The Decoy Princess (41 page)

Jeck gently pulled her back, and fear paled her cheeks. Thadd groaned. Sweat trickled down his neck as he kept himself unmoving.

“Your false princess killed your king and queen, and tried to kill their daughter,” Garrett said. “She is here now, in the city, plotting another attempt on her sister’s life even as I speak. I will knight the man who brings her to me.”

The crowd erupted into noise. I slumped onto the cart’s bench, putting my head on my knees more to keep from passing out than to hide. Someone draped a lavender-scented blanket over my shoulders. I numbly stared at the yellow floorboards as the clamor shook the wood under my feet. How could he be so foul as to blame my parents’ deaths on me?

“I will find your murdering, gutter-slime, false princess!” Garrett shouted over the tumult. “Your future queen has agreed to wed me at month’s end, and with her, I will bring justice to Costenopolie!”

The sound of the crowd, fierce with its conflicting opinions of denial and acceptance, beat upon me. I felt the cart shift and heard the call of our frightened pony.

“Get her out of here,” Duncan said. “Thadd, get down and lead the pony out of here.”

The cart jerked, inched forward, then moved faster. The press of the people grew less. With a shocking suddenness, the noise dulled. It was replaced by the sharp clips of our pony’s hooves against the cobbles when we found an empty street. There was a pause, and the cart shifted as Thadd lurched into it. I could hear the muted roar of the crowd come and go like storm surf as Garrett continued his lies.

The air was cool with evening, and when I pulled my head up, I saw Duncan sitting across from me, waiting.

“What are you going to do, Tess?” he asked. He looked severe, the tiny scar above his lip pale in the gathering shadows of the streets.

I remembered Kavenlow in chains and the princess’s interrupted confession. A feeling of inevitability and determination pushed out my confusion. I couldn’t afford it anymore. Costenopolie was mine, and I had to win my master’s game for him. I took a deep breath.

“I’m going to need some rope.”

Thirty

The jostling of people looking for answers at the palace gate square was overwhelming. I couldn’t even see the open latticework of worked metal. Putting my back against a lamppost, I shifted the bag that contained my rope higher onto my shoulder and tried to ward off my panic at the crush. It wasn’t dark enough to go over the wall yet, and I had come to estimate the amount of distraction the crowd would provide since Duncan was sulking, refusing to help me. My people weren’t angry yet, but they were working themselves up to it. Already the guards behind the gate had moved back, showing an increasingly uncomfortable indifference to the shouts.

My hands were damp, and I brushed them on the trousers I had borrowed from Duncan. I felt naked, as if I was in my underthings, and the trousers caught at my legs with every step. Thadd had covered my topknot with a cap and firmly pronounced me a fine-looking lad, but Heather’s pinched expression had told me it was a thin disguise. For the first time, I was glad of my tall, less-than-womanly figure.

“Hoy! Make a way!” came a familiar voice, and I spun in surprise. My lips parted as I saw Duncan and Thadd in the wagon with the statue, forcing it through the crowd.

“No,” I whispered, realizing why he had been so adamant he was staying behind and would have nothing to do with my plan. He was going in anyway. After I had told him not to!

“Get out of the way!” he shouted as he stood from the wagon’s bench and waved a dirty hand at the people. “Official palace business. Make a path!”

His cursed pride led him to this, nothing more. Frightened, I avoided eye contact. He looked confident, having put his trust in a plan that was going to fail. Thadd, though, looked properly petrified, and I cursed Duncan for pulling him into this.

The sculptor’s blocky hands gripped the reins with a fervent intensity. His attitude went perfectly with his story of artisan delivering a promised commodity, and I was sure it wasn’t an act Duncan shouted again, and heads began to turn, both guard and citizen. A reluctant path opened to show the palace gates and the peaceful grounds beyond. A sentry came forward. His hand was on his sword hilt. “No, no, no!”

I whispered. I should have darted them all into unconsciousness! I should have locked them in a closet! I should have turned them in myself!

I elbowed my way backwards as the wagon creaked to a stop before the tall gates. “Sit down,”

Thadd said, yanking Duncan back down on the bench. The sculptor pushed the reins into Duncan’s hands and slipped off the wagon. His fingers trembled as he passed a paper to the guard through the gate. The collective noise of the gathered people swelled in question.

“I have a delivery for the palace,” Thadd said, his slow drawl bringing the murmur of voices to almost nothing. My people were curious, if nothing else. “My father received a commission to make a series of statues. I have the last here. It was to be an engagement gift for the princess from the king and queen.”

I strained to watch the guard make a show of trying to read the note. He nodded as he folded the paper and tucked it behind his jerkin. “No one gets in,” he said. “Go home.”

“I can’t take it back,” Thadd protested, his thick hands clenching. “It’s too heavy to get up the mountain. And give me my paper. I need that to get my money.”

The crowd pressed closer. I was pushed almost to the front. Wiggling, I put a tall man between the gates and me. “Give him his money,” someone called. “Let him in,” another said. The phrase was repeated, becoming louder.

“The king and queen bought it for their daughter,” someone cried. “Let him deliver it.”

“The king and queen are dead!” the guard said. “All of you go home.”

It wasn’t the best thing for him to have said, and the crowd turned ugly. Duncan looked behind him as the once-sedate horse nervously tried to back up.

“Let him in!” the shout came again. “He has a paper. Let him do his job.”

I shrank down. Curse Duncan to the ends of the earth. He was going to get himself killed.

The noise clamored. A sharp crack of a whip brought a temporary silence, then the crowd returned to a soft murmur. I put an unnoticed hand on the shoulder of the man in front of me to stand on tiptoe.

My heart gave a pound and alarm rocked me back. Jeck.

The captain was behind the gate, still dressed in his smart uniform of black and green, again wearing that overdone hat with drooping black feathers. He was reading the letter. A guard stood with an uncomfortable stiffness beside him. Jeck’s brow furrowed, then smoothed as he folded the paper. His eyes rose to Thadd and Duncan.

Duncan’s casual stance flashed into a tense, dangerous pitch. My breath quickened as I saw his understanding that they were found already. The two men locked gazes over the crowd. Duncan’s shoulders went stiff, realizing he would never be able to flee. Jeck’s eye twitched, and Duncan’s jaw clenched as he acknowledged whatever silent conversation had passed between them.

“Get them in here,” Jeck said, his eyes riveted to Duncan, and the assembled people buzzed between themselves. I scrunched down.

“But sir…”

“Get them in here,” Jeck repeated, aggressively shoving the note behind the guard’s jerkin. “They have a paper signed by the late King Stephen. We will honor it. Use a detail of guards to keep the crowd back, but I want them in here.” He leaned close. “Now.”

They were caught. I had known this would happen, and my breath quickened in frustration as two ranks of sentries came out the guard door in the wall. The people voluntarily backed up, and I was pressed to the edges. Their shouts grew loud when Jeck came into the streets with shackles. “What’s going on?” someone called out as his intent became obvious.

I all but panicked, torn between my inability to help them and my need to try. Jeck raised a hand.

“Assassins have infiltrated palaces through the front gates before,” he said, showing a soothing smile. “If they are who they say, nothing will happen. If they’re impostors, you’ll find their heads on the wall in the morning.”

My hand went to my mouth and Duncan was roughly pulled from the wagon. The clank of the metal was loud as his boots were pulled off and the rings were fastened around his and Thadd’s ankles.

Duncan’s face was tight and angry. Thadd’s fists were clenched.

Jeck made a show of tucking the shackles’ key into his pocket, his gaze roving over the crowd.

The crowd’s noise swelled as the gates were unlocked. A guard mounted the wagon and slapped the reins. Neck sweating, the horse bolted from the crowd and into the dusky palace grounds. The ring of sentries before the crowd backed up to follow the wagon in. Thadd and Duncan were roughly pushed into motion. Jeck was the last to return. He looked over the crowd as the gate swung shut. The clank shocked through me, and my face went cold.

“What do you want done with them, Captain?” one of the better-dressed guards asked.

“Send word to Prince Garrett that we have them,” he said, his eyes on the crowd through the gates.

“And find me a lever and hammer. I want to open that box.” Saying no more, Jeck strode after the wagon, that awful hat crushed in his grip and his cloak furling behind him. The guard’s fingers fumbled as he checked the lock on the gate and hurried to follow. Swords drawn, the remaining guards struck aggressive poses in the safety behind the gate.

As if Jeck’s absence was a signal, the crowd surged past me. I stood rooted to the cobbles, bumped and jostled. Their noise grew ugly, and the soldiers threatened to stab through the bars. I backed up until the crush thinned. Almost unseeing, I turned and paced quickly down the road, feeling light and unreal. I had to get in there. Jeck would kill them both.

The tree overhanging the wall wasn’t far, but it seemed to take forever. Shadows were thickening.

The moon wouldn’t rise until late, giving me a smothering darkness until then. My attention alternated from the cobbles to the unbroken line the top of the wall made with the sky. I reached to touch my whip and then my knife as I looked for my tree.

The lamps were being lit, and my feet slowed as I passed one. A bad feeling settled over me as I recognized this corner. I had burned Kavenlow’s note here. Confused, I spun to the line the wall made against the lighter sky. It stood unbroken, cold, and empty.

My tree was gone.

Shocked, I stood as if frozen.
They had cut it down. They cut my tree down
! An unreasonable anger flashed through me. How dare Jeck cut down my tree! That was my safe tree, the heart of my games with Kavenlow. It was as if he had killed a favorite pet. And how was I supposed to get in now?

Frustrated and angry, I slumped against the wall, sliding down until I was sitting on the thin grass that eked out an existence where the stone wall met the cobbles. This wasn’t fair. I had to get in, rescue Duncan and Thadd, and save the princess. Jeck was ruining everything!

I crossed my arms around my knees and fought between my desires to cry and rail at the wall. If I didn’t get in, Duncan and Thadd were going to die. Why hadn’t he listened to me?

A cluster of jabbering people passed before me, faceless in the waning light. They ignored me as they would a beggar, and if I didn’t get over the wall, that’s just what I’d be. But how? It was built to withstand short sieges. A hundred men couldn’t take it.

Hopelessness turned my heart black, worse than the night I had left my dog, Banner, to be kicked and beaten for his steadfast obedience. My tree was gone, probably no more than a stump. I couldn’t tie my rope around a stump.

My head came up. “But Banner could,” I whispered. A hundred men couldn’t take the wall, but a lone woman might—if no one saw her. My eyes flicked across the empty street. Heart pounding, I took one of my preciously few darts from under my cap and stabbed it into my thigh. I grimaced at the sharp hurt, hating it. One dart wouldn’t lower my resistance too far, and I needed all the help I could find to remain unnoticed and convince Banner to do the impossible.

I tugged my hat back on and looked up and down the street. It was quiet this far from the palace gate. I pulled my rope from my pack and recoiled it loosely. There was a knot every arm length, and they bumped through my fingers.

“Banner,” I whispered as I stood before the wall and closed my eyes. Now that I knew what the venom did, I could feel it, trace the tingling flow from where I had stabbed myself. I followed the sensation as it ran through my veins, settling on the space behind my eyes. It seemed as if my nose burned, and I willed the sensation to grow. “Banner?” I whispered again, thinking of sticks and bones, and games of fetch. “Banner, I’m back. Come play with me.”
What if they had killed him
?

A muffled whine and a short bark from behind the wall set my heart racing. He was alive and free—and at the foot of the wall. It was working. It was really working!

Remembering the quick feel of the mouse’s thoughts, I tried to slip into Banner’s. The impressions of the night seemed to fade, then strengthen when I found him, his paws shifting restlessly against the damp ground. Like a rising tide, his emotions ebbed into mine, twining in an uncomfortable slurry. I struggled to fit his impressions into a context I could relate to.

He was far more complex than the mouse. Making sense of his view of the world was very much like composing poetry while hovering on the edge of sleep. My concentration wouldn’t hold, distracted by the process itself. Every time I managed to separate us enough to remember what I was trying to do, I would lose my place and have to start over. It was frustrating, and only the knowledge that I had done it before kept me trying.

Slowly I began to understand. He was hungry. Hungry and wet. His hip hurt where he had slept on it, and one of his paws had a torn pad. But Banner’s drives were more complicated than a mouse’s want for food and warmth. He had the ability to reason, to learn to expect an outcome from a seemingly unrelated action. It was the ability to play that I had to exploit.