Princess Juniper of Torr

by Ammi-Joan Paquette

  The difference between the right time to move and the wrong one is the difference between a safe walk over the bridge and a dunking into the stream. Go slow enough to pay attention; when the right time comes, you’ll know it.

  #4: When the time is right, be bold.

  Once that moment is reached, pounce! Don’t hesitate. Don’t look back. Don’t second-guess. You’ve come this far on sheer guts and gumption. Ride the force of that wave all the way through to the victorious finish.

  10

  DESPITE ALL THEIR KNUCKLE GNAWING—OR perhaps because of it, taking Oona’s view of the helpful powers of worrying—there was no visible fallout from the kerfuffle outside the Royal Suite. Neither Cyril nor his stepmother gave any sense of knowing they had been spied upon. Gradually, Team Goshawk relaxed. Over the next few days, they settled into a sort of routine. (Juniper considered making a schedule, but decided that might be a bit over-the-top, even for her.) They rose early, divided into scouting groups, and spent their days lurking in the Pockets, spying on the palace from inside the walls. At night, they met in the Aerie and pooled their information, which Erick transcribed onto one extra-large roll of parchment, which they set out on the low table as a sort of master spy document. (It was nearly as good as a schedule, come to think of it.)

  Egg’s assessment of the staff had been right-on: To Malvinia’s face, every person was courteous, attentive, and perfectly behaved. But she just had to leave the room for the frowns and mutterings to start up.

  Surely the Queen’s Basin team could exploit this, when the time was right.

  Rupert Lefarge stayed unresponsive in his sick room, his condition unchanged. A serving boy came in to spoon-feed him sugar water and thick broth several times a day. Cyril continued to hold his information close, ignoring his stepmother’s questions and spending a great deal of time at his father’s bedside, or—uncharacteristically, Juniper thought, given his self-absorbed nature—taking his young half brother on energetic runs in the palace gardens or reading him piles of brightly colored picture books.

  Nobles and dignitaries arrived daily from all over Torr and beyond, settling into the guest wing suites in preparation for the upcoming Summerfest. The staff worked flat-out from morning till night. So many of the longtime members had chosen imprisonment rather than pledging loyalty to the new rulers that the palace was seriously understaffed. And those who were at work were mostly new and untrained. According to Leena, it would take a miracle for them to pull off the big Summerfest banquet.

  The most important piece of information, however, was the single one they had not been able to verify: No one had yet made it into the dungeon to lay eyes on King Regis.

  “I’ve gone as near as I dared and spied through the closest Pocket for hours,” said Jess. “The guards are vigilant and relentless.”

  “We have to find a way in there,” said Erick. “Freeing the king is the key to everything.”

  But the dungeon was locked up tight as a drum, with a strict rotation and no fewer than three guards at the entrance. No one outside the elite guard contingent was allowed inside the reinforced doors. Extra guards came to carry food trays, waiting outside the door to provide support until the front guards returned with the empty dishes.

  The only other known set of keys was kept in the one place they could not access: on a thick ring securely fastened around the Mantis’s waist.

  “I’m officially making this our primary goal,” Juniper told the group. “We have got to find a way to get into the dungeon!”

  • • •

  With the prisoners frustratingly out of reach, Juniper wedged herself into the spying rotation by spending a good chunk of time in Rupert Lefarge’s sickroom. The only peephole was in the anteroom, and Juniper could see only a small bit of the bedchamber from her spot in the Pockets. But it was enough to watch Cyril make his way there early in the morning, take a seat next to his father’s still form, and keep up a patter of one-way conversation across the hours that Juniper kept her quiet vigil. At one point, Cyril disappeared for more than an hour, coming back with a bowlful of something pungent that curled her toes and made her eyes water from clear across the suite. This he slowly and painstakingly spooned into his father’s mouth.

  What on earth was Cyril doing?

  Aside from those gag-inducing minutes, the chamber was mostly still, and time passed uneventfully. Near the end of the day, when Juniper’s legs were cramped and her back ached something fierce, a loud rat-a-tat came on the door of Lefarge’s room, which then exploded open in a whirl of small-bodied frenzy.

  So this was the little mystery boy.

  “Ceepee! Papa?” he lisped, throwing himself at the end of the bed.

  “Come on, Artie, you know Papa’s sleeping,” said Cyril, in a low voice. Unreasonably, Juniper wanted the kid to keep shouting. I mean, if someone’s in an unconscious sleep, that’s a bad thing, right? Why wouldn’t you want the kind of loud noise that might wake him up?

  Still, Cyril evidently didn’t see it that way, for he gathered the little tyke in a playful headlock and zoomed him out of the room. The door shut behind them. Juniper listened to the stuttered breathing of her father’s former chief adviser for several long minutes. Then she sighed, creaked to a standing position, and headed back for the Aerie.

  • • •

  Pulling herself up through the trapdoor in the middle of the floor, Juniper found Egg standing alone at a window, looking out over the grounds. Unsure how to make the girl aware of her presence, Juniper walked up and touched Egg on the shoulder. The other girl just nodded like she’d known Juniper was there already.

  Without Jess around to interpret, Egg hiked up her sleeve to reveal her armband and fished out her chalk. “Wood floors,” she wrote. “You walk like a draco.”

  “I do not!” said Juniper indignantly, then she giggled. “I prefer to think I move like a draco in flight, all grace and glory.”

  She flapped her arms out like wings, and Egg rolled her eyes.

  “I’ve ridden one, you know. A live draco. No, really.” She could see that Egg didn’t believe her. “People think they’re just beasts of legend, but there’s at least one in the world that’s as live as you or I. It’s a stout friend—never say a pet!—of my blood sister, Zetta, the ruler of the Anju.”

  “Blood sister? What is that?”

  “Oh, she’s not a proper sister. It goes deeper than that, a blood bond that extends to the heart of the Lower Continent itself.” Juniper turned toward the window, then caught herself and faced back toward Egg, hoping she was forming the words distinctly enough. She knew lipreading was not easy work. “I don’t truly understand it all myself. It’s something I wish to learn more about from the Anju someday.”

  “You fought the Anju, yes?”

  “Not exactly,” said Juniper. “It’s . . . complicated. My mother was born Anju and was to be their chief, ever so long back. When we came upon them in the Hourglass Mountains some weeks ago, they were holding trials to choose their next chief. For a time, I thought that if I could become their leader, it would gain me a fighting force against the Monsians.”

  Egg raised a quizzical brow.

  “Well, good intentions don’t pave roads,” Juniper said. “I was wrong to force myself on them, but it worked out in the end. We’re all friends now, and I ended up with something better than subjects: allies.”

  “And the draco?”

  “Who knows what he’s up to? Lumbering about his cave, no doubt.”

  Egg seemed to be digesting this whole exchange. She fumbled with her chalk a bit, erasing and rewriting a couple times before angling her arm for Juniper to see. “Your experience is interesting. But I have found self-reliance the best guarantee of success.”

  This surprised Juniper. “Oh, you can’t think that! How can one person be and do everything that’s needed?”

  Egg shrugged. �
��A true spy stands alone.” Then her head turned to follow a movement in the gardens. “I must go,” she wrote. She turned and grabbed her bow and arrow from the couch, then headed down the stairs.

  Long after she left, Juniper stood gazing out over the grounds, watching the group of young nobles clustered around the archery targets. Egg had joined them in her most innocent pose, obviously trying to blend in and continue her surreptitious information gathering. Farther out beyond the palace peaks and gables and tiled turrets stretched the White Highway, and farther still—oh, so unreachably far away—were Juniper’s beloved Hourglass Mountains. Somewhere nestled in them lay Queen’s Basin, her tiny mountain kingdom just awaiting her return. And on its neighboring peak was the Anju village, which had carved such a deep spot into her heart. How could she have begun to tell Egg how the Anju trials had bonded Zetta and her for life? How could she have expressed the feeling she’d had upon meeting Odessa, her grandmother, for the very first time? Juniper reached into her pocket and squeezed the blue stone, Odessa’s parting gift. It brought me luck, her grandmother had said. Maybe it would for Juniper, too.

  Someday, when this was all over, they needed to have a big reunion—but with all the family this time. It was seriously overdue.

  With a sigh, Juniper drew her gaze in from the far mountains and focused back toward home. Someday. Meanwhile, closer to hand was the Bazaar field, where the merchants were nearly done setting up for the looming festivities. Where Root was stashed, along with their horses, awaiting the time to meet up. Where Team Bobcat was gathered, no doubt ready with their disguises and refining their plan for palace infiltration. And closer still were the dungeons, where Juniper’s own father, and Jess and Egg’s father, and Erick’s father, and so many other fathers and mothers and sons and daughters lay captive and unreachable.

  Awaiting the force that would set them free.

  11

  “IT’S A BOONDOGGLE, INNIT?” SAID LEENA that night, the end of their third full day back in the palace, as they all gathered together to vent their frustrations on a bowl of leftover cornmeal mush and spiced apples.

  Oona nodded. “We’re doing all this skulking and gathering, but to what end? We’re no closer now than when we got here, not really.”

  “We’re in the uphill part,” Juniper reassured them. “That horrible, slow gathering climb. But once we reach the peak and get ourselves together, we’re going to get some speed on the down-go that’ll whip your hair straight back, mark my words.” The others smiled a little, and Juniper was glad for this. The mood had been increasingly gloomy of late. “Now, let’s get down to business. What are our actual goals? What can we do to reach them?”

  “We need to hit this head-on and take down the Mantis,” said Jess decisively. “She’s the number one bad guy right now. Topple her, and the castle is ours.”

  Egg shook her head firmly, and Jess narrowed her eyes.

  “I’m with Egg,” Leena said. “How can we possibly snare the Mantis? Don’t you see all the guards she’s got with her every moment of the day?”

  “I agree, there’s too many unknowns for us to try a direct attack,” Juniper said. “And we still have no idea how loyal her staff is. If even a few are firmly on her side, and we have to assume they are, that’s too many.”

  Jess’s shoulders slumped.

  “Free the prisoners, then! They’re not loyal to her,” said Tippy.

  “That’s the goal, all right,” said Erick.

  “But how can we do that?” said Oona, twisting a strand of hair nervously around her finger.

  “We can’t,” said Jess. “Why? Because we can’t get into the dungeon.”

  “Maybe we should be thinking small,” said Erick at last. “Looking for little ways to undermine her around the palace. Nibble away at her control, you know?”

  “Like a mouse war!” offered Tippy brightly.

  “And what good will that do exactly?” challenged Jess.

  “Erick is right,” said Juniper. “Little pranks and mischiefs won’t get us back the castle, but they will get the wheels rolling. Give us something to do while we look for a bigger inroad—or till we can make our own. We’ll hack away at a load of small cracks until together finally they form a giant gaping hole.”

  Leena looked unsure. Oona looked faintly green.

  “Look at it this way,” said Juniper. “We have four days till the launch of Summerfest, when the Bobcats come in the gates and we can meet up with them. Then the opening festivities kick off and things really start moving. That’s when we’ll be expected to strike; Cyril will have given his information to the Mantis by then if his father’s still out.” Picturing the motionless body in that darkened room, Juniper could not imagine Lefarge leaping up to lead a charge against them any time soon. It was painfully obvious he would be down for a while. How long till Cyril came to the same conclusion and confided in his stepmother?

  “So we need to strike before then,” said Leena slowly.

  “That’s right,” said Jess. “If we don’t take back the castle before Summerfest, we’ve failed.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Juniper said. “But certainly by then Cyril will have everyone on high alert. What we really need to do is nail down a concrete plan. I think we should take a few more days to ramp up our spy schedule, then pool it all and see where we’re at. Set our course forward. But in the meanwhile”—Juniper grinned wickedly—“let’s look for ways to cause as much chaos and confusion as we can.”

  Erick nodded. “Think of ways to subvert the Mantis’s authority. Little things here and there—if we can get her to cast suspicion on everyone around her, get her angry with them, doubting them, questioning their loyalty, so much the better. Confusion, misattribution, you get the idea.”

  “Bring on the havoc,” Tippy chirped gleefully. “Oh, I like the sound of this!”

  “You stick with me, chicklet,” said Juniper, tucking Tippy under her arm. “There’s an art and a danger to chaos making, you know.”

  And so they dove into the guts of the palace, lurking and flitting about, slipping out to tip flowerpots and topple buckets and overturn chairs. They sliced drapes and bumped pans heaped with coal dust. Juniper knew that the immediate blame would fall upon the staff, and this pained her. But it couldn’t be helped.

  As the visible face of their operation, Egg continued her work in the palace. She snooped on those rooms not easily accessed via the Pockets. She mingled with the guests and nobles—most notably through her archery jousts—and kept an eye on that side of things. She also kept the group supplied with food and drink, though Juniper was not entirely sure where it all came from or how she managed to avoid suspicion. Perhaps Cook thought she was just an exceptionally peckish girl?

  Egg hinted at a further solution she was developing: a special key, she said. A way to get them inside the dungeons. But when Juniper pressed her for more information, Egg simply wrote, “Not ready yet.” When it would be ready—or what “it” even was—was anyone’s guess.

  And so they carried on.

  Tippy, being small of frame and light of foot, took to the Pockets better than any of them, often disappearing for long hours that left Juniper faint with worry. Each time the little girl came back with sad eyes and tight lips, but only shook her head when Juniper asked what was up. This was so unlike Tippy that Juniper was on the point of calling an intervention when, early on their fifth day back in the palace, a small clammy hand shook her awake.

  “Shhhh!” Tippy said, pushing her fingers onto Juniper’s mouth for extra muffling.

  Juniper gagged and swatted away the treacle-sticky hand. “What is it?” she whispered, sitting up.

  Along the Aerie floor, Erick, Leena, Egg, and Jess were sprawled out in their bedrolls. Various rugs, pillows, and duvets had been heaped for maximum comfort (Fleeter was tucked and purring under Jess’s outstretched arm), but the cond
itions were still rustic at best. Outside the huge windows, the first crack of dawn was splitting the sky with the promise of a bright day to come.

  What on earth could have Tippy up and around so painfully early?

  When they had ducked down the steep staircase from the trapdoor and settled in the dark hall below the Aerie, Tippy’s mouth dropped open and everything poured out in a single breath: “Oh, mistress Juniper, ’tis only my sister Elly I’ve been a-worried about this whole time. Her being in the dungeon—she’s your top maid and fully devoted to Your Royalty, don’t I know it, and so completely never would have sworn that foul allegiance oath—so of course she’s certain to be locked away there. But how can I know for true she’s well? What if she’s taken sick or needs something?”

  Tippy choked, and Juniper caught a flailing hand in both of hers. “Oh, Tippy! I should have thought of how hard this is—I know how much Elly means to you. But we’re working to free the prisoners just as fast as we can.”

  “I know, but they’re trapped down in that dark place, all of them and my Elly along with, and I just can’t bear it.” Tippy scrubbed her face with her free hand, but the other tightened in Juniper’s. “Not when I might do something, don’t you know?”

  Juniper froze. “Tippy. What have you done?”

  “’Tis a good thing. You can trust me, truly.” The little girl took a deep breath. “Only here is what I am doing and did and have to do, and you can’t stop me, Your Most Royal of Junipers, and sorry I am to have gone behind your back, but I spoke with the housekeeper already, and—and I have gotten myself hired on as a second underscrubber.” With that, Tippy fell silent.

  “Wait, you—spoke to someone? Here in the palace?”

  Tippy hung her head. “I needed to, don’t you see? They don’t know me. I don’t know most of them new people here now, and even Cook what was here before—even she don’t remember me. I’m a wee fry, aren’t I? An’ look even smaller than I am. Who would remember little me as anyone in particular?”