Entwined (15 page)

“Those are ours!” she said.

“I know,” said Keeper. “I like to keep things.”

“That's stealing!” said Azalea.

“You must forgive me,” he said. “But I am desperate. I need a favor from you, and your sisters. A great favor indeed, and I don't believe any of you would help me unless I did something, ah, unconventional. I want to be freed, Miss Azalea.”

Azalea frowned. Keeper was—well,
Keeper
. Magical and beautiful and part of the ethereal pavilion. She shifted on the velvet sofa, feeling both consternation and guilt.

“I…hadn't thought of it,” said Azalea.

“I know,” said Keeper. He smiled, but not bitterly. “Perhaps you will now?”

“Oh, honestly,” said Azalea. She stood up and strode to the entrance with a
click click click.
The familiar hotness had begun to run through her, and she felt she needed a breath of real air. “I can't believe you would just—just
steal
!”

“Step out of that entrance,” Keeper called, “and you and your sisters will never be welcome here again.”

Azalea stopped so abruptly her skirts swished the threshold. She glanced back at Keeper to see if he was
in earnest. A touch of a smile graced his lips, but his face was deadly serious.

Azalea's toes curled in her boots. She suddenly hated Keeper.

“Don't—” she stammered. She couldn't manage to meet his eyes. “It's…just…We've got to keep dancing here, Keeper. It's all we have. Don't take it away. Please.”

“Then you will help free me?”

Azalea gripped the side of the arched entrance, wishing to feel some sort of silvery texture beneath her palms. Instead she felt a strange glassy smoothness, and it frustrated her.

“Fine,” she said, her nails clicking against the post. “For the dancing. And the watch. What do we have to do?”

Though she couldn't hear Keeper's footfalls behind her, she felt his presence draw near to her, until she could almost sense his sleekness, and his eyes on her back.

“The High King magicked many things,” he said, in his smooth voice. “Your palace. This pavilion. And I. He was fascinated with magic. It was, to him, a science, dealing with force and matter and auras. There are different sorts of magic, too. Some are much stronger than others.

“Miss Azalea, there is an object in your palace that has been magicked so strongly, it keeps me weak. Confined.”

Azalea recalled Keeper raising the gushing, foaming water to the top of the bridge. He had been panting when he stood. Breathless and drawn, taxed almost to illness. Azalea scuffed her boot on the marble.

“A magic object?” she said. “Here, in our palace?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“I do not know. But here is a thought: Until earlier this year, I was hardly more than brick and mortar. Something happened to the magic object—it was partially broken. Broken enough that I have my magic back, at least in part.”

Azalea's eyebrows knit. They hadn't anything magic, unless it was the tower, and that wasn't broken, only stopped. They had the old, dented magic tea set, one of the few remnants of the High King. Although—Azalea's brows knit further—she hadn't seen that tea set for quite some time.

“I need you to find the magic object, and destroy it,” said Keeper. “Your period of mourning ends in but three months. Surely that is enough time?”

Azalea tapped her toe against the ground, the misty air stifling her.

“We…don't have much magic left in the palace,” she managed to say. “We could probably find it, if I had all the girls search—”

Keeper took Azalea's hand from the silver doorframe into both of his, and pressed his lips against it.

 

“He did
what
?” Bramble cried.

“I know, I know,” said Azalea. She sliced bread with a vengeance.

It was afternoon, and Azalea had just finished telling them the entire story at tea in the kitchen. The girls' eyebrows had risen and furrowed with each part of the telling, and at the end, their eyes were circles. Their muffins and tea had been forgotten as they stared at Azalea across the scrubbed servants' table.

“What a rotten shilling punter!” said Bramble, tearing her bread to bits. “I can't believe he stole our things!
Especially
the watch! We stole that watch first, fair and square!”

“Something magic?” said Eve, passing out the sliced cheese. “But what's left? I suppose there was the harpsichord—although that broke before the King was even born.”

“Well,” said Azalea, “there's the wraith cloak—”

“The what?”

“The cloak that would make you invisible. The High King would use it to slip into the city unseen. That wasn't unmagicked, but it was given away. No one knows where it is now, but surely it's fallen to pieces. So, that just leaves—”

“The tea set,” said everyone in unison.

Azalea sighed and dipped a piece of her bread in her raspberry tea. “Right. But I haven't seen that for ages. Even the sugar teeth—they disappeared after that first night. Does anyone know what happened to it?”

No one had.

Clover, who had been feeding Lily sips of tea with a shaking teacup, remained flushed and silent through the entire exchange, her rose red lips pursed. Now, all of a sudden, she burst into sobs.

“It was my fault!” she cried. “I did it!”

Everyone exchanged glances before turning back to Clover, who sobbed into her napkin as though she had unbottled her heart. She even looked pretty with a dribbling wet face.

“Um, sorry?” said Azalea.

“
I
broke it!” said Clover. “I broke the tea set!” Hiccupping, she raised her chin, defiant. “With a
fire poker
!”

The story spilled from her between stutters and shuddering breaths. It seemed as though she had been aching to confess.

Several months ago, when she had been ill, Mrs. Graybe set the magic tea set to tend to her. It kept pushing at Clover and nipping at her to taste the nasty-smelling tea, and finally, when she couldn't take it any longer, she took the fire poker and
bashed
the tea set in. And not just
once—repeatedly. There were still dents in the wall.

The girls gasped at this part.

The story became even more scandalous. Clover gathered up the pieces of the tea set in Lily's baby blanket and, late at night, slipped out and dumped the tea set into the garden stream.

“And the pieces—the pieces—they were still
wriggling
, and—oh! It was like I had drowned them alive!” Clover hiccupped. “But I am
not
sorry! I hated that horrid tea set!”

By this time, all the girls were laughing so hard they could hardly breathe. Bramble laughed so hard tea almost came out of her nose. Azalea laughed, more in shock that honey-sweet Clover could do something so violent.

“The teeth must have escaped while you murdered the rest of it,” said Bramble, cough-laughing into her napkin. “Ha ha ha! You know, sometimes I think Clover is harboring some deep, dark shocking secret. Fire poker! Ba-hahahahaaa!”

The girls laughed all over again. Even Clover managed a small, wobbly smile. Azalea rubbed her thumb, remembering how the sugar teeth had nipped her fingers.

“I suppose that settles it,” she said. “We've got to find the sugar teeth.”

 

That night, in their newly mended slippers from the shoemaker's, Azalea had the girls search for the sugar
teeth where she last remembered having them—in the silver forest. They had never properly explored the silver bushes and prickly pines off the path, and the girls searched back and forth, setting ornaments swaying and upsetting the bushes with a rustling fabric sound. Flora and Goldenrod even brought sugar cubes, in case they found them.

Thoroughly late for dance practice, the girls emerged from the sparkling foliage displeased, black dresses coated in silver dust.

“It's like looking for a needle in a stack of hay,” said Delphinium as they made their way to the bridge. “
Silver hay
.”

“The sugar teeth aren't down here, let's face it,” said Bramble. “They would have attacked one of us by now. They've probably run away. I'd bet a harold they've thrown themselves off the garden bridge to join their beastly comrades. Anyway, who cares if we set Keeper free or not? He's creepy.”

“
I
certainly don't,” said Azalea. “And if you don't either, maybe we should forget dancing and go back to the room.”

“Steady on,” said Bramble, two spots of pink on her cheeks. “I didn't mean it like
that
. Probably every gentleman was creepy back then. I mean, let's not be hasty or anything. Anyway, where else are we going to dance?”

“It's more—than just—dancing,” said Clover. “We're—doing exactly what the—the High King did to p-poor Mr. Keeper. Dancing and just—just leaving him there. It's so unkind of us.”

A guilty solemness fell over them all as they realized Clover was right.

“Well,” said Bramble. “At least we have until Christmas.” She pulled aside the willow branches.

Keeper stood framed by the entrance of the pavilion, his face lined. Behind him, in the middle of the dance floor, stood a pure white maypole, twisted like a marshmallow candy stick. Twelve colored ribbons dangled from it, bright and sleek. It could have been Azalea's imagination, but Keeper looked paler, and a touch older than he had that morning.

“Not a word to Mr. Keeper,” said Azalea quietly. “We know how it feels to be trapped.”

 

The girls gave the palace a full combing for the sugar teeth the next day. Rain pattered against the draped windows as they searched in the silver cabinet, turning up mismatched forks and spoons and an old shriveled potato. They sorted through the cabinets and even picked the lock to Mother's room. All her powder boxes, dresses, and jewelry had been locked tightly away, her nightgown lay on her bed, and everything felt strange and muffled.
The girls left the room, trying to swallow the choking emotion without smelling the white-cake and baby-ointment scent.

They searched through the portrait gallery, among the spindly sofas and tables, while the younger ones sat on the long red rug and ate bread and jam.

“What about this?” said Eve, at the end of the hall. She peered through a glass case on a pedestal, which held Harold the First's silver sword. The same one the King had taken with him to war. He took it to parliament meetings as well, and when the occasion called for it, speeches. It was ceremonial.

Azalea, for the first time, looked at it closely through the glass. More of a rapier than a real sword, the sort gentlemen two hundred years ago would duel with, it was old, dented, unpolished, and the mottled dark gray masked curly carved ornamentation along the side. Azalea peered closer and saw the thin crack up the side. Her brow creased, thinking of the sickening clang it had made when she'd fallen against it at the port.

“It can't be that,” said Bramble. “That's not magic.”

“Wait,” said Azalea. “It was broken earlier this year. And it's old enough. We might as well see.”

With Bramble's help, Azalea lifted the case and set it gently on the ground. She pushed her sleeve back.

“Don't touch it,” said Eve when Azalea reached for
it. “Only the King can use the sword. It's…legend, or something. I read it.”

“Lighten up, Primmy,” said Bramble.

The girls held their breath. Azalea slowly grasped the handle beneath the swirls.

She screamed.

The girls panicked and screamed, air-curdling screams.

“Ha—ha ha.” Azalea laughed and pulled her hand away. “Just kidding.”

The girls glared at her. Azalea thought that rather unfair. If Bramble had done the same thing, they all would have thought it a riot. She sighed.

“It's just an old sword,” she said, replacing the glass. “Even if it was magic, we couldn't get rid of it. It's governmental property.”

The girls continued their search of the palace, progressing slower and slower as the day wore on, until they ended with a halfhearted search in the leather-and-wood-smelling library. The King was gone on R.B., and the younger girls played with the ladders underneath the iron mezzanine, rolling along the bookcase walls and hitting the end with a thump.

A commotion of cries and gasps brought Azalea to the King's carved wood desk, the other girls following after. Eve gaped over the morning's edition of the
Herald
,
which Delphinium gripped tightly in her hands. Their eyes were wide.

“Is it Lady Aubrey's column again?” said Azalea, a hint of a smile crossing her lips.

“Just
look
at this!” Delphinium cried. She had a shrill, cutting voice, and it rang across the walls of books. Azalea's smile faded. She took the paper from Delphinium, open to the announcements section, and skimmed over the engagements and births and weddings. There, between two engagement posts, lay a large advertisement with an ink tick next to it. Azalea read.

ROYAL BUSINESS; STRICTLY
F
OR THE YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO MEETS THE CRITERIA—

A
RIDDLE TO SOLVE
:
W
HERE THE TWELVE PRINCESSES OF
E
ATHESBURY

D
ANCE AT NIGHT
A
S WELL AS LIMITED ACQUAINTANCE
W
ITH THE
P
RINCESS
R
OYALE
T
HREE DAYS' STAY IN THE ROYAL PALACE
WILL BE GRANTED.
T
HE FOOD AND BOARD WILL BE FREE.

I
NQUIRIES TO BE SENT TO
H
IS
R
OYAL
H
IGHNESS
H
AROLD
W
ENTWORTH THE
E
LEVENTH OF
E
ATHESBURY