Princess Juniper of Torr

by Ammi-Joan Paquette

  Just about anything would do.

  “Come on,” she urged, “gather round, everyone. Our plan needs some changing, that’s true. Fine, a lot of changing. Pretty much starting from scratch. But that doesn’t mean we won’t come up with something just as good in the end. In fact”—she swallowed—“I bet we can come up with an even better one if we try.”

  “You think?” Jess deadpanned. But she gathered with the others and dropped down on a cushion near the low table. Even Fleeter nosed over, looking for attention after spending so much time alone over the past days. For a wonder, the creature was actually awake!

  Juniper had cleared all the food off the table and now set out a sheaf of parchment and her freshly sharpened stylus. Erick’s master information list was nearby, too, but Juniper’s nerves were badly rattled. She hoped a good list-making session would restore her equilibrium. “Let’s start by writing it all out—our tasks and our obstacles.”

  “We need to find a way to free the king,” said Erick staunchly. “That’s its own task now, separate from the dungeons.”

  Juniper wrote that down. “Obstacles?”

  “Twenty-four-hour-a-day guard at the base of the Glassroom’s pillar,” Jess rattled off. “Fully lighted interior, the lamp oil replenished daily, so no sneaking up in the dark. They’ll lower the globe once or twice daily, for supplies and waste and so on, but there’s a dozen guards posted already, and I’m sure they’ll call in more for the occasion.”

  “How do you get out of that thing?” asked Root.

  “There’s a metal ladder for climbing up and down,” said Jess, “but that’s no use to us. Any climbers would be visible to all by day, and the lamplight makes it even brighter by night. No, His Majesty is clean out of reach, and that’s a fact.”

  Juniper recorded all this with a simple nod. None of it was new information, and all of it made her tremble with impotent rage. But the act of writing was already helping her feel more in control. To clearly see and understand the enemy, after all, gives a much better shot at victory.

  Or that was the hope, anyway.

  “All right, so freeing the king can’t be our first task anymore,” Juniper said, dying a little as she spoke the words, but knowing they were true. “There’s just no way to accomplish it right now. What about the blue stone?”

  “Made it through,” said Leena. “We got the dishes back empty as usual. Unless something went astray down them dungeon stairs, His Majesty got the message before he was moved.”

  “For all the good it does him now,” muttered Jess.

  “So what is our next goal?” Juniper asked.

  “Free the prisoners,” said Egg aloud. “No change there.” She frowned down at her hands, evidently too busy with her work to stop and elaborate.

  Juniper sent a querying glance, and Egg’s frown deepened.

  “Yes,” said Erick. “We need to rescue our parents and the other captives. But more than that, think of all the imprisoned guards! If we can just free them, we could get back the rest of the plan.”

  “But how?” asked Jess.

  “The Mantis nixed the crowds,” said Juniper. “And put out that horrible story about my father. We’ve lost the element of surprise, and somehow I don’t think we’d be able to rile up the nobles and dignitaries milling around tomorrow. Even if there were enough of them to cause a tumult, which isn’t likely. So where does that leave us?”

  “We got Tippy’s quick-eye view of the dungeon from her look inside,” said Erick. “But there’s still so much about them we don’t know.”

  Root cleared his throat awkwardly. “I know something of the dungeons. I, er, used to sneak down there a lot back in the day.”

  Juniper looked up in surprise. Nobles had been given a fair amount of leeway in the lower levels of the palace, and exploring a dungeon that had been empty for decades (during King Regis’s reign, that is; now it was full to bursting) couldn’t have been any kind of security risk. But it was an odd pastime for a noble. Root shifted. “My life was always so . . . sanitary,” he said lamely, “so organized and scripted. Sometimes I just felt like I needed to—see the other side, as it were. Look under the fabric to get at the seams. You know?”

  As a matter of fact, Juniper did know. A very similar set of feelings had led her to start her expedition to Queen’s Basin.

  “Go on, then,” said Leena. “Tell us about the dungeon.”

  According to Root, the dungeon was located directly under the army barracks, accessible through a winding stair that came up directly into the barracks courtyard. At the bottom of the staircase was a small area with a half dozen guards’ rooms. That connected to the dungeon proper: a long circular hallway around a wide-open area (until recently housing the king’s cell), with individual cells leading off the central room so the guards could keep an eye on all the doors with a minimal patrol area.

  “How many prisoners do we suppose are down there?” Erick asked.

  “Several hundred at least,” said Root. “I’ve been spying on the guards since I got back in here. As far as I can see, almost no one is allowed near the barracks or the dungeon. Just the guards assigned there. They keep it bare-bones.” He seemed put out by this, and Tippy nodded her own sorrowful agreement.

  “The fewer guards in the rotation, the fewer there will be for us to contend with,” Juniper said thoughtfully.

  “That’s true. The thing is, though, there aren’t that many cells down there. With so many prisoners, they’re bound to have put some of the overflow, the less high-risk ones, for example, in those outer cells that used to be prison guards’ lodgings.”

  “The ones at the base of the stairs, before the main prison loop?” said Jess.

  “Right.”

  Juniper was keeping up with all this on her parchment sheet. “Let’s talk about getting in. If we took care of the guards, how would that work?”

  Tippy perked up. “I can help here, from my very own eagle eyes! Here’s what I saw in my watching: There’s only two chief guard guys what do the overseeing. They trade off one and then another. It’s always one of them or the other to unlock the big old dungeon door.”

  “So the master key never leaves the dungeon, I’m guessing,” said Juniper.

  “Probably not,” said Root. “They would have the new chief guard—the one just starting his duty that day—do the unlocking, when his partner clocks out. Every aspect of the rotation is strict and regimented, from all I’ve been able to see.”

  “Me too,” agreed Tippy importantly.

  “The Mantis sure isn’t making it easy,” said Jess.

  “All right,” Juniper said, trying to tamp down her growing frustration. “So we still have the same three goals: Free my father. Free the guards. And, of course, depose the Mantis. The first we can’t start with. And the other two . . .”

  “It’s like a big Gordian knot, isn’t it?” said Erick. “All tangled up together. To free the king, we need the prisoners. To free the prisoners, we need the keys. To get the keys, we need to drop the Mantis, but we can’t do that without the king. It’s like a dog endlessly chasing its tail.”

  “Not endlessly,” said Juniper, throwing down her stylus and jumping to her feet. “There’s a solution here somewhere. We’ve just got to find it.” Her head felt full to bursting. Striding to the window, she put both hands on the sill and looked out. The gates wouldn’t open to the small groups of commoners until the afternoon, and the miserably empty grounds—on this, the first day of Summerfest, which should be the happiest time of the year!—made Juniper want to cry.

  Then something way down below caught her eye. Someone. Juniper narrowed her gaze. Could that be who she thought it was? A bunch of separate elements swirled in her mind: a fallen parchment sheet, a pungent smell, a certain stall at the fair.

  Behind her, she heard a shifting in place, then a faint metal ti
nkling. Then Egg’s words, spoken out loud. “Wait. I have something to share.”

  Juniper was still caught up in the view below, following her quarry with her eyes until she was sure. Then, all at once, everything coalesced into one shimmering point. Yes.

  Just like that, they were back in business.

  Juniper spun around, heart pounding. Egg was signing, her face tense with determination—and something else. Shame? Uncertainty? Juniper listened for Jess’s interpretation but kept her eyes on Egg as the story began: “I have been making a key for the dungeons. I wanted to do this alone. It is . . . the way I always work. But the stakes are so high. I am not moving fast enough.” She swallowed, looked around the circle, then met Juniper’s gaze straight-on with a shy smile. “Maybe this spy no longer works best alone. Maybe I should consider allies. Teamwork.”

  As Juniper processed this, Egg brought up her tightly closed fist with an air of dramatic reveal. Slowly she turned it over, splaying her fingers wide. Sitting in her palm was a small, spindly piece of metal.

  A gnut.

  17

  AFTER EGG’S REVELATION, THE ROOM ERUPTED in questions and unbridled enthusiasm.

  “Let the girl talk,” Jess barked. “Just because she can’t hear you isn’t a reason to drown her out. Clear back to your circle and talk one at a time so she can follow along. Egg’s got more to say about the blasted gnuts.”

  “What is a gnut, anyway?” Root asked.

  Egg pulled a bag out of the pocket of her split skirts and popped the small metal instrument back into it. “My father’s legacy. His invention and his fortune.” She nodded to Jess, who continued with a weary eye-roll.

  “Our father sells his gnuts up and down the continent. It’s a multiuse, multipurpose gadget—an ‘anything thing,’ he calls it. You can use it to connect stuff, fix stuff. It’s endlessly adaptable and absolutely indispensable. According to him.” Egg shrugged. “It gets him places, and everyone seems to want five or six of their own. It’s given him the money and the excuse to do all his spying. So I guess it really is the magic tool.”

  “What does that have to do with our key?” Juniper asked.

  “The gnut is the key,” Egg continued through Jess. “It can be made into a device to pick the lock. I am almost there. I just . . . am missing something.”

  “It’s a good plan,” said Juniper slowly. The gnut looked all sorts of clever, but to make it into a genuine lock pick? On such short notice? Tinkering time was a luxury they didn’t have. Then she thought of what Egg had said. “Teamwork,” Juniper mused. She pulled out a sheet of blank parchment. “Egg, can you sketch out what you’ve got done so far?”

  While she did, the others gathered in close to follow.

  “This part here,” said Root, pointing, “what if you turned it the other way around? The locks in the dungeon are narrow but get wider inside. Once you’re through the keyhole, there will be room for the device to ease apart.”

  Jess huffed. “You need lubricant to make it bend right. I’ve got a cream that will probably work.”

  “Erick,” said Juniper, “what about that book you were reading the other day? Wasn’t there a whole section on metal crafting and mechanical arts?”

  Erick reached behind him to scan through a stack of well-thumbed volumes. He eased out the third from the top and began riffling the pages, till his eyes lit up and he swung it open to a page riddled with diagrams and jargon so technical that Juniper saw stars.

  Erick set the book down and touched Egg on the shoulder to get her attention. “Can I see what you’ve got?” he asked.

  Egg handed him the bag and Erick poured the gnuts out onto the floor. His fingers started twitching, and his eyes got that glaze that Juniper was used to seeing when Oona looked at Root. Egg met his gaze and grinned.

  “I suppose we should give our engineers a little space,” Juniper said, keeping her voice low and light. She paused, then made up her mind. “And while they’re occupied, I’ve got an attack-team mission of our own to undertake. A little something I saw out the window is calling our names. Leena and Tippy, you probably need to get back to the kitchens. So Jess, Root—shall we?”

  • • •

  Sneaking out of the castle took more forethought than their last venture, but time was of the essence and Juniper grabbed at the first thing that came to mind. Exiting the Pockets in the deserted pantry, she grabbed two giant burlap bags. One was empty and the other was half full of bread; both were emblazoned with the words MAVENHAM BREADS AND SUNDRIES.

  “The palace always needs more bread,” Juniper said. “Don’t they know there’s a party coming up? We should go pay a visit to the baker.”

  Jess frowned. “But the Mavenhams always drop the bread off themselves.”

  Juniper winked. “What do you bet the front-gate guards won’t know that? Anyway.” She looked from side to side in an exaggerated way. “I hear the oldest Mavenham girl, that one who was tired of baking bread all day, she ran off and joined that rogue former princess, can you only imagine?!”

  Root stifled a burst of laughter, and even Jess quirked her lips. Then, hauling the bags in front of them in a self-important way—drawing as much attention as possible to what they carried and away from the carriers—the three breezed down the hallways, past the wide front doors, through the gardens, and out into the Bazaar.

  Juniper had kept her walk stately, if still brisk, as they moved through the palace. Once they cleared the guards, she tossed her bag to Jess and broke into a run.

  “Wait,” said Jess, grabbing her arm. “Aren’t you going to tell us what we’re doing?”

  This was the part Juniper had been dreading. She knew exactly how her wild-goose chase would sound. But Jess was right; she needed to tell them. “All right—but we have to keep walking. I don’t know how long we have. So, I was looking out the window just a bit ago, and I saw a familiar form sneaking through the castle gates: our old friend Cyril.”

  “Cyril?” said Jess, at the same time as Root said, “Sneaking?”

  “Yes to both,” said Juniper. She picked up her pace. “When we came out to the Bazaar the other day, I thought I saw Cyril in the crowds. I followed him for a bit but then I lost him near a certain stall. I thought I must have imagined him.”

  “And now you’ve seen him again—but how is that important?” said Jess. “Aren’t we trying to stay away from him?”

  “I’ve been putting some puzzle pieces together in my head,” said Juniper. “And I’m starting to think that those tiny bits all together make up a big picture that’s quite different from what we’d thought.”

  Root’s face did confused, and Jess’s did skeptical.

  Juniper warmed to her tale. “Think about it—we’re a day into Summerfest, and Cyril has not yet given us away. You know we’d have heard about it if he had! In all our spying, we’ve never once seen him have a friendly exchange with his stepmother. Not one! Now, it could be that he was loyal to his father, but I find it hard to believe he’s in full support of the Mantis’s awful ways.” She couldn’t say that she trusted Cyril, exactly—it was far too early for that. But the more time passed, the more the conviction was growing in her that there might be another side to his story. And she was curiously curious to hear what it was.

  The other two digested this in silence.

  Then Root said, “Summerfest has officially begun. It’s not like Cyril isn’t expecting us to be here already.”

  “Exactly!” Juniper replied. “He knows we’re going to be here, so what’s the harm in accosting him?”

  As they walked on, Juniper examined her new plan and its many possibilities. All she’d told the others was true. On the other hand, she wasn’t born yesterday. Her gut might lean toward trusting Cyril, but by the goshawk, the rest of her was going to wait till his loyalties were confirmed before acting.

  • • •


  After that, they shifted into speed mode, zipping around stalls and through knots of people. The usual giddy lightness of Summerfest was cut through with a tangible sense of disappointment. Huge crowds were camped out around the castle, awaiting the opening of the gates to let in the trickle of allotted visitors to view the grounds and the performers. Keeping that out of her mind for now (one problem at a time), Juniper retraced—with some difficulty—the route along which she’d tracked Cyril several days before. Her heart pounded in her chest. How long since she’d spotted him from the window, slinking out of the gates? How long would he be here for?

  Then she came around a flower merchant’s cart and saw the faded sign reading APOTHECARY BY AGNES. In front of the stall stood Cyril; his shoulders were hunched, as though to draw the eye as little as possible, but it was unmistakably him. He’d shaved off that infernally pretentious barely-there mustache, Juniper noted with satisfaction, so that was one less cause for annoyance. He was speaking with the fresh-faced girl who stood behind the table. She took his coins and pressed a small jar into his hand. Cyril slid that into his pocket with a furtive look over each shoulder, as though afraid of being seen. He didn’t look directly behind him, which was just as well, since his three stalkers were right in the open.

  Juniper tugged Root and Jess back behind the flower merchant.

  “How are we supposed to catch him?” asked Root doubtfully.

  Juniper hesitated. She was a talking sort of girl, a lay-it-all-out-and-see-where-we-stand sort of girl, a girl who liked to hit a problem head-on and deal with it right up front. But this was not an everyday scenario. There was too much at stake to risk it all on a slapdash whim.

  “I’ve got this one,” said Jess. She reached into her satchel and pulled out a thick yellow handkerchief. “You two get Cyril into that alley over there, and I’ll do the rest.”

  “Wait—what do you have in mind?” Juniper began.

  But Root grabbed her arm. “He’s leaving!”