“Fool!” the man said. “This letter doesn’t mean anything! Except that someone wants us to believe that the princesses are safe. Probably so we don’t start rebelling. Probably so we’ll go on acting like sheep, doing whatever the palace tells us. Even with the palace gone!”
People talk openly of rebellion in the streets of the capital? I marveled. Standing right in front of a letter from their rulers? From me?
I wanted to jump up from the stretcher and cry out, This letter is true! Look at me! I’m your princess! I yet live! I’m safe! Guards, arrest this man for treason! Except—what if I wouldn’t be safe if I did that? What if there were no guards within earshot? Or . . . no guards who would obey me? What if the rest of the crowd felt the same way as this malcontent man, and they didn’t actually care if I was alive or dead either?
What if they were on the same side as the people who’d set fire to the palace?
What if they killed me?
I waited for Tog or Terrence to speak up on my behalf—or even Janelia or Herk, if they were close enough. But the stretcher lifted and fell as if both boys were shrugging.
“Guess I’d have to take bodies out to the bone pile no matter who was in charge,” Tog said, just as mildly as before.
I felt the stretcher start moving forward again. Now it was harder than ever to lie still. I waited until the crowd noise faded in the distance, and I could hear nothing but Tog’s and Terrence’s footsteps once more. Then I took the risk of sliding my hand secretly past my head—out from under the sheet—and tapping Tog on the leg.
For a moment I thought he didn’t notice or understand, but then he called to Terrence, “Hold on. I think the body is about to slide off.”
The stretcher lowered to the ground, and Tog reached under the sheet as if he needed to center my body on the stretcher once more. I could tell by the shadow across the sheet that he also bent his head close to mine.
“Could you tell—did the rest of the crowd agree with what that man said? Or did they believe the letter?” I whispered urgently. “If there’s going to be rebellion, I need to stay here. I need to call up my soldiers. I need to . . . I need to . . .”
“That man was just talking,” Tog whispered back. “Nobody paid him any attention. But—nobody believed the letter, either.”
“What? Why?” I demanded.
Tog nudged my shoulders gently toward the center of the stretcher.
“You should have just signed your own name, not anyone else’s,” Tog said. “Should have stuck to what you knew for sure. People are more likely to believe the truth.”
And then he grasped the poles of the stretcher once more, and he and Terrence lifted me again, carrying me farther and farther away from any possibility of calling up soldiers (How would I do that? Would they obey if it was just me alone?) or just going back to the ruined palace and proclaiming, Look! I’m here! I’m still your ruler! See for yourself! I didn’t have to struggle to lie rigidly anymore, because Tog’s words alone made me stiff with fear.
Surely he just meant that nobody believed all thirteen princesses could have survived the fire and gone into hiding together. If we’d all survived and were all together, we’d be stepping forward and taking charge. We would have already found and punished our enemies; we’d be starting on plans for a new castle. We wouldn’t have needed ragamuffin boys to secretly post cryptic letters around the city in the dark of night. We’d be in control.
But it’s still possible the others are all alive, even if we’re not together, I told myself. It is. It’s still possible that I can rescue them and we can come back in triumph. Everyone will believe then. They will. They have to.
But why did I have to work so hard just to convince myself?
15
“State your business,” an official-sounding voice called out, after Tog and Terrence had carried my stretcher a long way farther in silence.
“Headed to the bone pile, sir,” Tog said, with a shrug that lifted and lowered the stretcher. “Another pauper died.”
I expected a grunt of assent from the guard at the city gate—for surely we were at the city gate now, weren’t we? Wasn’t that who would challenge our progress? I didn’t think even the gate guards would be too concerned about Tog and Terrence. The guards were supposed to challenge people entering the city, not leaving it.
But I heard no approving grunt; though I braced myself for moving forward again, the stretcher stayed still.
“You’re not the usual bone boys,” the guard said, and I could hear suspicion in his voice.
The stretcher rose and lowered again, this time at both ends. That made me think both Tog and Terrence had shrugged.
“The usual bone boys got sick.” I recognized Terrence’s voice. “Lot of people are sick down on Spittle Trail Street. This corpse here was the first to die. Want to look at it so you’ll recognize the oozing sores if they break out on your own skin?”
Now the stretcher moved in a different direction: Terrence seemed to be swinging it closer to the guard.
I heard the guard take a step back, the heel of his boot clicking against the cobblestones.
“Move along,” he said. “And don’t come back in through this gate after you get rid of that body. Take your sickness-carrying selves to the south gate.”
“Yes, sir,” Terrence said mockingly, and I wondered that he didn’t get his ears cuffed for disrespect.
Then again, the guard probably didn’t want to touch a boy who’d touched a corpse with oozing sores.
The stretcher began moving again. Tog and Terrence took only about a dozen more steps before Terrence began snickering.
“Did you see his face when I said, ‘oozing sores’?” Terrence chortled.
“Did you think about the people on Spittle Trail Street?” Tog replied. “Did you think about what they’re going to do when soldiers come in and burn down their houses to get rid of the sickness—which doesn’t even exist?”
Would that actually happen? I wondered. Would my soldiers do that? In my city?
“Enh, no soldier’s going to care about Spittle Trail Street,” Terrence said. “They’d be scared to go there. Anyhow, the soldiers don’t burn houses for illness anymore. One of the princesses issued an edict stopping it. Marindia, I think.”
She did? I thought. It was possible—and Marindia was the likeliest to have done something like that secretly, without telling the rest of us.
How many of us even knew things like that happened? I wondered, and my discomfort had nothing to do with the way I’d been holding my body stiffly for so long.
“Still,” Tog told Terrence. “You don’t know how things are being done now. And you didn’t need to say the name of any street.”
“And you don’t have to try to tell me what to . . . Janelia!” Terrence said, his voice shifting from defiance to more of the obsequiousness I was used to hearing at the palace.
“We made it out of the city safely!” Janelia’s voice was close and full of joy. “We all did! Thank you both!”
Janelia and Herk must have decided it was safe to catch up. That probably meant we were far enough outside the city that they weren’t worried about anyone stopping us.
“Well, the guard gave us a hard time, but I talked my way out of it,” Terrence bragged.
I didn’t hear anyone answer. By the shadow falling across the sheet, I could tell that Janelia was bending down close.
“Desmia—are you all right?” Janelia asked. “Your wounds don’t hurt too much, do they?”
“I’m fine,” I said. My voice came out just as bell-like and pure as it always had back at the palace. I was a little amazed that I could sound so calm.
“We’ll go on a ways, and then the maps say the land will get flat and we should be able to see anyone coming toward us a long ways out,” Janelia said. “I think it will be safe for you to sit up then. We’ll take the sheet off your face and you won’t have to pretend to be a corpse anymore.”
I held ba
ck a shudder, thinking about the oozing sores I was supposedly covered with. And about the real wounds that covered my feet and legs and kept me from walking on my own.
“That sounds good,” I said, just as calmly.
“Will there be any snakes where we’re going?” Herk asked. “Or wolves, or, or—”
“Don’t we have enough troubles without you making up more?” Janelia asked.
“I just want to know, because if there are snakes or wolves or other wild animals, I’ll carry a stick and beat off anything that gets too close to Princess Desmia,” Herk said. “I want to be ready!”
“How about you take a turn carrying the stretcher instead?” Tog asked.
The stretcher tilted, and I could tell that Herk had taken over one of the poles near my head.
“I can carry two poles!” Herk said. The stretcher careened dangerously. But I didn’t think Tog would actually let me fall.
“You know what?” Tog asked. “If I go from carrying both poles to carrying nothing, my muscles are going to freeze up. Let’s ease you in and me out kind of gradual-like, all right?”
I guessed that Tog was just making sure that Herk could carry the stretcher safely. I liked the way he’d phrased his explanation to save the younger boy’s pride.
“You want me to take your end?” Janelia asked, evidently speaking to Terrence.
“Nah, I’m good,” Terrence said. “Tog gets tired quicker than I do.”
But—Tog was just doing that to make Herk feel useful, I thought. Wasn’t he?
It felt strange to analyze the words and actions of beggar boys the same way I’d always done with palace officials’.
They walked on, the stretcher lurching beneath me a bit less steadily than before. Time passed, and I thought I might as well sleep—what else was there to do? But sleep didn’t come, not when the wounds on my feet and legs screamed with pain with every jostling. Not when the sun rose higher, and seemed to bake me through the sheet. Not when my brain raced, And when we get to Fridesia, I’ll need to get in touch with Ella first thing. I’ll need to find out if any of my sister-princesses are there for real; I’ll need to . . .
“This would be a good place to stop for lunch,” Janelia said. “See how those rocks over there would shelter us from the road?”
From the shadow that appeared across the sheet, I could tell that Janelia was pointing.
“I’ll check first and make sure nobody else is there,” Tog volunteered.
He means thieves, bandits, brigands . . . , I thought.
“Tog’s right,” Janelia said. “It’s good to be cautious. And we can put down the stretcher while we wait.”
I felt the stretcher descending. Then I could feel twigs and pebbles beneath me.
“All’s clear,” Tog called from off in the distance.
“And there’s no one in sight on the road . . . Desmia, I think it’s safe to take the sheet off your face,” Janelia announced. “I know this will be such a relief for you!”
Janelia tugged at the sheet and it slithered away, bringing almost unbearably bright light to my eyes.
What I saw first was sky, a vast dome of it that arced impossibly high overhead. Of course I had seen the sky before from the palace windows—and from my daily trips to the palace balcony to wave at my subjects in the courtyard below. But the sky had never appeared so large before; it had never seemed so overwhelming.
“Here. You must be dying to sit up,” Janelia said, reaching for my arm. “Let me help you.”
Dazedly, I let Janelia pull me up by the shoulders, let Janelia bend my waist. I might as well have been a doll.
A new scene appeared before my eyes: Not just sky but a horizon-to-horizon stretch of dust and rock, broken only by the road curving off into the distance. I felt dizzy. I couldn’t have said if the road I was looking at was where we’d just been or where we were going.
“Desmia?” Janelia prompted.
My ears rang, turning my name into something almost unrecognizable. My heart pounded faster and faster, barely finishing one thump before the next one sounded. It felt like my heart was running, maybe even trying to escape my chest. Sweat poured off me, soaking my hair and clothes and sliding into my eyes so I couldn’t see. My eyesight was going dark, anyhow, as though I was about to faint. But somehow the image of that awful open sky and that awful stretch of empty dust and rock stayed burned onto my vision.
I gulped air into my lungs and fought to stay alert.
“Desmia, what’s wrong?”
“What happened?”
“Desmia?”
The voices seemed to come at me from a million miles away. Or from as far away as the distance between my balcony and the people who always stood down below on the ground, back at the palace.
“Was she poisoned?”
“How could she have been poisoned when she ate the same food as the rest of us last night and this morning?”
“Desmia, you didn’t eat or drink anything else, did you?”
I couldn’t tell who was saying what. But the mention of poison and eating made me notice that my stomach was roiling. I gagged.
“Go ahead—throw up if you have to!” This was Janelia’s voice.
Still gagging, I leaned over the side of the stretcher. I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see if anything came out.
“Ugh, that’s how a princess behaves?”
Terrence’s voice, I thought. That was Terrence.
Someone was wailing, a long, drawn-out howl of pain.
Oh. That’s me, I thought. But I couldn’t seem to stop it.
“This isn’t a princess! This is just some crazy girl!”
Terrence again.
“Desmia, just tell us what’s wrong! Just tell us what we can do to help!”
Janelia? Tog? Herk?
It was strange how I couldn’t separate those three voices, couldn’t tell them apart, even though I could recognize Terrence’s.
I still couldn’t stop the wailing coming from my mouth, but I found I could shape it, direct it, turn it into words.
“The sky, the sky, that awful, open sky . . .”
“I think I know what’s wrong!”
That was Tog, wasn’t it?
He was still talking.
“I think I know what to do! She was never out of the palace before yesterday, right?”
“Not for years, I don’t think. . . .”
And that’s Janelia, answering Tog, I thought.
It was amazing how much better I felt, just to identify the voices around me.
“Let’s carry her over by those rocks, then,” Tog said, a note of confidence back in his voice.
I felt myself being lifted on the stretcher again and rushed away from the road. After a moment the overly bright sunshine stopped pounding mercilessly against my eyelids. I dared to open my eyes a crack. The stretcher was sliding downward. They were lowering me into a dim cave, maybe, or just into the shadowed space between rocks. I reached out and put my hand against the nearest rock and it was so blessedly cool that I thought just the touch of it could bring down a fever, if fever was what I had.
Solid, I thought. Strong. And closed up and hidden and safe.
I found that I could finally stop screaming.
16
I lost track of time. Was it only a moment or hours that I lay silently, the palm of my hand pressed against solid rock? Was it a moment or hours that the others sat silently staring at me before Janelia murmured beseechingly, “Desmia, please—are you all right? Can you tell us what’s wrong?”
I gulped, tamping down nausea and revulsion. This was more like me. This was the control I was used to having over my body.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. My voice came out a little ragged, but I was able to clear my throat and make it right again. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened. It was like . . .”
Like I was afraid that the ground would open up and swallow me whole. Like the sky was too big and too confining, b
oth at the same time. Like I couldn’t think. Like I wasn’t me. Like something I couldn’t control took over my body.
I turned and looked at Tog.
“How did you know bringing me back here between the rocks would help?” I asked.
He shrugged, and it actually seemed like a show of true modesty, as if he really didn’t believe he deserved credit. But I couldn’t be certain—in my time in the palace, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen any modesty that wasn’t fake.
“I just guessed,” Tog said, spreading his hands wide, a gesture of both innocence and ignorance. “I’ve seen soldiers back from the war who act like you, and they always want to get somewhere safe. You were screaming about the sky, and I thought maybe you needed to get away from it. So it wouldn’t scare you anymore. And I thought, if you’ve lived your whole life between stone walls, a rock cave would be the next best thing.”
I wasn’t scared, I wanted to say. I am nothing like soldiers who have fought in the war. I am nothing like soldiers, period.
But I hadn’t been able to stop screaming on my own. If the other four hadn’t moved me away from the horrible sight of that dome of open, empty sky and the open, empty landscape beneath it, I might have still been screaming.
“I get scared sometimes too,” Herk whispered, leaning in to pat my arm. He glanced quickly back toward Tog and Terrence. “I just don’t usually tell the big boys.”
For the first time I thought about what I was asking Herk to do—what I’d so carelessly drawn him in to when I announced back in Janelia’s basement, Herk and Tog will take me. And Janelia. Herk was just a little kid. I hadn’t thought to ask or even guess at his age before, but I did now: Was he maybe nine? Eight? Only seven?
Herk didn’t actually look any more scared or stunned or worried than Janelia or Tog, sitting on either side of him. I couldn’t tell about Terrence, the one who was supposedly never scared. He had his face turned, and he seemed to be gazing off into the distance.