The False Princess

CHAPTER EIGHT

It wasn’t as simple as that, though. The next time I saw Kiernan, we quarreled about it.
“She has figured it out,” he told me.
We were sitting in the garden behind Philantha’s house, watching the water in the little fountain splash into the basin at the bottom. It was a small space—no one but nobles had room for sprawling gardens inside the city. Surrounded by a tall stone wall, it contained the fountain and circling walkway, with various herbs and flowers growing near the walls. The balcony above teemed with more life, but it was still a pleasant place. I had been lounging with my back against the warm stone lip of the basin, and I jerked so hard that I banged my right shoulder painfully. Eyes watering, I said, “What makes you think that?”
“She said, ‘I know you’re seeing her. I want to meet her.’ It doesn’t get much clearer than that.”
I rubbed my shoulder. I thought about asking Kiernan if I was bleeding from scraping it against the stone, but only gritted my teeth instead. “What? Does she expect you to bring her to me?”
From the bench he was sitting on, Kiernan shuffled his feet against the ground, then said, “I think she does.”
I felt my cheeks go hot just as my spine seemed to turn into an icicle. I didn’t want to meet Nalia, didn’t want to get any closer to her than I was right now. I didn’t care that she was the princess, that it was her right to ask me to dance with a goat in front of all Goldhorn district if she wanted to. I knew only that I had no desire to lay eyes on the girl whose life I had been living until that spring. I would rather have crawled back to Treb on my hands and knees in the pouring rain without a cloak.
And yet.
I had been her. Some rebellious part of me wanted to look at her, to see the real thing, the thing I was supposed to have been. To see what she was doing with the life that had been mine. And it scared me, because I knew what I would find. I had seen it in that brief moment when she had disembarked from the carriage to greet the king and queen.
She was a princess. The real princess, all grace and silky movements and warm laughter. Something I, in my clumsy, shy, small body, had never been. To see her would force me to acknowledge it, more than I did now. And I was scared.
“Well,” I said, getting up, my hands on my hips, “you’ll have to tell her that you won’t. That it’s just not possible.”
He folded his arms, a stubborn expression on his face. “You know I can’t do that, Sinda. She’s the princess. She’ll be queen someday. If she asks, I have to do it.”
“You didn’t do what I told you to often enough!” I retorted.
“We’re not talking about taking the last spice cake on the plate! You know that I’ll have to bring her if she asks.”
I did know it, but I didn’t want to hear it. “Fine! Just do whatever Nalia wants. Bring her here. But don’t be surprised if I don’t answer the door!”
With that, I stormed out of the garden, slamming the door into the house behind me. Through the window, I saw Kiernan start toward the door, then stop. Slowly, he turned around and left through the garden door, the one that led into an alley that connected to the main street.
“What did he do?”
I whipped around, startled. I had been so immersed in my own thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed Philantha standing into the doorway to one of the sitting rooms.
“Pardon?”
“Well, in my experience, it’s usually the man who bumbles about causing most of the problems in relationships of romance,” she said. “So, naturally, I assumed that your young man has done or said or thought something that caused you to come bursting in like a hurricane. Am I correct?”
I shook my head so violently the braid coiled around my head threatened to come loose. “We’re not in a … relationship of romance. He’s just my friend.”
Philiantha made a sound suspiciously like a snicker. “Truly?” she asked. “I suppose that’s why he’s been with you most evenings.”
“Like I said, we’re friends. And we haven’t seen each other in a long time.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I may not care about it—or at least I didn’t, until recently—but I do hear some of the court gossip when I visit the college. The noble students, they bring it with them, you know. And one of the stories is how the Earl of Rithia and his wife are scrambling to find eligible matches for their son.”
I felt suddenly dizzy for no reason, and a hot flush—disturbingly like the jealous feeling I had experienced at the inn—rushed through me. “Matches?” I repeated.
“Girls, young women, marriageable prospects. Strange, how suddenly they started. Right after the princess came back, it’s been noted. As if they had had hope for another match before, and it was ruined.”
“Me?” I asked. “People think Kiernan’s parents wanted him to marry me? That’s … ridiculous. Princesses don’t marry earls—a duke, maybe, but not an earl, not unless he’s foreign and brings some grand alliance. And besides, we’re just—”
“Friends,” Philantha finished. “I know. That’s what you keep saying.” She eyed me, before saying, “They haven’t had much luck, though, from the gossip. He’s polite to everyone they trot out, but nothing more. But that’s neither here nor there, since you don’t love him.”
I glared at her, my face and chest still filled with that rush of heat.
“In fact, he’s made you angry, hasn’t he?”
“He did. Well, I said … Yes, we fought. He says that Na—the princess—wants to see me. And I told him that he couldn’t bring her to me, that I didn’t want to see her. He said that if she asked, he would have to. But he’s wormed his way out of stickier situations than that. He could find a way to avoid it, if he wanted to.”
“Then perhaps he doesn’t want to,” Philantha answered before gliding away up the stairs and out of sight.
I had plenty of time to mull over Philantha’s words, because I didn’t see Kiernan for the next three days. It was the longest we had been parted since I returned to the city, and even through my anger at him it drove me to distraction. I mangled my spells even worse than usual, spilled ink, and tripped so frequently that Philantha threatened to call Kiernan to the house herself and turn him into a sparrow if we didn’t make up. Her eyes glinted dangerously when she said it, and only that was enough to force away a bit of my muddleheadedness. But I made up for it by spending my free time mooning about on windowsills, staring in the direction of the palace. I thought about sending one of my message spells to him at least five times a day. But each time I raised my hand to conjure the tiny ball of glowing light, I dropped it. I wanted to see Kiernan, but I wasn’t ready to forgive him yet. As for Philantha’s other charge, it was obviously silly. We were friends, as we always had been.
Still, why did it seem like every time I turned around I was fighting with Kiernan? We had rarely fought before, and then only over unimportant things. Maybe, whispered a seditious part of me, you didn’t have enough of a spine before. You were too shy to fight with anyone, even him. Or maybe I was just turning into a prickly, irritable person, a sort of walking thornbush. Or maybe, despite my protests to Philantha, something was shifting between Kiernan and me, taking a path the end of which I couldn’t see.
On the third day, I managed to botch the locating spell Philantha was teaching me badly enough that, instead of finding the needle she had placed in her desk, I flung all the drawers out of their slots and against the wall.
“You aren’t concentrating,” she snapped, pointing at the drawers so that they flew back into their places. “You have to envision just the needle, nothing else.”
“I know, I know,” I mumbled as I slumped down on a stool. “I just …” I had been wondering about Kiernan, if he was talking to Nalia right then. It was afternoon, the time when the palace nobles sought the cool of the indoors before dinner. I felt wrung out, as tired and cranky as a wet cat, and also something else. Something that reminded me, though I wanted to deny it, of jealousy. “I’ll do better,” I offered.
“No, I think enough of my study has been upended for one day, or perhaps even five,” Philantha said with a shake of her head. “There’s an apothecary—strange man, very tall—in Wizard’s district who promised to order me some Farvaseean blood fig seeds. They should be in by now. I want this whole jar filled, or as much as he can manage.” Pushing a rabbit skull and paint palette aside, she found a squat, empty jar and shoved it toward me, along with a handful of coins.
I nodded and started toward the door. “I’m sorry,” I said over my shoulder as I reached it.
“Remember what I said about the sparrow,” Philantha huffed.
It was a gray day, with low clouds pressing on the tops of the buildings. The palace, I saw when I glanced involuntarily toward its hill, was obscured by the fog. I stared at the shifting mist for a moment, then shook myself and walked away from the house. I had taken only ten steps, however, when the tie on my shoe came undone, forcing me to stoop to relace it.
Only then did I notice the man.
He was thin, with unremarkable brown hair and a long, slightly mushy-looking face, dressed in common brown leggings and a tunic. No one you would ever think to look at even once. He had been rubbing at the metal railings that led up the steps to the house across from Philantha’s, his cloth dark with polish. I would never have noticed him, except that the abruptness of his movement caught my eye as I bent to tie my lace. He stopped, just when I did, and did not move until I had straightened and walked on.
Don’t be foolish, I told myself. It’s just a coincidence. But I couldn’t stop the prickly feeling on the back of my scalp, and I managed to sneak a look behind myself after turning two corners.
The man was following me. He walked half a block behind, his eyes not focused on me. He looked like any other common man hired for a day at one of the merchant houses, on his way home or to his next job. But he took every turn I did, and never fell back farther than a half block.
My heart was racing now, but I didn’t know what to do. Should I simply make my way back to Philantha’s? But she might not believe me, what with my strange behavior over the past few days. Should I call a city guard? No, a guard would certainly not believe me, for I felt sure that the man would melt away before I finished drawing breath. A treacherous part of me longed to flick my fingers, summon a message ball, and send it straight to Kiernan, but even in my fear I couldn’t make myself do it.
In the end, I decided to keep going to the apothecary. There were people on the streets; there was no way for the man to abduct me, if that was his plan. And why should it be? I argued with myself. Who would want to have me abducted or even followed? I was no one important, not now.
The apothecary’s shop sat on a street near the college that housed several other shops which wizards patronized. The owner, who was indeed tall enough that I had to stretch my neck to look at him properly, filled my jar and took the money without saying much. I thanked him, then paused to glance out the window before leaving. I didn’t see the man, which made me think that I really might have been imagining things.
You’ve been silly, I thought. Get hold of yourself and go home.
As I stepped out of the shop, however, I forgot to check down the street for the man, because I was immediately distracted by the strangest sensation. It was as though I was a doll on a string, and someone was tugging on that string, drawing my head in the direction they wanted. I couldn’t help turning to the left. For a moment, I saw nothing but the quiet street, and then a figure moved out of the shadow of a nearby building. Not the man who had, or had not been, following me. This person wore a long brown cloak, and something about its lines reminded me of the clothing worn at a convent or monastery. A memory itched in my mind, but before I could put it together, the person drew the hood back, and I almost dropped the jar of seeds.
We didn’t look the same, not really. Close enough to be cousins, perhaps, but never twins or even sisters. Nalia was taller than I was, and longer of limb. Her hair looked like polished wood, whereas mine tended to be more the color of dark tea. The features of her face were more cleanly cut, her nose sharper and brows more arched, all except her lips, which were full and rosy pink. The similarity was there, but it was like looking at a view of myself through water, with every feature altered by the waves.
We gazed at each other for a long time, and then I said, “We’ll attract attention if we keep standing here. And I’m guessing only Kiernan knows where you’ve gone, so you won’t want that.”
A little flush of color painted itself prettily across her face. “Will you walk with me then?” she asked.
I bit my lip, all other concerns vanishing from my mind, and nodded.
We walked in silence, each of us sneaking glimpses of the other out of the corners of our eyes, before I said, “There’s a statue, I think, of Queen Conavin around that corner. She’s the one who—”
“Granted the land for the wizards’ college,” Nalia finished. At my startled look, she shrugged delicately. “I was tutored well in the convent, and even more so since I’ve been here. They seem to want me to know everything you … everything a princess should know, and they think I should know it as quickly as possible.”
Another silence, this one a little heavier than the last. “There are benches,” I said. “We could sit there.”
“Lead the way,” she said.
The statue of Queen Conavin was set a short way off from the street in a small round cul-de-sac. It was life-size, or nearly, with the queen gazing toward the wizards’ college, her two hands held out in a gesture of giving. Nalia paused as we made our way toward the benches placed around the statue, her head tilted back to regard the stone face. It was hard to tell, for the statue was more than two hundred years old, but I thought you could see the resemblance, mostly in the slant of their cheekbones. I sighed.
The sound seemed to recall to Nalia that I was waiting, because she smiled apologetically and came to sit beside me on the bench the farthest from the road. But instead of speaking, we avoided each other’s eyes and stared at our laps. She wore a dusky blue gown, the sleeves cut to fall just below the crook of her elbow. If she had shifted, I might have been able to see her birthmark, my old birthmark, the three tiny reddish dots set on her inner arm. She remained still, though, and the silence between us grew more and more uncomfortable. But just as I was about to open my mouth, Nalia said, “I’ve been thinking about this for weeks, and now I hardly know where to begin.”
Her voice trembled, so slightly I wasn’t sure if I had actually heard it, and when I looked, I saw that there was just a sliver too much white around her eyes, a fraction of tension gripping her mouth. Vulnerable, I realized. The Princess of Thorvaldor felt as naked and strange as I did, as unsure of what to say. It made me want to simultaneously hug her and slap her across those elegant cheeks.
“Start at the beginning,” I said, though it came out a bit ragged. “Why did you seek me out, Your Highness?”
She did flinch then; the last words had been more acrid than I had meant. “Don’t call me that, please. I didn’t come here for that.”
“Then what did you come for?” I asked, resisting the urge to rub my hands up and down my arms.
“To see you. You were all I thought about, on the way from the convent. I thought that maybe I would get to meet you, that you would still be here, but you weren’t. And when I was lonely, when I missed my home, I kept wondering where you were and if you were missing your home.”
“Well, if that’s all you wanted to know, I can tell you about it.” The words rolled out of me in a torrent, sharp and biting. “If you want to hear how I cried myself to sleep missing my friends and my room and my … everything, I can tell you. If you want to hear about how I couldn’t even make a life for myself with the one real family member I have left, I can tell you. I can tell you about how the one friend I thought I’d made turned out to be no friend at all, about how the wizards’ college wouldn’t take me because I’m too poor. Will it make you feel better to hear those things?”
For an instant, Nalia looked as startled as if I had slapped her. But then she straightened her spine, her shoulders going hard, and her chin rose. “I didn’t ask for this, you know. I didn’t ask for them to come and tell me that I was the princess. I was happy with my life the way it was—I didn’t want to take yours! And now I’m just … trying to understand, and I thought—” She let out her breath in a whoosh, staring up toward the gray sky. “I thought I might, a little better, if I met you.”
Another barrage of attacks came into my mind, and I almost let them loose. Just then, though, I noticed how one of Nalia’s hands gripped the coarse fabric of her cloak, rubbing it back and forth between her fingers as if it were something comforting. The cloak smelled sweet, I realized. It had none of the slightly herby, musty smell of clothes that the palace servants had packed into trunks because they wouldn’t be much used.
“That’s not just for disguise, is it?” I asked.
She narrowed her eyes, waiting for another caustic remark, but when none came, she nodded once. “I wouldn’t let them take it. They gave me new clothes at the convent, for the carriage trip, but they hadn’t sent a cloak. I said I was cold, and they let me bring this. After I got here, I hid it before they could take it away.”
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees and face buried in my hands. It would be easy to hate her. To be filled with righteous indignation at having been snuck up on. To rail at her for what her family had done to me, how they had used me and then cast me aside. I wanted to hate her for taking the life that I had thought was mine.
I couldn’t.
Kiernan was right, I thought with a miserable, smothered laugh. Neither of us had asked for this. It had all been decided by others—the king and queen, the wizards they had asked for help, the Nameless God, even, when he sent a prophecy of death upon the princess’s birth. The two of us hadn’t had any control over it. And I was tired of being a thornbush, of yelling at everyone around me. Maybe, by not hating Nalia, by forgiving her for the life she now possessed, I could really begin to be Sinda, and not just the false princess.
“I’m sorry,” I said, taking my head out of my hands. “All I seem to be doing lately is arguing with people. Let’s start again, shall we? I’m Sinda, and you’re Nalia.”
Nalia had still looked frosty when I started talking, but by the end, her face had softened. “I’m sorry, too. I knew you wouldn’t want to see me, and I came anyway.”
“Sometimes you have to,” I agreed. It had started to mist, and tiny droplets of water clung to her hair. I could feel the wet seeping through my dress, but neither of us moved.
“I don’t have long,” she said. “I’ve been coming here for the past few days, for a little while, thinking you might come.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You told Kiernan that Philantha sends you on errands. So I’ve been going to each of the shops he said she frequents, while he lies to anyone who asks where I am.” She blushed again. “I wanted to wait outside your house, but I didn’t have the courage. I think this way took more time, though.”
I twisted my fingers together, then let them relax. “Did he tell you I was here, in the city? Is that how you knew?”
I saw consideration flash through her eyes as she tried to decide whether or not to tell me. I waited while she let out a small breath and then said, “Yes and no. I mean, he did tell me where he thought Philantha sends you, but I figured out you were in the city by myself.”
“How?” I imagined a ring of spies, all ready and willing to do the new princess’s bidding, even as I knew how silly that was. I had never had spies, after all, nor heard of any sixteen-year-old prince or princess who did.
Her cheeks reddened a bit. “Kiernan. We were introduced soon after I arrived. And everyone seemed to like him, and he seemed to like everyone else. Everyone but me.” I must have looked startled, because she smiled wryly. “Oh, I doubt many other people knew it. That’s one thing I’ve noticed—the people who live in the palace rarely look beyond themselves. They’re so concerned about, oh, their positions, and who’s in favor with whom, things like that.”
I grinned at her. “That’s true. But it always seemed like everyone noticed my tripping and falling over things every time I came into a room.”
“No one’s mentioned it. All I’ve heard is how you were very quiet, very studious.” She paused, and I knew that she was leaving something out. Maybe that I had been so quiet and studious that they should have known I could never be the princess. I didn’t say it, though, and she went on. “So, Kiernan. He always came, if I made an invitation, but I could tell that he didn’t want to like me. I knew he had been your friend, and I told myself I understood how he might hate me for taking your place. But really, I wanted him to like me so much it hurt. I thought, since he liked you, that, if he liked me, too, I might feel more like I was really the princess. It took a long time, but he finally seemed to warm to me. It was overnight, almost, like he had made some decision while lying in bed.”
I didn’t say anything, remembering Kiernan’s words. I hoped that someone was being kind to you, so I thought I should probably be kind to her.
“After that, I could tell that his … moods stemmed from missing you, and not disliking me. Then, one day, he said he was going to visit a friend outside the city. He gave a different name, but I guessed that it was a lie, that he was really going to see you.” She swallowed, and there was the slightest hint of nerves in her voice when she said, “It didn’t go well, did it?”
I recalled shouting at Kiernan, turning my back on him, the hot wetness of tears on my face. “No,” I said. “It didn’t go well.”
“I didn’t think so. He was worse when he got back. He didn’t come out of his rooms for days. But then, all of a sudden, it was like a light came back on inside him. And I thought there was only one thing that would cause that to happen. You.”
There was something sad in her eyes, in the line of her mouth. “We’ve been friends since we were children,” I said. It sounded like an apology, and maybe it was. I wondered if she had left a friend like that behind at the convent, if she couldn’t see that person now because she was the princess. I wondered what else she had left behind.
She shook herself, so slightly that I wouldn’t have noticed, except that it made the raindrops in her hair tremble. “I made him tell me,” she said. “He didn’t want to. Don’t be angry with him.”
I didn’t answer. The ache of anger at him had diminished a bit while I talked to Nalia. Part of it, I realized, had been born of the fear I’d had about meeting her, and I had just pushed it off onto Kiernan so I wouldn’t have to face it. But that was something I’d have to work out with him, not her.
Nalia reached down and plucked a blade from the clump of grass that was stubbornly trying to grow between the flagstones surrounding the statue. I was gazing toward the palace, lost in my thoughts, and she must have misinterpreted the look. “Did you love it very much?” she asked softly, braiding the grass through her fingers.
“What? Living there?”
“Being the princess.”
Part of me wanted to laugh, and another part, a little part, wanted to cry. As it was, I sort of hiccupped, then rolled my shoulders into a weak shrug. “Yes. No. I don’t know. I mean, it was my life, and I was happy most of the time. I knew who I was, I knew what I was for. I tried to learn enough to be a good queen. But I never really … fit in, I suppose. I didn’t like the grand dinners, with everyone watching me, because I was sure to spill something down my dress. I didn’t like having to make conversation with every duke’s son and foreign noble’s daughter, and never getting to be let off dancing at a ball. I could do it all, but it made me nervous. So, yes, I miss it. It was all I knew.” I looked into her face, so like and unlike my own. “But sometimes, it’s a relief, too. It’s easier, just being Philantha’s scribe.”
“Yes,” she whispered, “I know.”
A bell sounded somewhere in the district, marking the hour. It was later than I had thought. Nalia turned in the direction of the bell, her fingers rubbing her cloak again. She would have to go soon, or risk having every guard in the palace searching the streets of Vivaskari for her. She would have a hard enough time explaining as it was, for the mist had turned into real rain, and she would be soaked through by the time she reached the palace.
There was a question I had wanted to ask, but it kept getting stuck somewhere in my mouth before I could speak. Finally, though, with the ring of the bell still in my ears, I forced it out. “How is my … the queen. How is the queen?”
Nalia looked down at her lap. “She misses you, I think. She doesn’t talk about you—neither of them do. But I caught her crying once, when she thought she was alone. I was standing just outside the doorway, where she couldn’t see me. I was about to go in to her, but then my … then the king came. He held her shoulders and I heard him say that she had to bear it. That she had known, that there was nothing else they could have done. She stopped crying for him, but she still looked sad.”
My throat burned and I had to shut my eyes to keep tears from spilling out. I had thought that I wanted to know that she missed me, but knowing it didn’t make me feel better.
“I’m sorry,” Nalia said. “I’m sorry, but I have to go. They’ll miss me soon.”
I nodded, eyes still closed. When I heard the sigh of her skirt brushing against the ground, I opened them and stood. We stared at each other without saying anything until Nalia finally gave a tight little smile. “Thank you. I’m sorry I sneaked up on you, but I had to. I had to know.”
“I understand.” I did, now. It had hurt to talk to her, but it had been healing, too, as if a painful boil inside me had been lanced. “If you go in through the corridor that leads past Lord Trenbalm’s rooms, you probably won’t be seen by anyone. There’s hardly anyone around there this time of day.”
She grinned. “Thank you.”
She turned then and had almost reached the street when I thought of something. “Wait!” I shouted. She glanced back at me, quick and smooth as a deer. “What was your name, before?”
It hurt. I could see it in her face: an ache at recalling it, but also relief, a release like water breaking through a dam.
“Orianne,” she said. “It was Orianne.”
I inclined my head. Orianne. She watched me for a moment longer, and then I was alone beside the statue, rain dripping down my face.
I had made it back to Philantha’s house before I realized that I had not asked her if she had sent the man in brown, nor had I thought to watch for him all the way home.