by Shannon Hale
“Shh,” said Felissa.
“Now who’s stabbing things?” said the boy.
“Oh, I stab things all the time,” said Sus, putting her foot on the wall for leverage as she tried to pull out the sword. “You don’t need something this long to skin a swamp rat or a frog. But I wouldn’t mind having a sword when facing a caiman.”
“I don’t think caimans are real,” the boy said.
“They’re real. My sister Astrid is the best caiman hunter in all of Danland, but I’ll get better as I get older. When they come swimming at you, all you can see is their eyes and a little ridge of their back. They’re as quiet as water, and then suddenly, they snap!”
Sus clapped her hands at the boy’s face. He leaned back.
“Sus, please, no noise,” said Miri.
“No one comes up here,” said the boy. “That’s why I made it my throne room. I’m the king of Stora.”
“Kaspar, do you know of any way off this island unseen?” Britta asked.
“I wouldn’t tell you even if I did. Aren’t you the enemy?”
“Aren’t you the king of Stora?” Felissa said with a teasing smile. “We don’t have to be the enemy if you say we’re not.”
“Well, my father would be angry with me if I harbored his enemies,” said Kaspar.
“Anyway, a caiman’s jaws are this big”—Sus made a circle with her arms—“and can swallow you whole, but even more dangerous is when the caiman pulls you into a death roll underwater. It’s scary work, but when you kill it, you shout to the village, ‘We’ve got meat!’ And everyone comes running to have a caiman roast. The meat is white and thick and so good, and you just sit and eat and eat till you want to burst.”
The boy smiled. “I want to do that. How soon can we go?”
“There’s a war on,” Miri said. “There won’t be any caiman hunting for some time.”
“I wish we could go hunting now,” he said, occupied with trying to dislodge the sword from the wall. “Everyone made the war sound fun and I was excited to ride a warship, but it’s been nothing but boring talking and sitting around. Still, sometimes war is necessary for the good of a kingdom.”
“And sometimes it stinks,” said Sus. “Storan soldiers invaded our village. They killed an unarmed man just for getting into his own boat. That’s what happens in war. If you’d read A History of Peace, you’d know.”
“I have read it,” said Kaspar.
“Oh?” said Sus. A History of Peace was one of the books Miri had tried to explain to Sus from memory. “What did you think about Master Trundell’s theory that all progress begins with education, and whenever war begins, education ceases?”
“You know, I overheard someone quote that very bit to Commander Mongus when everyone was talking about invading Eris, but Commander Mongus said that things written on paper and action in the living world have nothing to do with each other.”
“That’s silly,” said Sus.
Kaspar shrugged, still working on the sword. It came loose from the wall and he held it up, grinning. “Someday I’ll join the war too.”
“Kaspar,” said Britta, “is King Fader really dead?”
He nodded, taking a few swipes at the air. “Like this, Princess Susanna. See how I keep my wrist straight?”
“Let me try,” said Sus.
“Just a minute,” said Kaspar.
“I only got a short turn,” she said.
“Kaspar, we’re in trouble,” said Miri. “I think the soldiers mean to lock us up for a long time and maybe even kill us.”
“Oh they won’t hurt you,” said Kaspar, still swinging, his forehead wrinkled in concentration.
“Well, yes, they might,” said Miri.
Felissa stepped closer, smiling kindly. Kaspar lowered his sword. She bent to her knees, and took his free hand.
“I’m asking your aid, Kaspar,” she said. “As a gentleman of Stora, can you help protect us?”
His voice warbled lower as if putting on a grand tone. “Of course, lady, because I am a gentleman. But you have nothing to fear. I mean, Mongus is a beast sometimes but ‘Storan men are honorable all,’” he said as if quoting someone. “Ooh, I want to show you something. I’ll be right back!”
Kaspar sheathed his sword and scampered out the tiny door.
“Who is he?” Astrid whispered.
“I’m betting the high commander’s son,” said Miri. “Only a high-ranking officer could bring family to war.”
“Maybe he is a king,” said Sus. “After all, I turned out to be a princess.”
“King of what?” said Astrid.
“King Fader did have a son named Kaspar, though there are …” Sus briefly shut her eyes, as if counting, “… twelve others in line for the throne before that Kaspar.”
“What if he’s going to get the soldiers?” said Britta.
“He won’t,” said Sus.
“He might,” said Astrid. “Miri?”
Miri shook her head, meaning she still had no plan. The day was a game board, and the Storans were well-placed pieces about to win. The only moves for Miri’s pieces were to evade and retreat. Except for Kaspar. He did not quite fit, and she thought to wait and see what he might do.
But night slouched outside their tiny window and he still did not return. The girls finished the water. Miri’s few slender drops seemed to miss her dry throat altogether.
Astrid stood. “I’m going.”
“No, let me,” said Miri. “Maybe I can find a path out of the castle now that it’s dark, or at least some more water.”
Felissa shook her head. “We stay together.”
They climbed back into the walls, descending down crumbling ladders, inching through dusty passages, alert for sounds through the walls. They crouched on the other side of one secret door for some time, listening. Between her own anxious breaths, Miri heard nothing but silence. Finally they emerged into a dark storage room packed with furniture. They sidled out of that maze and into an empty corridor.
They were creeping toward a staircase when footsteps resounded behind them. The girls ran. The bootfalls began to chase. Miri turned a corner and slammed into a soldier. And like that, all five girls were caught as easily as flies in honey.
The soldiers marched the girls downstairs, not to see High Commander Paldus but lower and lower still, the weight of the entire castle above, pressing them into darkness. Down where walls were rough cut right into the stone of the island and dungeons still slunk in the deep. The jagged rock glistened with water, and Miri could hear the river roaring as if it were about to break through and pound into the room.
The soldiers deposited the girls into a cell and locked the iron-barred door. The walls were mud-colored bricks, the only light from torches on the cellar wall, flickering through the bars to paint black shadows on their faces.
A voice called out, thick and hollow, from the cell beside theirs. Miri scooted closer to the wall.
“Yes, hello, who’s there?” she said.
“Master Hansa,” he said.
“I’m Miri Larendaughter of Mount Eskel, and I’m with—”
“Miri? Miss Miri?” A second voice called out, as thin and crinkled as old paper.
“Master Filippus!” she cried back. “Are you all right? What’s happened?”
“Stora happened,” he said. Miri imagined his eyes crinkling with a smile, the white of his hair and beard gray in the shadows. “They came, we cowered, and they tossed us down here to deal with later. Most of the scholars they let escape across the bridge, but we master tutors are apparently too dangerous to let free.” His voice warbled with age.
“I don’t understand what they’re doing,” said Miri.
“Well, Miss Miri, I may be a useless cowering old man, but I understand a great deal. I have read dozens of books about Stora, after all.”
“They were right, Master Filippus—you are dangerous.”
So she told him what they knew.
“ ‘The north men defe
nd honor with iron.’ The commander said those words?” asked Master Filippus. “Then this might be an honor war. Storans admire their own ethics above all else. If King Bjorn committed a crime against them, they could use it to justify an attack on Danland.”
Britta was pressed against the wall close to Miri, listening with her whole face tense.
“If they believe King Bjorn guilty, would Stora justify killing his son as well?”
“Historically, there is precedent,” said the master.
Miri could feel Britta shiver. She put an arm around her.
“They’re besieging the palace,” said Miri. “But they can’t think the king will run out of food and surrender before Danland’s army returns. It’s expected any day.”
“Mmm, clever,” Master Filippus said. “Small bands of Storan soldiers could make strikes against Danland’s army as it travels, slowing it down. Meanwhile, the Storans have impressive stocks of gunpowder. If King Bjorn doesn’t surrender, they could make bombs, set them outside the palace walls at night, blow it to bits, invade, and capture all they find within.”
The guard’s boot steps paced outside their cell door, and Miri fell silent. Britta’s shivering turned into crying. Miri held her, and they worried silently together.
Master Filippus was just guessing, of course. But Commander Mongus had hinted that they were already breaching the palace wall in some way that the royal guards did not notice.
No one noticed. The king and his delegates and advisers. The queen, crying in her room, Steffan there, consoling her. Peder and Katar, waiting to see if King Fader would honor his previous promise, wed one of the royal sisters, and form an alliance with Danland that war would not dare to break.
But it seemed King Fader was dead. There was no simple way to end the war. Stora could not hold Danland as easily as it now held Eris, but they would not try. They were here for an honor killing. If the Storans breached the palace wall, the royal family might believe they could surrender and depend on the Storan army’s honor to keep them alive while they waited for Danland’s army to rescue them. But the Storans were here to kill the king and perhaps the royal family too. And no one in the palace knew.
This winter, twice I heard you quarry-speak to me, Katar had said.
Long nights and empty days Miri had sat alone in the little linder house, in a swamp that had seemed to gnaw on her and try to spit her out. Hours quarry-speaking to the void, believing no one could hear, clutching the hawk Peder had carved.
Was it possible that Katar had heard her all the way from Lesser Alva? One time Miri had managed to send quarry-speech from the princess academy all the way back to the village, a three hours’ walk. But then she had been in a building full of linder and on Mount Eskel itself, which was scored with veins of linder where the quarry-speech could travel. Here Miri was surrounded by bricks and ordinary rock.
Miri plucked the stone hawk from her pocket and turned it over in her hands. Its edges were smooth, polished by her frequent touch. This was likely the only piece of linder between her and Peder.
Miri gripped her linder hawk and sent her quarry-speech into it, as if the small stone hawk could grip her silent words and take flight, out of the dungeon, toward the white stone palace. Perhaps distance did not matter so much, just as she did not need to be near Peder to love him.
With her breath alone, she sang a quarry song to focus her thoughts. “Hammer’s clamor bares the bone. What’s the matter? No one’s home.” She tapped her foot, the rhythm of quarry work, the beat of her heart, the thumping need in her gut all tied to the hawk in her hands. And silently she sang.
The Storan army.
The king and queen.
The water tunnel.
Image after image, she sang silently into the rock in her hands, repeating the memories that Peder might understand: crawling through the tunnel, the king, the queen, Steffan. The tunnel, the tunnel …
In the monotony of the task, other words drifted through her mind. Peder saying, “You’re never safe when a king knows your name.” And Dogface saying, “Fix this.” And from Marda and Pa the months of silence and separation, like a great hole in the center of the floor where she might slip and fall in.
She quarry-spoke to Peder. She quarry-spoke to Katar. She hoped one might hear her—or both, and they might say, Yes, I hear her too. That means we’re not imagining it. We need to get out.
And Miri clung to the linder hawk, an eye and beak making a perfect indentation in her palm.
Chapter Twenty-five
Close up your ears, child
And shut up your sight
Knock upon your heart
To know what is right
Deep into the night, Miri lay on the floor quarry-speaking while the other girls slept, the linder hawk clutched in her hands, her fingers cold and stiff. In her exhaustion, the activity mingled with the memory of another night when she was held captive, desperate for Peder to hear her quarry-speech. So familiar, as if her self then—on the floor of the princess academy, surrounded by bandits—lay beside her now. Her former self like a ghostly younger sister, the two Miris quarry-speaking together, one on harmony, one on melody.
Then she’d been pleading, Please, come get us.
Now she was shouting, Please, run away.
Then, she had received a response—a distant call in quarry-speech from Peder letting her know he’d heard. But now, there was nothing. Perhaps the hawk was too small a piece of linder to collect Peder’s replying quarry-speech and echo it back to Miri. Or more likely he simply could not hear her at all.
He can’t hear me. The thought became louder than the memory she was singing into the linder. So she shouted at it to go away and kept trying. Fell asleep still trying, curled around the linder hawk, clutching it with both hands.
Miri expected to sit forgotten in the darkness for days, but it was only the afternoon of the next day when their cell door squeaked opened. A guard brought them water to drink and wash their faces and then politely asked them to accompany him upstairs, as if they were honored guests. Though unfed honored guests. Someone’s stomach squeaked with hunger.
The morning sunlight stunned Miri’s eyes, and she stumbled against the steps leading up to the castle’s ground level.
“This was Queen Gertrud’s castle,” Britta whispered. “You are her descendants. Remember, you are home.”
Astrid straightened her shoulders.
Britta took Miri’s arm. Felissa, Astrid, and Sus took hands, and connected they entered an enormous room.
Formerly the castle’s great hall, the university tutors had used it for group lectures. Now it housed the center of operations for the Storan high commander, leader of the invasion.
High Commander Paldus sat stiffly in a carved wood chair at the head of a long, narrow table. In the morning light that rippled through the windows’ thick, ancient glass, his nearly white hair looked silver. Several soldiers stood at attention around the room. Commander Mongus sat at the table, his back to them, but Miri recognized his long blond hair.
“Princess Britta,” High Commander Paldus said with a nod.
“High commander,” she said with a small curtsy. A very small curtsy.
“Where is the king?” he asked, returning his gaze to the papers on the table before him.
Miri blinked. This was not a question she’d been expecting.
“I have no idea,” said Britta. “We came here to meet with him, and then your Commander Mongus there draws his knife and tells us he’s dead.”
“No, I did not mean our King Fader, rest his bones in the hall of warriors,” said High Commander Paldus. “Your King Bjorn. Where is he?”
Britta frowned at Miri. Miri shrugged.
“He’s in the palace,” said Britta. “You know that. You have it surrounded—”
“We have been surrounding an empty palace!” said the high commander. “We cracked open its shell last night and found the meat picked clean.”
Miri laughed
and then tried to cover it with a cough. She put her hand in her pocket and squeezed the linder hawk. Peder had heard. Last night. They’d just made it out in time then. Crawled through the filthy tunnel. Run through the dark streets. Huddled even now, perhaps, under the straw in Gus’s shed.
The high commander stood and crossed the room to Britta. “Princess, it’s in your best interest to tell me. Where is the king hiding?”
“Honestly, I thought he was in the palace,” she said.
“You will tell us where he is, or you will join him on the chopping block when we find him.”
“If he’s no longer in the palace, then he escaped under your noses,” said Miri. “What will you do, burn down every building in Asland? Track down every boat that might have slipped past you in the channel? You may as well search an entire city for one particular rat.”
“The best way to catch a rat is with a trap,” Commander Mongus muttered, his back still to them.
High Commander Paldus examined Britta’s face, scrutinized the other girls, and then leaned against the table to speak close to Commander Mongus. Miri overheard snatches of their urgent whispers.
“… just get rid of … no need of these …”
Fix this, Miri thought.
“You start a war of honor,” she sputtered, “yet you have none.”
Commander Mongus finally turned to look at them. He stood, stalked forward, and slapped Miri with the back of his fist. She fell with the force.
“Do not question the honor of Stora!” Commander Mongus shouted.
“Commander …” High Commander Paldus spoke the word as a mild rebuke with no real threat behind it.
Britta helped Miri to her feet. Miri’s jaw burned with pain but she kept talking. “You accept an honor challenge, and yet when our champion beats yours—”
“You held a champion match?” the high commander interrupted.
“Hardly, sir,” said Commander Mongus. “Sten fought one of the princess’s ladies.”
“And lost,” said Miri. “You were honor-bound to let us speak to your king, but you—”
“No!” said Commander Mongus. “I agreed you could speak to King Fader, and I will happily deliver you to the grave where he resides.”
