“No,” he agrees. “I have two children, both grown.”
“And a wife?”
“Yes.”
“What is she like?”
“Selarina is always laughing. She is wise and gentle and more stubborn than anyone I have ever met.” His eyes twinkle. “Even you.”
“You should go back to her.”
“I choose to stay with you, Alyrra.”
“Won’t she worry?”
“No.”
I nod, careful not to press him with more questions. We all need our quiet, I think. We all have our unspoken wishes, hopes we cannot mention, choices we may yet regret.
Today the geese are pastured at the nearest meadow. I have learned by now that there are four different pastures for the geese, each with its own little stream or pond. We cycle through them, allowing each to grow back for a few days before returning. Most of the pastures lie within sight of the road, though the one we visit today sits in a slight dip of land, more like a shallow bowl than a valley in these flat plains. This pasture I like the least, for it is hard to see past the walls of the pasture; I am always most grateful for Falada’s presence here.
I sit perched upon a rock, brushing out my hair as I watch the geese, running through the words I have most recently learned from the hostlers. Violet, with a mischievous smile I can only now appreciate, has taught me “handsome” and “strong,” while Rowan took me through the painstaking process of counting to ten. Falada stands beside me, occasionally murmuring a correction.
I take my time brushing my hair. Every week I fetch a bucket of water to my room to bathe with, rubbing myself clean with a rag and then washing my hair. With the colder days and nights, Valka’s thick curls have little chance to dry out—either when braided or when tossed over my pillow at night. So I have taken to brushing my hair out while watching the geese. Falada does not like it, but I prefer this to developing a chill. We have agreed only that he will stand between myself and Corbé, blocking his view.
Corbé has improved not at all. Though we have kept each other’s company these past weeks, we have grown no friendlier than his dark looks and grunted greetings will allow. Falada has counseled me to refrain from more than my daily greeting, delivered with a progressively more strained smile. That I have taken his advice is no source of pride to myself.
I braid my hair up again quickly today, then sit with my knees drawn up, watching the flock. The geese ignore me, waddling across the ground digging for insects or pulling up grass with their beaks, or dipping into the stream. They are strange birds, I think. They care nothing for the humans among them. Or perhaps it is us who are strange, thinking so much of ourselves.
I am still thinking of the geese as I brush Falada down that night. He turns his head to watch me, and I wonder what he has thought of all day out in the pasture.
“What is it?” I whisper, though there are no hostlers in sight.
“Only this: if I should die—”
“Why would you die?”
He watches me calmly. “If I should die,” he repeats, “then keep a part of me near you.”
“Why?” I ask, coming to stand at his head.
“Because I ask it of you.”
“You’ll see your wife again,” I tell him. “I know it.”
He does not answer me.
***
Two nights later, when I enter my room on our return from the pastures, I find it empty, my belongings gone. All that remains is the small stool and the rolled sleeping mat. When I turn back to the door, I find Matsin and Finnar waiting for me.
Chapter 14
“Come sit with me.” The prince lazes in his chair at the table, before him a silver platter heaped with fruit. As I sit down he picks out a peach and begins to cut it with a small, jeweled knife, setting each curving, golden slice down on a plate before him.
“Are you hungry?”
“I am well, Your Highness.” I drop my eyes from the peach to the tabletop. My stomach tightens as I think of Laurel and the others hostlers sharing their dinner, then of the peach. It must have come from afar, for winter draws near already.
He sets the last slice down on the plate before him, glances at me inquiringly. “Surely you miss such treats now?”
“I am grateful for what I have, Your Highness.”
“Hmm.” He spears a peach slice with the tip of his knife and lifts it up, meeting my gaze as he bites into it. I blink—when did I shift my gaze to him? I turn my face back to the table, waiting as he watches me.
“Yet you seem to have taken more than your share.”
“Your Highness.” It is not so much a question as an acknowledgement.
With studied casualness he says, “Explain how you neglected to mention you had the princess’s cloak in your keeping when last we spoke.”
I consider the angles. There are not many. With a small smile I reply, “Your Highness did not ask.”
“A clear failing on my part.” My eyes dart to him, catch the faint curl of amusement at the corners of his mouth.
“It is not the cloak that concerns you,” I hazard.
“It is not only the cloak the concerns me,” he corrects me. “I have taken the liberty of looking through your trunks.” I flush, embarrassed that he should have seen my clothes, or Valka’s. It is an unsettlingly intimate violation.
“Are you upset?” His voice is almost teasing, as if this were all a good joke among friends. But I do not count him a friend. Like my brother, he will either laugh at my anger or hold my impudence against me. I dare not answer him.
“Come now, lady. I thought we had gotten past the part where you sit still as stone and refuse to speak. Or have you turned to stone?”
“Your Highness?” I ask, unsure what he might ask next if I don’t answer.
“Ah, good; you have found your voice.” He taps the butt of his knife against the table. He is growing irritated with me, I think, a bitter taste on my tongue. “I was surprised to find you have a trousseau.”
“Yes.”
“Lord Daerilin expected you to marry?”
“Yes.” Whether he thought me Alyrra or Valka, he expected us both to marry.
“Yet he knew your prospects were not good. Your strained relationship with the princess would not have placed you well. Even we have heard of your reputation here. ”
“Of course,” I manage, mortified. Poor Valka. Even Mother had said how slim Valka’s chances were. I watch his fingers turn the jeweled hilt, his thumb rubbing against the precious stones.
He sets the knife down on the table. “Why did you not return the cloak?”
“I would have been charged with stealing it,” I admit, looking up.
“And now that you have been found with it?” His eyes are dark, intent and ungiving. I try not to think about what exactly the punishment for stealing from a princess might be.
“I didn’t steal it,” I say, my voice growing whispery with fear. I clear my throat, press my lips together to keep from speaking.
He doesn’t believe me. Or maybe he does. “How did it come into your keeping?”
“It was given to me,” I say vaguely.
“By whom?”
I don’t want to lie to him. It surprises me, actually, to find that I don’t. I would have lied to my brother without thinking if it would have bought me an escape. Now, instead of answering directly, I ask, “Who do you think would give me it, Your Highness?”
Kestrin watches me shrewdly. “Alyrra had no cause to give you a gift meant for her.”
I shrug.
“Lady, I cannot help you out of this if you will not help me. Tell me how you came to have the cloak.”
“It was given to me,” I repeat.
“When you were yet called Lady Valka.”
Why is it that everything I say must be a lie? “As you wish,” I murmur.
“It is not as I wish. You puzzle me exceedingly, Lady.”
“I do not mean to cause trouble,” I tell him.
“I almost believe you,” he says so quietly I wonder if he speaks to himself. “Here are the puzzles I will unravel: the cloak, which passed from the princess to you without her remembering. Your name, for you told Lords Filadon and Melkior that you preferred Thoreena to Valka, that being your mother’s name. Yet your mother died many years ago, and was named Temira. Then there are your trunks, trunks containing marriage gifts that a father you claim has no love for you would not have given you. Your character is also an enigma. Spoiled, pampered child that you were, you now work uncomplainingly, one might even say happily.” He laces his fingers together. “Your conversion mirrors that of the princess; she has turned from a shadow into a spoilt brat in a matter of days.”
I flinch—torn between pleasure that he sees Valka for what she is and humiliation that he had meant to marry a shadow. Is that what people had thought of me? Kestrin, watching me, allows the briefest of smiles to touch his lips. I cannot say what he thinks he has seen in my face.
“Will you explain these things?” he asks.
I force myself to answer him, starting with the easiest mystery first. “It is true I changed my name. I saw that in coming here I would begin a new life; I wished to leave behind my past. Start anew.”
“A simple explanation,” Kestrin agrees readily, and when he smiles it is the bared teeth of a predator scenting blood. “Believable, even. And yet it does not seem likely.”
I shouldn’t have tried to explain, I realize. “It is what it is,” I say, striving to sound slightly irritated.
He leans back in his chair. “The matter of the cloak yet remains.” His words are heavy with warning.
“I leave it to your discretion.” I let my eyes drop back to the tabletop. It is a golden wood, the surface as smooth as water. I wonder what he will do to me.
“You are too trusting, lady.” I incline my head. Falada would likely call me a fool. Kestrin looks at me thoughtfully. “What does your new name mean—Thoreena?”
“It is—thoreena,” I stutter to hide my initial confusion. “A small rose that grows wild in the mountains, it has only a few flowers; mostly it is leaves and thorns.”
“Why did you choose such a name?”
“I have always loved the plant.” Even as I say the words, I realize my mistake. Once more, I have painted for myself a history that is not Valka’s. With each detail, I convince him further that I am not the person I claim to be.
“Your Highness must understand, I have spent the last few years in the south, on my father’s lands. I have changed much since I left our queen’s Hall. Your reports will have told you only of the girl I was—not of who I am now.” I speak a little too fast, even to my own ears. Yet truth bleeds into fiction, and fiction into fact, and I am beginning to lose hold of the threads of my own reality.
“You care for thorn bushes where you once cared for jewels?” he asks lightly.
“Your Highness mocks me.”
“Admit it is a strange thing to claim, Lady.”
I hesitate, searching for an argument. “I could not name myself Ruby or Diamond, could I?”
He smiles, and I know that the silence between his demand and my answer has told him what I wished to hide. “No,” he agrees. “But let us consider your story: the pampered aristocrat, having turned into a rather charming goose girl in the course of a month or two, shows herself to have that which does not belong to her, coupled with riches enough to buy her a station well above that of a goose girl.”
I feel my jaw loosen in shock.
“Well?”
“I had not thought to sell anything.”
I think he is truly amazed by the simplicity of such a statement. “You had not thought?”
I spread my hands before me. “I can hardly speak Menay, Your Highness. Who would I go to? How would I explain myself to avoid suspicion of thievery?”
“You are already under suspicion of thievery,” he observes.
“Precisely.”
“Why did you not seek help?”
I laugh. I do not mean to, but the sound comes bubbling up before I can help myself, as it did long ago when I spoke with my mother. I press my hand to my mouth, but I cannot quite stifle my mirth. “Forgive me, Your Highness,” I say, “but who should I have asked? Should I have asked your father’s help when he has made me a servant? Should I have asked your help?”
His face has grown hard as I spoke. Abruptly he stands up, his chair scraping back against the stone floor. “How dare you speak so to me?” he growls. I flinch back, the hand covering my mouth tightening into a claw so that I gouge my own cheeks with my nails.
He leans over the table, palms pressed flat against the wood, eyes boring into me. “Do you disdain our kindness in keeping you when the princess wished you cast off? Dare you suggest that we would not have helped you in so simple a matter as this?”
“Yes.” My voice is hoarse with fear, and even as the word leaves my tongue I brace myself for the blow that is sure to come. But it does not.
He straightens and turns, stalking to the window. I consider his back, the rigid line of his shoulders. I think that I am already lost, for he will neither forgive this incident nor forget the matter of the cloak. So I speak.
“Your father offered me passage home if I informed him of certain matters concerning the princess. When I refused, he sent me to my new duties assuring me that, should I wish to betray her, there would always be a willing ear.
“As for Your Highness, you care for me only for the knowledge you believe I have. Each time we speak, it is only that you may try to pull some fact from me you are convinced I know. You would not help me to better my situation any more than your father, for you need me to feel that I need you, that I will be in your debt for your help. Is this not the game you play, or have I—have I mistaken you?” I end uncertainly, wishing desperately that my diatribe is wholly undeserved. But the prince makes no sound, and the silence grows between us.
When he turns back to me his face is closed, expressionless. I cannot read the look in his eyes. I think that he will beat me for the satisfaction of hearing me scream.
Kestrin crosses the room slowly, deliberately. I stand up as he nears. I know that I am trembling, but I cannot hide it anymore than I can hide the fact that I draw breath. He stops a handbreadth away. His eyes are sharpened onyx, glinting in the lamplight. I think Kestrin is enraged and the force of his wrath will put my brother to shame. But even now he stands still, gazing down at me.
“You fear me.” It is a statement requiring no agreement. I look away, turning my head to stare at the wall. Will he play another game, then? Is he worse than my brother, or only his equal?
“Sit,” he says, surprising me, one hand waving toward the chair by my side. I slide back down into the chair, my hands curling around the edge of the seat as he takes his own seat. I focus on the table, trying not to think.
“That white stallion you take out to the fields with you every day—what breed is he?” Kestrin asks, as if he had just met me outside the stables. It takes me a moment to reply.
“I do not know, Your Highness. I was told … he comes from the Fethering Plains.”
“A beautiful specimen. The Master of Horses is considering breeding him.”
“Breeding him,” I repeat idiotically, unable to follow this new thread of conversation.
“The horse has a good build. He is strong and fast,” he explains, the epitome of a casual conversationalist.
“I expect—I expect that is true. I just don’t know that—Falada will breed. He hasn’t yet.” After all, Falada’s having a wife is rather different from the stable idea of breeding.
“You seem to know more of the horse than the princess does,” Kestrin notes.
Damn his word games. I dare not remain silent, and yet I dare not speak. I do not understand Kestrin: had he been my brother or like him, by now he would have finished his games. I do not know why he drags it out, why, having drawn me into the open, he does not attack.
“Tell me, Thoreena, your father’s southern estate that you have lived on these past few years, what is it like?”
“Your Highness?”
“Has Daerilin a hall or a manor house? What are the grounds like? I have heard much of them, but would know your opinion.”
I stare blankly at the table. I do not know. I have never listened to what little talk there was of it for such talk invariably involved Valka.
“I think you have never been there, little thorn,” he says, his voice almost gentle in the silence. I do not think it strange that he no longer calls me lady. I bite my lip, then take a breath to answer but he cuts me off.
“Remember that it is a crime to lie to one of the royal family: a crime punishable by death, for it is considered a betrayal.”
“Your Highness, tell me what you want of me,” I plead.
“The truth. Who are you?”
“I am the goose girl. There is nothing more I can tell you, Your Highness.” The chain presses gently against my throat.
“If you were not the Lady Valka before you reached the Border, then what happened to Lady Valka?”
“I cannot say, Your Highness.” His face has lost its frozen aspect, his eyes glinting in the lamplight. I think he is closing in on the kill.
“Then you admit to having lived a lie among us?” He raises an eyebrow, half grinning, and though he has just warned me of the dangers of lying, his demeanor now invites confession. I find myself hating him for it—for the ability to play with people so easily.
“I admit only to wishing to live in peace,” I say bitterly.
He considers me. “Tell me why you fear me, lady.”
I try not to flinch, but his damned eyes see everything.
“At least twice I have seen you look at me with such fear as I have seen only in the eyes of hunted deer.”
I let my gaze wander across the table, pause over the plate of fruit, and finally come to rest on the small, jeweled knife. “I have only ever known one other prince, Your Highness.”
He nods. “Do you judge me by his standard?”
“I am not in a position to judge princes.”
Thorn Page 11
