Palace of Mirrors (19 page)

Several minutes after Desmia has disappeared around the corner of the stairway with Harper, Ella says, “All right, I think it’s our turn. Let’s hope I don’t get lost.”

We’ve only gone a few steps before I think of another question.

“Why didn’t we hear the birds?” I try to ask. But because of the gag it comes out, “I innunt ee ear uh urz?”

“What?” Ella says. Then she seems to comprehend. “Oh, you’re asking about the birds? I understand they’re usually pretty loud. That’s why Desmia covered their cages.”

I see that we are passing the first cage, which is, indeed, covered with a white sheet. And above the cage I notice a complicated pulley system connected to a long rope, which must have made it possible for Desmia to lower the cloth from afar. That way, I guess, she wouldn’t rile up the birds while she was trying to silence them. Now I want to ask Ella, “How do the pulleys work?” and “Covering them makes them be quiet? Really?” This time it’s not worth the effort. But I’m thinking. If Desmia could
control when the birds squawked and when they didn’t, then maybe she sneaked up to the tower many times, to eavesdrop on us. . . . Above my head I notice a round mirror—mirrors even up here!—but this one is angled so that it shows the door Harper and I were locked behind. So
that’s
how Desmia could see when we were watching for her and when we weren’t; that’s how she made sure we never knew when she was bringing the food.

Sir Stephen would be proud: I am putting things together, working on my powers of observation. But I can’t picture Desmia rigging up the pulleys and the cages and the mirror, and I don’t know who else would have done that. And I still don’t understand
why
Desmia locked us in the tower, or why she’s come for us now. If she really believed we were guilty of treason, she would have screamed for help that first day I talked to her, at the music competition. She would have called her guards; she probably would have had us killed.

I am holding on to some sliver of hope, because she didn’t do any of that. She’s come for me not with guards, but with another girl.

I’m lost in thought as we wind our way down the spiral staircase and through Desmia’s private quarters (which should be
mine,
I remind myself stubbornly). But as soon as we begin descending the secret stairway, I have to focus completely on putting down one foot after another without slipping down the dark, narrow stairs. I’m still wearing
my felt shoes; it’d be too embarrassing to take them off and go barefoot in front of this girl who looks so much like a princess.

“Curses upon the diabolical Sualan who built this,” Ella is muttering to herself. “But what was I expecting? Why should Sualan palace intrigue be any less Byzantine than Fridesian palace intrigue?”

She starts to slip, and I catch the back of her dress steadying her as well as I can with bound hands. The lantern weaves out dangerously, splashing oil on the stairs.

Ella turns to me with round, frightened eyes.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “I think you may have just saved my life.” She peers far down to the bottom of the steps, where she would have landed. “That’s the last thing Jed needs, to have me disappear and die. The rest of the delegation would say it proves the Sualans can’t be trusted . . . and it’d be all my fault, because of my own clumsiness!”

She seems to be mostly just talking to herself, but I file this information away:
So the peace negotiations aren’t going well; this Jed she’s in love with is at odds with the rest of the delegation. . . .

“Watch out,” Ella whispers, stepping past the spot of lantern oil on the stairs. “As if the steps weren’t slick enough already!”

We make the rest of our descent with great caution. The muscles in my legs ache from having to step so carefully,
down so many stairs. I’m not sure—I wasn’t counting that first day, and I don’t count now—but it seems that we have climbed down many, many more stairs than we climbed up before. I’m almost surprised when they finally come to an end. We push out through a stone door, and Desmia and Harper are waiting for us in a narrow, filthy corridor. There seems to be a river of sludge running beneath our feet—sludge which soaks into my felt shoes. I’ve walked in mud before, in manure, but this is much worse.

“Hurry,” Desmia says. “While the jailer’s still asleep.”

“She put a potion in his drink,” Ella whispers to me.

We begin tiptoeing down the corridor, past walls stained with . . . well, I don’t really want to think about what they’re stained with. Blood? Vomit? Excrement? Whatever it is, it looks like it’s been accumulating for ages, possibly since the time of King Saldorn the First, even though Sir Stephen taught me nothing about Saldorn the First’s dungeons. For that matter Sir Stephen taught me nothing about anyone’s dungeons; in Sir Stephen’s version of Sualan history, dungeons don’t exist. But there’s no denying the reality of the scene around me: the sludge soaking into my shoes, the grimy cobwebs dragging against my face, the choking stench that threatens to cut off my every breath. I begin to gag, and I’m not sure if it’s from the stench or just from imagining how Sualan royalty—my ancestors—must have used this dungeon.

“Take small breaths,” Ella advises. “Until you get used to the smell.”

I hold my breath instead, drawing in air only when I absolutely have to.

Desmia is watching Harper and me.

“See, I was being kind,” she says. “Putting you in the tower.”

I know what she means—the tower is luxury accommodations, compared with this—but I still want to retort, through the gag,
Why did you have to imprison us at all?
I decide I don’t have enough air in my lungs for that.

We pass a small room where a man is slumped over a desk. Ella gently tugs his door shut. Several paces farther along, the corridor widens. I can see flickering torches propped in crude wire sconces on the wall, and rows of bars that stretch from the floor to the ceiling, sectioning off one prison cell after another.

Desmia holds her hand up to stop us. Then she steps forward, into the center of the corridor.

“Which of you is the true princess?” she calls, her voice low but strong.

The response is instantaneous. In every cell I can see, a girl rushes to the door and shouts, “I am!” Tall, lanky girls; short, squat girls; girls with curly brown hair; girls with straight blond hair; every variety of girl from the entire kingdom, it seems, all calling out, “I am!”

“No, me!”

“You lie! I’m the true princess!”

“It’s me! I told you, it’s me!”

“Please! Somebody listen! I’m telling the truth!”

That’s all I hear before I sink to the floor in a dead faint.

  21  

When I wake up, I am lying on a soft bed, my head cushioned in feather pillows, my body tucked safely under airy quilts. I take a tentative breath and draw in the sweet odor of roses, lilies, lavender.

Finally!
I think.
This is where I belong!

Then I remember the horror of all those girls in the dungeon, all claiming the title I thought was mine, the privileges I thought I deserved.

“Noooo,” I moan.

My face is wet with tears, though I don’t remember starting to cry. I begin turning my head side to side against the pillows, my moans getting stronger: “Nooo . . . nooo . . .”

Someone lifts my hand and clutches tightly. I open my eyes—it’s Harper.

“Oh, Eelsy,” he says, and it’s like he’s apologizing to
me, grieving with me for everything I always believed about myself.

Everything I can never believe again.

It could still be true,
I think.
Desmia could be lying; all those girls could be wrong. . . .

But I am just thinking that out of habit. I know that I really have nothing to cling to anymore but Harper’s hand. I hold on with all my strength.

“Explain,” I whisper. “Please.”

Harper looks back over his shoulder.

“Princess Desmia?” he calls.

Desmia tiptoes toward the bed, a wraithlike figure in her pale gown.

“This is your bed,” I realize suddenly. “I shouldn’t be here, getting muck on your quilts, probably.”

I struggle to sit up. If I’m not the true princess, I want no privilege I don’t deserve, no luxury I have no right to. I still have my pride. I won’t lay claim to anything that shouldn’t be mine.

Desmia touches my shoulder.

“It’s all right,” she says shyly. Then, with a sense of mischief I didn’t know she possessed, she adds, “Your shoes already got those quilts so filthy they’ll never come clean anyhow.”

And then she smiles at me, which removes any sting from the words.

I smile back, feebly.

“I don’t understand,” I say. I’m not talking about quilts or mucky shoes.

Desmia’s eyes meet mine, and it’s like looking into a mirror, seeing the troubled puzzlement I feel reflected in her gaze.

“I don’t either,” she admits with a sigh.

“Ella?” I whisper.

The other girl sits down on the edge of the bed.

“Don’t look at me,” she says. “It’s your kingdom.” She shakes her head. “I didn’t think any palace could be more messed up than Fridesia’s!”

“Ours is,” Desmia whispers.

“How . . . ?” I start to ask, then decide that’s not the right question. “Why . . . ? I mean, who . . . ?”

I give up.

“It might help if you tell them what you do know,” Ella suggests gently to Desmia.

Desmia twists her hands together. She doesn’t sit down.

“What I told you before . . . I wasn’t lying,” she says. “They’ve always told me there was a pretender to the throne, who wanted to kill me and take over.”

“Wait a minute—who’s ‘they’? Who told you this?” I ask.

Desmia shrugs.

“Everyone. All the palace officials. All my advisers. My governess. My nanny when I was little.”

Desmia doesn’t say “nanny” the way I say “Nanny.”
She wrinkles up her nose and grimaces, like the word itself leaves a bad taste in her mouth. Instead of my warm, cozy Nanny Gratine, I picture a prune-faced woman who’d beat a child for sneezing. That’s how Desmia makes her sound.

“The danger from the pretender to the throne is the reason I’ve never been allowed to go out of the palace,” Desmia adds.

It takes a minute for that to sink in. Harper reacts before I do.

“Never?” He explodes. I can see by his face that he’s having trouble imagining life without ever fishing or running through mud puddles or playing leapfrog and chase and tackle. “That’s worse than harp lessons!”

“Well,” Desmia says, “a few years ago they started letting me go out on the balcony once a day, but I don’t count that. That was just because there were rumors in Cortona that I didn’t even exist, that I’d died with my parents, or been kidnapped, or . . . I don’t know, never been born at all.”

“Those are odd rumors,” Ella says.

“But what else would people think, when no one outside the palace had ever seen me?” Desmia asks. Unexpectedly, she giggles. “You should have seen my advisers measuring the distance from the balcony to the ground, making sure that no one could shoot an arrow at me, or throw a knife or hurl a sword. . . . They argued for days about whether
it was safe for me to take three steps into the fresh air or if it would be better to have me wave from behind glass!”

I like that Desmia is laughing at this. But I think about how she always stands so stiffly on the balcony, how minimally she moves her hand.

“You’re terrified whenever you’re out there, aren’t you?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer.

After a few moments pass, Harper says, “This pretender everyone always told you about—why did she want to hurt you? What did she hope to gain?”

“Power,” Desmia says softly. “Control.”

I can’t look at her while she’s saying that. I want to protest,
That wasn’t what
I
wanted! I wanted to be a good princess! Better than you!
But wasn’t that wanting control too?

I shift to another question.

“So you started arresting girls?” I ask, and I can’t keep the harshness out of my voice. “Anyone who seemed like she might want to be princess?” I’m forgetting that all the girls in the dungeon didn’t just
want
to be the princess; they claimed that they
were
the princess. They seemed to believe it. Just like I always have. “Didn’t you think they might just be crazy? Or”—I swallow a huge lump in my throat, force the word out—“misinformed?”