The Decoy Princess

by Dawn Cook

  The gypsy smirked at my loose speech, the folds of her face falling into each other. “Yes. Burned my van down to its wheels. It’s what he wants to do. Can’t you tell?”

  Kavenlow pried the knife from my fingers. “That won’t work with her,” he said as he tucked it into the coin purse dangling from my wrist. “She will eventually remember. She’s stronger than she seems. I’ve never been able to cloud her memory.”

  “It’s a good thing I’m not you, then, isn’t it?”

  His lips pressed into a thin line behind his graying beard. Taking my arm, he moved me to the door. The rush of light and heat as he opened it was so sudden and shocking, it was almost a pain. I balked, unable to leave the cool rest of the van. With a smooth motion, Kavenlow hoisted me into his arms.

  “Come see me again when you find unfailing love, dearest,” she said sarcastically as he carried me down the steps, “and I’ll tell you your children’s fortunes.”

  Two

  “Not so tight,” I gasped when Heather tugged my bodice laces. “I do have to breathe.”

  “Tish, tash,” the young woman said, giving the laces a final yank before tying them off. “We have to make the most of what little you have. Heaven help you, Tess, if you took away the dress and long hair, you could be a boy. And you want to make a good impression if you see him in the hallways—by accident, of course.”

  My eyebrows rose at the blatant hint of scheming. “And passing out from lack of air will impress the chu out of him, won’t it,” I said dryly, but a stab of anticipation brought me straight.

  Saucily humming the music I had picked out for my wedding, Heather helped me into a clean dress. She had joined the palace staff as a kitchen girl when I was seven and she was eight, but after borrowing her for a game of tag, I insisted she become a member of my “court.”

  Court had been a rather grand name for my loose gathering of companions at the time. I had been horribly obnoxious, demanding everyone play with me, noble and commoner alike. Heather, though, remained while others drifted away—a steady companion and extra set of ears keeping me informed of the palace gossip.

  “Have you seen him?” I asked, worried as I sat in a rustle of fabric before my mirror in my outer room. She had been unusually silent while I’d washed the street dirt from me, making me think the news wasn’t good.

  “He who?” Her eyebrows were high with an artful disinterest.

  “Garrett!” I said, pushing her away in exasperation as she tried to arrange my hair.

  “Prince Garrett of Misdev?” She said his name around a languorous sigh that sent her ample chest heaving dramatically. “The entire staff met him after breakfast while you were out. He’s been with your parents since, cloistered away with papers and maps. Dreary stuff. I don’t know how he stands it, the poor man. I’m sure he’d rather be out hawking or riding.”

  Heather pulled a curl from my topknot, and I tucked it back. I didn’t like her that close to my darts; she thought they were only a favorite bit of decoration. Lord help me if she ever pricked herself. I didn’t wear my knife or bullwhip behind palace walls, either.

  “And where did Kavenlow ride off to in such a hurry?” she continued. “The cook said he took the cold pork she was going to serve tomorrow and ran to the stables. Such a fuss that woman made. You’d think he stole a live pig the way she was bellyaching!”

  I frowned. “Kavenlow left? By horse?”

  “Right out the front gate.” She teased out another curl. “Bilge scrapings, Tess. Let me put your hair down. Honestly! Why won’t you let me pad you in front a little, too? Just for today? You’re as tall and thin as a dinghy’s mast.”

  Exasperated, I let the curl stay. Heather’s preoccupation with my looks was because I didn’t have any, and she did. She was shorter than me by half a head and pleasingly round where a woman should be, with rosy cheeks, blond hair, and wide, child-bearing hips. Fine, good, Costenopolie stock, as Kavenlow would say.

  “Kavenlow didn’t tell me good-bye,” I mused aloud. “That’s not like him.” Then I brightened. “Perhaps it has something to do with a betrothal gift.”

  “That must be it,” Heather said. “Though why he raided the larder is beyond me.”

  “We didn’t eat while we were out.” I carefully took the darts from my topknot and placed them in the hairpin cushion. My hair tumbled down, and I reached for the brush.

  The morning’s excursion had been an obvious ploy to keep me out of the palace and prevent me from meeting Garrett. I thought Kavenlow was being grossly overprotective. Though our grandparents had warred upon each other, King Edmund had far more to gain by his second son marrying into the family, hoping to prosper by the Red Moon Prophesy rather than be destroyed by it. Our marriage had been arranged for almost a year, but Garrett and I weren’t supposed to meet until a month from now at the summer festival, then be wedded this winter at the turning of the year. That he was early didn’t bother me at all.

  Heather pressed her lips and took the brush from me, struggling to get through the tangles the wind from the bay had made of my curls. “I don’t like you going down into the streets. You’re going to end up dead,” she said, giving my hair a sharp tug. “And what’s going to happen to me then? You couldn’t pay me to go into the streets with you again.”

  “That was years ago,” I protested. “Heather, bury it and find a new horse to ride.”

  A tinge of red came over her sun-starved cheeks, and her tugs grew sharper. In all honesty, it had been a near miss. The surrounding merchants and townsfolk had spontaneously retaliated, stoning the man to death under my and Heather’s horrified eyes. To Kavenlow’s fury, he hadn’t been able to stop them. My people left nothing to question in their anger. Kavenlow had stomped about the palace for days. Two days later, he began secretly desensitizing me to the poison on my needles to supplement my growing whip and knife skills.

  “You should have sent me,” she said, tugging on my hair. “I know what you like.”

  I took the brush from her before she yanked my hair out entirely. “I was buying something for Garrett.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” A randy glitter came into her blue eyes. “What did you get him? A matched set of jewels?” Her eyes went wide with a mocking innocence as she fluffed my clean underskirt. “No-o-o-o? He probably has a pair already. Maybe a great, awful, long sword? No? He has one of those already, too.” She giggled merrily.

  “A knife,” I said, meeting her grin with my own. Heather should have been married years ago, but had she accepted any of the numerous offers, she would’ve had to leave me until I was wed as well. And life beside me was too comfortable for her to give it up. Not to mention the court stipend.

  “A knife?” Heather repeated. She played with the ends of her hair, her full lips falling into a pout that generally got her whatever she wanted from the cook’s boy.

  I nodded. “It used to belong to a desert king. Want to see it?” I reached for my coin bag atop the vanity, pulling out the knife and placing it in her palm. “Be careful,” I warned. “It’s wickedly sharp. The gypsy I bought it from accidentally pricked my finger on it. See?”

  Heather dutifully glanced at the tiny spot as I held my hand out. “Kavenlow beat her with the flat of his sword,” I said, a distant feeling coming over me. “He burned her wagon and slaughtered her horse. She had . . . blue eyes. Have you ever seen a gypsy with blue eyes?”

  Heather’s mouth fell open. “Kavenlow?” she whispered. “He beat her?”

  “Oh, it was quite a sight,” I said slowly, seeming to smell smoke. I felt odd, starting when Heather took my hand and pulled my finger closer for a better look.

  “Chu, Tess!” she exclaimed softly. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  I pulled away, confused. “I don’t know.” Frowning, I turned to my mirror. “Do you think Garrett will like it?” I asked, tucking the knife in a drawer. “You saw him. What’s he like?”

  My pricked finger apparently forgotten, Heather s
at on the edge of my dressing couch, her round cheeks pinched as she beamed. “You are so fortunate, it makes me ill. Of all the fat ugly men, you somehow find the single handsome one.”

  At least he isn’t ugly, I thought. “Is he clever?” I asked her reflection.

  “Clever? It matters? He’s gorgeous!”

  “Oh, how nice . . .” I said, trying to feign an air of indifference as I smoothed my hair. I’d seen portraits, of course. But portraits often lied.

  “Yes, and he looks like he really knows how to use his sword,” she confided. “Even the one buckled to his belt,” she added, her blue eyes innocently serious.

  I gave her a raised-eyebrow look. Angels give me strength. I’d been waiting for a husband too long. A girl can crochet only so many doilies.

  “And he made the head cook blush with his praise of breakfast,” Heather added.

  That was impressive. Getting that old woman to color took some doing. “He can’t be better looking than the falconer’s boy,” I protested, praying she’d say he was.

  She nodded enthusiastically. “By a wagonload. Lord help me, his shoulders would make angels cry. And he has such a tight little—”

  “Heather!” I cried as she dramatically fanned herself, falling back on the couch by the window.

  “Oh . . .” she moaned. “You will have so many children, you will put the peasants to shame. To shame!”

  I turned away, pleased. I was obligated to marry the most lucrative offer, no matter what the man who came with it looked like or how stupid he was, especially with the “Marry her for glory or murder her for safety” mentality the surrounding noble families were afflicted with. And the marriage offers had tapered off dramatically since poor Prince Rupert.

  “Looks aren’t everything,” I said, running the brush over my hair and getting it stuck in a curl.

  Heather’s face was masked in a mocking horror as she met my gaze in the mirror. “Listening to you, one would think looks were nothing!”

  I cocked my head. “If one thought that, one would be . . . half-right?”

  She threw a cushion at me, which I easily knocked aside. “Your royal blood is showing,” she said in disgust. “Looks are everything.”

  I gazed at myself in the mirror, hoping Garrett didn’t think so. “I want a husband as smart as I am,” I said, thinking wistfully of Prince Rupert’s witty letters still at the bottom of my wardrobe drawer. “One who can play a decent game of thieves and kings.”

  “Games,” Heather said with a sigh as she came and took the brush from me. “Is that all you think about? Men are pigs rooting in the mud, royal and common alike. The sooner you realize that, the happier you’ll be.”

  “A man with high standards,” I continued, knowing she didn’t understand. “Dangerous, maybe?” I said, and her eyes went bright with repressed laughter. “A man with power, not necessarily wealth.”

  Heather snickered as she brushed my hair. “You have a better chance to catch a punta by the tail than finding a man that meets your standards, Tess. Especially when you have such a small inlet to cast your net in.”

  I sighed. “Use a mythical creature to catch a mythical creature,” I said, thinking that it was a good analogy—and not very encouraging. Puntas were large, ferocious cats with tufts of silver on their ears, able to vanish in a whirl of wind when surprised, which wasn’t very often. They haunted the beach as well as the mountains, reputed to be able to heal the sick, bring rain to end a drought, or call wandering herds of goats to their doom. I’d seen a punta pelt before, dry and dusty, cracking with age. They avoided people to the degree that it was questioned whether there were any yet alive.

  I stood, running my hands down my white linen dress. It wouldn’t be my fault if Garrett and I met in the corridors. “Do I look all right?” I asked anxiously.

  Heather sent her gaze over me, shaking her head in dismay. My eyes dropped, and my face went slack. It didn’t matter how tall I stood or how courtly my accent was, I was not built right. My curves were too shallow and my figure hidden under the yards of fabric was too defined by my afternoons on horseback. It hadn’t seemed to matter before. It did now.

  There was a heartbeat of silence, then clearly realizing what she had done, Heather bustled close, fluffing my skirt. “Oh, your hair looks fetching,” she asserted brightly, her face flushed. “I’ve never seen longer, and it’s that lovely rich brown, like freshly turned earth. Just like your eyes. You look—nice. Princess nice.”

  I gave her a thin smile. I wasn’t ugly, but we both knew I wasn’t the one the palace guards were sighing wistfully after when we went down the hallways together.

  “All you need is your circlet,” Heather said as she turned to my vanity.

  A small, pained sound escaped me, and I said nothing, keeping my eyes on my reflection.

  “Tess!” Heather wailed, her shoulders slumping. “Heaven help you, again? I swear, you’d lose your feet if you didn’t use them to stand on.”

  “I didn’t lose it; I traded it for Garrett’s knife,” I said defensively. “Could you slip out to the smith’s for a new one for me? I’d be ever so grateful.”

  My voice was entirely reasonable, hiding my sudden flush of worry for what my mother would say if she found out. It had sounded like a good idea at the time, and it was my crown, drowned it all. I was tired of being told what I could and couldn’t do. One would think that being a princess meant making your own decisions, but I never got a say in anything, always bending to do what was proper, what was expected. And I was weary of it. My thoughts drifted to the picture of Garrett hanging in the receiving room. Oh, I was so weary of it.

  Heather stood with her hands on her hips, waiting. She wasn’t supposed to leave the grounds unchaperoned, and I’d have to sweeten the deal for her to risk it. “I’ll tell everyone you’re cloistered away sewing,” I offered, recalling her unending prattle this morning had been exclusively about her latest suitor, and how long it had been since she had seen him. Alone. In the spring air. Wink, wink. Nod, nod. Sigh, sigh.

  My shoulders slumped. If I couldn’t follow my desires, at least she could. And maybe she’d tell me about it in the morning. “Take as long as you want,” I added. “I can get out of my dress tonight by myself.”

  I couldn’t—at least not without hurting myself—but I knew I had won when a sound of anticipation slipped from her. “All night?” she questioned. “You won’t tell anyone I’m gone?”

  I nodded, relieved the price of Garrett’s knife wouldn’t be a lecture from my mother but an evening of sewing buttons back on my dress when I popped them off to get out of it tonight.

  “Oh, pig feathers, it’s a deal!” she said, licking her thumb and extending it. I did the same, and we pressed them together, sealing the bargain with spit as we had when we were giggling fools keeping secrets. Apparently not much had changed.

  She looked to the door, clearly eager to be gone. “I hear there’s a new fish in the solarium’s pond,” Heather said as she picked up the basket in which she had brought me my noon meal. “Very pretty. You should see it. All glittery with black and green . . .”

  Black and green. The same color as the uniforms of Garrett’s guards. I met her grin with my own. I would have been surprised had she not known where Garrett was.

  Standing by my door, her smile faltered. “You aren’t really going to force an introduction, are you?”

  Seeing her troubled brow, I shook my head, bowing yet again to what was expected of me instead of what I wanted. Chu, I was so weak of determination, it was pitiful. But to do more than steal a look at Garrett would be a severe breach of etiquette. “No,” I said. “Just look.”

  She gave me a satisfied nod and tugged open the door. Leaving it propped for me, she sashayed down the hallway with her empty basket on her arm, giving each sentry she passed a flirtatious hello, her mind obviously on—er—other things. I headed the other way, getting only cursory greetings until I turned the corner since most of the guards wer
e watching Heather. All I had to do was get to the solarium before Kavenlow intervened. And he was gone for the day.

  Nervousness began to creep up my spine like a wolf spider, and I gathered up my skirts so I could move faster. The halls were bright with noon, and my father’s soldiers posted at the corners were wearing their best uniforms of gold and blue. They looked unusually dapper. I gave each a nod as I passed, and got more than a few encouraging winks in return. We had grown up together, and I felt as if they were overly protective brothers. They knew where I was headed, but only Kavenlow or my parents had the authority to stop me.

  Anticipation tingled to the tips of my toes when I found four guards at the door to the solarium. Two were unfamiliar, dressed in the well-appointed uniforms of black and green that I had seen in the streets. Lavish hats with drooping black feathers sat perched upon their heads. I eyed them, thinking the gaudy things would blow off in the first breeze from the bay. The men were undoubtedly part of Garrett’s personal guard. One looked too young, the other too old.

  I shook my head at my father’s sentries to tell them not to announce me. One smiled and opened the door, taking care to shut it softly behind me. The sun was glaring, and I squinted about the empty-seeming indoor garden. I heard my mother’s laugh and placed them at the unseen table by the orchid pond. The space was draped in vines to make a private nook. I had often used it for a classroom, and there was an ongoing game of thieves and kings between my father and me on the fishpond’s retaining wall.

  Following the voices, I crept down the tiled path between potted ferns and lavish vines from the south border islands. The heat of the day was thick, caught between the stone walls and the high glass ceiling. I wished I had worn something lighter. My pulse quickened as I heard what had to be Garrett’s voice. He spoke with great precision, hitting every syllable with a clarity that hinted at a clever mind and swift wit.

  I eased around a large potted tree, well-hidden behind the captain of my father’s guard and another, unfamiliar man in black and green. My father looked up across the distance when the sentries shifted to recognize and dismiss me. Brow furrowed, he started to rise but then turned the motion to that of resettling himself. “Leave now,” he mouthed at me, distracting my mother and the young man standing beside her by shuffling the papers on the table.