seemed that only negative emotions caused the magic inside me to seep out, because the air did not warp or heat even as my heart sped up. I could still feel it, though, now that I knew it was there. The magic felt like a tiny sun inside me, but a sun with an … awareness. It wanted to get out; I knew that somehow. I just had to keep it inside long enough to be trained in its use.
The driver left me in front of the Cat’s Paw, an inn in Guildhall where he claimed he would leave his own daughter, if he had one. I knew little about accommodations in the city, aside from several expensive taverns in Sapphire district that Kiernan had sometimes gone with other boys from the palace. I knew I could not afford those, and I merely hoped the Cat’s Paw would prove to be as clean and as relatively cheap as the driver had promised.
It did, and I was soon ensconced in a room with a window overlooking Scribe Guild’s Hall. The only slippery part of the transaction had occurred when the matronly-looking owner had fixed me with a hard glance and asked, “How old’re you anyway?”
“Eighteen,” I had lied, trying not to blink. Though she had pursed her mouth in suspicion, the woman had finally nodded and accepted one of my coins. From the widening of her eyes, I guessed that most of her patrons didn’t pay in gold, and I vowed to hide the small bag of golden coins tonight, then get them changed to silver and copper as quickly as possible.
Night had fallen by the time I was settled in my room with a tray for supper—I had not wanted to stay downstairs to eat my meal. Though I had rarely strayed outside the upper districts of Vivaskari, I worried that someone might still recognize me as the false princess. After Tyr’s ploys of friendship, which I couldn’t think about without unhappy rumblings in my stomach, I felt inclined to view almost everyone with suspicion and distrust.
Those feelings extended, strangely, to myself as well. I had changed once again from the person I thought I was. And I didn’t trust this new person, this magic-filled self. I had kept my hands clenched in my lap for the entire carriage ride to the city, fearful that I would unleash power that I couldn’t control.
All my hope now rested on attending the wizards’ college. Surely they would see that I was a danger to myself and those around me and take me in. And if that did not sway them, I could pay with the bag of gold hidden at the bottom of my trunk.
It seemed a long time before I managed to quiet my spinning thoughts, but I finally fell asleep that night. Tomorrow, I told myself as I drifted off, I would begin to pull my life into order.