“Under the palace,” said the maid. “That’s where the crypts are. You have to keep them down there deep so that the frost doesn’t heave them back up, but it means they’re all cold and dry and they don’t really go to bones as quick as they should. Tuck your chin, ma’am, so I can get this bit here…”
Marra tucked her chin obediently. In the mirror, her neck vanished into a plump roll. She wondered if the maid was going to continue on her own or if she needed to ask for more information. Fortunately, this was apparently a favored topic.
“All the dead kings are down there, and the dead princes, too. They say it’s a whole palace of the dead down there. Each king got a room, you see, and the queen got her room next to his. If she had any babies who died, they put them in her room, and in his room…” She gave a small, pleased shudder. “In his room, they’d put the royal concubines, back in the days when they had them, yes? And if the concubines weren’t dead when they buried him, why, they’d strangle them with a silken cord and put them down there beside him.”
Marra watched her own eyes go wide in the mirror. “Goodness! What did the queens think of that?”
“I expect they were just glad to get their own room,” said the maid practically. “But of course, some of the kings had more than one queen. If she died before she had any babies, they sent her back to her people, but otherwise, they buried her here, so sometimes the kings have three or four rooms branching off their room, and then the princes would also have rooms nested in there, so now it’s like a maze down under the palace, and nobody knows how far back it goes. Sometimes people try to explore it, but they have to take a family tree in one hand and a map in the other, and they don’t always come back.” She wrinkled her nose. “The dead don’t always lie easy, particularly kings, and they don’t always approve of the way their descendants are running things, so they come up and walk around and disapprove. That’s why there’s so many drafts.”
“Goodness,” said Marra again. She would have liked to swear rather more strongly, but it did not seem appropriate for the princess’s sister, who was also mostly a nun. “Are there so many kings as that?”
“They don’t last that long,” said the maid, matter-of-fact about the royal family’s mortality. “It’s hard to be a king, and the ones who don’t die in battles waste away young. You’ve seen His Majesty, of course.”
“He’s very old,” said Marra, thinking of the ivory teeth and the wandering mind.
“He’s barely fifty.”
“What?”
The maid laughed, but kindly. “Oh, aye, it’s in the blood. My mother served his father and his grandfather, and she only retired last year. Some say there’s a terrible magic over the kingdom and it’s the godmother’s blessing that keeps it all at bay, but the strain of it wears on them, poor souls. My mother, she said they burn themselves out keeping us all safe. Who knows, though? Anyway, that’s why the palace under the palace is so large.”
“Oh…” said Marra faintly, wondering what her sister had married into.
“There’s some who say that it’s not just the kings,” added the maid. “You can’t have a great big palace of the dead like that without grave robbers, can you? So it’s all laid about with curses that rip the souls out of the robbers and wad them all up together, and they say that goes waddling and wiggling through the halls of the dead palace, looking for more souls to eat.”
“Oh my.”
“Makes you fair shiver, doesn’t it?” said the maid cheerfully. She patted Marra’s shoulder as if she were a horse. “You’re all ready to go, ma’am. Best not be late for the christening.”
* * *
It was at the christening, for the first time, that Marra saw Prince Vorling.
He was small. That surprised her the most. Her whole family had ordered their lives around his whims, and he had loomed very large in her mind. But he was barely taller than Kania, slim-hipped, with a narrow, angular face. He stood behind the golden cradle and smiled and smiled, his eyes as flat as river stones. He did not look as if he were aging out faster than a normal man, but perhaps it came on the kings all at once, or perhaps it was only a maid’s gossip.
Still. She looked over at the king, his hair as soft and thin as that of the infant in the cradle. Could he really only be fifty?
The christening itself was dull. Courtiers stood around and pretended to be fascinated by the sight of a cradle that presumably held a child somewhere in the pile of lace and linen. As a family member, Marra was closer than she might have been, but as a very unimportant person in the family, her primary view was over her mother’s left shoulder.
The cradle had golden ribbons on it. The king mumbled a name and then Vorling shouted his daughter’s name in a carrying voice. Marra caught that the first name was Virian and then it dissolved into a welter of names that slipped out of her mind as soon as it went in. Surely they cannot be saddling this child with all those names? she thought. She wanted to give her sister a bemused look, but she could only see the side of Kania’s face.
And now there will probably be speeches, she thought, and steeled herself to stand looking calm and composed and politely interested.
But there were not speeches. Instead, Vorling stepped back and said, “The godmother’s blessing,” and was silent. The courtiers, too, fell instantly quiet. The double door at the side of the great audience hall opened.
“The godmother of the royal house,” said the herald in the doorway, and then he, too, stepped aside and a figure in gray came through the door.
The godmother was old, very old, older than Marra knew a person could be. She did not have wrinkles any longer. Her skin had drawn tight across her skull, almost translucent. Marra could see the shadow of bones in her face, as if there were light streaming through her like stained glass and the bones were the lead between panes of skin.
She moved very slowly. Her spine was curved, but in a way that gave the impression of a scimitar blade rather than old age. She leaned on a black cane and her progress toward the cradle took many minutes, but not one of the courtiers, nor even the prince, showed the slightest trace of impatience.
It occurred to Marra that the king was not treated with half as much deference as the godmother.
She wore dove gray, but her skin was so pale that it looked almost black by contrast. She made her slow way to the cradle, and it was not until she lifted her hand that Marra noticed the exquisite layers of lace that draped her sleeves.
Marra herself had tried making lace once and never again. It was ruinously expensive. Even the prince and the highest ranked lords only had it at their cuffs and hems, and here was the godmother wearing enough to buy a palace.
The lace swayed as she pushed the curtains of the cradle open, and one shadow-bone hand rested on the air over the child’s head.
“This is my gift,” said the godmother. Her voice was not loud, but it was so silent that it carried to the far corners of the room. “I shall serve her as I have served all her line, my life bound to theirs. No foreign magic shall harm them. No enemy shall topple their throne. As it has been for all the children of the royal house, so shall it be for her, as long as I draw breath.”
The king bowed his head. The prince did as well. As the godmother turned and began to make her slow way to the door, the new princess of the Northern Kingdom began to cry.
Kania half turned as if to go to her, but the prince caught her arm and held it fast. A nursemaid hurried from the sidelines, her footsteps muffled on the carpet, and caught up the infant, hushing her with soft, frantic whispers.
Even at her own christening, she is not allowed to cry. Marra bowed her head so that no one would see her lips twitch. She, too, had been a princess once. And I do not know that I would wish it on you, niece, but I am only a youngest daughter dressed up as a nun, and no one cares what I think either way.
* * *