Palace of Mirrors

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “Shh.” Desmia stops her. “We’re showing them, remember?”

  Things happen fast after that. I want to signal Harper, to work out some sort of arrangement, passing information with a glance: Once they open this door, you take out Desmia and I’ll overpower Ella and then we’ll run for help. We’ll wake up the whole castle if we have to!

  But I can’t catch Harper’s eye, and I’m not going to run away and leave him behind. And anyway, I am curious about what Desmia wants to show us in the dungeon. Besides, Desmia insists on tying our wrists together before she unlocks the door—we have to stick our hands out between the bars, and then lean our heads against the door for the gags.

  “I’ll take the boy, first,” she tells Ella. “You take Cecilia.”

  In spite of myself I have to admit that that’s a clever strategy. Surely Harper knows that he can’t scream and rouse the whole castle, because then Ella could just throw me back in the tower—or maybe out the tower window. And I can’t do anything to attract attention, because that would put Harper in danger too.

  Several minutes after Desmia has disappeared around the corner of the stairway with Harper, Ella says, “All right, I think it’s our turn. Let’s hope I don’t get lost.”

  We’ve only gone a few steps before I think of another question.

  “Why didn’t we hear the birds?” I try to ask. But because of the gag it comes out, “I innunt ee ear uh urz?”

  “What?” Ella says. Then she seems to comprehend. “Oh, you’re asking about the birds? I understand they’re usually pretty loud. That’s why Desmia covered their cages.”

  I see that we are passing the first cage, which is, indeed, covered with a white sheet. And above the cage I notice a complicated pulley system connected to a long rope, which must have made it possible for Desmia to lower the cloth from afar. That way, I guess, she wouldn’t rile up the birds while she was trying to silence them. Now I want to ask Ella, “How do the pulleys work?” and “Covering them makes them be quiet? Really?” This time it’s not worth the effort. But I’m thinking. If Desmia could control when the birds squawked and when they didn’t, then maybe she sneaked up to the tower many times, to eavesdrop on us. . . . Above my head I notice a round mirror—mirrors even up here!—but this one is angled so that it shows the door Harper and I were locked behind. So that’s how Desmia could see when we were watching for her and when we weren’t; that’s how she made sure we never knew when she was bringing the food.

  Sir Stephen would be proud: I am putting things together, working on my powers of observation. But I can’t picture Desmia rigging up the pulleys and the cages and the mirror, and I don’t know who else would have done that. And I still don’t understand why Desmia locked us in the tower, or why she’s come for us now. If she really believed we were guilty of treason, she would have screamed for help that first day I talked to her, at the music competition. She would have called her guards; she probably would have had us killed.

  I am holding on to some sliver of hope, because she didn’t do any of that. She’s come for me not with guards, but with another girl.

  I’m lost in thought as we wind our way down the spiral staircase and through Desmia’s private quarters (which should be mine, I remind myself stubbornly). But as soon as we begin descending the secret stairway, I have to focus completely on putting down one foot after another without slipping down the dark, narrow stairs. I’m still wearing my felt shoes; it’d be too embarrassing to take them off and go barefoot in front of this girl who looks so much like a princess.

  “Curses upon the diabolical Sualan who built this,” Ella is muttering to herself. “But what was I expecting? Why should Sualan palace intrigue be any less Byzantine than Fridesian palace intrigue?”

  She starts to slip, and I catch the back of her dress steadying her as well as I can with bound hands. The lantern weaves out dangerously, splashing oil on the stairs.

  Ella turns to me with round, frightened eyes.

  “Thank you,” she whispers. “I think you may have just saved my life.” She peers far down to the bottom of the steps, where she would have landed. “That’s the last thing Jed needs, to have me disappear and die. The rest of the delegation would say it proves the Sualans can’t be trusted . . . and it’d be all my fault, because of my own clumsiness!”

  She seems to be mostly just talking to herself, but I file this information away: So the peace negotiations aren’t going well; this Jed she’s in love with is at odds with the rest of the delegation. . . .

  “Watch out,” Ella whispers, stepping past the spot of lantern oil on the stairs. “As if the steps weren’t slick enough already!”

  We make the rest of our descent with great caution. The muscles in my legs ache from having to step so carefully, down so many stairs. I’m not sure—I wasn’t counting that first day, and I don’t count now—but it seems that we have climbed down many, many more stairs than we climbed up before. I’m almost surprised when they finally come to an end. We push out through a stone door, and Desmia and Harper are waiting for us in a narrow, filthy corridor. There seems to be a river of sludge running beneath our feet—sludge which soaks into my felt shoes. I’ve walked in mud before, in manure, but this is much worse.

  “Hurry,” Desmia says. “While the jailer’s still asleep.”

  “She put a potion in his drink,” Ella whispers to me.

  We begin tiptoeing down the corridor, past walls stained with . . . well, I don’t really want to think about what they’re stained with. Blood? Vomit? Excrement? Whatever it is, it looks like it’s been accumulating for ages, possibly since the time of King Saldorn the First, even though Sir Stephen taught me nothing about Saldorn the First’s dungeons. For that matter Sir Stephen taught me nothing about anyone’s dungeons; in Sir Stephen’s version of Sualan history, dungeons don’t exist. But there’s no denying the reality of the scene around me: the sludge soaking into my shoes, the grimy cobwebs dragging against my face, the choking stench that threatens to cut off my every breath. I begin to gag, and I’m not sure if it’s from the stench or just from imagining how Sualan royalty—my ancestors—must have used this dungeon.

  “Take small breaths,” Ella advises. “Until you get used to the smell.”

  I hold my breath instead, drawing in air only when I absolutely have to.

  Desmia is watching Harper and me.

  “See, I was being kind,” she says. “Putting you in the tower.”

  I know what she means—the tower is luxury accommodations, compared with this—but I still want to retort, through the gag, Why did you have to imprison us at all? I decide I don’t have enough air in my lungs for that.

  We pass a small room where a man is slumped over a desk. Ella gently tugs his door shut. Several paces farther along, the corridor widens. I can see flickering torches propped in crude wire sconces on the wall, and rows of bars that stretch from the floor to the ceiling, sectioning off one prison cell after another.

  Desmia holds her hand up to stop us. Then she steps forward, into the center of the corridor.

  “Which of you is the true princess?” she calls, her voice low but strong.

  The response is instantaneous. In every cell I can see, a girl rushes to the door and shouts, “I am!” Tall, lanky girls; short, squat girls; girls with curly brown hair; girls with straight blond hair; every variety of girl from the entire kingdom, it seems, all calling out, “I am!”

  “No, me!”

  “You lie! I’m the true princess!”

  “It’s me! I told you, it’s me!”

  “Please! Somebody listen! I’m telling the truth!”

  That’s all I hear before I sink to the floor in a dead faint.

  21

  When I wake up, I am lying on a soft bed, my head cushioned in feather pillows, my body tucked safely under airy quilts. I take a tentative breath and draw in the sweet odor of roses, lilies, lavender.

  Finally! I think. This is where I belong!

  Th
en I remember the horror of all those girls in the dungeon, all claiming the title I thought was mine, the privileges I thought I deserved.

  “Noooo,” I moan.

  My face is wet with tears, though I don’t remember starting to cry. I begin turning my head side to side against the pillows, my moans getting stronger: “Nooo . . . nooo . . .”

  Someone lifts my hand and clutches tightly. I open my eyes—it’s Harper.

  “Oh, Eelsy,” he says, and it’s like he’s apologizing to me, grieving with me for everything I always believed about myself.

  Everything I can never believe again.

  It could still be true, I think. Desmia could be lying; all those girls could be wrong. . . .

  But I am just thinking that out of habit. I know that I really have nothing to cling to anymore but Harper’s hand. I hold on with all my strength.

  “Explain,” I whisper. “Please.”

  Harper looks back over his shoulder.

  “Princess Desmia?” he calls.

  Desmia tiptoes toward the bed, a wraithlike figure in her pale gown.

  “This is your bed,” I realize suddenly. “I shouldn’t be here, getting muck on your quilts, probably.”

  I struggle to sit up. If I’m not the true princess, I want no privilege I don’t deserve, no luxury I have no right to. I still have my pride. I won’t lay claim to anything that shouldn’t be mine.

  Desmia touches my shoulder.

  “It’s all right,” she says shyly. Then, with a sense of mischief I didn’t know she possessed, she adds, “Your shoes already got those quilts so filthy they’ll never come clean anyhow.”

  And then she smiles at me, which removes any sting from the words.

  I smile back, feebly.

  “I don’t understand,” I say. I’m not talking about quilts or mucky shoes.

  Desmia’s eyes meet mine, and it’s like looking into a mirror, seeing the troubled puzzlement I feel reflected in her gaze.

  “I don’t either,” she admits with a sigh.

  “Ella?” I whisper.

  The other girl sits down on the edge of the bed.

  “Don’t look at me,” she says. “It’s your kingdom.” She shakes her head. “I didn’t think any palace could be more messed up than Fridesia’s!”

  “Ours is,” Desmia whispers.

  “How . . . ?” I start to ask, then decide that’s not the right question. “Why . . . ? I mean, who . . . ?”

  I give up.

  “It might help if you tell them what you do know,” Ella suggests gently to Desmia.

  Desmia twists her hands together. She doesn’t sit down.

  “What I told you before . . . I wasn’t lying,” she says. “They’ve always told me there was a pretender to the throne, who wanted to kill me and take over.”

  “Wait a minute—who’s ‘they’? Who told you this?” I ask.

  Desmia shrugs.

  “Everyone. All the palace officials. All my advisers. My governess. My nanny when I was little.”

  Desmia doesn’t say “nanny” the way I say “Nanny.” She wrinkles up her nose and grimaces, like the word itself leaves a bad taste in her mouth. Instead of my warm, cozy Nanny Gratine, I picture a prune-faced woman who’d beat a child for sneezing. That’s how Desmia makes her sound.

  “The danger from the pretender to the throne is the reason I’ve never been allowed to go out of the palace,” Desmia adds.

  It takes a minute for that to sink in. Harper reacts before I do.

  “Never?” He explodes. I can see by his face that he’s having trouble imagining life without ever fishing or running through mud puddles or playing leapfrog and chase and tackle. “That’s worse than harp lessons!”

  “Well,” Desmia says, “a few years ago they started letting me go out on the balcony once a day, but I don’t count that. That was just because there were rumors in Cortona that I didn’t even exist, that I’d died with my parents, or been kidnapped, or . . . I don’t know, never been born at all.”

  “Those are odd rumors,” Ella says.

  “But what else would people think, when no one outside the palace had ever seen me?” Desmia asks. Unexpectedly, she giggles. “You should have seen my advisers measuring the distance from the balcony to the ground, making sure that no one could shoot an arrow at me, or throw a knife or hurl a sword. . . . They argued for days about whether it was safe for me to take three steps into the fresh air or if it would be better to have me wave from behind glass!”

  I like that Desmia is laughing at this. But I think about how she always stands so stiffly on the balcony, how minimally she moves her hand.

  “You’re terrified whenever you’re out there, aren’t you?” I ask.

  She doesn’t answer.

  After a few moments pass, Harper says, “This pretender everyone always told you about—why did she want to hurt you? What did she hope to gain?”

  “Power,” Desmia says softly. “Control.”

  I can’t look at her while she’s saying that. I want to protest, That wasn’t what I wanted! I wanted to be a good princess! Better than you! But wasn’t that wanting control too?

  I shift to another question.

  “So you started arresting girls?” I ask, and I can’t keep the harshness out of my voice. “Anyone who seemed like she might want to be princess?” I’m forgetting that all the girls in the dungeon didn’t just want to be the princess; they claimed that they were the princess. They seemed to believe it. Just like I always have. “Didn’t you think they might just be crazy? Or”—I swallow a huge lump in my throat, force the word out—“misinformed?”

  Harper squeezes my hand, as if he understands how hard it is for me to say that.

  “I didn’t arrest anybody!” Desmia protests. “I didn’t put anyone in that dungeon!”

  “Well, then, you had your people do it,” I say, and there’s an ugly, bitter twist to my tone. “That’s how your kind of royalty works.”

  Desmia blinks. Is she blinking back tears? How strange, I think.

  “I didn’t even know they were there,” she protests in a strangled voice. “Until—” She breaks off and glances toward Ella.

  “You thought it was safe to tell me,” Ella says encouragingly.

  “Until I found the secret stairs and started hiding there, eavesdropping on my advisers,” Desmia finishes. She stares down at the floor, as if it’s now her turn to be ashamed to meet our eyes.

  “So, then,” I say cautiously, since Desmia suddenly seems so fragile again, “did you ask anybody about those girls? Anybody you trusted?” I’m thinking about Nanny and Sir Stephen, how many questions I asked them, how much I always trusted them. The lump is back in my throat. What good was it to trust them if all their answers were false? I wonder. But I can’t bear to think about that right now. I focus on Desmia again. “What did the people you trusted say?”

  “There isn’t anybody I trust,” Desmia says. She lifts her head, peering almost fiercely at Ella and Harper and me. “There wasn’t.”

  “Nobody?” Harper asks in a choked voice. He’s looking at me, and I know he’s thinking about how I came to him in the night and whispered my secrets to him in a cowshed. Despite everything that’s gone wrong since then, I’m not sorry that I shared what I thought was the truth.

  Desmia winces.

  “If you knew the people in this palace, you’d understand,” she says ruefully. “Lord Throckmorton, Lord Suprien, Lord Tyfolieu . . .” Her face twists more with each name she recites.

  “Not the nicest of people,” Ella agrees. “I’ve barely been here a week, and already I’ve taken a hearty dislike to pretty much everyone but Desmia.” She smiles at the other girl, but the grimness in her eyes cancels out the cheering effect. “They are definitely the type who’d lock girls in a dungeon for no good reason.”

  I shake my head, still baffled.

  “But there’s got to be some reason,” I say. “Some explanation. That’s a lot of effort to go t
o, to hunt down and imprison all those girls.” Just thinking about the girls in the dungeon makes me want to faint again. My memory is so vivid and nightmarish: the sludge flowing beneath my feet, the stench threatening to overwhelm me, the eager faces pressed against the bars, all the girls calling out, “I’m the true princess!” “No, I am!” But I fight down the faintness and force myself to think coolly and logically. Just like Sir Stephen trained me. Look for the facts, I remind myself. “How many girls are there?” I ask, pretending a calm I don’t feel. “Ten? Fifteen?”

  “Eleven,” Desmia says.

  Eleven. That means that I bring the number of girls claiming Desmia’s throne to an even dozen. Or an unlucky thirteen, if you count Desmia herself as having no more claim than the rest of us.

  “Have you talked to them?” I ask Desmia.

  “I did,” Ella says. “They all tell very similar stories: They were hidden away because of the danger, but educated so they’d be ready to take the throne when the danger passed. I don’t know Sualan geography terribly well, but it sounds like they were all raised in remote villages, scattered throughout the kingdom, and everyone in their villages was under the impression they were just ordinary girls.”

  Childishly, I want to scream out, No! It can’t be! That’s my story! Mine alone! But I bite down hard, holding the words back. I press my lips together with agonizing force.

  Harper squeezes my hand again.

  Ella tilts her head to the side, thoughtfully.

  “Of course, that’s a lot of effort to go to, to hide all those girls, to educate them, to concoct cover stories. . . . Did the people who hid all of them away know about the other girls in hiding? Did your Sir Stephen know Sir Roget, who hid Lucia in Gondervail? Or Sir Alderon who hid Fidelia in Tsurit?”

  I shrug, because I am still gritting my teeth as tightly as I can. I’m afraid of what I might say if I let myself open my mouth. My story! I still want to scream. Only mine! I am unique! I am special! I am the one and only true princess!

  “And,” Ella continues, “I’m thinking that there must be at least two competing sides here, that the people who hid the girls in the first place probably aren’t the same ones who put them in the dungeon. . . .”