Princess Academy (14 page)

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Chapter Eighteen

Call your heart to pulse

To the drum’s eager beat

Hear the mountain call

Lift your arms, slide your feet

n

The first thing Miri noticed was the music, a sound so luscious that just hearing it reminded her of eating fresh strawberries. In front of the hearth, four women played stringed instruments that sang out in tones so round and lively, Miri could scarcely believe they were in any way related to the village’s twangy, three-stringed yipper. The sounds vibrating from each musician’s fingers intertwined, making something unified and beautiful that reached to Miri and called her closer in. The music held her.

She blinked and took in a room as bright as morning. Hundreds of candles flamed in the chandelier and candle stands, a fire blazed in the long hearth, the light from all sides burning away any shadows. Tapestries in vivid colors covered the walls, making the hall feel warm and alive. Their vibrancy was surpassed by the shades of the attending women’s long gowns and the men’s shirts, breeches, and feathered hats. A draft carried a rush of smells—meat cooking in the kitchens, perfumed soap, the delicious scent of beeswax candles. Stepping into all that color and light and music and fragrance felt like walking into an embrace.

Except that every person in that room was looking right at her. Including the prince. Miri swallowed.

The chief delegate stood by the door.

“Presenting Miri Larendaughter of Mount Eskel, the academy princess,” he said.

The prince stood across the room and bowed at Miri’s curtsy. She turned to the girls behind her and smiled with wide, panicked eyes before taking her place at the end of the hall. At the doorway, Katar stepped forward, smiling with dimples Miri had never before seen.

“Presenting Katar Jinsdaughter of Mount Eskel.”

And so each girl stepped forward, heard her name, curtsied, and took her place along the wall. The prince bowed the same shallow bow each time, his expression stiff, even, Miri noticed, when he first caught sight of beautiful Liana.

The chief delegate introduced the last girl, and the music changed to something light and rhythmic. The prince hesitated as he looked over the girls, but he crossed the room to Miri.

“Will you accompany me in this dance?” he said, bowing and holding out his hand.

“No, thank you.” Miri smiled.

The prince frowned and looked back at the chief delegate as if for assistance.

Miri laughed self-consciously. “I, uh, I was teasing,” she said, wishing now that she had not tried to make a joke. “Of course I would be honored to dance, Your Highness.”

The frown relaxed from his brow, and he seemed almost to smile. He took her hand and led her to the dance floor. She hoped her palms were not terribly clammy.

The younger men from the prince’s party engaged half of the academy girls for the dance. The music wrapped back to its cheery opening, the prince bowed, Miri curtsied, and they began to perform “Butterfly and Morning Glory,” which she had practiced to Olana’s raspy humming all summer.

Miri was so determined to get the steps right, she barely noticed her partner. When the music swelled, indicating the end of the first part, she realized that half their dance was over and he had not spoken a word. She supposed it was left to her.

“The music is beautiful. Do you like dancing, Your Highness?”

“Yes, I do,” he said, his tone amiable if slightly distracted. “Do you have many chances to dance in your village?”

Miri tried not to grimace. When practicing Conversation, it was so bothersome trying to deflect direct questions about herself. She brightened as she thought of the response: “None as elegant as tonight’s.”

The dance required Miri to release her partner and walk behind a line of girls. They gave her questioning looks, and she shrugged as if to say she did not know what to make of him.

“There you are,” she said as she emerged. “What a journey! I got lost taking a tour of the seaside.” He smiled quickly, like a lightning flash in a night sky that left only an impression.

“How was your own journey up the mountain, Prince Steffan?”

He held her left hand and turned her around twice. Her skirt brushed his legs. She imagined dancing this way with Peder—not separated by a ribbon, hands touching.

“It was long, but I love seeing the country. How do you survive such cold weather up here?”

She put her left hand on his chest. He put his left hand on her lower back.

“It’s not so cold now as it will be in a month. I’ve never been to the lowlands. Do you like the mountains, forest, or seaside best?”

He pressed her back, turning her body to face outward as they walked.

“The seaside is very nice in summer. Have you ever been to the sea?”

They exchanged partners with the couple to their left, turned, and returned. The prince held both her hands.

“No, I haven’t.”

“I did not think so.”

The music flourished and fell silent. It was over, and she had said nothing important at all and did not know him any better than she had before.

His apparent disinterest had not helped, she thought sourly. Perhaps he had danced “Butterfly and Morning Glory” hundreds of times and did not ponder that for her it was something special. She wanted to say, “Shame on you,” as Marda had said to Bena’s younger brother after he had killed a pretty little bird with his sling. But she did not. He was a prince, after all.

“It was a pleasure,” he said, offering another short, stiff bow.

“The pleasure was mine, Your Highness,” she said properly. Though it was not.

The prince left Miri in the center of the dance floor feeling as if she had just tumbled down a hillside. Despite practicing all summer, the girls had never thought to ask what to do when the dance was over. Miri recognized the overture for “Evening Shadows” and scurried out of the way as the prince escorted Katar to the center of the floor. At least he seemed as remote with Katar as he had with her.

Miri thought of going to check on Britta, but one of the prince’s escorts, a man with short reddish hair and a face full of freckles, asked her to dance. After that she never found herself idle.

Miri observed Esa’s turn with the prince, wincing in apprehension, but he was as stoically polite with Esa as he had been with Katar and Miri. He never glanced at Esa’s lame arm, held her left elbow instead of her hand, and led her gracefully through the dance. Esa’s smile was genuine, and in that Miri found much in Prince Steffan to admire.

Miri’s other dance partners were more appealing than the prince. Many spoke freely about the provinces of Danland, the capital, and their profession as a personal guard, delegate, or courtier. A couple let slip some dismissive words regarding Mount Eskel, but most seemed awed by the view and curious about life there. Despite the disappointing prince, Miri could not feel glum.

So Miri twirled and spun, paraded and curtsied, talked and smiled, and even laughed. Her dress made the most scrumptious swish whenever she whirled around. The candles were scented with the perfume of some foreign flower, and the smell poured over everything. The music was so beautiful that it entered her with a pleasant tang, like drinking ice-melt water on an empty stomach.

Even while sitting beside the unresponsive Prince Steffan at the banquet, Miri could not relax her smile. They ate fresh roast with bread-and-vinegar pudding, pickled beetroot, lamb’s head and boar’s head, fresh fish breaded in wheat flour and fried with yellow squash, and heaps of soft, steamy bread. While feasting, Miri thought that she might be quite happy married to any lowlander in the kingdom if she could enjoy dinners such as this.

After the meal, servants set sweet foods on trays all over the room, and it seemed there were enough sugary things to fill the world. The musicians played melodies that yearned and pleaded, as sweet as the sticky honey cakes, syrupy custards, and fruit dusted with sugar so light that it melted on Miri’s tongue before she was scarcely aware of the flavor. She looked up from biting into a fried fig to see a minister whispering urgently into the prince’s ear and gesturing her way. She swallowed and brushed any crumbs from her face.

The prince approached her and bowed short and shallow. Again. Miri wondered if he tired of bowing so often and in exactly the same way.

“Miss Miri, would you care to take a turn with me?”

Miri and Steffan strolled the quiet corridors, conversing much as they had while dancing. The principles of Conversation did not work as well with the prince as they had with Peder at spring holiday. He continued to ask about her village, and after a time she ceased averting his inquiries.

She led him into the pleasant chill of the autumn night to walk the stony paths around the building. Thin fog enclosed the academy, so Miri described the view, a string of mountains so familiar that she thought of them as aunts and uncles, extensions of her own family. She told him about Marda and Pa, the people most precious to her, and about the quarry and the hard life on the mountain, but how it was even now improving.

“We may earn more next season than we used to in three. It never occurred to us that it was possible until I happened on some information about Commerce in the academy’s books. Now we have a real chance of making things better, and some villagers might be free to pursue things besides quarrying, like sculpting stone . . . or all kinds of things.”

“That sounds very nice,” said Steffan. “Your village must be proud of you.”

“Yes, I suppose. Your Highness.” She looked him over, hurt by the indifference in his tone. But why should he care? As Olana had let them know, compared with the rest of the kingdom, Mount Eskel was a bug bite on the king’s ankle. Steffan could not gauge what a difference the change in trading would make and did not know how much it had meant to Miri to be a part of it.

He did not know her, and, she recognized now, he did not want to.

She stopped walking. “Why are you here?”

Steffan straightened his jacket. “Why do you address me like this?”

“Because I want to know the answer.” She put her hands on her hips. “Really, why did you come?”

“I’m not accustomed to being spoken to in such a tone.”

“Well, you’re on Mount Eskel now, Your Highness. I’m sorry if I’m offending you, but I’ve been preparing for today for a year, and I think you owe me at least some explanation of your behavior.”

“I am here, as you know, because the priests have proclaimed this village the home of my bride-to-be . . .”

“Yes, yes. But do you really want to meet her? If so, then why aren’t you looking at me, or at anyone, and really listening?”

Steffan frowned. “I apologize if I seem uninterested.”

“Well, you do. But you don’t need to apologize.” Miri sat on the academy steps. “I honestly want to understand why, if you’re here to discover your bride, you don’t seem to be trying.”

Steffan shrugged, then sighed, and his hard, princely demeanor slid off. For the first time, Miri saw an eighteen-year-old boy who could be confused like any other person. He sat beside her, stared at his boots, and rubbed a scuff mark off the leather.

“I guess this isn’t what I was expecting,” he said.

“What were you expecting?”

“Something more straightforward.” There was a hint of alarm in his eyes. “There are so many girls in there. How am I supposed to know all of you? I hoped that one girl would just seem right. There wouldn’t be explanations and awkward conversations. We would both just know.”

Miri blinked. “Is this an awkward conversation?”

Steffan let himself smile. “No, this is all right.”

“It’s all right because you’re acting like a person instead of a stone column.”

“You’re right to scold me, but this is a very delicate situation to be in.”

Miri was tempted to roll her eyes, but she thought of the principles of Conversation and tried to see the situation from his point of view. “I can imagine that it might be overwhelming. There’s only one of you, but you have to get to know twenty of us.”

“Yes, exactly!” Steffan smiled at her, and she found his dull appearance much improved.

“Certainly when I imagine the reverse situation, I shudder—only one of me and twenty Prince Steffans . . . ugh.”

He stared at her, not a speck of humor in his eyes.

“I’m teasing you!” She nudged him with her elbow. “I was trying to make you smile again, it was such a treat.”

“Oh, I thought you were serious,” he said. “Because you know I am one of twenty brothers, and we’re all named Steffan.”

Now it was Miri’s turn to stare.

He pointed at her and raised his eyebrows. “Ah-ha! Now the predator is prey.”

“I didn’t really believe that you had nineteen brothers. . . . Well, I considered it for a moment.”

She nudged him again and he nudged her back, which made her laugh, and then he laughed.

“Has anyone ever told you that you have a laugh that makes others want to laugh?”

“Doter, my neighbor, always says, ‘Miri’s laugh is a tune you love to whistle.’”