by Shannon Hale
There was an old story of a princess who wept tears of pure love over her fallen prince, healing his injuries and letting him live again. It was just a story. Miri knew it was not true. But just then, she felt capable of a love so huge it would break the entire palace. Maybe outside of stories, holding Peder’s hand and loving him fit to crack her heart like a linder stone could not heal him. But then again, it could not hurt to try.
She scooted nearer. She leaned her head against his. She squeezed his hand.
Just in case feeling was not enough, just in case such a magic needed powerful words spoken, she whispered, “I love you.” And then she quarry-spoke memory after memory—the time he had carved a linder hawk for her; the night she was captured by the bandits and he heard her far-off quarry-speech; when they laughed and danced at the ball; that perfect afternoon in Asland when they kissed in the straw-dusty shed. And those memories also said I love you, I love you.
She did not know what personal memories her own nudged in Esa, Gerti, and Bena, but Esa smiled, Gerti sighed, and Bena rested her chin on her knees. The queen sat beside the king and took his hand. He leaned against her and kissed the top of her head. Miri guessed they must feel what she was feeling, and perhaps they remembered loving each other too.
Britta sat behind Miri and touched her hair, as a friend would. Until that moment, Miri had not considered that she herself might need a little bit of healing.
By her boot lay a shard of linder. It had recognized her voice; it had responded to the quarry-shout. Hundreds of years it lay as a floor stone in a palace, far from the mountain, yet it was still of Mount Eskel. How could just a few months in the city transform her entirely?
She clutched the shard in her fist. They had been in need, and the stone had remembered, the mountain had heard. Britta might have been felled beside Peder, and perhaps Esa and Frid, Steffan and Miri too. It was hard to feel anything but anxiety for Peder, but once she opened herself to a tiny bit of gratitude, it swelled till her chest ached with it. She started to sing the song Gerti had begun, an anthem to Mount Eskel, a love song. Esa and Gerti picked it up. Britta and Steffan joined in the second time around. They sang it for the stone, for their mountain and home, and for Peder. The stone chamber held all the voices, bouncing them back again till it seemed hundreds of unseen singers joined in. The room sang.
Chapter Twenty
Sweet girls are sighing
Young boys are pining
Eskel is skying
Hammer is beating
Daylight is fleeting
Eskel sends greeting
It did not take the royal guardsmen long to realize they had been tricked away from their posts. A traitorous chief guard had sent groups to points all over the city, supposedly to quell protests that never occurred. Within the hour they’d returned, driven all intruders from the palace, and freed the party from the refuge room. The plan to assassinate Britta and spark the revolution had failed. Miri imagined the mood was gray in political Salons across the city. She wondered how many of those passionate scholars and talkers, facing Britta, could have pulled the trigger themselves.
Miri spent the night beside Peder’s bed in the palace infirmary. The physician stitched up his wound and said it looked clean, but as morning drew near Peder’s skin fevered.
“Infection,” said the physician. “This kind will heal on its own or it won’t.”
He sent everyone away except Esa, who, as Peder’s sister and a physician’s assistant, had a right to stay.
Miri was too tired to sleep. She walked outside, her mind so full of prayers that for a moment she fancied they had turned into white birds that flapped on the breeze. Leaflets, not birds, covered posts and windows, shuffled loose on the ground, and lifted on the wind. Miri caught them like butterflies and read parts. Nearly all retold Britta’s actions in the courtyard.
How a Pure Heart Saved Danland
The princess lifted her fair hand, her tear-filled eyes beseeching the heavens on behalf of the young innocent. Although she was clad in the finest garments of the land, her feet knew her heart and would not abide slippers, for Princess Britta’s heart was ever with the shoeless.
The Princess and the Mob
Those of us in the crowd did not even notice the boy until she had pulled him away from the carriage. After she returned him to his mother, she stood before us. No guards. No words. She had saved him. But she did not know if we would save her.
What I Saw
Someone put a musket in my hand. The girl came running at us. I was angry. I do not have enough coin to buy bread. I thought about shooting her. She saved that boy. I did not want to shoot her anymore.
Most mentioned that the “Mountain Girl” herself had voiced support of the shoeless princess. One was even titled “The Mountain Girl Laments No More.”
A warmth pulsed through Miri, and she forgot her exhaustion. She found a cobbler she’d heard about, whose secret press had printed many a Salon’s leaflet. Miri asked him if he’d print hers as well.
“For coin I will,” he said, his browned skin as smooth as the leather he was working over a knob. “Where is your leaflet?”
Miri bit her lip. “Um, can I borrow quill and paper?”
A rule of Rhetoric suggested offering stories, not lectures. Miri sat on his floor and wrote.
The Robber Princess
Theirs was a love forbidden by tradition. A childhood friendship deepened until neither could bear to live without the other. Though heir to castle and crown, Steffan was helpless to choose his true love as his bride. He could not seek her, so she must seek him, all the way to the princess academy.
Britta climbed the highest mountain in the land. She threw off her silks and slippers and donned rough woolens. She spurned the name of her cruel and noble father, labored in a quarry, became a mountain girl. She risked everything. And if Steffan rejected her, she determined she would stay on Mount Eskel forever. She was Lady Britta no more.
Britta awaited Steffan’s arrival with a fearful heart. After a year and a half’s separation, perhaps his love had dimmed. Would he scorn her? Would he have her thrown in prison?
Miri watched the cobbler place the tiny metal letters in the press with a speed and deftness that reminded her of a blackbird building a nest. He brushed them with ink, lowered the press, and her few hundred words stained the white paper.
Britta does not care about being a princess. She loves Steffan, not the prince heir, and is perhaps the only one in the world who sees him truly.
This is how their story begins. The people will decide how it ends. I, Miri of Mount Eskel, do not like tragedies. I am hoping for a wedding.
The cobbler gave her a wedge of wax to rub on the corners of the papers so she could stick them to posts. The last of her allowance purchased only a slim stack, and a few dozen windows and lampposts later, she had just one left.
She’d arrived at the Green, the ruins of the bridal edifice strewn across the grass. The fever of energy still burned in her. She discovered a hammer in the wreckage and tried nailing two pieces of wood together. They stuck at an odd angle, not quite square. She scavenged some more wood about the same size.
By the time the sun was high enough to heat the part in her hair, Miri had a rough square frame as high as her knee, several splinters, and one bruised thumb.
If I work all day, she thought, I won’t be able to remake the stairs let alone the platform and the rest. It’s useless.
She picked up another piece of wood.
She was nearly finished with a second square frame when she realized she was not alone.
There was a man, tall and lean, wearing a featherless cap. He stood with hands in pockets, the blue band around his arm clearly visible.
“You’re one of the Mount Eskel girls, aren’t you?” he asked. “I saw you in the palace courtyard.”
She nodded. Her eyes flicked to his belt to make sure he was not carrying a pistol.
“What are you trying to do?”
he asked.
“Rebuild the edifice.”
His brows twitched in surprise. “And what have you got so far?”
She held up her two pieces.
“That much, huh?”
His smile made her want to smile.
“They’re going to be a step,” she said. “See how cleverly I nailed the wood together to almost form a square?”
“I do indeed.”
“A square is a lot harder than it looks. Why, a square is perhaps the most difficult shape in all the world.”
He laughed and put on worn leather gloves. “Lady Mount Eskel, what I need is a sorter. You think you could arrange wood in piles by size?”
Miri’s grin felt good against her cheeks. “I think I have the potential to be the most amazing sorter you’ve ever seen.”
She worked till she was sweating, sorting wood, piling loose nails. The lonely sound of the man’s single hammer multiplied, and she knew others had joined them. Hammer and nail, saw and ax, the snap of fabric and the creak of joints—the noise of work was loud and merry as a festival. She did not rest. All that mattered was the speed of her own two hands. If she kept working, perhaps she could help Peder, and Britta and Steffan, Mount Eskel, and all of Danland too. If she just worked hard enough.
Soon she was singing as she worked, a Mount Eskel habit. Her third time through a work song, other voices joined in, picking up the words.
She felt dazed by her sleepless night and too focused to pay attention to anything beyond her own hands, so by the time she stood up, stretched, and looked, the Green had collected a mob.
She saw feathered and flat caps, blue-bannered and bare arms, the solid black of servant attire beside the colorful skirts of merchants’ daughters and the silk trousers of noble sons. All were rebuilding the edifice. It was not the same edifice as before; it was lower and longer, cobbled together and a little rough. But it stood. She stuck the last copy of “The Robber Princess” to its front.
The lean man called to her from the platform and pointed up. He’d nailed her misshapen squares to the tallest pole like a banner, its colors the blue sky beyond.
“It’s been two days, and the rebuilt edifice is still on the Green,” Miri told Peder, though she was not certain he was awake. He slept most of the time, moaning when Esa changed his bandages or swabbed his face. “The first day, soldiers guarded it through the night, but the king called them away. I think he’s testing Asland, letting them decide if Steffan and Britta should wed. If they tear it back down …”
Esa put a hand on Miri’s shoulder, letting her know the visit was over. Peder’s little sister looked as tired as Miri felt, darkness under her eyes.
Miri went in search of Britta, hoping at last to talk to her alone, but before she reached Britta, Inga found her. Miri was commanded to see the king.
Miri joined him in the throne room, where he sat grandly on his gilded wooden chair in a cavernous linder hall. She remembered the proper curtsy for such an occasion and performed it with only a small trip. Gummonth, beside the king as usual, did not hide his smirk.
“You were brave,” said the king.
She nodded. She did not feel particularly brave, but she did not want to argue with a king—at least, not about that.
“You were also too familiar.”
She nodded again.
“You may go,” he said.
She blinked in surprise and turned away.
“You’re welcome,” she said under her breath.
“What was that?”
She came back. “I said ‘you’re welcome,’ because I think you brought me here to say a thank-you of sorts, and it’s not your fault if no one ever taught you those words. But that’s no reason for me not to be polite and say ‘you’re welcome’ as I ought to.”
His eyes widened, but they wrinkled slightly too, as if he was amused. Now she did indeed feel brave, if a bit embarrassed. But she was too worried and tired to care about angering a king.
“Sire, I’m going to be overfamiliar for a few moments more. You should know that every time you take tributes of food, food prices go up, and people starve.”
The king made a noise of surprise and indignation. “Starve? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Go out into your kingdom and see for yourself. There are poor everywhere, except Mount Eskel this year, because for the first time we have enough to eat. But that will change when you demand Gummonth’s high tribute of us too. A lot is changing in Danland, and none for the better.”
He straightened, his chin flexed, whiskers bristling. “My officials assure me I may take as I please. I am king.”
“Exactly! You’re a king, not a bandit. Don’t let them bully you into being one.”
“Enough insolence!” said Gummonth. He started forward as if to physically remove Miri from the room.
“Wait,” said the king. He considered them both, then said to Gummonth, “Step outside, sir, if you please.”
Miri resisted sticking out her tongue at Gummonth, but only barely. Gummonth’s face turned a fierce red, but he bowed and left.
The king looked at Miri.
She looked at him.
He smiled. She could not remember seeing him smile before.
Too curious to be quiet any longer, she asked, “Is it easier to sense what I’m feeling when we’re alone?”
He nodded. “I am beginning to realize just how strongly my chief official feels things, and how easy it is to feel as he does whenever he is near.”
“Which is often,” she said.
He nodded again. And smiled again. She smiled back. And then the king did something that surprised Miri more than a musket shot—he laughed. A dozen lines wrinkled out from the corners of his eyes, and Miri thought he looked the better for it.
“You have a good sense about you, don’t you?” he said. “I like it.”
“I like you too,” she said, and was happy to believe it.
They talked longer, about linder and quarry-speech, and even the pleasures of a roast duck. But when Miri suggested he listen to the revolution’s concerns and consider making changes, his smile dimmed and his look returned to stern.
“My duty,” he said, “my entire reason for existence, is to protect the power of the crown. I will never budge on that.”
But he did not seem angry, and when Gummonth came back, the king declared Miri would find his next meeting interesting and bid her accompany him. Gummonth impressed Miri with his ability to look like the nastiest, orneriest billy goat she could imagine.
“With all that has occurred, sire,” said Gummonth as they made their way to a receiving room, “I must insist that you further enlarge your royal guard.”
Miri pressed her fingernails into her palms to keep from shouting her opinion on the matter. Just outside the door, the king halted.
“No, not this time, Gummonth. I know you mean to protect me, but not at the expense of those who pay for it. Train them properly and those we have will suffice.”
Miri smiled. She stood by the door, letting the king and Gummonth go in first.
Gummonth turned back to whisper, “No one ever wants to pay the tribute, but they always do.”
Miri’s mood sank. But as she walked into the room, she was comforted by Steffan’s smile. He motioned for her to sit beside him at the round table of officials, where the Justice Official presented a suspects list.
A chief guard had already confessed to accepting a bribe from the assassin to misdirect the other guards and leave the royal family unprotected.
“This chief guard ignored the mandate to stay no more than eight hours each day in the king’s wing,” said Steffan. “For years, he secretly slept in the linder-walled guardroom instead of the barracks.”
Steffan looked at Miri, and she nodded slightly to show that she understood—this guard must have developed linder wisdom, and so was able to sift the disloyal from the rest to choose his coconspirators.
Before his execution, the chief guard had w
ritten the names of all who had played a part in the scheme.
Miri peered at Steffan’s copy of the list. She was not surprised to see Sisela’s name, but the rest of her Salon, including Timon, had escaped notice.
So did Liana, Miri thought, just now realizing what must be true: Liana had been part of the conspiracy. She knew about the danger in the refuge room and so fled it when she had a chance. The thought that someone from Mount Eskel would have tried to get Britta killed made Miri so angry she could have chewed rocks to dust.
“The law is clear,” said Gummonth. “Treason is a capital offense.”
“Your Highness?” Miri said.
Gummonth groaned, and other officials started whispering to one another, as if to question Miri’s presence at all. But the king gestured at her, allowing her to speak.
“I recently read about an old Danlandian custom. Past kings often heard grievances in their linder halls and pronounced judgment themselves.”
Knowing now the royal secret about linder, Miri wondered if the tradition was a chance for the king to sense the truth in a person before pronouncing judgment. Even though the people on the list had conspired to kill her friend, Miri felt sick looking over the long list and imagining them all called to the Green. So many names, so many lives.
The king announced he would meet the first few prisoners personally the next day. Gummonth would not join him.
Miri had not truly believed her suggestion would change anything. However, the very next morning the royal news journal listed the rebels’ names but declared no more would face execution.
A kingdom at war with itself will not long stand. Let us wash the blood from our hands and start anew.
Miri laughed out loud with relief. She wondered what Sisela would make of that!
But mistake not this pardon for unlimited lenience. Any new crimes of treason will be punished swiftly and justly. The so-called revolution ends now, or the executioner’s ax will fall.
Though many lives would be spared, Miri was not completely at rest. She discovered from Bena where Liana was now staying, and she went alone to the opulent inn.
