The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) (19 page)

Emma stared blankly ahead. She
didn’t even appear to be aware that anything was amiss.

The panic became worse. Chloe’s
breathing came in gasps. She looked everywhere and anywhere for help.

Bazzlejet had not made it back to
Emma’s row. He was stuck among the crowd on the far right side of the room. He
looked angry. He tried to elbow his way out of the crowd, but a red-caped guard
cut him off.

“This is hound crap!” Bazzlejet
shouted, shoving the guard. “Don’t you people see? That buffoon is putting us
on!” He pointed at the duke. “He’s lying! I bet poor widdle Hue didn’t even
write that letter! He was too busy being a walking disguise for Robyn!”

Now the suspicious stares turned on
the duke. Chloe regained a little of her spirit.

“Yeah!” Violet shouted. “Don’t
listen to the duke. He just wants the throne to himself!”

“Get her out of here,” the duke
hissed to one of his guards. They obliged, dragging Violet behind the curtain.

“Now the Dookie of Briar is picking
on little girls!” Bazzlejet shouted.

Some of the people closest to him
laughed. It was bad for Bazzlejet. The guard who’d been holding him back let
loose with a baton and smacked him in the stomach. Two more red capes came over
to drag him away.

Chloe clenched her fists. “Stop
it!” she shouted at the duke. “You have no right to come in here and make
accusations! Go back to your side of the ocean!”

“Yeah!” Bazzlejet shouted weakly as
he was being dragged off.

The duke chuckled. “I only have
Ivywild’s best interests at heart, and I have the backing of the Seelie Court.”
He bowed to the judges. They returned it with a simpering bow of their own.
“These fine men asked me to take action after I presented my evidence.”

Chloe glared at the judges. “Evidence?
You’ve only got one fake letter! Obviously I’m NOT possessed. Even if my rule
was really in question, a foreign duke has no business stepping in. Violet is
the next direct-line descendant.” She turned to the crowd and said, “Make her
the queen if you don’t trust me.”

“Princess Violet has only just
turned fifteen,” Kesper quickly reminded everyone. “Royal edict states that no
heir under the age of sixteen years can take the throne. Until they are of
coronation age, a regent must act in their stead. The Duke of Briar is the
obvious choice for regent.”

The duke’s eyes glinted with
malicious pleasure. “A year is ample time to determine if you are, as you claim,
fit to rule. I, for one, believe you are not.”

“On what grounds?” Chloe retorted.

“The Seelie Court has its own
evidence,” Judge Kesper said, moving to stand next to the duke. He folded his
hands over his paunch and gave the crowd a look of fatherly concern. “Princess
Chloe has consistently denied pilgrims the safety of Ivywild.”

A shot of fury made Chloe’s
fingertips grow warm. “That’s not true. I let everyone come inside after
Father’s funeral! Nobody has been turned back since!”

“You mean after the failed massacre
at Mag Mell,” Kesper said loudly. “How odd that such an attack should occur
when we were all out in the open, gathered in such staggering numbers. Odder
still that Ivywild’s own security force was nowhere close by.”

“They were patrolling the castle on
my orders!” Chloe raged. “And there were plenty of guards at the funeral.”

“Not nearly enough
on your
orders
,” Kesper said, raising his eyebrows at the audience. “More curious,
still, that you should be among the last to return to the castle, and yet you
suffered no injuries at the hands of the monsters. In fact, all of your closest
friends walked away unscathed.”

Emma kept her look of infantile
ignorance. Chloe waited on her to stand up and say how she’d saved them all
with a barrier. She was silent.

The murmur of the crowd
grew. They were staring, whispering, nodding with crossed arms and eyes
narrowed in doubt. Their favor was swinging away from her.

Chloe tried desperately to think of
a way to defend herself. This wasn’t a coronation. It was a trial. She was
outnumbered and all alone. There was nobody left to vouch for her innocence.
She gave Emma one last, begging look, but her friend didn’t even register it.

“HOW DARE YOU!” roared a powerful
female voice.

A figure in a rolling chair made
her way up from the back of the crowd. Chloe barely recognized her own mother. Othella’s
hair was down, trailing long, wild curls of whitest blonde over the back of her
wheelchair. She wore no powders on her face and her eyes were puffy red with
unrest.

“Glad you decided to join us,
Othella,” the duke said with a smug grin.

Onlookers gasped anew to discover
that the wild-eyed lady in the rolling chair was the king’s widow.

Othella barged her way up to the
dais. The look on her face was murderous. “You are nothing but a pretender. A usurper!
If Theobald could see this, he would hang his head in shame for ever supporting
you!”

Her comments bounced harmlessly off
the duke. He leered at her, looking amused. “My dear lady, I far more think
King Theobald would have been ashamed to discover the true source of your
unfortunate injury. Many witnesses from the day of Hue’s death said they saw a
forbidden machine inside the castle. You were the one in the machine, were you
not?”

Othella glared at him. “That’s
beside the point. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO BE HERE!”

The duke laughed. “Avoiding the
facts doesn’t make them go away. Friends, fellow Fay, I implore you to do a
little digging into Othella’s past. Many times in her youth she was caught
meddling with forbidden machinery. You’ve seen the evils caused by such
machinery. It is used by the very monsters that attacked Mag Mell.”

Several in the crowd nodded. There
were shouts of agreement.

Gathering steam, the duke continued
his assault. “Othella was known to have Slaugh contacts. She was a close friend
of Linaeve Grimmoix, a traitor who left Ivywild to marry the King of the Slaugh.”

Chloe’s fingernails seared crescents
into the flesh of her palms. “DON’T TALK ABOUT MY MOTHER LIKE THAT!” she shouted.
“You are a pompous ass and if you don’t leave this room IMMEDIATELY I’LL—”

“You’ll what?” the duke said. “Come
on. Let us see what you’re capable of.”

Chloe’s face and neck were bright
red. She took deep breaths to get a hold of her emotions.

The duke watched her expectantly.
His guards had moved close to him. “Go ahead,” he whispered to her. “Do it.”

“No,” Chloe said. “I’m not some
possessed puppet. I am the Queen of Ivywild.”

The duke turned to the crowd. His smile
was awful. “What say you, humble citizens? Is
this
what you want for
your ruler? This wayward child, evil’s instrument and the daughter of a
criminal?” He shot a pitying glance at Othella. “This girl who delivered you
all into harm’s way at Mag Mell? She, who would rather sully the good name of a
boy who can’t defend himself rather than admit her own failing? Be honest with
yourselves. I will give you a year’s servitude and then you can determine if
her younger sister is suitable to be your ruler. Wouldn’t that be safer than
handing it all over now to this little charlatan?”

Silence. Chloe held her breath.
Perhaps he hadn’t swayed the people. They had been loyal to her father. They
might remain loyal to her.

“Duke of Briar for regent!” shouted
High Priestess Grimmoix.

Chloe’s heart sank. A dozen more
people picked up the chant. They began rising to their feet. The duke’s chest
swelled with victory.

“No!” Chloe said. “This can’t be…”

“Seeing is believing,” the duke said
out of the corner of his mouth. “The people have spoken.” He nodded to one of
the guards. “Take her away.”

The red caped guards moved towards
Chloe. There was nowhere for her to run and no way to fight back.

All of a sudden both guards flew
off their feet. Othella’s wheelchair rose by some invisible force to the level
of the dais. The blue crystal around her neck crackled with energy.

“Chloe, run!” she yelled.

People flew off all sides of the
dais as Othella cleared a path. The duke and his guards fell into the front
row. Uncertain of what was happening, portions of the crowd began to run for
the exits.

Chloe darted through the curtains. Behind
them, Violet was being held by a couple of guards. The curtains blew back and
Othella rolled through them. She knocked the guards away with magic, freeing
Violet.

“Mother!” Violet shouted.

Chloe gawked at Othella. “Where
have you been?”

“There’s no time,” Othella replied.
“Come close. Hold onto my arms.”

The noise on the other side of the
curtain swelled into a storm. Guards shouted. People screamed. The duke
bellowed at his guards to get control of the crowd. Loud footsteps rang on the
dais, coming closer.

“Get over here now!” Othella
shouted.

Chloe and Violet ran to her and
each grabbed one of her arms.  She pulled a small, round object like a pocket
watch out of her skirt.

Violet gasped. “Mother, is that—”

“Hold on!” Othella shouted as a knot
of guards poured through the curtain.

Chloe screamed. Her voice was
caught up in a brilliant flash of light. A roaring noise filled her ears. She
felt as though she was falling through an unending void. All the cosmos spun
around her. Then it all stopped with a gut-wrenching lurch.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Alone in my cell I was
far removed from the weeklong celebration going on inside the castle. The
hubbub meant little to me. The overthrow of Princess Chloe by the Duke of Briar
was not history yet. It was not recorded in any tree or available in any fruit
where my mind could sop it up like a sponge. Therefore, I didn’t care.

High Priestess Grimmoix had been
quite jolly for days. She was in such a good mood that she even allotted me
double helpings of fruit. She did not show up very often anymore. As one of the
new regent’s top advisors, her duties kept her inside the castle more than the
cathedral.

My last meal had been hours ago.
Now I was growing restless. It was past my usual suppertime. My stomach ached.
The thousands of factoids crammed in my head were starting to jumble together.
Behind it all I had the strange sense that something was wrong. I longed for the
next meal. It would take my mind off those nagging feelings.

There was a rattling at the door. I
scrambled over to snag the plate of fruit. To my dismay, it did not slide
through the door slot immediately. Instead, I heard voices quibbling outside.

“Are you sure this is the right
stuff?” asked the usual guard. “These plums have too much color.”

“Of course it’s the right stuff,”
came the chirpy, feminine answer. “Don’t believe me? Try them yourself.”

“No, thanks,” said the guard.
“Maybe I should wait for the high priestess to inspect them first.”

“She isn’t due back from the castle
for hours,” said the pleasant female voice. “If you wait much longer, the
prisoner will become unruly. Cognites have to be fed every four hours without
fail.”

“I suppose,” said the guard.

The slot opened and a tray of fresh
fruit slid through. I dove into it immediately. The stuff had become my
lifeblood.

The first thing I downed was a
juicy orange. Its flavor was very sweet, much better than some of the other
fruit I’d had lately. It did not jolt me with knowledge as quickly as I was
used to. Instead, it delivered a slow a narrative with just a few images. It
told of a mythical race of beings called humans and their supposed habits in a
parallel world.

Hu-man
. I rolled
the word around in my head. It felt familiar. Hadn’t I been called that before?
I could almost hear the word being uttered by someone in a scornful tone, like
it was an insult.

“
I did not think hu-mans ever
came to Faylinn
.”

It was there, a solid piece of my
own memory. Somebody had said that to me in the past. Then that meant—

“I am a human,” I said softly.

“Did you say something?” the guard
outside asked.

“No, Sir,” I said quickly. I did
not know what prompted me to lie. It simply felt like the right thing to do.

The plums looked particularly
delicious. I bit into one of the rosy purple fruits and was treated to a tutorial
on the different kinds of Fay magic.

Another wave of memory hit me.
Somehow I already knew about the Enchanters, Channelers, Guardians and Master Casters
before the plum told me. When it got to a part about magic and source crystals,
I studied the heavy red stone around my neck. So that’s what it was. Funny, it
didn’t make me feel powerful like the knowledge in the plum claimed it should.

I took a break before eating anything
else. A feeling of panic was growing inside me. Something was not quite right.
It was like having one of those dreams where I was out in public and suddenly
realized I wasn’t wearing any clothes.

Rattled, but curious, I opted to
keep eating. I took a moist green olive from the platter.

“The Slaugh language is little
understood and hard to learn,” a tutor’s voice boomed in my head. Images of
written Slaugh words formed before my eyes. Most were strange and unfamiliar.
They meant little in writing, but when the narrator spoke them it roused
something inside me. Here or there a particular word or phrase stood out as
though I’d heard it before.

“One of the difficulties in
learning the language is that many Slaugh words have dual meanings and must be
taken in context to make any sense,” the voice said. “Even then it can be
tricky. Take for instance the word
‘liebet.’
”