“Of course he will. Ella asked him to play at her wedding,” Cecilia answered for him. “She loves his new style of music!”
Cecilia and Harper acted as though Harper had been tortured because his mother forced him to take music lessons his entire childhood. But his mother had just been appointed music master for the palace.
Is she someone I could trust after Cecilia and Harper leave? I wondered.
I barely knew the woman.
“Everyone loves Harper’s music,” I murmured, for politeness. But my gaze wandered back toward the great crowd of dancers.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven . . .
This time I really was certain that all of the princesses were accounted for: eleven whirling out on the dance floor, only Cecilia and me standing off to the side. The crowns of the eleven dancing princesses glittered more brightly than ever. It struck me that there was something odd about how dramatically all those crowns glowed, as if the ballroom was lit by something more than candlelight reflected by dozens of mirrors.
At the same time, I heard the panicked scream from across the room: “Fire!”
3
“Let’s get you two out of here, then I’ll help put the fire out,” Harper said, grabbing both Cecilia and me by the arm.
I realized he was showing more chivalry than the actual, true royal courtiers I saw abandoning their dance partners and scurrying for the nearest door.
Harper tugged on my arm, but I stood firm, watching the flames. They were reflected so many times in all the mirrors that it was easy to be dazzled by them, and hard to see where they had begun. But all of the draperies along the north wall were ablaze now. The tapestries along the east wall were starting to sizzle and burn too.
Did a dozen candles slip and fall from the sconces on separate walls all at the same time? I wondered. In such a way that each one of the candles just happened to land on flammable fabric?
It was a ludicrous thought. It was impossible.
“The fire’s been set!” I hissed. “Somebody started those fires. They’re still starting them!”
Even as I spoke, the first of the south-wall draperies went up in flame too.
The three of us were standing by the west wall—the only one still untouched by flame.
“Quick—the secret passages!” I cried.
Now I tugged on Cecilia’s and Harper’s arms—and the two of them resisted.
“You don’t hide inside a wall when a fire breaks out!” Cecilia protested. “You go outside! Where it’s safe!”
“I don’t think it’s safe outside right now,” I argued. “I think that’s where they want us to go!”
I didn’t think I needed to spell out who they were—the unknown, unseen people starting the fires, the source of the hidden danger I’d known was there all along.
Only, now it had burst out into the open.
Cecilia and Harper were both still staring at me blankly. Oh—they hadn’t heard me over the crackling flames and the screaming crowd. Even in the midst of a fire, I’d automatically used my carefully modulated bell-like, palace-approved voice.
Panicked dancers swarmed past us; the dance floor was now engulfed in smoke. The smoke was like something alive: hunching, stretching, advancing, retreating . . . Even if the flames at the bottom of the draperies and tapestries were beaten back, the smoke bearing down on the crowd could still win. The smoke spun, trailing behind dancers frantically fleeing the dance floor, and for an instant I had a clear view of one of the girls in the shiny golden crowns. It was a sister-princess with dark hair, one in an aquamarine dress—Rosemary? Fidelia? I wasn’t close enough to see a face; in the panic and smoke and fear, I couldn’t remember who had been wearing which dress.
I have to get her out through the secret passages too, I thought, actually stepping toward the flames and smoke.
The smoke swirled; my next glimpse showed two men sidling up beside Rosemary/Fidelia and putting arms around her shoulders.
Oh good, somebody else is taking care of her, I thought. So I don’t have to worry.
Except that, in the next instant, the princess in the aquamarine dress crumpled to the floor, and the two men moved away as though that was what they’d intended all along.
If thirteen princesses die in a tragic palace fire, what then? I wondered. Who would dare to question it? Who would risk offending whatever ruler replaces us?
I was still clutching Cecilia’s and Harper’s arms. Something pounded in my heart, a feeling too intense for the palace. Even if I failed at everything else—even if I myself died—I had to save Cecilia and Harper. They were so innocent, so good, so out of place in this palace of smoke and mirrors.
A surge of strength flowed through me, and I shoved Cecilia and Harper toward the wall.
“Go!” I screamed, all modulation gone from my voice now.
All three of us slammed into the stone wall—had we been running too fast? I let go of the other two just long enough to run my fingers along a familiar crack in the stone, to spring a release that almost nobody else knew about. A door in the stone appeared, the opening just wide enough to squeeze through.
I glanced back quickly. The smoke had grown in the past few moments; now it rose like another wall behind us. But I was grateful for it now. Since I couldn’t see anybody clearly through the smoke, surely that meant that nobody could see me.
I shoved first Cecilia, then Harper through the opening to the secret passages.
“Save Cecilia!” I screamed in Harper’s ear. “Go down two flights of stairs, there’s a way out to the street . . .”
I was relieved that there was no hint of smoke in the secret passageway. Flames and smoke rose, didn’t they? Wouldn’t Cecilia and Harper be safe climbing downward?
“Oh yes, through the torture chamber,” Cecilia shouted. “I remember now! I know the exact door!”
“Then go straight on to Fridesia,” I commanded. “Leave immediately! There’s something going on here, some danger none of us knew about. . . . Save yourselves!”
It was terrible that sending them to the land of our former enemies seemed the best way to save their lives.
“Tell Ella and Jed!” I added, taking a step back. “Get their advice! Let them help you figure everything out . . .”
I began easing the door shut between me and Cecilia and Harper. Harper’s face went pale behind his freckles, and Cecilia’s eyes grew wide, as if it were just now occurring to both of them that I didn’t intend to escape through the secret passageway with them.
“Desmia!” Cecilia screamed. “You come too!”
“I’ll meet you in Fridesia!” I screamed back, still shoving on the stone door. “It’ll be safer if we travel separately! In disguise!”
Stone met stone with a subtle click; the door to the secret passages was hidden once more.
Harper will care most about getting Cecilia to safety, I told herself. And Cecilia will want to make sure that Harper stays out of danger. . . .
My heart twisted as I turned to face the smoke again. I couldn’t have said if it was because of fear or hope or just the longing to have somebody, someday, love me the way Harper and Cecilia loved each other. Could the other two possibly believe that I would meet them in Fridesia? Could they believe it enough that they’d manage to save their own lives?
The other princesses, I reminded myself. They need to be rescued, too . . .
The smoke was so thick now that it was impossible to see more than a foot or two in any direction. My eyes stinging, I hunched over, because the smoke seemed to thin a bit lower down. Was that the glint of a golden crown off through the tendrils of smoke? Was that a girl in an aquamarine dress still lying on the floor?
You knew there was still danger, I chided myself. Even I hadn’t known to fear fire, but at least I’d known to be on guard. You should have warned the others; you should have told them a ball is always more than just giggling and dressing up and dancing. You let them stay too innocent and now you owe i
t to them to save them . . .
It was undignified and unroyal to crawl—not to mention, incredibly difficult in a ball gown. But I dropped to my knees anyway. I took a deep breath and held it, then lumbered forward even though the smoke hid my destination from view. I bumped into something that might have been the fluffy layers of an aquamarine dress covering an unconscious princess.
Not dead, I told myself. Surely not dead yet. . . . Surely those two men didn’t actually kill her. . . .
I grappled for ankles or wrists, hands or feet—something to pull on, anyway. I could check for a pulse later, when the unknown princess and I were both safe. A shoe came off in my hands and I wasted time staring at it stupidly for a moment, noticing the arch of the heel, the golden filigree meant to loop daintily from ankle to toe.
“We’ll take care of her, princess,” a man’s voice said from behind me. “We’ll take care of you both.”
How did he know I was a princess from behind, in all this smoke? I wondered.
Then I remembered my own crown, still glistening on my head.
I’d been an idiot. In a ballroom where people were setting drapes and tapestry on fire and going around knocking princesses unconscious—or dead—I should have taken my crown off first thing, disguised my identity before taking a single step in any direction.
I spun to face my supposed rescuer—or assailant. I hoped I would be able to tell the difference at a glance. But I was still holding my breath. The thoughts, You’re running out of air! You’re going to have to take another breath! pounded in my head, making me dizzy. I couldn’t see the man before me very well; his hulking shape seemed to waver in and out of focus.
“Princess,” the man purred, patting my arm.
I couldn’t decide which threatened me most: The lack of air in my lungs? The overwhelming smoke around me? The stinging sensation on my arm?
And then I couldn’t decide anything, because everything went black.
4
I awoke.
In . . . a bed, is it? I wondered groggily, feeling what could have been soft cotton sheets tucked around me.
I heard no crackle of flames, no shrieks of panicked courtiers in fear for their lives. So it seemed I was in no imminent danger from fire, at least.
But maybe . . . from something else . . . ?
I decided it might be wise to learn as much as I could before tipping off anyone else that I was awake.
I let my eyelids flutter, not as if I were waking up, but in the manner of someone suffering from a horrific nightmare. This also gave me a reason to thrash about a bit, to gauge the width of the bed, to snatch quick glimpses of the room on either side of the bed. I let a soft moan escape my lips—the moan of someone deep in sleep, deep in the grasp of a dread-filled dream.
“Princess Desmia?” a woman’s voice murmured softly from the left side of the bed, the same side as a heavily draped window.
Of course I didn’t answer. I turned toward the right, still pretending that it was only because of my nightmare thrashing. Then I pretended that I found the sound of my own name comforting, that I was settling back into a soothing slumber.
Actually, I was staring at a wall.
Plaster, not stone; whitewashed, not painted . . . I’m not in the palace anymore, I told myself.
That alone was a shock.
Because my supposed parents, the king and queen, had been murdered, the threat of danger from the unknown assassins had hovered over my first fourteen years. As long as Lord Throckmorton was my guardian, I couldn’t remember ever being allowed outside the palace, except to stand on the single balcony high above the adjoining courtyard.
Which meant that, in reality, I might as well have never stepped foot outside the palace in my first fourteen years.
And in the month since Cecilia and the other princesses arrived, and Lord Throckmorton and his evil cohorts were unmasked and imprisoned—since everyone else thought the danger was over—somehow there was always too much to be done or watched over within the palace walls for me to take advantage of my new freedom and go outside.
But now I was outside the palace. Now I was exposed.
You’re still in a house—still in a structure of some sort, I reminded myself, because my stomach was roiling, my throat was growing tight, my vision was threatening to go dark again. And, remember, it’s not as if being in the palace kept you safe, anyway . . . not as if sharing the palace kept the other princesses safe . . .
Thinking about the other princesses steadied me a bit. But it also made me too impatient to focus on cataloging the level of ornateness of the pitcher and bowl on the table beside the bed, or to bother with covertly scanning the wall for artwork that might provide clues about my location. Those details wouldn’t help me find out what I really wanted to know.
I took a sudden breath as if I’d been startled awake, possibly even by my own dreams. I jerked, and rolled back again toward the left.
“Where . . . am I?” I groaned. “What . . . happened? My sisters—where are my sisters?”
“Shh, princess. Calm yourself.”
The voice came from beside the bed again, from a location that seemed to be hidden behind one of the cloth-draped pillars holding up the canopy of the bed. But it was followed by a muted creaking—was the woman sliding forward in her chair, standing up, moving toward me?
She’s called me princess twice now, I reminded myself. Would someone who intended to harm me continue addressing me by my royal title?
I remembered the princess in the aquamarine dress—Fidelia, I thought now, it had to have been Fidelia—collapsing between the two men in the smoke-filled ballroom; I remembered the two men stepping past Fidelia’s crumpled form as carelessly as if she’d been a dropped handkerchief. I also remembered the man standing over Fidelia and me and saying, We’ll take care of you both.
There were various ways to interpret that. I’d heard it as a threat.
A woman’s face appeared at the edge of my vision, just past the regal swoop of cloth hanging from the canopy.
I couldn’t place this woman. She wasn’t someone from the palace—I was sure of that. I would have recognized at least the face of all but the lowliest palace servant, and this woman was clearly not a lowly servant.
You always knew there were plenty of people in the world outside the palace as well, I chided myself, though that was a matter I’d only taken on faith for most of my life.
This woman’s air of dignity seemed suited for palace life, anyway. Her silver hair was pulled back in a distinguished style, held in place by matching combs that might have been pewter—an interesting choice: expensive without being flashy, understated without being dull. Her skirt and blouse were deceptively simple; perhaps only someone like me, who’d been raised with the finest of goods, would be able to see that they were of the highest quality, stitched together with extreme care.
“Who . . . are you?” I asked, and was dismayed that a tiny frisson of panic sounded in my voice.
I wasn’t accustomed to meeting new people without being fully briefed ahead of time. Or—without spying on them first.
The woman cleared her throat reprovingly.
“You may address me,” she said, “as Madame Bisset.”
I had to feign a sudden, overwhelming weakness that demanded I close my eyes again. I couldn’t let this woman see that I recognized the name: my Fridesian friend Ella had told stories of clashing with a woman named Madame Bisset back home in her kingdom’s palace.
Could it possibly be the same woman? I wondered. Or a sister? Or . . .
A sister would not have the same last name as a Madame Bisset. Perhaps it was a sister-in-law? Or not a relation at all? For all I knew, Bisset could be an extremely common name in some other part of the world.
But it wasn’t in Suala. I had heard the name only in connection with the villain in Ella’s stories. Even though Ella, telling it, had admitted, Oh, how Madame Bisset would have loved you, Desmia! Because you are neat and tid
y and careful and polite and everything else Madame Bisset thought a princess should be . . .
I decided it best to go on pretending the name meant nothing to me. If Ella and Madame Bisset hated each other, mentioning Ella’s name wouldn’t help. I forced myself to open my eyes again, struggle a bit higher on the pillows, and extend my hand.
“My apologies,” I murmured demurely. “I find my mind is still so . . . foggy. It is a pleasure to meet you, and I thank you for watching over me so carefully. My last memory is of collapsing in the smoke at the ball. . . . To whom shall I address my thanks for rescuing me? Could you please summon my sisters so we can make a statement of gratitude together?”
Now it was Madame Bisset’s turn to hide her expression as she took my hand. Madame Bisset bowed her head slightly—it was probably meant to look respectful, but the motion made me distrust the woman even more.
“Alas, my dear princess, what you request cannot be granted,” Madame Bisset said. The heavy sorrow in her voice gave me chills.
“Why ever not?” I had to work to keep a calm tone. My voice was still as bell-like as always, but I let it also contain a hint of a threat: Do as I say, or else! You do not cross Sualan royalty!
Madame Bisset patted my hand.
“My dear child, you cannot be ready to hear this,” the woman murmured. “Rest yourself awhile longer yet, then perhaps . . .”
I noted the shift in terminology. I was no longer a “dear princess,” only a “dear child.”
“Tell me,” I commanded, my voice steely.
Madame Bisset blinked back something that might have been tears. Or at least the pretense of them.
“Poor, dear Desmia,” Madame Bisset crooned, shaking her head despairingly. “Do you not yet grasp the tragedy? You were the only princess to escape that ballroom.” A kind person would have left it at that. But Madame Bisset did not. She clutched my hand and drove the awful news home: “All of your sister-princesses are dead.”
5
I don’t believe you, I thought, and though I had fourteen years of experience being controlled and restrained and cautious, it was all I could do not to scream at this woman, You lie! Stop your vicious lies this instant!