Palace of Lies

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  I lowered my head, because that would be expected of me. But I was sure my eyes glinted with anger, not grief, so it was a relief to hide that.

  I know Cecilia escaped the ballroom, I reminded myself. I saw it with my own eyes. I shut the door behind her. She was safe! Or, in any event, if she ran into further danger, it wasn’t in the ballroom. . . .

  Only, was it possible that after I walked away, intending to rescue Fidelia, perhaps Cecilia and Harper came back out of the secret passageway, back into the burning ballroom? Could they possibly have returned intending to rescue me?

  No! screamed through my head. They couldn’t have! Harper wouldn’t have let Cecilia risk her life like that. . . .

  But hadn’t Harper and Cecilia risked their lives thinking they would save mine once before?

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no . . .

  Tears dripped down my face—As they should, I told myself. You are only pretending, behaving the way this horrible woman expects you to. You are hiding knowledge she doesn’t know you have. You are protecting yourself, and Cecilia and Harper as well, because they won’t be able to escape to Fridesia if you tip off anyone about where they are going. . . .

  A tiny voice inside my head whispered, But what if any part of what Madame Bisset told you is true? Aren’t you sad if any of your sister-princesses are dead?

  I couldn’t let myself feel anything. Not until I knew what was truth and what was a bald-faced lie.

  “Please,” I whispered, and maybe the despair in my voice was pretense; maybe it wasn’t. “Please. I must see my sisters. See their . . . bodies. I must bid them farewell. I must hug them good-bye.”

  Madame Bisset’s grip on my hand began to feel like a trap. A cage.

  “You are delirious with grief,” Madame Bisset said. “You do not know what you are asking. I cannot permit you to see your sisters as they are now. The flames . . . Well, ’tis better for you to remember them as they were before the ball. Not disfigured and . . . charred.”

  The “charred” seemed like a deliberate cruelty. It felt like a sword thrust, meant to loosen any remnants of my self-control. It appeared to be carefully designed to send me into true delirium and total, babbling grief.

  But I had lived with fourteen years of Lord Throckmorton’s cruelty, both his casual, unthinking, everyday sort and the premeditated scheming that controlled all those around him. It was not that I was immune to such heartlessness, but I did know how to gird myself against it, how to pretend to be unaffected.

  Does she already know that Cecilia escaped—and maybe others, too? I wondered. Is she trying to shock me into telling her everything I know, just because I’d want to deny the possibility that what she’s telling me is true?

  I couldn’t yet piece together why anyone would have set the ballroom on fire in the midst of Cecilia’s farewell ball. I couldn’t see any benefit to the crime, unless it eliminated all thirteen girls. But I could see a scenario building in my mind, one built of equal parts hope and fear:

  Suppose every single one of us—except, perhaps, Cecilia—was rendered unconscious and then dragged from the flames, I thought. Suppose all over the city the other sister-princesses are waking up in houses like this, being told by strange women, “You are the sole remaining princess.”

  Suppose our reactions are being gauged and compared, and all of us will be killed except for the one who is judged the most malleable, the most easily controlled. . . .

  It did not seem like such a far-fetched idea. Was this so very different from what had happened back at the beginning, when all of us were babies?

  I will not be the pawn this time, I told myself. But I have to keep pretending. . . .

  “I must go to the palace!” I cried as I jerked my hand back from Madame Bisset’s grip and threw off the coverlet weighing down my legs. “I must assure the Sualan people that they are safe, even in this time of tragedy. I must assure them that their government is yet strong, in my hands, and that the other princesses they loved will be remembered well. . . .”

  I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from adding, And that the miscreants who set this fire will be caught and punished—because what if I shouldn’t even acknowledge that I knew the fire had been deliberately set?

  Madame Bisset put her hand over my wrist this time—encircling it, pinning it to the bed. With her other hand, Madame Bisset tugged the coverlet back into place over my legs.

  “Spoken like true royalty,” the woman murmured admiringly, even as she held me back from taking any of the actions I’d listed. “To think of the people of your kingdom, even at this time of grief . . .”

  “Then let me go!” I insisted. I tried to assume the tone of Sophia, who was the best of any of us at ordering people around. “I command it.”

  Madame Bisset looked down mournfully. But she didn’t let go of my wrist.

  “My dear girl,” she said. “Why do you persist in forcing me to tell you all the bad news at once? Your people will understand that you need time. . . . Can you not simply lie back and rest, and let yourself recover from one shock before requesting another?”

  How can anyone who’s been told there’s more bad news not demand to hear it immediately? I wondered.

  “Tell me,” I said through gritted teeth. I glanced down, already thinking of the impression I’d need to make, stepping back into the palace. I’d have to leave no doubt that I was in charge. I would have to start someone hunting down the arsonists. I’d have to find out what portion of the story Madame Bisset had told was true—or if any of it was.

  But I wouldn’t make much of an impression sweeping into the palace in a nightgown.

  “Tell me fast—and then send a servant child over to the palace, to bring me a daydress to speak to my subjects in,” I added.

  “I can’t,” Madame Bisset said.

  This was not simply clutching a wrist a moment too long. This was insubordination, clear and certain.

  If I didn’t punish it instantly, there was no telling what Madame Bisset might do next.

  “Because there is no palace anymore,” Madame Bisset continued.

  I stared at her. The woman sighed and turned to the heavy drapes behind her. She whipped them aside, revealing a scene of still-smoking rubble in the incongruously bright sunlight.

  “I am so sorry,” Madame Bisset murmured. “The palace burned completely to the ground.”

  6

  Madame Bisset seemed to expect me to be more distressed about losing my palace than losing my sisters.

  And I was more . . . stunned, anyway.

  Because I still have hope for my sisters. And I was worried about them all along. I knew they were fragile and unprotected. But the palace . . .

  The palace had survived hundreds of years of Sualan royalty living and dying, being born and growing old. It had outlasted twelve generations of the people I still thought of as my ancestors.

  But I couldn’t deny that it was gone now.

  Unless . . .

  “That’s not the palace!” I protested. “You’re just showing me . . . some other building that burned!”

  Even as I spoke I could see a courtyard between me and the rubble: It was the same courtyard that I’d faced every day from the palace balcony. I was just on the other side of it now. I must be lying in one of the houses across from the palace.

  The yellow one with the gingerbread trim? I wondered. Or the red one with the outline of dragons on the roof?

  I was amazed that I could still think of such frivolous things as gingerbread trim and fanciful wooden dragons. What did it matter which house I was in?

  Because . . . you’re going to have to escape, I thought.

  This was a big shock too. But it made sense. Somebody had put the other girls and me in danger—maybe even killed some of the others. Somebody had burned down the Palace of Mirrors, the only home I’d ever known. Somebody had deposited me with this strange woman who may or may not be Ella’s worst enemy.

  Was it an overreac
h of logic to suspect that the first two crimes probably meant that I was still in danger here and now?

  “Desmia?” Madame Bisset said softly, and I recognized the tone. This was how Lord Throckmorton often operated: Just when he’d driven me to the brink of madness with his conniving, he’d turn around and be unexpectedly kind.

  Except, I had quickly learned that his kindness was always fake. It was like a velvet glove on the hand that beat me.

  Madame Bisset doesn’t yet know that I consider her my enemy, I reminded myself.

  “How . . . ?” I began, and I didn’t have to fake the tone of shock. “How did it even start? How is it possible that everything is gone . . . my sisters, my palace . . . and the others who were there that night? How many of the courtiers, the servants, are . . . are . . .”

  I acted like I couldn’t bear to speak the word, “dead.” Only, I wasn’t sure that it was an act. Maybe I really couldn’t.

  “No,” I moaned. “Don’t tell me about the others. Not while I’m still absorbing the news about my sisters. . . .”

  I was dangerously close to admitting a truth. I couldn’t think about anyone but the other princesses right now.

  Madame Bisset patted my hand, as if rewarding me for my shocked, stunned, humbled tone.

  Shocked, stunned people are probably easier to fool, I thought darkly.

  I made myself listen carefully to Madame Bisset’s answer.

  “It is believed that one of the ribbons festooning the ballroom came loose, and perhaps blew into one of the candles,” Madame Bisset said. “There was a devilish breeze last night—did you notice?”

  How could anyone believe that story? I wondered. How could one loose ribbon set three long walls of draperies and tapestries on fire in the blink of an eye?

  But it was probably like everything else in the palace—people tended to believe whatever gave them an advantage, whatever gave them greater power or diminished their enemies’.

  Probably everyone in Suala would believe this story of the ribbon and the devilish breeze if they felt they needed to.

  “But . . . people can escape from fires,” I said. I didn’t have to work very hard to keep my tone of being stunned senseless. “There were windows. And . . . the palace servants are trained to start a bucket brigade when there’s a fire. . . . They practice. How could all our safeguards have failed completely?”

  “Not completely—you survived,” Madame Bisset reminded me.

  I winced. Was Madame Bisset trying to make me feel guilty? Or powerless?

  Madame Bisset began to toy with a loose thread on my coverlet.

  “It turns out that there were secret passageways honeycombed throughout the castle,” Madame Bisset said. “Perhaps the knowledge of them vanished decades ago. But the flames found those passageways—they climbed from one level of the palace to another, and the people fighting the fire had no hope of following. They could not understand why the flames kept popping up in new places—and once the new outbreaks were discovered, it was too late. So . . . everything burned.”

  I sank deeper into the pillows.

  Cecilia . . . I thought. Harper . . .

  Had the secret passageways already been burning when I sent my friends into them? Had I actually condemned them to death when I was trying so hard to save their lives?

  The secret passageways didn’t smell like smoke, I reminded myself. And flames climb up. Cecilia and Harper were climbing down. I saw where the fire started. In the ballroom.

  Wasn’t I right?

  “Desmia?” Madame Bisset said. “You’ve gone pale. This is too much for you to hear, while you’re still so fragile yourself.”

  I could feel the color draining from my face. I could see how my dainty hand nestled in the sheets was just as white as my bedding and nightgown. But my time in the palace had taught me that “fragile” was a word that could be used like handcuffs. It was meant to make me feel frail and useless and trapped. It was meant to keep me from thinking I had any power or control.

  “I would like to be alone with my grief,” I murmured, which was the only way I could think of to fight back.

  A gentle half smile played across Madame Bisset’s face. It was probably supposed to look sympathetic and kind, but I saw glee behind it.

  Madame Bisset thinks I have given up, I thought. She thinks I will be malleable now. She thinks she can use me.

  The question was, what did Madame Bisset want to use me for?

  7

  Madame Bisset left the room.

  I took that as a sign that I’d acted sufficiently devastated by all the bad news; I’d fooled her into thinking that I was so fragile and frail and mind-numbingly grief-stricken that I would be incapable of coming up with any plots of my own.

  What if I am so mind-numbingly grief-stricken that I’m incapable of coming up with any plots of my own? I wondered.

  My heart throbbed. I hadn’t known it could do that: hold so much pain and regret and fear that the agony seemed to come in waves.

  Potential pain, I told myself, fighting back again. It’s still possible that everything Madame Bisset told you was a lie. I glanced out the window, toward the smoking devastation that only last night had been the most impressive palace in six kingdoms. Except the part about the palace burning down. But just because the palace is in ruins, that doesn’t mean that anything else Madame Bisset told you is true.

  I wanted to slide down deeper under the coverlet. I wanted to cry and cry and cry. I wanted someone—not Madame Bisset, but someone who truly cared, someone sincere—to pat me on the shoulder and say, There, there. Everything’s fine. All you’ve lost is a palace, and those are easily enough rebuilt. . . .

  I imagined Ganelia, the sister-princess who was fascinated by everything architectural, actually being delighted to have a chance at designing a new palace. I imagined Florencia arguing over the cost of all the frills and furbelows Ganelia would want to include on a new palace. I imagined both of them—and the other ten—still gloriously alive.

  I have to act to Madame Bisset as though I believe they’re dead, I told myself. But for myself, to keep from plunging into the depths of grief, I have to hold on to the faith that they survived . . .

  And what did I have to do to make sure that I myself stayed safe? So that, if it was still possible, I could rescue the others from wherever they were being held?

  Was I safe enough in this house that I could take time to cry?

  No, I told myself.

  I shoved back the coverlet and the sheets. Chilly air rushed at me, and for a moment I hesitated.

  This Madame Bisset might not actually be the same evil woman that Ella told me about, I thought. It might be that everything Madame Bisset told me is true, and she really does have my best interests at heart. . . .

  I had lived with liars and conniving schemers my entire life. I recognized the signs.

  I knew when I was in danger.

  Just think about escaping, I commanded myself. Then you can think about everything else.

  I put one pale, bare foot down on the wood-planked floor.

  Splinters, I thought disjointedly. Shoes.

  I looked around, but there was nothing in the room but the bed, the chair, and the bedside table with its porcelain bowl and pitcher.

  I am in a box, I thought, with rising panic. A cage.

  I shook this off and forced myself to place my other foot down on the floor. I reminded myself that, coming to the palace, Cecilia and Harper had made shoes for themselves by cutting up a felt cloak and sewing the pieces back together in the general shape of footwear. They’d been hideously ugly shoes, but surely they’d given some protection against splinters and nails and the kind of burrowing insects that liked to crawl into feet.

  I didn’t have a knife or a needle. The sheets or the coverlet would make a poor substitute for felt.

  Before they made their ugly felt shoes, Cecilia and Harper walked barefoot all the way to the capital city from their tiny village ou
t in the middle of nowhere, I reminded myself. They walked barefoot for days.

  Cecelia—and all the other girls—had spent pretty much their entire childhoods totally barefoot, and they’d survived. Truth be told, even in the palace the twelve of them were constantly, secretly slipping their shoes off, complaining about how shoes pinched and bound.

  You can do this, I told myself, putting full weight on my feet, even though nothing lay between them and the surely splinter-filled wood floor.

  I could hear a mocking voice in my head—Cecilia or Harper, perhaps, or maybe Rosemary, who was the most sarcastic of the sister-princesses—saying, Ooo, Desmia, you’ve managed to stand up all by yourself! Congratulations!

  At this rate, even if the others hadn’t died in the palace, they would be dead by the time I found them: dead of old age.

  This thought propelled me forward, though I stepped cautiously: afraid of splinters, afraid of creaking floorboards . . . My choice of escape routes was either the door Madame Bisset had exited through, or the window that looked out on the palace ruins. I had an image in my mind of Madame Bisset sitting right outside the door, listening at the crack.

  So your only possible escape route is the window, I told myself, trying to be brisk and decisive, when really I felt more like a girl who was terrified of splinters, terrified of making a noise, terrified that I might really have lost practically everyone I’d ever cared about.

  I found myself at the windowsill. I appeared to be on the second or third floor, but the roof below the window sloped downward in a way that made it seem possible for someone to shimmy down, clutch the eaves at the bottom of the roof, and then drop safely to the ground from there. I could imagine Ella or Harper or Cecilia doing that—or even one or two of the other sister-princesses—Lydia? Marindia, maybe?

  I couldn’t actually imagine myself climbing over shingles and eaves.

  Think about what Ella had to do to escape from her Madame Bisset in Fridesia, I reminded myself.