Nan heard a faint creak of wood, and a thin shaft of yellow light stabbed into the dark.
Nan’s eyes took in a shadowy storeroom with a jumble of furniture, and a stone hallway just behind. A torch set in a sconce high on a wall at the end of the hall gave the light. It seemed as bright as a beacon after all that darkness.
“We go up the back stairs, only used by servants,” Blackeye whispered.
She led the way to a narrow, plain door, and they slipped inside. Small glowglobes like the ones in the gang’s cave lit the way up steep stairs. Nan ran after Blackeye, ducking with her into a narrow alcove when they heard a door slam and loud footsteps somewhere above.
“Usually not many servants brought along on these pleasure runs,” Blackeye murmured. “House used to belong to the Senna family, but it was taken by Todan. He lets the Lorjees use it—that being the one Great House that went over to his side. What we can’t figure is why they come out here at all.”
“So they don’t know about your hideout on the island.”
“We thought they knew when they first began coming here, but they searched so poorly—like they didn’t expect to find anything. They stay for a week or so, holding drunken parties, then go away again. The others think they come just to be silly away from eyes in Fortanya, but I don’t think that duke would come, or let his allies come, unless it served some purpose.”
“And Mican and the others want to do—what?” Nan asked.
“Run ’em a little.” Blackeye’s slanty eyes narrowed in challenging humor. “We always steal our supplies from Todan’s warts. These would be perfect. You’d think. Except that’s why we shouldn’t—for they’d wonder why we came all the way to this island to steal from them, unless we already lived here. Once or twice the others have pulled a haunt. Once we even scared them into leaving right away—but then a week later we had the soldiers crawling over the island, and we had to sit in the cave for three weeks.”
“Was that Warron’s idea?” Nan asked. “When he was in charge?”
Blackeye’s eyes widened. “Now how’d you know that?”
Nan flushed, being completely unused to praise. “Just a guess.”
Blackeye laughed, a soft sound. “Come. Study’s this way. It’s where the Lorjee duke roosts when he comes. And it’s that same duke who commands Todan’s fleet.”
“What are we looking for right now?” Nan asked as they slipped out into the hall again, and resumed climbing.
“Talk. I think they come here where no one in Fortanya can overhear...and maybe they meet people here they wouldn’t want to be seen meeting in the capital.”
Blackeye stopped at the top of a long flight, listened at another of the unmarked, narrow doors. Her fingers rested on her knife hilt. Nan felt her own sweaty hand move to the threatening steel shape riding so uncomfortably on her own hip.
“We’re okay,” Blackeye said softly. She opened the door—then pulled it shut again. “Guards!” She snorted a surprised laugh, then bolted through an adjacent door and down another narrow hall.
Nan pounded after, trying not to choke on her fear. They skidded around a corner and stopped, pressing themselves against a wall. A moment later the door they’d first bolted through slammed open.
“Not here,” a deep male voice said.
“Probably a kitchen lout sneaking off duty,” another voice answered further off. The door slammed shut again.
“Whew, what a close one.” Blackeye laughed. “Well, some important toff is in that study—those two guards were posted on either side of the servants’ entry. First I’ve seen that.”
“So we can’t listen?”
Blackeye’s challenging grin flashed again. “Sure we can,” Blackeye said. “I noticed you were pretty good at climbing today. We’ll just have to use the green stairs. Okay?”
“Green stairs?” Nan repeated, confused.
“Joke name.” Blackeye rubbed her hands in anticipation. “For the ivy.”
Eight
You’re supposedly a princess, Nan thought. If you chicken out now, they’ll know you’re a fake—and McKynzi’s laughter will be nothing to theirs.
Nan shrugged, fighting to hide her fear. “If you show me how.”
“It’s easy,” Blackeye said. “Trick is to only step on the big branches. They’ve shot roots into stone cracks, and they’ll hold you. Little creepers will just tear away.”
Once again they ran down a confusing array of halls. Nan knew she was tired—the glowglobes and torches glared at the edge of her vision. But she kept reminding herself that princesses were always fearless and heroic.
Blackeye found an empty room, which they crossed in the darkness. She opened the window, and cool salt air blew in. “We go up here,” Blackeye said, throwing her leg over the sill.
Again Nan followed her every move, forcing herself not to look down. Luckily the ivy was thick and strong as a tree, with branches curling every which way along the wall. She could hear the surf booming and hissing far below, but she kept her eyes on the leaves right in front of her as she crept sideways.
Blackeye reached down and motioned to Nan. Holding tightly, Nan craned her neck and looked up. An open window glowing with light was about six feet above her. She could barely hear the clinking of crystal and the mutter of voices over the sounds of the surf below.
Blackeye wanted her to position herself alongside the window, which she accomplished with slow, careful movements. Blackeye swung her way silently to the other side of the window, her dark eyes reflecting the yellow light from inside. She was clearly enjoying herself.
Nan was too frightened to get any closer to the window. She wedged herself tightly into the ivy and tipped her head back to glance through the window. All she could see was the corner of a tapestry on a wall, and the end of a low table with gold edging. Raising her head just a tiny bit farther, she glimpsed people sitting in gracefully carved low chairs.
As she did, the talk she heard resolved into words. One woman in particular had a very penetrating voice. Nan stared at her velvet gown with its jeweled embroidery and festoons of pearls. A wave of envy swept through Nan, then passed by when she looked at the woman’s face. It was not a particularly notable face—long and thin and kind of chinless—but the way the sharp nose was angled straight in the air, and the mouth was pruned up, made Nan think of Mrs. Evans when she talked about “trashy teenagers.”
“...and then I set rubies into the lace,” the woman was cawing. “The sheerest stroke of genius. You may be sure Matiri was just desperately put out. So at the Naming she tried rubies, but with her red hair, the effect was just hideous.”
Nan shifted her grip, raising her head just a bit more. All she could see were three of the woman’s listeners, two women and one man. All three of them wore the kind of polite, fake smile that Nan had seen on the faces of kids trapped in adult company, or on the faces of adults when kids talked: boredom. But the woman either didn’t see or didn’t care. She just talked on and on about her clothes at various parties and how lousy everyone else had looked. Once or twice others tried to get a word in but she sharpened her voice and plowed on louder.
A slight sound on the other side of the window caught Nan’s attention. The ivy rustled as Blackeye moved closer to her. “That’s the duke himself in there,” she whispered impatiently. “And I can’t hear a word he’s saying over that goose’s squawking.”
Both girls were silent a bit longer. The clothes-woman droned on, punctuating each triumphant detail with a screechy laugh.
Blackeye shook her head. “Let’s try some diversion.”
She swung out one-handed, using the other to tear a leaf from the ivy. In the soft glow from the window, Nan watched Blackeye roll the ivy around in her fingers. Occasionally she dug her thumbnail into the leaf. Meanwhile she kept watching the people inside.
Suddenly Blackeye lunged upward so she was almost in direct view of the window. Then, with a strong flick of her wrist, she zipped the ivy-ball straigh
t through the open window.
“...and those sleeves were simply hideous on her!” the woman was boring on. “I told her—Ack!”
The ivy ball splatted on the woman’s cheek, leaving a gooey green smear. She slapped her beringed hand to her cheek and looked at it. When she saw the green gook, she yanked her hand back and shrieked as if she’d been stabbed.
Her hand smacked squarely into the hand of the man sitting next to her, just as he was lifting a full wineglass to his lips.
“Hey!” he yelled—and the wine splashed backward right into the face of a servant holding a full tray, who was standing behind the couple.
“Got it in one,” Blackeye chortled, collapsing into her ivy as she tried to muffle her laughter. “Now watch the wine—”
The servant gasped, and the tray—and the brimming wineglasses on it—dipped, splashed, and as the man clutched desperately at it several glasses clashed together and went flying—right onto the seated couple.
Crashes, shrieks and angry exclamations sounded forth. Below the window, Blackeye stuffed her knuckles into her mouth.
A short, gray-haired man with a heavy gold chain resting on his shoulders addressed the clothes-woman in soothing tones. His brows flicked together in a quick frown when he saw the smear on the woman’s cheek, and he turned a fast glance toward the window.
Nan pressed herself flat into the ivy, her blood pounding in her ears. She heard noises at the window, but she was afraid to look—or to move.
“Probably a bird,” a male voice said clearly, from inches above Nan’s head. “There’s nothing else out here.”
Nan’s fingers tightened painfully on the ivy branches.
Wood slammed, glass rattled—the window being pulled shut.
Two, three longs breaths. Then Blackeye’s whisper. “Come on! They’re going in here to talk.”
Blackeye pointed at the next window down. She followed Blackeye, who swung with ease and apparently boundless energy toward the next window.
Nan uncurled her stiff, shaky fingers and gripped ivy farther over. Dug a foot in, tested the ivy. Shifted her weight. One hand and foot at a time, she neared the second window. Presently she heard voices.
“We should know if Averann will back us by month’s end, at latest,” a deep-voiced man said.
“We had better,” a woman said coldly.
“Todan will have his seer before then,” a second man said. “If Dhes Andis keeps his promise. And then we’ll—”
Two hands appeared on the sill. Nan lunged back against the ivy. She saw a brief gleam of cobalt blue in a square ring on one of the hands. Nan glimpsed some kind of carving on the ring—a bird—then the window swung shut. Nan heard nothing but the crashing of the sea, and the faint cawing of distant gulls.
“That’s it,” Blackeye said then. “Let’s get out of here.”
Gratefully, Nan followed Blackeye back down to their entry window. When she slid inside, she breathed a silent sigh of relief. Now she was glad she hadn’t chickened out. But we’re not safe yet.
Blackeye checked the door, then led the way into a hall. They retraced their way back down to the storeroom, Blackeye pausing to steal one of the glowglobes from its stand and thrust it down her tunic.
When they were in the tunnel Blackeye pulled the glow globe out, and used its light to push the false stone black carefully into place. Then she sat back with a sigh. “Hoo,” she said. “If you’re not tired, then you must be made of brick.”
Nan grinned. “I could sleep a year,” she admitted, relieved at being able to tell the truth for once.
“Me, too,” Blackeye said, rubbing her eyes. “Well, not long now. And what a find! Did you hear what they said?”
“I think so,” Nan said, and repeated what she’d heard.
Blackeye nodded emphatically. “Not much, but it tells us lots. One, Todan really is trying to get a wizard who’s trained in magic. That’s bad for us. But it also looks like that Lorjee duke wants to double-cross him.”
“He’s a good guy?”
“No way,” Blackeye said. “He was the only toff who joined Todan, and he sure wasn’t any slouch about taking things from the others as Todan’s warts defeated them. He’s just as big a slime. So’s his sister, who was the woman. Anyway, if those two are planning something against the warts, we don’t join him—we plan for that.”
She got to her feet, and cupped the glow globe in her hands. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully as she studied it. “Which brings us to the third thing, the identity of that other man. Who was he? We’ll have to find out.”
She led the way back down the tunnel.
Nan remembered the subject they’d been discussing on their way to the castle, and she said, “So what happened with Warron, anyway?”
Blackeye tossed her shiny dark braids back, giving a surprised laugh. “So you’ve got strategy on your mind, too?”
Confused, Nan did not return an immediate answer.
Apparently Blackeye did not expect one. “After a few months of his captaincy—and I never once said anything or interfered between him and the others—we were hot stuff with knives, swords, and swinging on ropes, but they were unhappy. His plans didn’t have any fun to them. Always the same thing: rush in, grab stuff, threaten anyone we found, and get out fast. Over and over.”
“That ghost thing sounded fun,” Nan said.
“That was the only one—and it was something I’d suggested once, as a plan for entering Castle Rotha when we finally make it. That was before we found out about the magic on the prince.” Blackeye shrugged, grinning ruefully. “So anyway, one day when the others were feeling fed up, but no one said anything, I said it was time to plan. He came up with a lot of his usual stuff. And maybe it would work if we had an army. And though the others didn’t speak, I could see, and he could as well, that they weren’t convinced. But my idea is something a bunch of kids have a chance to pull off—and it’ll be fun. So I offered to lead a few practice runs, and made ’em good ones...and Warron just stood up at dinner one night and said he wanted me to take over again. He’s backed me ever since. So you might say he’d won the battle—but lost the war.” She chuckled. “Ever heard that saying where you come from?”
Nan grinned back. “I bet everyone on every world that had Todans and clothes-horse ladies has heard that one.”
“Clothes—horse?” Blackeye laughed in delight. “Clothes-horse. What a picture! Do you really dress horses?”
“I don’t know. We don’t have any horses where I live. Lived. Maybe somebody did dress one up a hundred years ago, when people used to use horses to get around. Uh oh. Here we are at that that stone ladder again.”
Blackeye kept chuckling from time to time as they worked their way down. She didn’t say anything more, until they were nearly there. Then she stopped, her face serious in the light of the glow globe. “Here, Nan. We weren’t going to tell you—the visitors—the actual plan until it was time to do it. But I’ve changed my mind. If we can’t trust you now, we won’t be able to any time, right?”
Nan nodded, shivering inside, but this time from happiness. I don’t care what their plan is. I only care that she trusts me.
“So here’s what I’ve got in mind.”
o0o
“Hey, I don’t feel so dead,” Joe said three mornings later. “A miracle.” He stretched cautiously. He was still sore, but not nearly as mega-sore as he’d been on that second morning.
He scowled, trying to fight off the twinge of jealousy that came with memory of that morning. When he’d gotten up that day, it was to find out that Blackeye, Warron, and a couple of the others had taken Nan on some kind of secret mission during the night.
Why Nan instead of him? He’d looked at her curiously when he and Tarsen returned from their fencing practice. Her eyes were puffy and dark-ringed but she was smiling quietly as she ate her breakfast.
He did not find a chance to ask her privately what was going on. Warron had emerged right after, grabbed a si
ngle piece of bread, then he chased them out for another long, grueling day.
Sometime at the end of the day it occurred to Joe that she was avoiding any personal encounters. Okay, fine, he’d decided.
She went to bed right after dinner. Good riddance. He stayed up, and even dropped some hints about how fantastic it was that he didn’t feel at all tired—which was a big lie. Not that it mattered. Warron, Blackeye, Sarilda, and Mican disappeared one by one to crash, and the others just sat around singing songs and talking about nothing much until general yawns sent everyone off to sleep.
So he’d thrown himself into the training with every ounce of bounce he could muster. Nobody would say Robles was a lazy slob—no friggin’ way. He hustled hard, just to find Warron pushing him even harder. And still no secret night runs.
Maybe I’m imagining things, Joe thought, rolling out of his hammock.
“C’mon, let’s nab the hot chocolate while it’s still hot,” Tarsen said as Joe yanked his sweatshirt on.
“Right behind ya,” Joe said, shoving his feet into his sneakers. Following Tarsen’s jaunty figure up the tunnel, he reflected that another good thing was ol’ Tarsen. He was a funny guy—and he, at least, seemed to like hanging around Joe. Yesterday afternoon he’d even shown up and ran along with them while they did their rock-and-tree-climb in the forest. He’d called out a stream of mock-insults and joking threats, keeping Joe at least in a gasping state of laughter even though his body felt like it’d been mashed by a monster truck.
“We’re all clear outside. Ready for our Fortanya run?”
That was Blackeye, just coming in from the beach. She addressed Warron, who’d just emerged from the stream cave, his long wet hair tied back.
Warron gave a short nod, then said, “Get ’em some duds.”
“Right.” Blackeye clapped her hands and rubbed them. “I had that in mind as well.” She turned to Joe. “Wear something of Tarsen’s, and you’ll have to go barefoot. We don’t want any attention from anyone. We’ll get you some clothes in the city.”