Princess of the Silver Woods (Twelve Dancing Princesses) (27 page)

“There are no guards,” the crown prince said. “There’s the king, the princes, and the court, but they never venture across the lake.”

“Hurry and get a few more branches if you would, Oliver,” Walter Vogel said. “Then we’ll find a place to make our preparations.”

“How large is this wood?” Oliver asked.

He took a few steps farther into the thick of the trees. They had been taking leaves and cutting branches right beside a narrow path, and he worried that Grigori or someone else who used the same gate would notice. A few steps in he selected another branch and lopped it off near the trunk of the shining tree.

“I don’t know that anyone’s ever explored it,” Walter said. “Galen and the girls were too busy running to really take it all in the last time.” He gave a dry chuckle.

“Running and shooting,” the crown prince said.

“Aren’t we glad that I taught Lily to shoot?” Heinrich was gathering up handfuls of black dirt to fill small leather bags.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t give thanks for that,” his cousin said fervently.

“And then you taught the other princesses to shoot afterward?” Oliver dragged the branch he had cut back to the path.

“Yes, after what happened the king was quite adamant that they all learn,” Galen said. “That’s why I’m surprised that you, er, abducted Petunia. Wasn’t she armed?”

“Yes, she was,” Oliver said, smiling to himself. “The first time I saw her, she had a pistol aimed directly at my face. But I jumped down out of a tree later and caught her off guard,” he explained.

The others laughed at that, which reassured Oliver. If they could laugh, if Walter Vogel could hum as he gathered up the twigs, then Oliver felt that this might all turn out all right.

When they had gathered the wood, leaves, and soil that
they needed, they continued down the path until they came to a lake of black water. Rising from an island at the center was a palace, ragged and menacing against the dull-gray nothingness that formed the sky. Oliver felt prickles of ice go down his spine.

“Stay in the trees,” Walter Vogel cautioned. “They can see us from the palace. We’ll need to move just around here a ways, to find a place to work.”

Reluctantly, Oliver pulled back into the trees with his armload of silver wood. He tripped several times trying to crane his neck and keep the palace in sight. It didn’t seem to have any windows, only a single large door, but still he wished for a glimpse of Petunia. Was she all right? Had they hurt her?

“They are well,” Heinrich said quietly, walking along beside Oliver. “It’s thin consolation, but the princes do want their brides unharmed.”

Oliver cringed. Their brides. And Petunia had been six when they’d first stolen her away to make her a bride. Now she was barely sixteen, and he still could not fathom it. She might show a bold face to the world, but she was still so very vulnerable.

A flash of red caught the corner of Oliver’s eye. He turned his head toward the palace once again, thinking that he had only conjured the color out of his memories.

But no.

Someone in a red cloak was emerging from the palace doors, a tall figure in black on either side. Oliver knew it was Petunia in the red cloak. It had to be. The smallness of the
figure, the sweep of the cloak … he would know her no matter the distance.

“That’s Pet,” breathed Heinrich, standing close by Oliver. “But where are they taking her?” Every line in the prince’s body was taut.

There was a row of small boats beached on the shore. One of the tall black figures helped Petunia into the bow of a boat, and then sat in the middle seat with a hand on each oar. The other tall figure pushed the boat out and leaped into the stern. The rower pulled them toward the wooded shore with firm strokes, and Oliver and the others drew back into the trees.

“We have to move farther away,” said Galen in a barely audible whisper. “We can’t risk them seeing us now.”

“But we could rescue her,” Oliver insisted in a harsh whisper of his own.

“She doesn’t need rescuing right this very moment,” Galen said, taking Oliver’s upper arm in a tight grip. “And if we killed those two and took Petunia with us, the king would soon miss his brothers, and he would come looking for them. We would never be able to get the other girls out then.”

The other girls. Beautiful, queenly Rose. Poppy with her mischievous smile. She and Princess Daisy were to be married in the spring. Oliver had seen Princes Ricard and Christian in Bruch. He had seen the way they smiled at their princesses. Did they know what had happened, or were they still going about their ordinary duties, oblivious to the danger their brides were in? Oliver swallowed, his throat dry.
Suddenly, getting all twelve princesses safely out of the black palace seemed insurmountable.

He watched Petunia climb out of the boat without any assistance, his eyes searching her for any sign of pain or fear. She moved easily, but her hood hid her face. The swirls of silver embroidery around the edges of the hood matched the silver of the trees, and the scarlet velvet stood out against the black soil. When she started toward the trees with her escort, Oliver allowed himself to be drawn back into the thick of the woods.

They found a small clear space some ways away, and Walter Vogel set them each to a task. Oliver’s was to cut the silver twigs to a certain length, and then to notch them in a pattern that looked like a line of fence posts.

“Well! What did you think they were?” The crone whacked him over the head with one gnarled hand. “New fence posts to hold them all in, the awful old things.”

Oliver used great restraint to avoid sidling away from the crone. He didn’t care if she was a revered sorceress; his head smarted where she had hit him. But he supposed being several centuries old would make your moods unpredictable.

The two princes busied themselves with the small bags of soil and the leaves, and Bishop Schelker cut marks into the ends of the larger branches that Oliver had chopped. Their preparations weren’t taking very long, and Oliver was hopeful that they would be able to finish refreshing Under Stone’s prison before nightfall. Then he supposed they would just have to worry about actually fetching the princesses, and they could finally leave.

And it seemed that Walter and Galen had a plan to get the princesses out of the palace as well.

“We’ll need to sneak inside the palace, and there’s only one invisibility cloak,” Galen said when they had finished preparing the wood and soil. “Although I do have this.” He reached into the satchel that Bishop Schelker had brought and removed a lightweight shawl of gray wool. “Which should work just as well.”

“It’s not as stylish as my cloak,” sniffed the good frau.

“I wouldn’t think to upstage your fine cloak,” said Galen with a little bow.

“I stole that off a Romisch cavalry officer when I was a young lass,” she told Galen with a twinkle in her eye. “Of course, it had no magic then. I just liked the color.”

“It was always a very good color on you,” Walter Vogel said.

Oliver thought about asking them how long they had known each other, but decided he didn’t want any of the details that the good frau might actually offer about their relationship.

“Two of us will be invisible,” Galen continued. “But unfortunately only two of us. Another reason why I sent Frederick to the estate with Oliver’s men: he would have tried to come with us, and there isn’t a third cloak.

“We’ll try to get in at the end of the ball and bring the girls out when everyone is dispersing for the night,” Galen went on. “Someone will need to wait by the gate to make certain they all get through, and then we’ll close the prison.”

“I want to go into the palace,” Oliver said.

At the same time, Heinrich reached for the gray shawl.

But Galen was shaking his head. He pulled the gray shawl away from his cousin. “I’m sorry, Heinrich. I’m giving the cloak to Oliver, and taking this myself.”

“But Lily,” began Heinrich.

“Heinrich, how fast can you run?” Galen looked as if asking the question pained him, but his eyes never wavered from his cousin’s face.

“Damn Analousians,” Heinrich said, and let go of the shawl. He pounded the thigh of his bad leg with a fist and winced.

“Heinrich, after you help to place the new fence posts, you’ll wait at the gate,” Galen said. “And get all the girls out. And yourself.”

“I thought you needed my help with the spell,” Heinrich protested.

“We could use you,” Walter Vogel admitted. “But we can also do it without you.”

“And I would rather that you made sure that Rose didn’t try to come back,” Galen said. “It will be easier for me knowing that you and the girls are all safe. And alive.”

Oliver looked down at his hands. He knew there was a chance he wouldn’t survive this. Especially if he helped to seal the Kingdom Under Stone. That had been another reason why Prince Frederick had been sent away, for some of their husbands would need to survive this. But if Petunia and her sisters could be free, it would be worth it, Oliver decided.

To his surprise, the good frau put one hand over his in a comforting gesture. He looked at her, but just as she opened
her nearly toothless mouth to speak, there was the sound of shouts and then the crack of a pistol firing.

“That wasn’t the palace,” Heinrich said, struggling to his feet.

“It came from over there,” Bishop Schelker said, pointing through the trees where they had last seen Petunia.

Out of habit, Oliver pulled his wolf mask over his face and fastened it. He grabbed his pistol, shifting it to his left hand. He hefted Karl’s ax with his right. “I hope this doesn’t ruin your plans too much,” he said to the crown prince, and then he raced off through the woods.

Prize

Petunia was having quite an enjoyable time pretending that Kestilan and Telinros didn’t exist. Telinros was returning the favor, but it frustrated Kestilan and he kept trying to make conversation, or at the very least make her look at him.

She went a little way along the path that wound from the black shore through the silver wood. It was the same path that she and her sisters had always used, a path she hadn’t walked in ten years.

“Petunia, come back here!” Kestilan called.

That decided her. She went along the path to its end, with the princes trailing behind. Kestilan continued to plead with her to turn back, but Telinros just looked angry when she peeked at him. She straightened her cloak and kept going.

At the end of the path she found the silver gate, set with pearls, that even after all these years was as familiar to her as her own bedposts. Wrapped around the gate was the chain of
boiled wool links that Galen had used to seal it shut, the knot pinned by a silver knitting needle.

She reached out and fingered the scratchy, boiled wool of the chain. She remembered watching Galen knit it at dinner, the night before the old king had forced them to stay Under Stone. At the time she’d thought he was only amusing her and her sisters, the way he had earlier by giving Pansy a red yarn puffball when she was crying. It wasn’t until later that she understood what he was doing, his calloused fingers working away with the yarn that was so much more than just wool.

Petunia’s mouth went dry. She whirled, grateful that her sweeping cloak hid the chain from the two princes. Their faces were white and strained, as though it hurt them to be so close to the gate, and she felt a small surge of triumph even as she brushed past them, hurrying back along the path and hoping that they would follow. She snapped her fingers to speed them along.

The chain was knotted and pinned on the
inside
of the gate now.

Halfway down the path she noticed something else that she did not want the princes to see. Someone had chopped a branch off one of the trees. The scar on the trunk was plain to her eyes, glittering slightly. The shimmering black soil was swirled and scuffed as though several people had been there. She immediately went to the other side of the path and began testing the branches, moving with light steps.

“Don’t go into the trees,” Kestilan said.

“Stop her,” Telinros ordered his brother.

Petunia looked back and saw them both standing at the edge of the path, their faces twisted with pain. Kestilan took one step off the path, between two arching silver trees, and hissed. He glared at Petunia.

“Come here.”

“No,” she said. “I’ll come when I’ve finished gathering twigs.”

“Gather them from the path,” he snarled.

“No.”

She kept walking deeper into the woods. She heard slow steps behind her: Kestilan braving the blessed silver. She hoped the pain was excruciating.

“Petunia, come back here!”

“No!”

“Haven’t you learned not to wander into the woods?”

That brought her up short.

It was true that she was in the Kingdom Under Stone because she had been picking flowers that any sane person would have known signaled a trap. But how could she get into any more trouble? And now she was walking in her mother’s silver wood, perhaps the safest place in this realm.

She went forward and came through the trees into a clearing. In the middle of the clearing was a beautiful little house, like an Analousian chalet with a sloping roof and ornately carved wooden balconies. It was all in black, and there was none of the traditional paintings on the walls, but otherwise it looked precisely like a chalet from the southeastern mountains.