But what if he did? I thought. What if he convinced them to come out looking for me on horseback or by carriage? How quickly could they reach us?
“I’m not even sure who my enemies are—how would Terrence find them?” I asked.
“You and the other princesses put Lord Throckmorton in prison. But you didn’t restrict who comes to see him. His wife and sons visit him every day,” Janelia said. “And then there’s . . .”
I could feel my lips start to tremble.
Strong visage! I ordered myself. Keep a strong visage!
“Never mind,” Janelia said. “No need to talk of enemies now. All we have to worry about for now is the trip to Fridesia. We’ll need to stay off the road completely now, but that will work out.”
Janelia paused, as if she couldn’t decide how to bring up the true problem.
“I won’t start screaming again,” I said, lifting my chin. “I promise.” Holding my chin higher meant that I could see a patch of sky over the top of the rocks overhead. I made myself stare at it, just as I’d always tried to stare at the things that scared me.
No different from looking at the sky from the balcony back at the palace, I told myself. No different at all.
Only, it was. Because I knew that this sky was completely open and empty. And because, when I’d looked at the sky from the balcony back at the palace, that was before some unknown enemy had burned down the entire palace, before my sister-princesses vanished, before Madame Bisset claimed that all the other princesses were dead.
Somehow in my mind, all of those things were connected to the empty sky.
I couldn’t help myself. I began to quake.
I lowered my chin.
“You’ll have to carry me with the sheet over my face,” I said, my voice clotted with shame. “I’m sorry.”
Janelia surprised me by drawing me into a big hug.
“Oh, Desmia, I’m sorry,” Janelia murmured into my hair, which, now that I thought of it, probably reeked of sweat and dirt and maybe even vomit. “I’m sorry we couldn’t get a carriage for you to travel in, in comfort. I’m sorry that you have to make this trip at all, worrying about the other princesses the entire way . . .”
I lifted my arms, willing myself to hug Janelia back.
But I could hear in my mind how Lord Throckmorton would have viewed the action: Yes, yes, make her think that you care about her, too; make her think that you view her as a true sister and you believe her story completely, and you’re not just using her and Herk and Tog to get what you want.
And then that thought made it impossible for me to move at all. I just sat still, absorbing Janelia’s embrace, while my own arms dangled half-up and half-down, caught between impulses.
It was only later, when I lay back on the stretcher, the sheet covering my face, that I realized Janelia could have announced a different choice entirely.
She could have said, “We have to give up. There’s no way the three of us can carry you to Fridesia,” I told myself. She could have said, “We’ll take you back to the capital, but that’s it, we want nothing to do with you after that. You put us in too much danger.”
Janelia and Tog and Herk could have even made the same choice as Terrence: All of them could have run away.
Why didn’t they? I wondered.
It was odd: I could easily understand why someone would want to harm me. Why was it so hard to understand why anyone would help me instead?
19
I dozed through a hot, sweaty afternoon under the sheet. Janelia, Tog, and Herk were probably sweating even more than me, so I didn’t let myself call out for water. Even when I wasn’t actually sleeping, I pretended I was so the other three wouldn’t try to talk to me. It was too hard trying to communicate through the cloth over my face, too hard trying to talk to the others as they walked so casually through scenery that terrified me and left me cowering under a sheet.
And they’re beggars and I am a princess, I thought. Don’t forget that difference!
I didn’t forget, but I couldn’t feel quite so superior about it.
It’s like I’m just a thing they’re carrying, I thought. An object, weighing them down.
It struck me that for most of the time I’d lived in the palace, I’d just been a thing there, too. I’d been a thing that Lord Throckmorton displayed whenever he wanted to awe the rest of the kingdom: Don’t you see? I represent the true princess, who, of course, is a young girl and therefore cannot speak for herself. So you must do everything I say! I’d been a thing when I’d stood on the balcony every day, waving like an automaton at the commoners in the courtyard below. The palace officials might as well have hung a sign over my head that said, THIS IS YOUR PRINCESS, ALWAYS OUT OF REACH, BUT ALWAYS YOURS. YOUR OWN LIVES MAY BE DESPERATE AND POOR AND PATHETIC, BUT YOU’RE A SUALAN; YOU HAVE THIS AT LEAST! Before Cecilia and Harper came to the palace, I had been a thing even to them, just a placeholder sitting on the throne.
We all forced out the truth, I thought. The three of us, plus Ella. I wasn’t just a thing when we were all working together to find out what was going on!
But had I gone back to being just a thing in the past month? Hadn’t I stood back and let the sister-princesses take charge the way I’d once let Lord Throckmorton run the palace and the kingdom? Hadn’t I gone back to smiling prettily and hiding what I truly believed and felt and wondered?
Hadn’t I failed to tell the others to watch out for danger?
I can’t be just a thing when we get to Fridesia, I told myself. I’ll have to act. I’ll have to find all the sister-princesses, or find out what happened to them, or . . . or . . .
“We’re stopping for the night,” Janelia said above me.
I realized that I’d tuned out everything the others said for hours. I’d started automatically rolling right or left with the motion of the stretcher, and not even noticing. I’d been so lost in my thoughts that I’d forgotten the outside world.
“Already?” I murmured.
“It’s practically pitch-black out!” Janelia said incredulously. “We can barely see where we place our feet! And Herk looks so tired he might as well be sleeping standing up!”
“No, I’m not,” Herk said. But he spoke in such a slow, hypnotic voice he could have been talking in his sleep.
“Oh,” I said. “I . . . wasn’t paying attention.”
I hadn’t noticed the darkness, but it felt like a comfort now, a relief from the sunlight blazing down on me, baking me even through the sheet.
“Don’t worry, we’ll camp for the night in a place that’s sheltered from the sky,” Tog said from above my head. “I’ve had my eye on a particular overhang alongside the mountains for the past three hours. We’re almost there.”
“Mountains?” I repeated.
I thought of the topographical map of Suala that always hung in Lord Throckmorton’s office. When I was little and he scolded me, I always stared at the peaks of the mountains on the map and imagined myself there—or, really, anywhere but Lord Throckmorton’s office.
It hadn’t quite occurred to me that they were real.
“Here we are!” Janelia announced.
I felt my stretcher eased down to the ground, the sheet sliding away from my face. “Close your eyes. I’ll drape this over the rocks, and then it will be like a tent,” Tog said. I heard him scurrying about. A moment later, he said, “There. Done.”
I opened my eyes. “Tent” was too elegant a word to describe the enclosure I was in, with filthy dark rocks on three sides, and the sheet hanging down at the front. But there was no danger that I would glimpse the sky, and I was grateful for that.
“Thank you,” I whispered, sitting up.
It was so dark I didn’t realize Tog was still standing right beside me until my shoulder brushed his leg.
“I have to go make the fire now,” Tog said hastily, backing away. “We’re having stew tonight. Maybe you heard, maybe you weren’t asleep when this happened—Herk made a slingshot, and, well, it?
??s hardly a royal feast, but he was so proud when he hit a weasel, and—”
“A weasel?” I repeated. “People can eat that?”
Tog went instantly silent. Even in the darkness, I could tell that I’d offended him.
“I mean, that’s wonderful,” I said, trying to recover my manners. “I’m sure it will be lovely.”
“No,” Tog said stiffly. “It will probably be tough and bristly. But it’s food, so—”
“I’ll be sure to thank Herk,” I said.
Tog bowed out past the sheet. I couldn’t tell if I’d placated him or not.
A few moments later, Tog started the fire outside my “tent,” and so every motion the others took was silhouetted against the sheet. The contrast between firelight and shadows made even the most ordinary motion seem dreamlike: Janelia placing a small pot over the flames, Tog pouring in water from the gourd, Herk dropping in what must have been the weasel meat . . .
It’s no different from eating venison or wild boar, I told myself. Why did you have to say anything?
I wondered if the other three would bring food and then leave me alone. But when Janelia came by with a dented cup of stew (which actually did smell good), Janelia ducked under the sheet and took a seat on a rock beside me.
“We only have one spoon,” Janelia said. “We had to sell the rest last night to buy supplies. So—you eat, and then the rest of us will take our turns.”
It had never struck me as unfair in the palace that royalty and palace officials ate first, and then, if there was anything left, the ones who had actually prepared the food got their chance. But I’d never spent time in the presence of the people who prepared the food.
I pushed the stew away.
“Why don’t the rest of you eat first?” I asked. “I haven’t been walking, and you have, and . . .”
Herk was already shoving his way in under the sheet.
“All right!” he said. “I’ll take that serving.”
“Herk! Manners!” Janelia protested.
“It’s fine,” I said, handing over the dented metal cup. “You provided the meat. And I appreciate that.”
Clutching the cup, Herk backed out past the sheet again.
“I am showing manners! I know not to eat in front of people who are still hungry!” he called over his shoulder.
Janelia laughed. But she made no attempt to follow Herk. She lifted something from her lap that I hadn’t noticed before—some sort of long, flat, slender leaf? Some sort of reed, still dripping water? Janelia twisted her hands. In the dim light from the fire, it was hard to tell exactly what she was doing, but it was something like a braiding motion. Was it possible to braid reeds?
“What’s that?” I asked.
Janelia held out the pair of reeds in her hand, twisted together into what looked like a flat surface.
“This is my plan for raising money as we go—I picked up reeds down by the river, and now I’m making baskets,” she explained. She paused, and the clump of reeds threatened to slip out of her hand. “That is, if I can remember how to do it. My mother taught me so long ago . . . Our mother, I mean. I’m sure she planned to teach you someday, just as she taught Rebecca and Lyssie, and Cala . . .”
“Those are your other sisters who died?” I asked.
“Our other sisters,” Janelia corrected.
She fell silent for a moment, evidently needing all her concentration for the slippery reeds. She blinked, as if it took great effort to get her eyes to focus in the dim light.
She walked all day, she hasn’t eaten yet—you’d think she’d be too tired to work, I thought. But she’s working anyway.
Meanwhile I felt jittery with having done nothing all day long. Even back at the palace I would have walked from my chambers to the meeting rooms to the dining hall. I would have worn myself out with pacing, if nothing else. Lying on a stretcher all day doing nothing but worrying left me with excess, useless energy.
“Show me how to do that,” I said impulsively. “Please?”
Janelia looked up, startled.
“All right,” she said. She moved closer and handed me the coiled reeds. “I’ll let you work this one, since it’s already started, and starting’s the hardest part. The pattern is over two, under one, like this. . . .”
I watched, then imitated the pattern myself.
“Oh, it’s kind of like needlepoint, isn’t it?” I asked. “My friend Ella—the one girl I know I can trust in Fridesia—she says needlepoint was invented because corsets weren’t enough torture for royal women. But I’ve always liked it. The way the patterns always made so much sense, and if you messed up, you could see it right away and fix it . . .”
“Desmia, you almost never messed up,” Janelia said softly. “Even when you were first learning.”
I jerked my gaze from the reeds to Janelia’s face.
“What?”
“I’m the one who taught you needlepoint,” Janelia said. “When you were three.”
I shook my head—not in denial, but because this seemed so disconnected from my own memories. Was it possible? I didn’t actually remember the first time I’d grasped a needle and pressed it through cloth. I couldn’t remember not knowing the chain stitch, the split stitch, the wheat stitch, the French knots . . .
For a moment I had the same sensation I’d had in Janelia’s basement home, of almost remembering, of feeling a memory squirm away without quite surfacing.
“Think hard,” Janelia said. “Can’t you remember? I told you the needle was like a fish, swimming through the cloth. . . .”
“Mmm . . . I don’t know,” I admitted.
Trying to remember bothered me. Even the innocent image of the fish made me think of danger. It made me want to shout, Swim fast, little fish! There are men on shore with spears and hooks and fishing lines! Swim away to safety! Now!
Was this the same instinct that had made me want to warn my sister-princesses back at the palace? That made me want to tell them, Watch out for vipers! Watch out for their fangs!
I should have warned them. I’d failed them. If I’d warned them, they would have been on guard at the ball that night. They would have been safe right now.
I shook my head again.
“Why didn’t you teach me basket-weaving back at the palace?” I asked.
“Oh law, where would I have gotten the reeds?” Janelia asked. “Even if Lord Throckmorton and the other palace officials would have approved of a princess knowing a common skill like basket-weaving—and having all those tiny cuts on your hands from the reeds . . . well, you saw. It was a half day’s journey to the right kind of reeds.”
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t think of that.” I had the sudden feeling that I didn’t know anything about my kingdom. I’d never seen the Sualan Mountains or the wheat fields of the east or the swampy lands where the reeds and rushes grew. And as long as open sky terrified me, I never would.
“How did your—our—mother learn how to weave baskets, anyhow, living so far from reeds?” I asked.
“Mam grew up in one of the river villages,” Janelia said, starting a second basket. “She and Da both did. They were already married before they moved to the capital city. You can start working on the sides of that basket. You keep the same pattern, just pull the reeds tighter together.”
I nodded and tilted the reeds slightly, increasing the tension.
“Why did they go to the capital? Why didn’t they stay in their village?” I asked.
I wasn’t thinking of Janelia’s parents as truly having any connection to me. Indeed, I was asking about them to keep Janelia from bringing up more immediate, less comfortable topics.
“There wasn’t much in their village,” Janelia said, her head bent over her basket. “It’s not like they were seeking their fortunes in the capital, exactly, but . . . they wanted a better life. For themselves and their children, in the future.”
“And did that happen?” I asked, concentrating mostly on the pattern of reeds in my hands. r />
Janelia looked up and smiled ruefully.
“It would appear to most people that you made out all right,” she said.
Herk pushed back in at the sheet again before I had a chance to answer.
“Mam! Mam!” he cried, and I feared that the snakes or wolves he’d talked about earlier had materialized beside the fire. But he went on, “It’s your turn to eat!”
“Thank you, Herk,” Janelia said, with exaggerated patience. “Next time you enter Princess Desmia’s private chambers, make sure you have permission, all right?”
“ ’Private . . . chambers?’ ” Herk repeated in puzzlement. “We’re outside!”
Janelia pointed at the sheet.
“This is the most privacy we have to offer her, so please respect it,” she said.
“Sor-ry,” Herk said, backing away.
Janelia patted him on the head, as she slipped out past the sheet.
“You’re forgiven,” she said.
Janelia and Herk weren’t actually related, but was this how normal mothers and children talked to one another? If the queen had lived, would she have treated me with that same bemused but proud affection?
I reminded myself that if the queen had lived, she probably would have had more natural-born children of her own. Ones that didn’t die at birth. She wouldn’t have had to engage in that desperate charade of passing off orphaned pauper babies as princesses.
And what would have become of me then?
What was going to become of me now?
20
It was the middle of the night, and I could not possibly have been wider awake.
Actually, I was only guessing about it being the middle of the night. Out here in the wilderness, far from the palace clock (which no longer existed, anyway), I had no way of knowing the exact time. But it was dark out, and it had been dark for hours. And the darkness weighed on me in a way that made me feel certain there were hours more of darkness ahead of me.
You’re surrounded by a sheet and three walls of rock—it’s not like you’re missing any lovely view in the absence of light, I reminded myself.