Tuesdays at the Castle

by Jessica Day George

  “So the only people who didn’t know I would be king by the end of the week were you two and me!” Rolf picked up one of Lilah’s pillows and threw it at the wall.

  “It’s an insult,” Lilah agreed. “But there’s precious little we can do about it.”

  “But I’m supposed to be the king!” Another pillow smacked into the wall.

  “Under a regency, that won’t mean much,” Lilah said.

  “Lilah!” Celie found herself on the verge of tears. “Don’t be mean!”

  She picked up one of the fallen pillows and hugged it to her chest, huddling into a window seat and making herself as small as possible. The news that Rolf was to be a king under the thumb of a regency had been nearly as shocking and upsetting as the news of their parents’ mishap, as Rolf had called it. To make it worse, Rolf had been livid for days, and he and Lilah had been arguing the entire time as well, Lilah trying to make Rolf stop complaining and accept matters, and Rolf snapping back at her and threatening to fight the Council over everything.

  Lilah went to sit beside her in the window seat. “I’m not trying to be mean, dear, I’m trying to be practical. The regency will happen, and the more Rolf fights them, the more they will treat him like a child.”

  “So you think that I should just agree with everything they say?” Rolf picked up a pillow and looked at it like he wanted to murder it, not just toss it at the wall.

  “No, I didn’t say that,” Lilah said. “I only mean that you should show that you are willing to work with the Council, to listen to what they have to say. It will make things a lot easier on all of us.”

  “I don’t want things to be easy; I want them to be right!” Rolf said.

  “When Pogue returns with his news,” Celie began, “the Council will see that—” She stopped as Lilah and Rolf exchanged a look. “What? What’s happened to Pogue?” Celie asked as her stomach dipped and lurched.

  “Nothing, nothing, dear,” Lilah soothed. “Or at least, nothing that we know of. But the Council sent a runner this morning to bring him back. There isn’t to be any more searching for Mother and Father and Bran.”

  “What?” Now Celie took the pillow she’d been holding and threw it against the wall as hard as she could. It was very satisfying. “How could they? Isn’t that … treason … or something?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Rolf told her. “As the Royal Council of Sleyne, they have the right to declare Mother and Father dead. Apparently.” He swallowed, looking like he’d eaten something nasty. “There really is no reason, now that we’ve had a memorial ceremony, to spend the time and expense looking for their bodies.” He held up his hands in defense as Celie gave him a murderous look. “That’s what they are saying, not me.”

  “But—but we can’t just give up on Mother and Father and Bran!”

  “We haven’t,” Rolf said. He crowded into the window seat with Celie and Lilah. “I promise that we haven’t. I slipped a note for Pogue to the runner, along with the official letter from the Council. I told him what has happened, with the regency and everything, and asked him to stay as long as he dared, and do as much as he can. He can say he’s decided to stay in the city and visit some relatives.”

  “He does have cousins near the College of Wizardry,” Lilah said. “If he’s there now, he’s probably staying with them anyway.”

  “You see? It will all work out just fine,” Rolf said, pasting a false-looking smile on his face. “Pogue will keep going until he finds something, then he’ll come back and report directly to me.”

  Celie knew that they were just trying to reassure her; it was clear that even Lilah and Rolf no longer believed their parents would return. But she still did. She knew that her father and mother and Bran were still alive. She felt it somehow. All they could do was wait and hope, and try to keep going as best they could, despite the Council, and the coronation, and all that went with it.

  “Now,” Rolf said, leaping to his feet. “Who wants to come to the seamstresses’ quarters with me, and be fitted for some lovely, lovely coronation robes?” Rolf bowed with a flourish, gesturing for Celie and Lilah to come with him.

  “I already had my fitting this morning,” Celie said.

  “I didn’t,” Lilah said, getting up and stretching. “I was down appeasing Cook. She wasn’t told about the coronation, either.” She took Rolf’s arm, but looked back at Celie. “Do you want to come and keep us company?”

  “Not really,” Celie said. She saw the frown that appeared between Lilah’s brows. “I’ll take a bodyguard with me.” Three soldiers were waiting in the corridor outside Lilah’s room, ready to stalk along behind them as soon as they stepped out. Even the Council hadn’t objected to the extra security measures. “I think I’ll go up to the Spyglass Tower for a while.”

  “All right,” Lilah agreed reluctantly.

  “Keep a lookout for Pogue, will you?” Rolf gave her a poke in the ribs. “Make sure he doesn’t dawdle on the way home.”

  “I will,” she promised.

  They stepped out into the corridor, and Rolf told the guards their plans. Two of them followed Rolf and Lilah to the right and the seamstresses’ rooms, and the other tagged along after Celie, who did indeed go to the Spyglass Tower, leaving her guard at the bottom of the narrow stairs. He had twice inspected the room, and verified that it had no other exits.

  When she reached the little round room, Celie cleared her throat and patted the gray stone doorway. It was smooth and cold, and yet there was a certain underlying sensation that was almost but not quite warmth.

  “I don’t know if you can hear me,” she said hesitantly. “But Rolf is going to be crowned at the end of the week. There will be royal guests, and noble ones, coming. If you could please make some more rooms … or fetch them, if that’s how it works. And if you could help with the coronation, I know that Rolf would really be grateful. And me and Lilah, as well. So that the regents know that you still want Rolf to be king.”

  A thought struck her, and she stepped forward to rest both hands on the table. She looked around the room, a room that she suspected had been prepared for reasons she didn’t understand even now. The Castle did things that they couldn’t fathom, the Castle appeared to like some people and not others.

  So why was Prince Khelsh still there?

  And the same for Lulath and the Council. Preparations were going forward for the coronation, yet the Castle hadn’t protested. Nor had it changed her parents’ rooms, or Rolf’s. What was going on? Was the Castle losing its powers?

  The thought chilled her, and she moved to stand against one of the walls and press her face to the cold, smooth stones. She laid her palms against the stone, too, and stayed there for a long time, breathing slowly and taking comfort from the strength of the stones. She listened, too, to see if the Castle would tell her anything. When it didn’t, she simply asked.

  “Why don’t you get rid of Khelsh? Do you like him? And do you still want Rolf to be king? Right now? Even with the Council telling him what to do?”

  She listened for several minutes, but didn’t hear anything. Sighing, she pushed away from the wall and glanced around. To her shock, there was an opening in the wall on the opposite side of the room. There was a black cloak folded on the table, too, made out of some sort of thick cloth she had never seen before.

  Celie’s whole body trembled. Had this really happened, or was she just dreaming? She touched the cloak tentatively, but it felt real, heavy and soft. What did the Castle want her to do with it? Where did the doorway lead?

  She stood and fingered the cloak until a bird soaring by one of the open windows startled her. She made up her mind.

  “All right, I’ll do it. I trust you,” she announced to the empty room.

  Celie put on the cloak, which fit as though it had been made for her. She tried to see if it made her invisible, but it didn’t. Or maybe she could see herself, but no one else could. The one odd thing was that it seemed to muffle any noises she made. Her feet were compl
etely silent, there was no rustling from her gown or swish as her hair brushed her shoulders, and even her breathing seemed to be soundless now. She pulled up the hood to hide her light-colored hair, and made her way through the new entrance, down a long, winding staircase, to whatever it was the Castle wanted her to see.

  The passage ended in a blank wall with a narrow horizontal opening cut into it—a peephole—at the level of Celie’s eyes. She peered through, and could see a faint mesh on the other side of the wall. She reckoned that she was looking through a tapestry of some kind, but which one? There was no one in the room, and it wasn’t anywhere she recognized.

  It was a large room, and very impersonal. There was a round table and some high-backed chairs, tapestries on the walls, and a few small tables in the corners of the room holding candles and books and other odds and ends. Was it a new room for one of the guests? She couldn’t be sure. She tried to see if any of the books were in Vhervhish, or Grathian, but they were too far away, or turned so that she couldn’t read the covers.

  Then the door opposite her peephole opened, and men in black robes began to file in, led by the Emissary. The Council! She was spying on the Council’s privy chamber! Even Celie’s father hadn’t been allowed in the Council’s privy chamber, and he was the king! Her heart began to pound, and she was glad that the cloak she wore muffled the noise.

  She was even more grateful for the muffling cloak when Prince Khelsh entered the room, and a gasp escaped her lips before she could stop it. What was Khelsh doing there? She pressed her face as close to the wall as she could without smashing her nose, and stared through the peephole, angry and nervous and frightened at the same time.

  Khelsh closed the door behind him and gestured for the Councilors to sit, acting for all the world as though he were their ruler. Celie gritted her teeth, and tried to keep quiet.

  “Now you sit,” said Khelsh roughly.

  “Yes, thank you,” the Emissary said crisply. “I agree with Prince Khelsh: let us get right to business!” He made it sound as if Khelsh’s harshly accented words had been the height of courtesy. “We need to sign the agreement making His Highness the fourteenth member of the Royal Council of Sleyne, and thus a regent to Prince Rolf.”

  Just then the entire Castle seemed to shudder, and Celie put her palms flat on the wall in front of her, trying to soothe it despite her own anxiety.

  “Shouldn’t we inform His Highness first?” It was Lord Sefton, and Celie wondered if he might prove to be an ally.

  “My dear Sefton,” the Emissary said. “We are talking treason. Of course we aren’t going to inform Prince Rolf. He’ll find out after the coronation, when he has his first meeting with the full Council.”

  “But it’s not really treason,” Sefton protested. “Not when we’re only trying to help Rolf rule as best he can.”

  Prince Khelsh and the Emissary exchanged looks, and laughed.

  “That is quite enough merriment,” the Emissary snapped. He had an expression of great distaste on his face. “Everyone, sign the agreement so that we can continue with the rest of our business.”

  “The other agreement?” Prince Khelsh’s expression was cold. “You must sign also.”

  “For that we will need Prince Rolf’s signature, once he is king,” Lord Feen said.

  “You did not say this before.” Prince Khelsh’s neck began to swell as it had before, in the throne room. He had very pale skin, like most Vhervhish, and it showed every vein and rush of blood, preventing Khelsh from ever hiding his emotions. Celie fervently wished that the blood she could see pounding through his temples would cause him to have some sort of fit.

  Khelsh dipped the pen into the small ink bottle and signed with an agitated scrawl. He tossed down the pen and looked at the Emissary closely.

  “But you make princeling sign, once he is king?” Khelsh asked.

  “Of course we will,” the Emissary said in a soothing voice. “Prince Rolf will have to agree. He’ll need an heir—every king has to designate one immediately—and the Council will help him choose the heir. He’s young, and naive: he’ll soon realize that he’s powerless to object, if he objects at all.

  “And by the end of the month, my dear Prince Khelsh, you will be the crown prince of Sleyne.”

  Chapter

  11

  From now on, we may only talk freely here,” Rolf said, his face so white and strained that Celie thought he might faint.

  “But how will we tell each other when we need to meet here?” Celie kept folding and refolding the heavy cloak with shaking fingers.

  Lilah was standing by the spyglass that faced south, nervously looking through it over and over again, adjusting the lens: searching for some sign of Pogue or their parents or anyone who could help, Celie guessed.

  All three of them were in the Spyglass Tower. Celie had gathered her siblings there immediately after spying on the Council, and told them everything she had heard. They were shocked and horrified, as she was, and she was very grateful that they trusted her, and trusted the Castle. If they’d thought she was lying or telling stories to get attention, she didn’t know what she would have done.

  “Stick a handkerchief in your sleeve, so that a bit of it is hanging out,” Lilah said.

  Celie and Rolf both looked at her, a little startled by how promptly she was able to think of an answer. Lilah blushed.

  “Mother told me that she and Father used to do that, when they were betrothed, and wanted to be … private.”

  “If I ever see Pogue with a handkerchief hanging out of his sleeve …,” Rolf threatened.

  “Well, you will soon enough,” Lilah said defiantly. “We’ll need to let him in on this as soon as he returns.” She glanced through the spyglass restlessly. “We have so few that we can trust …”

  “There’s Ma’am Housekeeper,” Celie said. “I don’t think she needs to know about this room, but she will help us. And Cook. Most of the servants, I think.”

  “And Sergeant Avery,” Rolf said.

  “Can we be sure?” Lilah twisted the spyglass this way and that. “Lord Feen was a Councilor to our grandfather! And the Emissary to Foreign Lands! He’s always been so kind! Remember, Celie, how he brings us candy and presents when he returns from a journey?”

  Celie nodded, but Rolf’s lips twisted into a cynical smirk.

  “That’s his job, isn’t it?” he pointed out. “Those presents were probably from the kings of those ‘foreign lands,’ and he’s just taking the credit for them. I’ve never liked him.”

  “So, a handkerchief in one sleeve means we meet here,” Lilah repeated, after they had all mulled over Rolf’s point for a moment. “But should we drop everything and meet at once? Or should we have a special time?”

  “Midnight,” Rolf said decisively. “But if it needs to be sooner, put it in your left sleeve. Got it? Right sleeve, midnight; left sleeve, as soon as you can.”

  “But what if we can’t find the staircase to the room?” Lilah took out a handkerchief, pushed it into her left sleeve, and pulled it back out again. “We could spend hours wandering. Usually only Celie can find it.”

  “Don’t worry,” Celie said. She stroked one of the walls. “Castle, we need your help. Whenever we need to meet in this room, please let Lilah, Rolf, and Pogue find it without me.”

  Celie wasn’t sure, but she thought the stones of the wall seemed warmer under her fingers.

  “I think that will do it,” she said.

  “Does that really work?” Rolf’s eyes were wide.

  “If it doesn’t, we can meet in Celie’s bedroom,” Lilah decided. “We can usually all find that, and one of us can lead Pogue if he can’t.”

  “That’s assuming he returns in time to be of help,” Rolf reminded Lilah.

  “I’m sure he will,” Celie said loyally.

  “But until then: What shall we do?” Rolf’s face was only slightly less strained.

  “Don’t sign the agreement,” Celie said. “If you have to name an
heir, name me or Lilah. Or Lord Wellen, the Councilor of Farm Matters. He’s always been so nice …” She trailed off, no longer certain if anyone she’d thought was nice before was a traitor or not.

  “Wellen seems like a good enough sort,” Rolf agreed. “And he’s a second cousin, so he’s got a better claim than Khelsh, who isn’t even from Sleyne! At the very least, maybe I can use Wellen’s name to stall for time.”

  “Don’t act surprised when they announce Khelsh as a member of the Council,” Lilah said. “Just nod like you’ve been expecting it.”

  Rolf and Celie looked at her, curious.

  “It will confuse them. And probably annoy them, too,” Lilah explained. “They’re waiting for you to pout and act childish, Rolf. They want you to prove that you can’t rule alone. But if you show everyone how gracious and … kingly you can be, people will question why you need regents. Khelsh isn’t popular, and he’s Vhervhish. I can’t imagine people won’t raise a hue and cry over his appointment. We won’t have to lift a finger in protest; we’ll let everyone else do it for us!” She raised a fist triumphantly.

  “Then, if I start to disagree with the Council,” Rolf said slowly, “in public, you know, or act shocked at what they do, people will be more likely to see my side of things.”

  “Yes, and when the time is right, you say that the regency is bad, that they’re trying to take over the throne, or give it to Khelsh,” Celie said. “By then, everyone will be ready to support you!”

  “It will work,” Lilah said fiercely, hugging Rolf. “It has to work!”

  “How long do you think it will take?” Celie looked at her siblings, wondering how many days they would have to live under this strain.

  Rolf’s face became tense again, and his eyes a little wild. “Well,” he said. “Let’s just hope that it doesn’t take ten years.”