by Shannon Hale
The slender man motioned to another guard and sent him running into the estate. They waited. The guards were eyeing her mount, her dress, the aspect of those who followed her, measuring her words against her appearance. She could see immediately that if she had walked up as the goose girl alone or with a couple of animal-keeper friends, these guards would have sent her out of the valley with a sword at her back. At least that much of the plan was working. They were passing for Kildenreans and just might be let through the gates. The workers wore their hats and caps, but on inspection, no one would mistake them for anything but Bayern. Ani prayed they would not be delayed enough to make time for a close look. She sat up straighter and felt the bay shift under her legs, hoping, perhaps, that her anxiety meant there would be some action.
The runner returned and whispered into his leader’s ear. The slender guard nodded and gave silent commands to others.
“The king will grant an audience,” he said.
Ani barely stifled a sigh of relief and readied herself to ride forward. Instead, two guards came to her side, one holding a stirrup while the other offered a hand to dismount. Disconcerted, she took the hand.
“Princess,” Talone said uneasily.
The guard helped her down, took her arm, and walked her to the gate. Her company urged their steeds forward to follow.
“His Majesty the king wishes to see Princess Napralina-Victery privately and orders her escort to remain here.”
Gasps escaped the mouths of her friends at her back like the fluttering of many wings.
“No,” said Talone. “She requires a personal guard. We will accompany her.”
Ani had two guards on either side now, holding her arms and pushing her inside the gate. She struggled, clumsily digging her slippered heels against the ground. “Wait,” she said, “I will not go with you without my guard.”
Talone jumped off his horse and ran after her. “Let me follow her. I tell you I will.”
“Unhand me. This is a gross insult. I will not go alone.”
Her captors took no heed of her protests. Four gate guards grabbed Talone. He struggled, and a guard took away his sword, pulled from its steel scabbard with a peal of metal on metal like the cry of a high voice. “Princess!” said Talone.
She looked back to see his face, wrinkled, travel stained, and worn, shut out by the closing of the iron gate. The guards held her closely, her feet barely pushing against ground to keep their pace. She struggled and protested and fought their grips. They gave no explanation. They continued their course.
Down they took her through the estate’s first long corridor and then ducked into a side room and shut the door. The room was dim, but Ani could see several people standing before her, lit from behind by the light of a window.
“Welcome,” said Ungolad.
Ani took in a sharp breath. A hand over her mouth stopped her scream.
All the remaining Kildenrean guards were there, lining the walls in front of dark shelves of books, their pale hair darker in the weak light. Swords at their side shivered silver in the obscurity, and each had a round shield strapped to their left arms as in preparation for battle. Selia rose from a chair against the window. The light was directly behind her. Her face was all in shadow.
“Thank you so much.” Selia motioned, and the guard behind Ani dropped his hand from her mouth.
“Selia,” Ani said in a whisper. “My lady-in-waiting. Won’t the king be expecting me?”
“In good time.” She stepped forward to place coins in the palms of the two Bayern soldiers, and they quickly left the room, shutting the door behind them.
Ani saw now that Selia wore a bright yellow tunic and skirt in the Bayern fashion. On her forehead winked the three rubies of Ani’s tiara. Three points of red like the blood of the lost handkerchief, as though Selia wore the mark of the queen’s approval and protection. False, thought Ani. It’s all show. Like the handkerchief. Like my mother’s love. But the sight of it bothered her, and she wanted to rip the circlet from her head and fling it away.
“Let me gut her right now,” said Terne. His dagger rang as he ripped it from its sheath, and Ani’s stomach muscles clenched. Selia held up her hand.
“Not here. My love, can you take her safely out of the estate?”
Ungolad nodded. He tickled Ani’s chin with the end of one of his braids. “It will be easier if she is unable to scream.”
“Don’t touch me.” Ani backed toward the door. A big man named Redmon was there. He put a hand on her back to stop her.
“I don’t mean to kill you,” said Ungolad. “I only mean to put you to sleep.”
He stepped toward her. Ani felt a draft pass under the door and touch her ankle. In a panic, she spoke to it without waiting to gather more and sent it flying at Selia. A few papers rustled on the desk beside her. One piece of parchment flew off the desk and floated to the carpet like goose down on a breath of air. Her breeze died out, useless. Selia glanced back at the closed window, searching for its source.
“Stay away from me,” said Ani. The guards looked unimpressed. She recalled the images that had been carried on that breeze—several guards moving down the corridor. Toward that room.
“Easy, now,” said Ungolad as though speaking to an unpredictable animal.
Ani pointed at the door. “Wait. Someone is here.”
There was a knock. Redmon started.
“What are you, some kind of Bayern witch?” he said.
“Who is there?” called Ungolad.
The door opened, pushing Redmon aside and admitting four soldiers with the purple slash of the king’s own guard. “His Majesty has been informed that Princess Napralina-Victery arrived from Kildenree, and he calls her to his presence.”
“Yes, certainly.” Selia stepped into the light of the open door, an easy smile on her lips.
Ani stepped away from Ungolad’s grasp and into the escort of the king’s guard. The Kildenreans followed, Selia at their head. There was a hum of anticipation. Even the king’s guards seemed to feel it, and they glanced from side to side with hands on sword hilts, anticipating action. Ani saw Selia lift her hand as if to calm her own mob, and her men followed quietly into the estate’s small throne room.
It was a long room with a row of narrow, high windows spilling patches of light onto the stone floor. Hard sunlight fell on the dais and chair at the far end where the royal party stood waiting—the king, the young prince she had seen at wintermoon, several others in hunting clothes, the prime minister wearing court apparel and a suspicious expression, and the royal guards. And one guard in particular who watched her approach with a kind of confused concentration, as though he sought to count colors on a moving banner. My hair, she thought. Geric doesn’t know me for my hair.
The guards at her side escorted her to the center of the room and withdrew. Selia and the Kildenreans gathered in a mob at the steps of the dais, facing her. Everyone was looking at her. They waited. She curtsied to the king.
“Princess Napralina-Victery,” said the king. He raised one eyebrow.
“No, I am not she,” she said in her careful, Kildenrean accent.
“Not Napralina?” The king’s voice was a hammer that rang against the stones.
“No, I am not, but—”
The king signaled, and Ani heard the thuds of the guards’ heavy boots approach from behind. Selia smirked.
“No, wait.” The words broke like sobs from Ani’s throat. A guard’s hand was on her shoulder, and she fell to both knees and threw her hands on the ground in front of her, as though she would cling to edges of the floor stones to remain. “Please, wait, listen to me.” The guards stood beside her now, close enough that she could feel the heat from their bodies on her back, but they did not pull her away. “Please.”
“One moment, sire.” Geric squinted against the sunlight that fell steeply through a high window and into his eyes. He took a step forward. The rays of light slipped off his shoulders and onto the ground, heavy as shado
w, and his face dimmed to the light of the hall.
“Isi?” His face softened in recognition, then his mouth widened in that wonderful smile that made lines in his cheeks and brightened his eyes. “Isi, what’s going on?”
Clearly he expected her to smile back, to laugh with him and admit she was playing some clever joke. She wished she were, but just a glance at Ungolad ripped away any desire to smile. Crouched before Geric, she felt hollow and slight and wretched, and her stomach felt light enough to float up to her throat.
“Isi was my grandmother’s name, among friends,” she said. Her voice did not sound like a princess’s, rather squeaked from her throat, narrowly escaping its tightness. Geric’s eyes darkened under a frown line. She forced her gaze away from him and to the king, who watched her with barely controlled outrage. Slowly she stood, and the guards, for the moment, let her be.
“Sire,” she said, “I am Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, first daughter of Kildenree. That girl”—she pointed toward Selia without looking—“was my lady-in-waiting.”
The silence of the stone hall broke then with gasps and murmurs, but most clearly of all—a sound high and fierce that rose above the noise like a raptor’s cry—was a laugh. The other noises died away, and the laugh remained and became a lovely sound, dainty, artless, intelligent. Selia’s posture was confident and casual, and she seemed to light up prettily with the attention that focused on her. She smiled and addressed the king.
“My compatriots and I stood here in silence, Your Majesty, eagerly awaiting what word this lost bird would bear, and it has proved more entertaining than we had imagined. She is the princess!” Selia shook her head with a sympathetic expression.
“This is the little runaway I told you of, sire, the serving girl who decided in the Forest that she no longer wished to serve and slipped away in the night with one of my gowns and a bag full of coins. It would seem she still has the dress but has spent the coins—though how she managed that in just these few months might be answered only in a gambling hall or tavern. At any rate, it would seem she still does not wish to serve.” Selia crossed to Ani and put a soft hand on her shoulder with a benevolent, older-sister expression. “But really, Selia, is not crying ‘princess’ taking one step too far?”
Ani was still. She could feel Selia’s words tremble and wind around the room like a tangible breeze. They slipped from Selia’s mouth and hummed in her ears. Watch that one, Ani thought, she has the gift of people-speaking. Ani had never before felt the full force of Selia’s ability. Her ears filled with Selia’s words, her head bowed under the weight.
“No,” she said. It was all she could say.
“Come now, my dear,” said Selia. Her voice was slick like running water and low enough not to echo against stone. “Being a princess is more work than a lady-in-waiting. You should know; you have watched me most of your life.” Her smile was only for Ani, and it revealed traces of spite and anger. Ani winced. “You have told me how you have felt being consigned to a life of servitude. I sympathize. I know you feel trapped by your birth and have seen your talents go wasted by the narrowness of your occupation. To wait. To sit and wait and serve your mistress. I can understand it must be frustrating. But, princess?” She laughed so lightly, it seemed to be not an expression of humor, but a gift to the listener. “And as much as it is a burden at times, I’m not going to resign on your behalf. So, please, for the friendship we once shared, admit the truth.”
Selia was offering her the release of all trouble, the loosening of tension, a salve for fear. It could all end peacefully. Resolution, is not that what she wanted? Ani struggled against the sound of her voice, shaking her head to free it from her ears, to shake it from her hair, where it tangled itself and whispered relentlessly, Tell the truth, resign, and tell the truth.
“No,” said Ani. The word was like a stone on her tongue. “I mean, yes, I have told the truth. I am who I say I am.”
“Enough of this.” The prime minister strode down the steps of the dais. He turned to the king, his short cape lifting with a snap. “Sire, we waste time here on this runaway thief while there are pressing matters of war.”
“War,” said Ani. The word awoke her senses, and her head lightened. “You started all of this, Selia, in the Forest. The guards, you murdered them. She murdered them all, sire, she and Ungolad and the others. And I ran, so she could not kill me, too. I have been hiding these months as a goose girl. I have witnesses who saw these men try to kill me just as they killed my guards.”
Ani spared a glance for Geric to see if he believed her, but his face was somber and unreadable, like that of a guard on duty.
“Now, dear, don’t be silly,” said Selia. “All my guards are right here.” She gestured to the eighteen men behind her.
“No, the others. Where are Rashon, Ingras, Adon, and the others? And, and Radal, and Dano. Poor Dano, who looked up to the warriors as to older brothers and only ever carried a dinner knife in his belt, and”—her voice broke—“you killed him anyway. All of them, sire, all.”
Ani looked at Selia’s eyes for the first time. “Except Talone.”
Selia started to shake her head, then caught herself. Ani flashed a hopeful smile.
“You did not know that, did you? That he survived your slaughter? Sire, I beg you to ask my escort Talone. He is just outside the gates. Your guards would not admit him, but he stands ready to testify to you that what I say is true. He was there. He witnessed the massacre in the Forest.”
The Kildenrean guards looked at one another and murmured softly until Ungolad silenced them with one quick, slight look. Selia blinked.
“Ah, Talone, your cohort. Is he still with you?” Her voice lost its sweetness and almost betrayed real anger. Her lips curled slightly as though she would spit. “Of course, you would not be so brazen as to make these claims unless you had a false witness to improve the odds. He is so fickle, however, I would not have guessed him to stay with you since the Forest, once you lost your coin.”
The prime minister rustled his cape again. “Sire, the young prince is tired from the hunt, and this Kildenrean’s spy’s lies are none of his concern. I recommend he be saved from this raucous tedium.”
Ani looked over at the young prince. His face was pinched and white, and he tugged the bottom of his tunic with the self-consciousness of a boy who is growing too fast for his clothes. Again the thought of marrying him troubled her, but his sweet, boyish face invoked her pity as well. Knowing what she did, she could not abandon him to an unwitting marriage to the likes of Selia.
The king roughly wiped his brow. “Yes, I grow rather tired of it myself. Would that I had youth as an excuse to withdraw.” He waved a hand, and two guards, neither one Geric, began to escort the young prince from the room.
“Wait,” said Ani, afraid she was not being taken seriously, “shouldn’t the prince stay? After all, this is the matter of his bride.”
The prime minister laughed with scorn. “You see, Your Highness? She doesn’t even know what she’s saying.” He turned to Ani with an arch in one eyebrow. “The princess, of course, is betrothed to our elder prince, Geric.”
“Geric?” Ani felt as though all the wind had left her lungs, and she said his name with her last squeak of breath. “Geric is the prince?”
He met her gaze, his lips tight and thoughtful.
“You are?”
He nodded. His forehead was worried with lines, and while he stared at her, she found it hard to look away. She did not want to. She was afraid she was losing, losing the war and losing the fight for her name, and now, painfully, she realized she was also losing Geric.
“Isi, are you truly Kildenrean? Truly Anidori?”
“Yes, I am, I swear, I—”
The king grumbled. “What’s all this, Geric?”
Geric addressed the king, but he kept his eyes on Ani. “I knew this girl, before, as a goose girl.”
“You called her Isi,” said the king.
“Yes, that’s
what she—that’s what I thought her name was.”
“And did she ever claim to you that she was the princess?”
“No, but—”
“Oh, sire,” said Selia with a sigh, “clearly she was trying to use the prince to win her little game.”
“Mmm,” said the king. Geric looked at her again, and the new doubt in his eyes hurt her like a slap.
“Sire, there are other matters that beg your attention,” said the prime minister.
“The war,” said Ani. She felt a new urgency to convince them, and she watched Geric’s face anxiously as she spoke. “It is her idea, the war. Kildenree is not plotting. There is no conspiracy. She invented it all to hide her bloody deeds.”
“Sire,” said the prime minister.
“Please listen to me. Geric, you know me. You must believe that what I’m saying is true.”
The prime minister huffed. “This is obviously a Kildenrean spy sent to thwart our endeavors.”
“She is a fraud,” said Ani. “All she says is a lie.”
“Sire, don’t let this yellow-haired wench craft doubt on our war.”
“Enough!” said the king. His face was red, and his eyes were on Ani.
“Sire,” said Geric, putting a hand on his arm, “we should listen to her.”
At Geric’s words, Selia frowned.
“We have listened enough.” The king shook off his son. “This girl announces herself as Napralina, then she says she’s Anidori, then you call her Isi, then she’s Selia. It appears that she’s also that goose girl who curtsies so prettily and was found spying around the royal stables last winter. Whoever she is, she’d better decide quickly so we know what to engrave on her tombstone. I smell treason.” The king stomped down the stairs and stood before Ani, his eyes searching her face for answers. “Anidori, my dear.”
Ani opened her mouth to answer.
“Yes, my lord,” said Selia.
“What’s the punishment for treason in Kildenree?”
Banishment, thought Ani, but Selia will not say that, and she noted that Selia’s eyes sparkled while she thought.
