by M. E. Breen
Page shook her head. “No scar, but—” Her eyes widened.
“A wound. He was wounded there. How did you know? Oh, Annie, tell me Uncle Jock didn’t—”
“He did. He tried. I’ll tell you, but finish the story.”
“Uncle Jock and this ugly man, they tied me up in a wagon with the rain cover on it. I was trying to translate the paper when they grabbed me. Aunt Prim must have picked it up.” She shook her head. “I knew where they were taking me. Uncle Jock forced me to drink something awful, so I wouldn’t fight.” She gripped both Annie’s hands tightly in her own. “Sharta attacked the wagon, Sharta and his mate. They saved me.”
“Kinderstalk saved you?” Annie blurted. “But why? Why not kill you?”
“Annie, shh, just listen. Uncle Jock ran at the first sight of Sharta, of course. But the other man fought. I couldn’t see because of the wagon cover, but I could hear—oh, it was awful! Sharta fought the man and his mate freed me. When she jumped into the wagon bed … you can imagine what I thought. But she chewed through the ropes. She pulled me by the back of my dress, here.” Page touched the nape of her neck. “I saw the ugly man lying on the ground, bleeding from his head. I thought Sharta had killed him. And Sharta—”
“He made Sharta blind?”
“Yes. I don’t remember much after that. Whatever they’d given me to drink made me sleep. I woke a few times and it felt as if I were flying, but I think—I think Sharta’s mate carried me on her back. The next thing I knew I was tied up again, this time by the king’s guards. I learned later that they found us together, Sharta and I, outside the same gates where we found you. They put him in a cage and let all the lords and ladies in to look. The ‘Blind Beast’ they called him.”
“And now you can speak to him?”
“His language is Hippa.” The word sounded like a cough.
“Hippa?” Annie coughed back.
“That was good!” Page smiled. “You would hardly believe how difficult it was to learn. The difference between one sound and another can be so small, but the meaning … I still make mistakes all the time. But yes, we talk together. He and his mate had a message of their own for the king.”
“What is it?
“Not now, Miss Curious.” She picked the green gown up off the floor. “Will you put this on and wash your face, and come meet the king?”
Annie walked to the window. Through the glass she could see the tips of the trees in the pleasure forest, waving like kelp in a pink sea. She thought of Gregor, who loved the sea.
“Should I braid my hair?’
“Leave it loose. It’s so pretty loose.”
Twenty minutes later, Annie descended the stairs for a second time to meet Page in the black and white tiled hall. She kept forgetting she didn’t have to sneak, and snuck. Not that it was easy to move unnoticed in this dress. It rustled. It pinched. It caught itself on everything. And the shoes: wobble, wobble, wobble down the stairs.
Page looked as small as a toy at the far end of hall. She led Annie along an arched corridor. The curved ceiling was painted gold. The walls were lined with portraits. On one side a row of dimpled ladies reclined against cushions; on the other a line of dark-haired men posed beside the bodies of dead kinderstalk.
Gilt-edged mirrors reaching to the floor hung between the portraits on Annie’s left, reflecting the sunlight that filtered through the colored windowpanes and washing the painted ladies in shades of mauve and indigo.
Page stopped in front of one of the mirrors and tapped on the glass. Instantly the mirror swung open like a door and revealed a small, warmly lit chamber. The king was sitting in an armchair by the window. He looked up when they entered.
The king was so handsome that Annie found it embarrassing to look at him. He had glossy black hair that waved over his forehead and a red mouth that pouted like a woman’s. But his hands, lightly gripping the arms of his chair, were as big as a laborer’s. Annie decided immediately that he was vain. She glanced at the mirror over the fireplace and met his eyes there. He had been studying her, studying him.
The king gestured to two chairs facing his own. Through the window, Annie could see the courtyard and the massive doors that had been shut against her the night she arrived. They were shut now.
A servant emerged through the mirrored door carrying a tray of tea and chocolate. Pastries fanned across a plate, each shaped like a different kind of leaf: oak, maple, bay. The king picked up a bay leaf and bit into it. Flakes of dough fell onto his lap, staining the gray silk with spots of oil. The servant used a little silver brush to sweep the crumbs into a napkin.
Annie ate five pastries. The first bite dissolved in her mouth in a rush of sugar and butter; after that, she hardly noticed the taste. She forgot to thank the servant when he poured her a second cup of chocolate. She set down her cup and found Page and the king both looking at her, the king with bemusement, Page with mortification and a hint of alarm.
“I trust you have found your accommodations satisfactory, Miss Trewitt?” the king said.
“Yes, Your Highness.” If he had not been so handsome, and not been the king, she might have told him he would be starving too if he’d had the doctor in charge of his meals.
“I am pleased to hear it.” He flicked his fingers at the servant, who disappeared through the mirrored door.
The king settled back in his chair and smiled broadly at Annie. “Your sister has not been very forthcoming about your reasons for visiting the palace, Miss Trewitt. May I indulge myself a moment in letting you know what I imagine?”
Annie nodded, realizing as she did so that he had not asked the kind of question that waited for an answer.
“I imagine you are here to do me great harm, Miss Trewitt. I imagine you have an army of kinderstalk waiting to rescue your sister from a most wicked king. Is that not what she has written you, in her many dozens of letters? Were they not all accounts of my great wickedness?” His hands had become clenched on the arms of the chair. He folded them in his lap and smiled more broadly than ever. “I imagine, Miss Trewitt, that at this very moment, you have merely to snap your fingers and summon that army of kinderstalk to your side. Am I wrong to imagine such things, when in all the history of Howland, so far as any of my scholars can tell me, no person has survived an encounter with the kinderstalk such as yours, save, perhaps, your dear sister?”
Annie sat dumb as a stump. His words seemed like a net thrown over her and cinched tight, so anything she might have thought to say could not reach her lips.
“Have I imagined wrongly, Miss Trewitt?” said the king. “Do tell me so.”
“Your Highness,” Page said in a low voice. “Remember you are speaking to a child.”
The king looked from Page to Annie. For a long time he said nothing. Then he appeared to make a decision. He took off his crown and set it on the table next to his chair. His hair, so dense and shiny black that it appeared to have been lacquered, held the crown’s imprint. Annie wondered if it looked like that even when he slept.
When he smiled again there was something like warmth in it.
“A jest, rather poorly executed.” He dipped his head in a bow. “Forgive me.”
Again Annie nodded, though she had no clear sense of what she had agreed to, or what was forgiven.
“Lady Trewitt requested this interview on your behalf, Miss Trewitt. What is it you wish to tell me?”
“Lady Trewitt?” asked Annie.
The king inclined his head toward Page. “She hasn’t shared our news with you yet?”
Annie turned to her sister. “Page?”
“I thought at a later time,” Page murmured.
“Very well. Such news is best savored, perhaps. Now, Miss Trewitt, your information?”
But Annie’s mouth had gone dry. She looked at Page’s hands twisted together in her lap.
“Go on, Annie,” Page said quietly.
So she told them about the Drop, and the orphanage, and the children working at night. S
he told them what a runout was and what they did to them. She told them about seeing Gibbet in the wood, and the kinderstalk on its hind legs, and the rabbits; she told them about the pit with its hidden treasure and the tunnel to the river. She did not tell them that she could see in the dark, and, for some reason she didn’t understand, she did not tell them about Beatrice and Serena.
For a long time, the only sounds in the room were Annie’s voice and the occasional pop and hiss of logs in the fire. The king listened with his eyes half-closed, his steepled fingers pressed to his lips. Page stared intently at the fire, as though it were telling the story.
When she had finished speaking, the king surprised her by fixing her another cup of chocolate. The chocolate itself was scalding hot and very bitter; he added cream and three spoonfuls of sugar, then mixed it all together carefully. It tasted divine.
The king leaned back, steepling his fingers again as he regarded her. All of his postures, even the most casual, seemed studied.
“The ringstone that was recovered from among your possessions was of exceptional quality. You believe it to have been mined at the Drop?”
“As I told you, the children mine the white stone. They can get into the narrow spaces between the rocks.” Page shot her a look. “Your Highness,” Annie added.
The king smiled coldly. “Pardon me for wishing to clarify some of the more important points in this narrative.”
“Of course, Your Highness.”
“When you observed Mr. Gibbet with the kinderstalk, are you certain they were speaking?”
“Yes.”
“And you believe Mr. Gibbet and his men are smuggling ringstone out of the country by way of the West River?”
“I do.”
The king turned to Page. “The foreign currency she found—that is Frigia’s coin, and Brineland’s, and Redonda’s.”
“It is just as Sharta warned us,” Page said. “Gibbet is planning—”
“Quiet!” The king gestured toward Annie. “That is the business of the crown, and none of hers.”
“For heaven’s sake, Terr! She’s my sister!” Annie and the king both looked at Page, startled.
Terr?
Page blushed. “Your Highness, she risked her life to come here and tell you what she knows. Her information corroborates what Sharta has told us. I see no reason not to be open.”
The king ignored her.
“Miss Trewitt, how is it that you knew the kinderstalk would attack the palace when they did?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Your Highness, she was the target—” Page started to interrupt, but the king wagged a finger in the air and she fell silent. Annie struggled against a sudden wave of hatred for him.
“I’d arrived in Magnifica that day and had just learned about the engagement party,” Annie said. “I thought it would be my best chance to, well, to enter the grounds unnoticed, so I took it.” She trailed off, uncertain. Nobody spoke. “I could not think of another way to reach you, Your Highness, and Gregor … all the children at the Drop, it is bad for them there.”
When another minute passed without anyone saying anything, Annie stood up and walked over to the window. She didn’t know if that was something you were allowed to do without permission from the king. She hoped it wasn’t.
Outside, blooming dogwood trees grew along the perimeter of the courtyard, their black branches lacy with frost. The sun was shining and the paving stones had been swept clear of snow, and around the base of each tree white petals mixed with the white snow.
Behind her, the king and Page had begun a whispered conversation, their heads bent together. A lock of Page’s hair touched the king’s shoulder. Suddenly the king jerked upright and slammed his fist on the table so hard that the cups jumped in their saucers.
“I thought only you could speak to the beasts!” he roared at Page. “This changes everything!”
“How could I have known? I don’t know where he learned! If you had let me speak to her when she first arrived, perhaps Gibbet’s plans would not have advanced so far!” Page paused, breathing hard. Both of them seemed to have forgotten Annie was in the room.
“It isn’t too late to stop Gibbet,” Page went on. “You have Sharta. You have me. Let’s try. Let’s talk to them.” Page’s voice sounded low and tense, and something else, something Annie didn’t recognize from her sister. She was pleading with him.
Annie’s heart hammered high in her chest, as though it would burst from between her collarbones.
“The beast is useless,” the king hissed. “You are useless!” He gestured contemptuously at Annie. “She cannot speak to them, can she? So how is it she knows so much? So much more than you? Have you been keeping secrets from me?”
Page shook her head. Tears cut tracks through the white powder on her face. “You are cruel.”
“Well?” the king persisted. “Well?” He leaned forward across the table, his face inches from hers. Page shrank back until it seemed the chair would swallow her.
“What’s the matter, kinderstalk got your tongue?” he sneered.
“I will never marry you!” Page spat out. The king blanched, then raised his arm over his head, hand balled into a fist. What happened next was so strange that Annie could not be sure afterward what was real and what she had imagined.
Page cried out, but the sound was immediately swallowed by another sound—snarling. In an instant Annie was between the king and Page, her body rigid as a shield. The king tried to push her aside, and then she was at his throat. The weight of her body striking his chest knocked the king backward. The edge of his throne caught him behind the knees, and the throne, several hundred pounds of oak, brocade, and ringstone, screeched across the tile floor and slammed into the bookcase behind it.
Annie came to her senses with her hands around the king’s neck. She scrambled off his lap and backed away, eyeing him warily. Her palms felt damp, but when she moved to dry them on her dress she saw that they were wet with blood, not sweat. The blood was coming from the tips of her fingers.
Three red gashes ran from the corner of the king’s right eye down his cheek and over his jaw. Blood dripped onto his gray silk vest. The king looked down at himself and when he raised his eyes, Annie could see that he was frightened. Annie was too—she knew she should go for help, but somehow all she could do was rub her hands, over and over, against the front of her dress.
Page stepped out of her petticoat and folded it into a square. She pressed the cloth against the wounds. Her fingers drifted through the damp hair stuck to the king’s forehead. His eyes closed.
“Annie, you must find the doctor. If anyone asks you, tell them the king has retired for the day.”
Annie nodded dumbly and turned to go.
“Wait.” With her free hand, Page smoothed Annie’s hair down behind her ears, rubbed a fleck of blood from her cheek. “Wipe your hands on my dress. It won’t show on the red. Good. Now try to smile, and remember to curtsy if you pass anyone of rank. And, Annie, don’t tell anyone, not even the doctor, that you—don’t explain.”
Once more, Annie turned to go. This time it was the king’s voice that stopped her.
“I would never have hurt her.”
Annie left the room.
Chapter 11
The bindweed outside her window had crept over the sill and wrapped itself around the window frame. Cone-shaped flowers, white with purple veins, crowded against the glass. Two weeks had passed since she attacked the king.
“He’s fine,” Page told her. “Maybe a bit subdued.”
“Will you marry him?” Annie asked.
Page sighed. “I don’t know. I said I would. That was the third condition, to get you out of the dungeon.”
“Do you … are you in love with him?”
“No. Sometimes. He’s not always so—”
Arrogant? Bloodthirsty? Evil?
“—imperious. And what he said, at the end. It’s true. He would never hurt me.”
“He was going to hit you!”
Page met Annie’s eyes. “He wasn’t. He was reaching for the bell pull. To call the servant.”
Annie took a moment to digest this and found she couldn’t.
“I know you didn’t mean to hurt him. You were only trying to protect me.” She looked down at her gloved hands. “I have never seen you like that before.”
That wasn’t me! Annie wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. Whatever part of her had attacked the king was as real as the part that knew how to wait quietly, to ask before taking.
She laced her bare fingers through her sister’s satin-covered ones. “I’m sorry.”
Page looked up, her eyes bright. “I do love him. I love him and half the time I don’t even like him.” She smiled, surprised, it seemed, to hear herself say the words. “In a way, I think he respects you because of this. Everyone here has to act as if he’s the smartest, wittiest, most marvelous person they’ve ever met, so he never knows when he’s being a bore. I’m not sure he even knows when he’s being cruel. He admires people who are honest. And you, little one, can’t help but be honest.”
Not always, Annie thought. You don’t know everything.
Page gave her hand a squeeze and unlaced their fingers. “He’s furious, of course. His looks are practically ruined.”
Annie decided it was time to change the subject.
“Will the king put Gibbet in the dungeon for smuggling?”
“I think it’s gone beyond that, Annie.”
“He won’t let him get away with it!”
“Of course not.” She paused. “Have you considered what Gibbet’s buying in exchange for all that stone?”
Annie thought back to the cove at Witch’s Hand, the empty coffin-shaped boxes stacked by the boats.
“Muskets.”
“Not only those. Remember the foreign coins you found? Kings take an interest in what happens in their neighboring countries. I think Gibbet is paying them not to be interested. I think he’s planning to seize the crown. And when he does, they’ll let him.”
