The Amaranth Enchantment

by Julie Berry

  “Leave me be,” she snapped.

  “Where’d you get that gold?”

  She stopped trying to get away. “You know where.” Beryl’s gold, which she took from me last night. Unbelievable.

  “But why did you do it?”

  She glared at me. “You’ve been a pestilence and a vexation from the day Ernest brought you home. A spoiled little minx. A wedge in my marriage. A drain on my budget.” Her bloodshot eyes burned. “I’ll not have you as the ruination of my peace as well!”

  I blinked. “I, the ruination of your peace?”

  “Let me by,” she said, almost pleading.

  “Not until I understand,” I said. “Why do you part with the gold when you hate me so?”

  Aunt let out a long, troubled breath. She seemed to shrink as she did so. When she spoke, her voice was small, as if coming from far away.

  “Last night Ernest came to me in a dream.” She sniffled. “He said I’d betrayed my own.” Her eyes flashed. “I don’t call you my own.”

  She stood glowering at me, her chin quivering. Then, wonder of wonders, her face screwed up with—what? Grief? Remorse? Could it be possible?

  “But Ernest called you his own,” she said. “I thought I owed him this.” She raked her sleeve across her eyes. My voice broke on my words. “Thank you.”

  I knew I was speaking to Uncle, too.

  She wouldn’t look at me. For a moment her profile was that of a wide-eyed little girl with thick, dark curls. She started briskly down the alleyway.

  “Aunt!” I cried.

  She stopped and turned, scowling back at me.

  I swallowed my nervousness. I hadn’t exactly planned what to say, nor even considered whether or not I ought to say it.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Thank you,” I said again, this time with more feeling. “And… I’m sorry.”

  She seemed taken aback. “For all that you’ve suffered. Not from me, but… Yes, from me, and from everything.” I swallowed hard. “Things have been hard for you, and I know it. I’m just sorry about it, is all.”

  Aunt’s face contorted into a grimace of bewildered disgust. She shook her head as if shaking me off like cobwebs, turned away, and disappeared down the alley.

  Chapter 20

  Aunt ran one way, and I, the other. Already I’d lingered too long near the Hall of Justice.

  The sky grew lighter. Pale morning sun without warmth filtered down through the rooftops onto the dingy streets in this part of town.

  My stomach rumbled, and my head ached. A sleepless night left me physically spent. To Beryl’s, I supposed, I’d go, to admit defeat and beg a change of clothes before fleeing the country.

  I paused for a moment’s rest in another alley, sliding down the side of a building and sitting on the ground. Hardly any sunlight penetrated here. The darkness made me feel safer.

  Clattering footsteps made me jump in terror. Before I could see who was coming, wet rubbery lips explored my face and a meh-heh-heh erupted in my ear.

  I wrapped my arms around Dog’s neck and kissed his wiry cheek. He settled down beside me and let me pet him, lending me his precious warmth.

  Street traffic increased in the stretch of road I could see at the mouth of the alley. Milk trucks and vegetable carts pulled by tired old horses passed in either direction. Hawkers’ voices rose on the morning air. Walkers hurried by on their way to work or to market. Did they know how lucky they were to be about on the streets, with a warm coat and a belly full of breakfast and no constables to molest them?

  In only minutes, I knew, my flight would be known, and Coxley would send his men to scour the surrounding areas for me. Would Cuthbert invent a story? How close would it come to the truth? Close enough to catch me? He had his gold now.

  I knelt down, rubbing my hands in the dirt. I smeared it over my face, rubbing dirt into my hair and fouling it up with tangles. I tore at my clothing, ripping off any bits of lace or ribbon, so it looked tattered and spent. A disguise, of sorts. Half the city had seen me dance with the prince then be arrested. Or so it had seemed last night.

  I fled the alley.

  Every moment I expected to hear a shout, a whistle, a commotion signaling that someone had sounded the alarm. All I heard were surprised noises from people as I breezed by them. “What’s your hurry?”

  “Where’s the fire?” and such.

  Perhaps I was attracting too much attention this way. I slowed until I reached a corner, ducked around it, and sped up again, only to collide head-on with someone.

  He fell backward. I landed on top of him, smacking my forehead sharply against his jaw. It stung so badly I was sure the skin had cracked open. I winced in pain, afraid to open my eyes and see who I’d toppled. I tried to climb over him and stand up. Dog trod on him too.

  The man seized both my wrists, and I collapsed bodily on top of him once more.

  “Well, you’re a mess,” his voice said. “Fancy meeting you this morning.”

  Oh no.

  I forced my eyes open. I shut them again.

  It was Peter, grinning like a monkey.

  I wrenched my hands loose from the hold he had on me and climbed to my feet, taking no pains to avoid stepping on him, and continued on my way. I’d not talk to that scoundrel for all the money in the world.

  In a moment he was at my side, jogging comfortably and brushing the dirt off his jacket. I pressed on, determined to avoid him. But he was about as easy to lose as a barnacle.

  “You’ve mussed up my hat,” he said after a while.

  “Blast your hat.”

  “And where are we off to?” he asked, sounding as though a picnic were planned.

  “‘We’ aren’t off to anyplace,” I said. “I am off to wherever you’re not.”

  “That’s odd,” he said. “I was on my way to find you.” Oh, indeed. “Ha.”

  “Was so,” he said. “Though I certainly didn’t expect to find you like this.”

  I glared at him.

  He colored. “That is to say, er, you’re looking well! Compared to… ahem.”

  “Compared to a corpse?” I snapped. “Forget it, Peter. Just forget it. And go away.”

  He closed his mouth for a blessed moment or two, but he didn’t go away.

  I halted and grabbed his sleeve. “What do you mean, you were ‘looking for me’?”

  He swallowed. From the looks of it, an entire potato. “I didn’t want you to be alone out there,” he said. “And afterward I was going to make sure you had, er, the right sort of burial.” He jingled the contents of his pocket and grinned awkwardly. “Figured—seeing as now you’re a customer—you had that coming to you. Was going to have them put satin in your coffin. Blue, I thought, would suit you.”

  A blue satin coffin.

  Once, he’d amused me—in a maddening sort of way—with his audacity and wit.

  No more.

  “Your loyalty to your customers is touching,” I said. “I should have known you’d only treat me decent if I was dead.”

  He looked stung. I was glad of it. I marched on. He didn’t follow.

  At first.

  The sun was full up now. I ignored Peter and took stock of where I was. The road sloped gradually uphill, as so many thoroughfares in St. Sebastien did, toward the palace, which stood sentinel over the highest part of the city.

  Beyond it to the north lay the river, and then my parents’ home, and after that the open countryside and the road that would take me, after several weeks’ journey, out of Laurenz and into Hilarion, where perhaps I could begin a new life.

  North. That’s where I’d go.

  Peter caught hold of my sleeve. Dog wedged himself protectively between me and Peter.

  “How’d you get out, anyway?” he asked, admiration in his voice. “Did you escape?” He whistled. “What an adventure, eh?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  The palace. Its towers of brown stone rose like stacks of buttered toast. I was so hungry
I could have bitten it. “Let me buy you breakfast,” Peter said.

  Peter, part with cash? My hollow belly squirmed. But I’d not be beholden to him.

  “No.”

  Peter blocked my path. “Why’re you so sour? I’m just trying to help.”

  It was a mistake, listening to him. He only made me furious. I could have ground my teeth to powder.

  “You, help?” Here came the tears again. I squashed them back down furiously.

  He shall not, he shall not see me cry!

  “You, help!” I repeated for good measure. “Help me out of a fortune, help me into prison, help me into the hangman’s noose! Help me right into the paws of rogues and scoundrels! Next time why don’t you just help me off a cliff and be done with it?”

  I was shouting. I couldn’t stop. Peter looked like he’d stepped outdoors to use the privy and found himself knee-deep in a flood.

  I rushed on. “I could have died, Peter! Because of you! And they’ll be out hunting for me any moment, and I may die yet. Because of you! Help, indeed. You only help yourself, to everything around you that catches your eye.”

  I thought I saw the first real glimmer of remorse in his crestfallen face then.

  “I’ve been up all night feeling awful about you,” he said.

  Much good that had done me. This wasn’t enough. “So?”

  “If I’d known what would come of it, I wouldn’t have stolen your gem.”

  An admirable but altogether unhelpful conclusion. If I’d known what would have happened, I wouldn’t have stolen it last night, either.

  He looked me in the eye from underneath his curtain of dark hair. “I’m sorry.”

  “I should think you would be,” I snapped, and stalked off. This time he didn’t follow.

  I stopped.

  I looked back. He hadn’t moved from the spot where we’d been.

  Lucinda, you’re a fool to forgive him.

  “Well, are you coming?” I called.

  A grin lit his face. He closed the gap between in a second.

  We looked at the awakening city. The streets were dirtier than usual, littered with yesterday’s debris from the Winter Festival. Unlike the day before, the sky overhead was flat and gray with low-hanging clouds.

  I kept the palace as my Polaris as we wended our way through ever more crowded streets. At least, I thought, festival crowding would conceal me from constables.

  “Where are you bound?” Peter asked—a careful and cautious Peter.

  “Bridge,” I said. “Any one of them will do to get me where I’m headed.”

  Peter shook his head. “Any one of them will do for you to lose your head, you mean.”

  I bristled. “What do you mean, lose my head? I’m as rational as you are.”

  He shook his head urgently. “I mean, you daren’t cross any bridges. You said they’d be looking for you? If that’s so, they’ll have officers posted at all of them by now, searching for you, and then back to jail you go.”

  It felt like a hand had seized my throat and started squeezing. I tried to fight back.

  “They can’t all know what I look like, can they?”

  “Well enough,” Peter said. “You’ve got the same clothes. I wouldn’t want to be any girl trying to leave the city today. They’ll investigate them all.”

  “But I have to reach Riverside,” I said, panic flooding. “It’s the only place I can hide.”

  As soon as I said it, I knew I was wrong. I couldn’t hide there. Coxley knew I’d been to my parents’ home, and it had confirmed his suspicions—that the home’s new occupant and the Amaranth Witch were one person.

  Now I had a new concern. I started running once more. “I have to get there to warn Beryl!”

  “Who’s Beryl?” Peter asked.

  “The stone belongs to her,” I explained between breaths. “She’s the one who gave me the nice clothes I wore yesterday. They were my mother’s, long ago.”

  Peter paused. “Your mother’s?”

  I elbowed past a woman carrying a tray of hot buns, and she spilled them. A stream of curses followed me. I stammered an apology and hurried on. When I looked back at Peter, he was eating a bun, and another was dangling from Dog’s bearded mouth.

  “Give me that!” I snatched the bun from Peter’s hand and bit into it. He started to protest, then shrugged. I finished the bun. “My father was a wealthy merchant before he died,” I said between bites. “He and Mama and I used to live in one of the mansions on Riverside.”

  Peter whistled. “How’d you come to be scrubbing floors in a second-rate shop, then?”

  I shook my head. “No time for that now. Point is, Beryl now lives in that mansion, and I’ve got to warn her that Coxley’s after her.”

  “Unless I’m mistaken,” Peter said, “he’s after you. Over here!” Peter yanked me into a darkened doorway and halfway up a flight of stairs. A pair of constables on horseback cantered by. Dog stood guard and insulted their horses.

  We hid in the stairwell until city noises swallowed the hoofbeats. Then Peter ventured down the stairs. I grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back into the shadows.

  “Peter,” I said, “you’ve been a criminal your whole life. It’s a little new to me. How do I reach the river and cross it without getting caught?”

  He pursed his lips. “For starters, there’s disguise, but you’re already a sight different from yesterday. As for the river, I know a fellow with a boat who might help us out if the price was right.” I started to speak but he silenced me. “This one’s on me. I owed you a coffin anyhow.”

  We ventured down the stairs and into the street.

  “As for getting through the city without getting caught,”

  Peter went on, “I always say, go to where they’d least expect to find you.”

  Where they’d least expect to find me.

  I scarcely knew where I’d expect to find me.

  I looked around for inspiration. Of course! I snapped my fingers. “That’s it.”

  “What’s it?”

  “You’ve given me the answer,” I said. “It makes perfect sense.”

  “Oh?”

  “I may not survive this night, Peter. I’ve got one chance left. Besides, there’s someone I need to see.” I swallowed. Could I? Yes, I could face him now. Calm as sunrise.

  Peter scratched his head. “Pardon my saying so, but you’ve lost your wits in jail. It happens. Torture.”

  “Be still. Come on, we’re almost there.” Somehow I found new strength. I began to run.

  “Where?”

  I pointed straight ahead, to the rippling flags on the towers and entryways of Sebastien Palace, a quarter of a mile away.

  Peter stopped short. “That’s carrying advice a bit far, don’t you think?”

  “Not at all,” I panted. “I need to see the prince.”

  “Well, what are you going to do, knock on the front door and ask for him?”

  I considered. “More or less. He holds court, doesn’t he?”

  “The king does, and sometimes the prince assists him. Not likely today, though. Festival. Impending wedding.”

  I ran on, wiping my sweating face on the sleeve of my dress.

  “I’ll talk my way in. I’ll tell them it’s urgent.”

  “No, you won’t,” Peter said. “You’ll come with me.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me down a narrow covered path leading away from the palace entrance.

  I pushed at his arm to no avail. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Trust me.”

  A fat lot of good that had done me in the past. I swallowed a rude remark.

  The path wound about like a tunnel in a cave, lit only by sunlight through occasional breaks in the ceiling. I felt hemmed in. At last we came to a wooden door. Peter pulled a ring from his pocket containing keys and key picks and had the door open in seconds.

  He glanced down at Dog, one hand on the doorknob. “He can’t come in here,” he said.

  I knelt and scra
tched Dog’s ears. “Stay here, now, boy, understand?” He grunted at me but didn’t protest when we closed the door behind us.

  “Not a sound, now,” Peter whispered, and gestured for me to follow him.

  We emerged into a frozen winter garden, on a path overhung by hydrangea branches. Their leaves had fallen but a few withered blossoms still clung. Small statues of squirrels and rabbits dotted the stone path. A peaceful, almost reverent feeling hung over the place. The high wall and trees held the city’s noises at bay.

  It was so enchanting I lost sight of myself for a moment. “Hurry,” Peter whispered, startling me out of my reverie.

  The hydrangeas thinned, and Peter walked more stealthily, pausing between steps. Once he stood stock-still for a minute, and I wondered why, until he pointed at a retreating figure roving through the gardens. He’s a palace guard, I told my thumping heart, not a city constable.

  Peter gestured, and we scurried over a walkway paved with white pebbles and lined with bare, dignified trees, until we came to the rear castle walls.

  Above us hung the curved bottom of a stone balcony. We crouched, half-hidden in evergreen shrubbery below.

  Peter picked up a pebble from the walk and tossed it onto the balcony above us.

  We waited.

  He tossed another pebble. I heard it ping on the balcony floor. It echoed across the frosty gardens.

  “Must be he’s gone,” I whispered.

  “Dead asleep, more like,” Peter said.

  I pictured Prince Gregor asleep, and then I pictured him awake, coming into the shop, and dancing with me twice. My courage melted. Filthy clothes, dirty face and hands, what was I thinking?

  “Peter,” I said, “maybe this isn’t…”

  He launched a fistful of pebbles into the sky. They landed on the balcony about as quietly as a vase smashing. “… such a good idea,” I finished lamely.

  A door opened.

  Footfalls shuffled.

  A pebble landed on the walk, followed by half a dozen more. I covered my head with my arms.

  A sleep-thick voice floated downward. “This had better be important, Peter.”

  Chapter 21