Palace of Mirrors (7 page)

Harper seems to be considering my story with great seriousness. His eyes narrow again.

“But if you were just a baby . . .” He tilts his head suspiciously. “Did they change your name? And Desmia’s? So they didn’t have to say, ‘Oops, sorry everyone, the princess’s name is actually Desmia, not Cecilia. Don’t pay any attention to this little switch, it doesn’t mean a thing—’ ”

“I hadn’t been christened yet, when my parents were murdered,” I said, my voice dropping to a whisper. “Remember, it’s the custom with the royal family that they don’t announce a baby’s name until the christening day.”

This is a part of the story that’s always bothered me. I ache a little every time I think about the fact that my parents never got to hold me up in front of the entire kingdom and God himself and announce, “This is our dear, dear child, our baby Cecilia, whom we love beyond endurance. . . .” Sir Stephen says I was barely seen publicly at all before the murderers came. So that saved me from having to live my life under a complete alias, the impostor taking even my name. But somehow, even though I never would have remembered the moment myself, I wish that my parents had lived long enough
for my christening ceremony, long enough to show me off to the world, to claim me as their own.

“But where did Desmia come from?” Harper said. “You can’t just pick up a spare baby in the marketplace—‘Hey, just need a loaner for a while. We’ll bring her back when we’re done.’” He makes a disgusted face.

“Desmia was just an ordinary orphan. She had no family, no one to care what happened to her,” I say softly. Maybe it’s the word “orphan,” but I can’t look straight at Harper while I say this.

“So because she’s an orphan and nobody cared, it’s okay to just let her die?” Harper asks in a harsh voice.

I glance up at him in surprise.

“No, no, Sir Stephen never said she’d die,” I say.

“Sir Stephen—that’s the guy who always comes to visit your nanny?”

“He’s visiting me, not Nanny. He teaches me about being royal. He’s a knight.”

“A knight, huh? And he’s really told you that Desmia won’t die?”

“Well, no,” I admit slowly. “He hasn’t said that she won’t die. But he’s never said that she
will.
There are guards and everything in the castle. I’m sure they’re trying to keep her as safe as possible.” I feel like my tongue is getting all knotted up, trying to explain. I can tell that it’s the middle of the night and I’ve had no sleep, because I’m having trouble thinking clearly. I resort to using the
same explanation Sir Stephen has always used with me. “When . . . when the dark forces come back, they’ll be revealed if they even try to attack Desmia, and then they’ll be vanquished. And then I can take my throne, and Desmia can go . . . live her own life.”

Harper has one eyebrow raised.

“So the castle guards can protect Desmia, but they wouldn’t be able to protect you? They can make sure that she’s not killed, but they can’t make the same promise about you if you were living in the castle with that royal princess life you’re supposed to have?”

There’s a bitter twist to his words that I don’t quite understand. Then I get it. I see that Harper, who’s had barely any education except harp lessons, is trying to trap me. This is like the logic proofs Sir Stephen has only begun to teach me: If A, then B; if B, then C; If A, then . . .

“I think,” I say starchily, “that it’s a matter of odds.” Sir Stephen has taught me about odds and probability, too. “The
odds
are that Desmia will be safe—that I might have been safe too—in the castle, living openly as the princess. But no one wants to take any chances with my life, since I’m the last in the royal line, my parents’ only heir.”

“But it’s okay to take chances with another girl’s life?” Harper asks. “Someone who doesn’t even have a stake in the outcome? If she dies in your place—oh well, too bad. She was only an orphan, anyhow.”

I start to remind Harper that Desmia’s getting a much
better life out of all of this—the silk dresses, the satin sheets, the sumptuous feasts—everything that ought to have been mine. Then I see the glint in his eye. It’s not fury he’s working from. It’s pain.

“This is about your father, isn’t it?” I say. “Your father, who died for another man’s cause . . .”

Harper is nodding, violently.

“My father died for the
king’s
cause. If you’re the princess, my father died because
your
father sent him off to war!”

I gape at Harper in the candlelight. I have honestly never put that together before. In the village people talk about the king and the war and everything else about the outside world like it’s all so distant and far away. When I picture my father the king, I imagine a stately man in royal robes hugging close his beloved child (me). I have never once pictured him sending soldiers off to war, off to certain death.

But I know he did that. I don’t actually know if he ever hugged me.

“I—I’m sorry,” I stammer. “I never . . . never thought about that.”

Harper kicks at the matted straw.

“Then I guess that’s proof,” he says bitterly. “You really are the princess. Or something royal. Royalty only think about themselves, about keeping power and building the royal treasury. They don’t think a thing about ordinary people. They don’t care if we live or die.”

“Harper, you know I’m not like that,” I protest.

I reach toward him without thinking. I’m not sure if I’m intending to hug him or pat his arm comfortingly or grab his shoulders and give him a good shake—or maybe even punch him. But he pulls back away from me, dodging my hands. He ends up on the other side of the cow, staring at me resentfully.

“How could you?” he asks. “How could you let another girl take all the risks for you? How could you let someone die in your place?”

“I told you, Desmia’s not going to die!” I say, but I choke on the words. This is something else I’ve always managed to gloss over. Or wanted to gloss over. Why else would I have spent so much time imagining the ceremony I’d have to thank her? “Anyhow, I didn’t arrange this. I was just a baby when they brought me here. I didn’t have a choice. I’m not responsible for Desmia’s life.”

“What good is it to be princess, then?” Harper asks. “If you don’t have any control over anyone’s fate? Even your own?”

“I
will
,” I say. “When I come out of hiding . . .” But even as I say these words, I doubt them. When I come out of hiding, I’ll have royal advisers. All the men who have been running the kingdom since my father died will just keep running it. “Well,” I add, “if I could, I’d end the war. And then wouldn’t you be mad at me? Because you’ve always wanted to be a soldier going off to war?”

Harper stares at me from the other side of the cow.

“I want to be a soldier because it’s something to do. Taking action. Better to do that—to do
something
—than spend my whole life playing music I hate, just so I don’t die.”

I can’t see Harper’s face very well in the dim, flickering light. But I feel like I’m seeing him with something beyond vision. Harper’s been my best friend my whole life, but I’ve never known this much about him.

“What would you do if you were me, then?” I ask in a ragged voice. “Go tell Desmia she doesn’t have to take any more risks for me? Take over as princess?”

“Yes,” Harper whispers.

I feel dizzy.

“I really could end the war,” I say, suddenly awed at the possibility.

“You could send all the soldiers home to their families,” Harper says. “The ones who are still alive, at least. You could open the royal treasury to feed the poor. You could pass any law you want.”

“I could outlaw harps!” I say, giggling.

“Why not?” Harper asks, grinning.

Anything seems possible, suddenly, sitting there with Harper and the cow in the Suttons’ tiny shed. I feel like all my choices are spinning around my head, glittering like gold. I’m so glad I’ve told Harper my secret.

And then I remember why I told him.

“My enemies—I think they’ve already found out where
I am,” I say. I tell him about Nanny’s strange behavior, about the cut in our door latch, about my own fears about the shadow on the path. “Sir Stephen will probably want me to hide somewhere else.”

“And then, if your enemies find you there—”

“I’d have to move again,” I say.

The possibilities spinning around my head turn dark and dreary. I see a different life for myself: trudging from village to village, a homeless wanderer, always cowering in fear. I could use up my entire life like that. It’d be like Harper spending his whole life taking harp lessons, hating every moment of it.

“Maybe . . .,” I say. “Maybe I should stop hiding.”

“What?” Harper says.

“I could do what you said you’d do. If my enemies could find me here, they could find me anywhere. So why not just go back to the castle, tell Desmia thanks for her service, but it’s no longer needed; she no longer has to risk her life for me. And then I would just . . . be the princess.”

The candle flickers. Harper’s jaw drops.

“Wouldn’t it be a little more complicated than that?” he asks. “More . . . dangerous?”

“Well, sure, but . . . Harper, I’ve been studying for this my whole life. I know the Royal Code, the Principles of Governance. I know every single export Suala produces, and the ratio of iron ore to rock in the Gondogian mines.
I’m ready!” My words ring with confidence. I am surprised at myself. I sit up straighter, no longer leaning on the cow. I inhale deeply, and it feels like the first free breath of my life.

I expect Harper to argue with me, to try to talk me into being practical, into being safe. But he’s sitting up straighter too, his face a mask of determination.

“I’m going with you,” he says.

  8  

We make our plans with amazing speed. Maybe we’re afraid that if we don’t go right away, we’ll chicken out. Maybe we’ve both been waiting so long to leave the village, to begin our real lives, that we can’t stand to stay here a second longer than we have to. We talk at the same time, our words overlapping: Harper volunteers to bring leftover bread and an old canteen for water while I jump in to offer dried jerky from Nanny’s pantry. But we’re in complete agreement about everything, until I say, “And you should bring your harp, as our cover story along the way.”

“What?” Harper explodes. “No—I am not taking the harp! That’s what I’m running away from!”

“I’m not saying you have to play it. Or practice or anything. But people will wonder about two children out on their own. If you have the harp, we can tell everyone that
you’re going to the capital to find work. And we can say I’m your sister or something, coming along to help out . . .”

“We might as well say I’m going to that stupid music competition,” Harper grumbles.

“Perfect!” I say. “That’s what you can put in your note to your mam.”

“My note?” Harper sounds incredulous.

“Well, yeah, you weren’t going to just run off and not tell your mother anything, were you?”

I see by his face that he had intended to run off and not tell his mother anything.

“Eelsy—Cecilia—my mother wants to go to that music competition with me,” he says. “She wants to sit there in the audience and listen to me play better than anyone else. She wants to be there when they put the gold medal around my neck, when the director of the castle musicians walks over and begs me to work for him. Except—none of that would ever happen. I’m not better than everyone else. When I play in public, my hands get all sweaty and my fingers slip and I forget to count time. . . . I’m not even good enough to be the village musician, and there’s no competition here except Herk the tailor playing his cowbells!”

“Then write that she makes you nervous and that this is something that you have to do for yourself,” I say impatiently.

I’m surprised that Harper stops arguing. A few moments later we blow out the candle and creep out of the shed,
each of us giving Glissando/Grease a good-bye pat. I wait by the door of Harper’s cottage while he tiptoes in and changes clothes and gathers up his things. I don’t see the note he leaves for his mother, but when he emerges through the doorway, he’s got his harp strapped across his back.