The False Princess

CHAPTER SEVEN

I left the workroom that day feeling buoyant, but if I had thought that the rest of my lessons would be as relatively easy as that first had been, I was mistaken. For one thing, it took more of me than I had thought it would; every spell, even the tiny ones, sapped my energy. Philantha said that I would grow stronger as I practiced and tried harder spells, just as a person’s arms grow stronger from lifting heavier and heavier loads.
“Everything has a price,” she said airily. “Magic is just like everything else—you have to give something to see a result. In this case, it’s a bit of your own energy with each spell. But less and less, as you get better. All that it means—well, perhaps not all, but quite a lot of what it means—is that you have to practice more.”
So I practiced. I froze and unfroze water, lit fires by staring at the hearth, and called up wind to float feathers around the study. I ground out potions of clear-sightedness, tried a dismal hand at scrying, and went on long walks with Philantha in the countryside around Vivaskari to collect herbs and plants for her experiments. And it was not all practical study. She set me to reading, and sometimes copying, long passages from books and scrolls of magic. Her library was well stocked with such books, as well as books on the history of magic in Thorvaldor and the countries surrounding it. She also gave me books on the runes used by wizards in older times. They had fallen out of favor in the last hundred years, she told me, but a wizard should be able to read them, as so many older texts employed them.
It would have been easier, I think, if I had had a more conventional teacher. But Philantha’s lessons, like everything else about her, were haphazard and often unconnected, so that we went from spells of transformation to spells of strengthening to spells of mind control and back without plan or reason. Once fixed on a topic she was clear and precise, but her tendency to change subjects without warning often left me three steps behind her.
It would also have been easier if I had been better at magic.
It was strange. There had been few things in my life that dealt with learning that I had not grasped quickly and easily. Dyeing, yes, but little else. But after that first triumph of freezing the goblet, I struggled for every bit of progress I made. Spells backfired or simply didn’t work. And to my increasing dismay, magic continue to leak out of me whenever I was upset, just as it had outside Tyr’s house and at the college’s fountain.
“It really would be easier,” Philantha said one day after I had accidentally blasted a leg off one of the study’s tables, “if you had less magic, you know.”
“Less magic?” I asked incredulously. “I can barely work any spells now.”
“But it’s not the amount of magic in you that’s the problem, you see,” Philantha corrected. “It’s just as I said at the college: you’re positively bursting with magic. So much that it’s trying to all come out at once every time you do a spell, and sometimes it just decides to come out all on its own, regardless of whether you called it. I’ve rarely seen so much, in fact. And because there’s so much, you’re choking it off in an attempt to control it.” She shook her head as she gazed at me. “I’m surprised, really, that it didn’t show itself before now—usually wizards with as much potential as you show it when they’re children. I can only assume it was that spell they used, the one to make everyone think you were the princess. Very clever, and very strong, that spell. It kept your magic from showing at all, and tamped it down enough to keep it from surfacing until long after the spell was removed. Which was, frankly, a feat, because there’s so much of it.”
It scared me, to feel so out of control of something so potentially deadly inside me. To compensate for this fear, I found myself seeking not merely to control my magic but to capture it in a stranglehold. Slowly, things stopped exploding so often. Which was good, except that I kept such a tight grip on my magic that, more and more often, my spells simply failed.
“You have to work with the magic,” Philantha repeated so often that I went to bed with the refrain jangling in my head. “You’re trying too much to control it. Let it flow through you. Pretend you are a riverbed. Don’t dam up the water, but don’t let it overflow your banks either. Trust the magic, and trust yourself. Let go a little, Sinda.”
It frustrated me, to wonder if I would ever gain a true measure of competence. I was used to being good at learning; I wanted to be good at magic. I pushed myself more relentlessly than Philantha did, even while I knew that I was still holding back in some vital way, unwilling to let go of my magic and see what happened. This constant push and pull made me edgy whenever we went to start a lesson, and left me jittery for hours afterward.
And yet, through it all, I felt more peaceful than I had since leaving the palace. I had an identity now. I was a member of Philantha’s household. The shopkeepers and families around the house knew me as Philantha’s scribe, and they seemed to look no harder than that. And even if no one but Philantha, her servants, and I knew it, I was a budding wizard. I felt, for the first time since I had left the palace, almost whole. I was good at being a scribe, and if I wasn’t yet good at magic, Philantha assured me that I would be one day.
I did not have all the pieces of myself intact, but the shattered ones lay quieter than they had in Treb, gradually being smoothed over so that they no longer cut me as often.
As the weeks passed, however, there was one piece of my newly developing self that would not fall into place. At first, I tried to ignore it. But as time went on, instead of improving at my lessons, I got worse and worse. Philantha had to chastise me to make me pay attention some afternoons. I accidentally left scorch marks on the cover of a book I was copying in the library, and caused a windstorm in my bedroom that nearly blew my bed out the window. Eventually I couldn’t sleep at night, but lay awake, miserable under the warm blankets.
I knew the cause, though I tried to ignore it. But it was like trying to ignore a wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding, like trying to ignore the breaking of your own heart. Even with my relief at finding a place with Philantha, the world began to seem drab and lifeless, lacking in color and sound. I pushed through it, stubbornly, for weeks, telling myself that I was happy, but eventually I had to admit the truth. No matter how comfortable I became in Philantha’s house, no matter how much magic I learned, none of it would matter until I had put things right with Kiernan.
Finally, three weeks after I arrived in the city, I went to Philantha to ask for an afternoon off. I was surprised, however, and almost went away again, when I found her ensconced in her workshop with Neomar Ostralus, the head of the wizards’ college, and the man who had once helped cast a spell on me to make me seem to be the princess.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said as I entered the room and saw them sitting with their heads together, bent over a tattered old scroll. Philantha looked up and smiled, though Neomar scowled a little at the interruption. “I didn’t know—”
“That anyone so illustrious ever came to visit me?” Philantha finished.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “That you were busy.” Of course, I hadn’t known the other, either. So far, my experience with Philantha had taught me that most of the wizards at the college had little use for her, with her odd ways and general flouting of convention.
She wagged a finger at me. “No point denying it. I’m usually surprised myself when he deigns to call on me, but we did start at the college in the same year, and even his prestige hasn’t stopped us being friends. He’s just come to ask my opinion of this spell they found in the archives—hasn’t been seen for, oh, two hundred years—and, of course, it’s easer to find me here than at the college.”
Neomar had looked up from the scroll by then and fixed his dark eyes on me. I couldn’t help remembering the last time I had seen him, and my stomach twisted. But I managed a stiff smile. “My lord,” I said.
“Miss Azaway,” he said, seeming equally stiff. He frowned and swallowed, giving the neck of his black robes an almost nervous tug. Maybe he, too, was remembering our last encounter.
I expected him to continue, but he only watched me with an expression of irritation, so I turned to Philantha.
“I have … business I need to tend to,” I told her, and though her sharp eyes brightened with interest, Philantha only nodded. “In the city. I was hoping, if there’s a time that you won’t need me …”
“Take tomorrow,” she said. “A friend of mine—a Wenthi wizard—is coming to visit, so I won’t be able to give you a lesson. Just make sure that you copy down the notes I took yesterday. I spilled tea on them, so it will give you chance to practice vanishing spells if you aren’t able to make out the words, and with the amount of tea on the papers, I expect you won’t. Just try not to vanish words instead of the tea.”
I nodded to her, then gave a little head bob to Neomar, and slipped from the room. As I was leaving, however, I heard Neomar say with a huff, “I had no idea you were teaching her, of all people, Philantha. It’s very unorthodox.”
“Well, you might have had her yourself, if it weren’t for those archaic rules at your college,” Philantha answer snappishly. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times … And there’s talent there, quite a bit of it, even if it is erratic right now. No, don’t look at me like that. I won’t be dissuaded, no matter what you say.”
A long sigh, one that I could hear even in the hall. “Then I at least ask you to keep me apprised of her progress,” he said. “It could be important … to the crown, that is.”
I was eavesdropping, I realized, and with their being wizards they might realize it. I hurried away, wondering why Neomar though it important to know the strides I made with my magic. Perhaps the king and queen would worry I was trying to gain back the power I had lost. But I wasn’t, I reminded myself, and if Neomar watched, he would see that. And besides, I had more pressing matters to worry about, so I put it out of my head.
The next day I rose and went to the library right away, without visiting the kitchen for breakfast. My stomach was doing a country dance inside me, and I thought that if I ate anything I would see it again shortly afterward. It took me four tries to vanish the tea stains on Philantha’s papers, and halfway through I managed to blotch enough ink onto my copy that I had to start over again. By the time I finished at noon, I was trembling visibly, my hand jerking as I took up a clean sheet of paper to pen my own note.
I am in the city. Please meet me in the Goldhorn Gardens this afternoon.
I paused, the pen hovering dangerously over the paper. There was so much I wanted to write, in case he refused to see me, but at the last moment my courage failed, and I only scratched: Your friend, S.
I folded the paper, dripped wax across the opening and sealed it with Philantha’s seal, then wrote Kiernan Dulchessy on the outer fold. I stared at the words for a moment, my mouth dry, before grabbing it and leaving the library.
All the way to the palace, I thought that I might be sick at any moment, regardless of not having eaten breakfast or lunch. What if Kiernan wasn’t there, or was too busy to come to find me? Or worse, what if he was there and simply wouldn’t meet me? I had said such horrible things to him in Treb, things that some people would say were unforgivable.
But I needed him. I had lived my life without him for almost a season now. I had tried, in Treb, to replace him. While I might have fooled myself at the time, looking back I saw how hard I had had to work to convince myself that I cared for Tyr the way I cared for Kiernan. In Vivaskari, I had tried not to think about him, trained my eyes not to look north toward the hill on which the palace stood. Neither tactic had worked, and I quailed at the thought of going through even one more day feeling as empty as I felt without him. Even so, walking toward the palace, I trembled even more at the thought of his turning away from me, telling me that I should go …
No. I stopped the thoughts with a hard shake of my head. I had to try—he was my best friend, and I had to try.
The palace walls stretched across the upper end of Goldhorn without a break, so I had to go into Sapphire to reach the gates. The people walking the streets here might actually recognize me if they looked closely enough, so I ducked my head whenever anyone passed until I realized such suspicious behavior might draw other sorts of attention. After that, I forced myself to keep my head level but straight ahead, never making eye contact, wishing all the while I had already learned the spells to alter my own appearance. Not that I could have performed them successfully in my state; I probably would have ended up looking like a bearded man for the rest of my life. Even without the spells, however, I reached the palace without incident. Two guards dressed in deep red, the color of the royal family, stood at attention before the gates.
I didn’t recognize either of them, so I put on a meek face and walked toward the gate.
“Your business?” the guard on the right asked in a bored voice.
“I’ve come with a message for the Earl of Rithia’s son,” I said. “From the house of Master Wizard Philantha Sovrit.” That was the truth; I was part of her house now. “I—I don’t need to deliver it myself, though.”
The guard nodded and snapped his fingers at the door to the guardhouse just inside the gate. “Selic,” he called. A young page burst out of the building at a jog, his yellow hair flapping on his forehead. “Run this woman’s message to Kiernan Dulchessy. You’ll probably find him in his rooms. He hardly leaves them until evening these days.”
The page nodded and held out his hand for my message. My throat was thick as I laid it in his hand. Then he was gone, hurrying off toward the palace. I smiled weakly at the guards, bobbed my head in thanks, and lurched back toward Goldhorn district.
The Goldhorn Gardens were public gardens, kept up by the donations of the residents of the district in their hopes of someday surpassing the gardens of Sapphire. They were not crowded, for it was midday and growing hotter. As I entered them, I cast around for someplace to sit, someplace where I might see Kiernan coming before he saw me. A bench set just in front of a tall weeping willow looked like a good spot, so I settled myself down to wait. And wait, and wait.
I sat. The sun moved slowly across the sky as I waited; sometimes a cloud obscured it, but mostly it just drifted implacably westward, shining off the water in a nearby pond and hurting my eyes. My bottom grew numb from the stone bench, but I had endured long years of sitting through lengthy affairs of state, and I hardly even shifted to make myself more comfortable. At first, I wondered about Kiernan and what the guard had said. Kiernan had never been one to lock himself up in his rooms; he thrived on conversation and company. Perhaps he was ill. Perhaps he had taken a lover and was staying up until all hours with her. Both thoughts made my empty stomach flip over weakly. But even my worries died away, replaced by a sense of growing internal numbness, as I sat there longer and longer without seeing his figure coming toward me.
I had resolved, the night before, to wait until dark, but now that seemed like a feat worthy of song. Maybe I should get up and walk around. Maybe Kiernan had come but was waiting in another part of the garden, and if I didn’t find him quickly, he would leave. Yes, I decided, I would go and look for him. But as I put my hands against the bench to push myself up, I saw him.
He was moving slowly, glancing to his right and left and sometimes behind himself. A fancy green tunic that I recognized as one his parents had given him for his last birthday covered light brown hose. His hair was dark with water, as if it had just been washed, and it was pushed back from his face, though it was already starting to wave slightly around his ears.
It was then that he saw me, ridiculous looking as I half crouched to rise. He started to take a step toward me, but then hesitated, and that hesitation nearly snapped my heart in two. Before I knew what I was doing, I had flung myself from the bench and was stumbling across the grass toward him.
I was breathing hard when I reached him, but from nerves rather than the distance. We stared at each other, silent, and then I gasped, “I’m so sorry. Nameless God, I’m sorry, Kiernan. I—”
I didn’t get any more words out, because he had caught me up in a ferocious hug that lifted me to my toes. All the air was crushed out of me, and my face pressed against his shoulder. To my dismay, I even snuffled a bit into the shoulder. We stood like that for a long moment, pressed together, before propriety forced itself into my brain. “You shouldn’t be seen hugging random girls off the street,” I mumbled.
“Let the king and queen see. I don’t care,” he hissed fiercely over my head.
But I pushed back, and he let me go reluctantly. “Well, I do.” I tried a shaky laugh. “One of us still has a reputation to maintain, after all.”
Kiernan looked ready to argue, so I shook my head. “I came to apologize, not fight again. So will you let me?”
This time Kiernan smiled. “Only if I get to apologize, too. I’ve been sick ever since that day. It was so stupid, my riding in like that. I should have warned you I was coming. I was asking to get my head bitten off.” He raised one eyebrow. “Though, I have to say, you bit harder than I would have imagined possible.”
I flushed to the roots of my hair. “I am sorry,” I said. “I knew when I was saying those things that I shouldn’t. I couldn’t seem to stop myself. But I didn’t mean them.”
“And I’m sorry, too, for sneaking up on you like that. Friends?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, letting out a huge breath.
We grinned at each other—silly, happy grins—and then began to walk slowly down one of the gravel paths, past shady stands of trees and several more formal collections of flowers and bushes. I felt … loose, like a string that has been tied in a knot and finally unwound. I was still smiling so hard that my face hurt, and my feet wanted to skip instead of walk.
“Are you here, then?” Kiernan asked finally. “In the city, I mean. Speak carefully, though!” he warned. “You’ll crush my heartfelt dreams of the past … afternoon … if you say no.”
“You don’t need to worry,” I confirmed. “I am living in the city.”
“You left your aunt?” Kiernan’s brow wrinkled in concern. “Or is she here, too?”
“No, she’s still in Treb. I’m the one who left.”
Kiernan seemed to consider before he said carefully, “What about your friends there?”
A huge familiar hand gripped my chest as I said, “There was only one friend, really. And he turned out to be … false.” Kiernan didn’t ask, but I found myself saying, “He was only pretending to be my friend. He really wanted … that is … he wanted to say he had … with me …”
I was stuttering and blushing, but Kiernan seemed to have understood me. His eyes widened as he asked slowly, “Well, did he?”
“No!” I stopped and stamped my foot at him. “Who do you take me for? I didn’t lose my brains when I lost my title.” Kiernan had the good sense to look abashed, so I continued, in a low voice, “But who knows? I let him kiss me, and I was lonely. I might have, if I had gotten lonely enough …”
Kiernan’s face had gone white, and his jaw was so tight it looked like rock. “He kissed you? A piece of dirt like that?”
“I doubt I’m the only one who’s been kissed these last few months,” I said with feigned lightness. I didn’t want to talk about Tyr anymore, not when I was finally back with Kiernan. “You were pursuing Lady Vivia when I left. I’m sure you’ve kissed her by now.”
My ploy worked. Kiernan launched into a story involving a feast, a loose dog, and the comforting arm he had had to wrap around Lady Vivia, and had both of us laughing. And if some of the laughter on both sides was a little forced, neither of us mentioned it. Afterward, we walked a little farther in silence, and then Kiernan said, “So where are you living?”
I started to answer, and then realized that I had a whole story to tell myself. “I’m scribe to Philantha Sovrit,” I said slowly. “I live in her house.”
“Philantha?” Kiernan sounded shocked. “The crazy wizard?”
I puffed up like an angry cat. “She’s not crazy! She’s a Master, and she’s just … different. She does all sorts of experiments and new sorts of spells. She just doesn’t like the college, that’s all.”
Kiernan raised his hands in mock surrender. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Please,” he said with a bow, “let me not offend Mistress Sinda so that she attacks me with magic no doubt learned from the veritable Philantha.” He grinned at me as he raised his head, but I didn’t say anything. Slowly, the grin dwindled. “What?” he asked.
“I—I—well, look.” Holding out one hand, I narrowed my eyes in concentration. I could feel sweat under my arms. Please, I thought. Nameless God, don’t let me fail in front of him. Slowly, there appeared a tiny spark, and then a ball of weak blue-white light hovered above my hand. I glanced from my palm to Kiernan, whose mouth was hanging open.
“It’s not a hard spell,” I said, and as I spoke, the light vanished. “And see? I’m not really any good at all. There’s no need to look like that over it.”
Still, Kiernan stared at the spot where the light had been until I dropped my hand. “How did you do that?” he asked, gaping. “You don’t have magic, no one in your family—” Understanding lit his eyes. “Your real family. They were … wizards?”
I shrugged, embarrassed now. “My mother was, not my father. And I don’t think she was a wizard, just … someone with power. She was always on the move—I don’t think she would have gone to the college, even if she had had the money or title to get in.” I ran a hand through my hair to tuck an errant strand back behind my ear. “I tried to get into the wizards’ college, but they wouldn’t have me. Philantha found me there, and she offered to teach me as part of my payment for being her scribe. She says that the spell they put on me to make me seem to be the princess must have … pushed it down. Kept the magic from surfacing. And that it took a while after the spell was gone to reassert itself.
“I’m really hopeless, though. Philantha says that there’s too much magic in me, that I didn’t use it early enough and now it’s trying to get out all at once. Sometimes things happen without my meaning them to when I’m upset. Or sometimes I can’t get even tiny spells to work at all. I’m sort of … dangerous, I think.”
I had worried that he might think of me differently, once he learned about my new powers. That the thought of being accidentally roasted alive if I got angry with him might send him running back to the palace.
I shouldn’t have bothered. Kiernan’s tongue was poking between his lips. I had seen that look a hundred times, usually just before a stunt that would have him, or both of us, in trouble. “Magic,” he murmured. “You, a wizard. A dangerous one.” His eyes swept over me, then landed on my face. “Do you have any idea how much fun this could be?”
Once I had Kiernan back, I began to think that, perhaps, my life was finally beginning to come around. It might not have been the life I had once thought I would have, but it was not a bad one. I did the work Philantha needed: copying tattered books and scrolls, translating her experiment notes into a legible script, visiting the shops of Vivaskari in search of ingredients not found in the surrounding countryside, and helping her with her experiments. She was so scattered that, on many days, she did not bother to think ahead to my next task, so I was left alone to study magic. Not that it seemed to make much difference sometimes. I still struggled to control my magic, and sometimes despaired of ever learning enough to call myself a true wizard.
I had rare success, however, with a message spell. It took me two days to get it right, but eventually I could conjure up a tiny ball of green light that, after I spoke to it, would convey a short message to whomever I wished. It was handier and quicker than letters, and it allowed me to tell Kiernan immediately whenever I had an evening free.
“What are you telling them?” I asked during our fourth visit. We were sitting at a table in a tavern in Guildhall, one that Kiernan had apparently been coming to for some years whenever he felt tired of the fancy spots in Sapphire. I had been to so few taverns that I couldn’t help staring covertly at every new person who came through the door. I felt rather daring for just being there, though I tried to look unmoved by the whole thing.
“What am I telling whom?” Kiernan asked. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, and one arm dangled over the back of his chair. If you didn’t look too hard, you might have mistaken him for a prosperous guildman’s son out for a night in town.
I frowned at him. “Your parents. The court. Everyone. You’ve disappeared, as far as they’re concerned, four nights in the past week and a half. You have to be telling them something.”
“I told them I’ve met a fishmonger’s daughter and that she’s playing hard to catch,” he said blandly. “That my courtship has so far been dismal—fish thrown at me, nets dropped on me from rooftops, horrible stuff—and that I’ll have to devote much more time to sweeping her off her feet.”
I clinked my fingernails against the side of my mug, my scowl deepening. “No, you haven’t.” It came out as more of a question than I had meant for it to. I didn’t think he would really tell anyone that, but you never quite knew with Kiernan.
Kiernan took a slow draw from his mug of ale and then set it down. As he wiped a hand across his mouth, I saw that he was trying to hide a smile. “No, I haven’t,” he said finally. “I haven’t told them anything. You forget, dear Sinda, that I’m only five months shy of eighteen. My parents seem to think that I need to, how did my father put it, ‘get any ramblings out of my system’ before I settle down as a proper adult. They’re letting me run positively wild these days.”
“As if you hadn’t before,” I snorted.
He shrugged. “The last few days, they’re just happy that I’ve done something besides grimace and sulk in my rooms. I did a lot of that while you were away.”
“I thought you kissed Lady Vivia while I was away.”
Leaning forward across the table, he winked at me. “Yes, but only once, more’s the pity.” He shifted, as if he were going to sit back, but then he said, more seriously, “The truth is that I was miserable while you were gone. And particularly after our, um, visit in Treb. My parents threatened to take me to our Rithia holdings, to see if the fresh air would knock me out of my despondency. That was when I kissed Lady Vivia. I thought that a scandal would prove that I was still myself, and make sure they would leave me here. I had this idea that you might come looking for me, might need me, even after what happened, and I didn’t want you to find me gone.”
Warmth slid into the crevices between my bones, golden and sweet, like honey. I swallowed, not knowing what to say. “Your poor parents must have been mystified,” I finally managed. “You’ve never been sick a day in your life.”
“Oh, they knew the reason. They just thought …” He stopped, a falsely bright smile on his face. “Do you need another drink? I’m going to get more ale, so I can get you some if you want.”
I nodded, watching him as he wove through the tables to the bar. He leaned on the counter, chatting with the serving girl as she produced two fresh mugs. He came back, bearing the drinks, with a jaunt in his step.
“That girl—Ani—she says that there’s a troupe of jugglers staying at an inn in Flower Basket. They’re going to perform tomorrow in the market just before dusk. If Philantha doesn’t need you, maybe we go could see them.”
“What did your parents think, Kiernan?”
“Pardon, my rosebud?” A confused look stole over his face, but I knew better.
“After I left. You said they knew why you were upset, but that they thought …” I trailed off, raising my eyebrows expectantly.
He sighed, then pushed my mug toward me. “They hoped that I’d make friends with her. That I’d forget about you.”
The warmth was receding, replaced by the beginnings of crackly ice. “With Nalia.”
“Yes.”
I reached for my mug and managed to slop some of the liquid on the table as I raised it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. “And did you? Make friends with her?”
Kiernan looked torn. He glared at his cup, then took a big enough swallow that he choked. Eyes watering, he said, “Sort of. She’s … She’s nice, Sinda. She was raised in that convent, but you wouldn’t guess it—she’s not stuffy or cold. She’s nice. And my father wanted me to make sure that I didn’t … snub her. He said that everyone knew how close I was to you, and that it would hurt our family if I seemed to dislike the princess. So I went whenever she invited a group of us to play games in the hall or go walking. And she had heard about you, and me. She asked me questions, sometimes.”
My face felt puffy, like when I had been holding back tears. “Like what?”
He shook his head and shrugged. “Things you did. What you were like.” He smiled at me, but weakly. “I left out the parts about your being pretty much unable to walk without hurting yourself.”
Trying for levity, I stuck my tongue out at him, but it was halfhearted.
“At first, I felt like I was being disloyal to you. I didn’t want to like her. But then I thought, well, that the two of you are really in the same boat. And I hoped that someone was being kind to you, so I thought I should probably be kind to her.”
“Oh yes,” I said sourly. “She’s suddenly the princess and I’m suddenly nobody and we’re in the same boat.”
“Well, you are,” he said more forcefully than I would have expected. “Neither of you asked for this. She was pretty lost herself at first. Everyone trying to curry favor; nobody really talking to her. She needed a friend.”
I wanted to snap at him, or maybe crawl into bed with the covers up around my ears, but I just looked down. I was, I realized with a flush of mortification, jealous. Jealous of Kiernan liking Nalia, of finding her, even in the tiniest way, a replacement for me. Was this how Kiernan had felt when I had thrown Tyr in his face in Treb—all hot and cold at the same time? But I had been trying to be spiteful, and he wasn’t. Even through the hurt, I had to admit it was different. Still, it didn’t stop me from saying, somewhat sulkily, “Would you rather be with her now? You can go, if you want. I’m sure there’s something going on at the palace that would be more interesting than being here.”
“A play, actually,” he said. “There’s a Farvaseean troupe of actors staying at the palace. They’re performing some new comedy tonight. It’s supposed to be quite good.”
I could feel my forehead pinching as I stared resolutely at my lap.
“Nameless God, you can be a stupid cow.”
I jerked my head up. “How dare—” I sputtered, but Kiernan was shaking his head and smiling.
“Don’t you see? I’d rather be here than watching ten Farvaseean plays.”
The sincerity in his voice made me aware of how petulant I must look. “Sorry,” I muttered.
“It’s all right,” he said easily. “I expected you to ask me about her before now.” We sipped our drinks in silence for a time, before he added, “I think she’s guessed that you’re here, though. She said something to me the other day that made me think it.”
I swallowed, not wanting to show how much that scared me. “Will she tell?” I asked. “I don’t—I just don’t want anyone to know. Where I am, that I’m here. I don’t know why.”
“I don’t think so. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if she came looking for you. I think she has questions.”
Which was a problem I had not even considered. I didn’t know how I felt about talking to Nalia, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to find out. But I had ruined enough of one evening, so I only said, “Well, we’ll see about it when it happens. Now, tell me about the jugglers.”