Palace of Lies (18 page)

“Is that what the soldiers you know do?” I asked. “The ones you said I was acting like? Do they force themselves to get used to scary things gradually?”

“Some of them,” Tog said, tilting his head thoughtfully. “The ones who survive.”

And the others die?
I wanted to ask. I found myself wanting to ask how many soldiers he knew in each category. What was the likelihood of each outcome? What were my chances of being cured of my fear?

And was death the only other option?

I didn't ask any of those questions.

“It's probably very strange for you, out here,” Tog said. He brushed his curly hair back from his face. Somehow that just made his hair messier. “You probably miss the palace.”

Was he being like Madame Bisset and assuming that I would miss the palace more than I missed the other girls? For a moment, something like fury threatened to overcome me. But then I heard Tog add, “. . . and everyone in it. You must miss everyone you love. Being out here is strange for me, too, but at least I still have Herk and Mam with me.”

But not Terrence,
I thought but didn't say.

I tilted my head back, gazed up at the stars, and whispered, “I don't miss the palace. I'm glad it's gone.”

Tog jerked his head toward me. His eyes bugged out.

“What? You wanted it to burn?”

I looked down at the dark rock beneath me. Why had I admitted that out loud? Now I had to explain.

“I didn't want it to burn,” I said. “Because . . .” I had a moment of remembering the screaming, the running, the panicked crowd in the ballroom. And then, just like that, I walled off that memory in my mind. “I'm afraid people got hurt. I don't believe my sister-princesses died, but . . . I think some people might have.”

Somehow I needed the cover of darkness to actually admit that. Tog was still staring at me in confusion.

“But you're glad—” he began.

“About losing the palace,” I said. “Yes.”

Tog's confused squint only deepened.

“I was never inside it, of course,” he said. “But Janelia said it was beautiful. I thought you liked beautiful things.”

I gazed out at the horizon, where the dark, formless land met the glory of the starry sky.

“The palace . . . ,” I began. “I think everything about the palace was designed to make you feel small. To make anyone who stepped foot in there feel small. All those mirrors were so big . . . it was like they were there to whisper,
You're not good enough. You're not worthy.
I think the idea was that if people came to petition the king—or, in my time there, Lord Throckmorton—the palace made it so that they would feel so low and humble that they'd forget they wanted anything, except to get out of there alive. But I always wondered, did the palace make kings and queens feel small too? My ancestors? Did they have to keep adding on and making the turrets taller and the spires higher because that was the only way they could
say back to the world,
See, I
do
deserve this palace! I am the master of it all! Look upon me and tremble!”

Tog tilted his head, listening intently. And thinking. He seemed to be thinking hard.

“Mam would say those weren't your ancestors,” he said. “Not your real ones.”

“I always believed they were my ancestors,” I said. “And the way everything turned out, they might as well have been.”

Tog opened his mouth, then shut it.

“Were you going to tell me that isn't true?” I asked.

He looked away. His gaze seemed to be aimed toward the horizon too.

“Mam's been fretting about you for the past ten years,” he said. “I mean, she fretted about me and Herk and the other boys, too—she's such a
mother
. But, you, the way she talked about you, it was like you were right there with the rest of us, growing up. Only, you were always still a four-year-old.”

I let out a barking laugh.

“Lord Throckmorton always treated me like a four-year-old too,” I said. “Like I didn't have a mind of my own. Like I was a puppet.”

“A puppet wouldn't be on her way to Fridesia right now,” Tog said. “Only someone who was truly brave would be going to Fridesia.”

I had had courtiers tell me that my face was lovely; I'd had music masters tell me that my lute-playing was exquisite;
I'd had ladies-in-waiting ooh and aah over the perfection of my needlepoint stitches. Back at the palace, everyone from the lowliest servants up to the most influential advisers and counselors felt it their duty to blanket me in compliments all day long. It was like any pathway I stepped down had to be first lined with layers of praise. Perhaps once upon a time I had believed it all. But once I took to listening at palace doors from the secret passageways, I'd quickly learned to trust none of it: the same music master who praised my skill to my face called me tone-deaf when he thought I was out of earshot; the ladies-in-waiting gossiped and nitpicked and carped behind my back; even the courtiers, on their own, complained that my eyes were just a tad too big for their taste and I was probably too prissy for kissing.

But
this
—this was a compliment.

And somehow I was sure that Tog meant it.

In the morning when Janelia
came to wake me, I considered saying,
You can take the sheet down and I can eat breakfast out in the open with the rest of you. I'll travel today sitting up on the stretcher, with nothing covering my face.

But the world looked different by the light of day. I saw the pile of rocks I might have fallen into the night before, and they really could have destroyed my face. How could I bear seeing the dangers all around me every moment of the day?

Gradually,
I told myself.
Tog said the soldiers he knew worked up to facing their fears gradually. So that's how I'll do it too.

Janelia peeled the bandages from my feet and examined the wounds.

“Oh, everything is healing so well!” she exclaimed. “You'll be able to walk again long before we get to Fridesia.”

Then she glanced up, wincing at her own words.

“I mean—when you're ready otherwise,” she added.

“I'll start going without the sheet over my face for short periods of time today,” I told her. “I'll be able to go completely without it by the time my feet heal.”

It was strange: Back at the palace, I had made a habit of keeping my plans to myself. Even after Cecilia and the others arrived, I shared very little. But something about Janelia's hopeful, expectant expression made me tell her things.

The other three packed up and moved out before the sun was fully over the horizon. I knew this, because I'd peeked out from the sheet soon after I'd settled onto the stretcher.

And I'd managed not to scream.

I also noticed, in that glimpse, that Herk and Tog were working incredibly hard to erase every trace of the fire, every sign that four people had camped there.

Of course,
I thought.
They don't want anyone following us. They don't want anyone knowing which way we went . . . or that I'm going to Fridesia at all.

It was so boring lying flat on the stretcher for hours on end, unable to see a thing. When the others took their first break, I asked hesitantly, “Do you suppose I could weave my basket sitting under the sheet, while we travel?”

“Of course,” Janelia replied, her voice seeming to come from so far away, just from the other side of the sheet. “Why would that be a problem?”

“I don't want to make the stretcher any harder to carry,” I replied.

“Having you sit up and work won't matter for that,” Tog said, almost brusquely. I could hear the weariness in his voice.

At least if I weave baskets, I'm doing
something, I thought.

I was able to finish not one, but two baskets by the end of that day of walking.

“But—they're exquisite, Desmia,” Janelia said, examining them that evening.

This night we were all camped out in a cave together. They'd given me a section off to the side, which Herk kept calling the palace room.

“So we've got three baskets to sell?” Tog said, coming into the cave with a pile of firewood on his shoulder. “It looks like there's a village just a mile or so to the east, and it's still light out—do you want Herk and me to go into the village and see if we can trade the baskets for food?”

“Sounds wonderful,” Janelia said. “You should go right now—I'll start the fire.”

After the boys left, I shyly watched Janelia stacking the firewood beneath a hole in the ceiling that I guessed was the cave version of a chimney. Janelia tucked twigs and dried leaves between the larger branches, then began rubbing what looked like stones together.

“What does that—” I began. A spark leaped from the stones to the wispiest, driest leaves. “Ooh. How did you know how to do that?”

“Start a fire, you mean?” Janelia asked. “Didn't you ever notice who lit the fireplaces at the palace?”

I hadn't ever paid attention. But I could guess where Janelia was going with this.

“The maidservants?” I asked. “So you learned how to start fires when you were attending the queen?”

Janelia laughed.

“No, I learned
how
when I was a small child helping my mam,” Janelia said. “But I got a lot of practice serving the queen. Of course, the idea was to never let the fire go out so you didn't have to go to all this effort, but . . .”

But it's not like we can carry fire along with us, traveling,
I thought.

Janelia put a pot of water on the fire to boil. Then she went over to the mouth of the cave and peered off into the distance.

“I hope the boys are all right, going to that village so late in the day,” she murmured, clutching at her apron.

“There's nothing else left to eat, is there?” I asked. I'd noticed when we stopped for lunch that we were down to only crumbs.

Janelia bit her lip, as if trying to decide whether to tell the truth. A moment passed before she finally said, bluntly, “No.”

Some of the panic I'd felt the day before threatened to come back, but I tamped it down.

“Oh, I'm sure when we get back into a wooded area, Herk can hunt more,” Janelia said. “But we were walking through such scruffy areas today—there were barely any plants, let alone animals.”

Janelia was kneading pleats into her apron. For all that I'd never thought much about money in the palace, I could see what a constant worry it was for Janelia.

“How did you have money for food in the first place?” I asked.

“Oh, you heard us talking about this—we sold all but one of our spoons, and we sold that fancy nightgown you were wearing. . . . Terrence was the one who handled that, and I worry now that he made contacts with bad men doing that, because what honest tradesman would buy a royal-looking nightgown from a beggar boy?” Janelia fretted. “Without suspecting it was stolen? We're lucky no one called the magistrate on him, but . . .”

“Maybe our luck would have been if someone
had
called the magistrate on him,” I said sharply. “Then we wouldn't have had to worry about him carrying news to my enemies, and we would have brought a more reliable third boy with us.”

Janelia seemed almost ready to bite clear through her lip.

“I do still worry about Terrence,” she murmured. “He's not a bad boy, just . . . easily misled.”

I remembered Tog and Janelia arguing about Terrence from the very start. Janelia probably wasn't the right person to talk with about Terrence.

I shook my head.

“I know all that about how you got money for this trip,”
I said. “I actually meant, years ago, after you left the palace, how did you have money to take in and raise all those boys?”

Something changed in Janelia's face—was she shocked that I asked that?

Too late, I realized that just as asking about someone's wealth was rude in the palace, asking about someone's poverty was probably an improper question outside.

The problem was, I was truly curious. It was much easier to avoid rudeness when you weren't curious.

“I should have told you the rest of the story already,” Janelia said. “It's just . . . it's sad. You have enough sad things to deal with right now.”

“My sister-princesses
aren't
dead!” I said. “I'm going to find them!”

Janelia gave me a look that I couldn't quite read.

“We'll help you as much as we can, doing that,” Janelia said. She came away from the mouth of the cave and checked the pot of water on the fire. I could see steam starting to rise.

“You're showing a lot of faith that Herk and Tog are going to come back with food soon, if you're already boiling water to cook it,” I said.

“This water is for boiling rags, to clean your wounds again,” Janelia said. She pulled the pot off the fire. “But we need to let this cool a little now.”

She seemed a bit at a loss about what to do next.

“Tell me the story while we wait, then,” I suggested.

Janelia winced, then nodded and sat down beside me.

“I got fired from my job at the palace when you were four,” she said.

Ten years ago,
I thought. I couldn't think of any memory I could definitely identify as being from that long ago. I hoped Janelia would move quickly to talking about events that had nothing to do with me.

“It was . . . It was awful,” Janelia said, staring down at the cave floor. “A footman accused me of stealing a silver vase. A lady-in-waiting said I'd been rude to her. And that was just the beginning of the accusations. They kept coming, one after the other. None of it was true, and nobody had ever accused me of anything before that, but . . . it was like suddenly I was the worst person in the palace!”