Cyril’s back jerked straight. “I will not wear a bell!”
“Fine, no bell. But what do you say otherwise? All you need to do is provide us with the information you know to help us in our return to Torr. It’s a very good offer! Your thirsty skin will thank you. And, though you’ll say it doesn’t matter one whit, you’ll be doing good for your country besides.”
Cyril let out a theatrical sigh, though his hand stayed guardedly on his chin. “Here’s how it looks from my side. I will accept your offer of this so-called freedom, but here’s what I can give you in return for it. All I can give you. I know nothing more about the dealings of Monsia with Torr, nor could you persuade me to share them if I did.” He lifted a hand to quell Juniper’s protest. “No. That’s something I won’t budge on. Say what you will about my country pride—and I won’t deny there’s truth to that—still, you shan’t get me to fink on my blood. Hear me out, though! I do have something important to share which I think you will find well worth my freedom.”
Now that he had her attention, Cyril leaned back and preened a little. “Oh, yes.” He lowered his voice ghoulishly. “And it’s fairly juicy, to boot. Want to hear it?”
He paused again for effect, then raised his hands in a dramatic gesture. “I know who thieved your horses.”
3
FOR A LONG MOMENT, JUNIPER WAS SPEECHless with shock. It was so exactly like Cyril to have known this information from the start and said nothing until it could benefit him! Then Alta dove for him with throttling hands outstretched, and Juniper had to jump up and get very busy keeping her from knocking Cyril’s lights out—though it pained Juniper a bit to do so, for never would a beating have been so well earned.
Still, this was sorely needed information.
And Cyril knew it.
The boy himself sat with arms crossed on his chest, watching their tussle with smug confidence. At a suitable pause in the action, he said, “Bring me to your next gathering, and I shall share my intelligence with the group. I guarantee they will be pleased to hear me out.”
Still in the act of blocking Alta, Juniper let go. Alta barreled on through her own momentum and crashed into Cyril, who toppled backward like a felled tree. Juniper ignored them. Her focus sharpened to a fine point. What was she doing? If her father could have seen her now . . . Surely he’d raised her to be smarter than this! Why, she was acting no better than a thwarted schoolgirl in short skirts facing a threat to her sandbox.
Juniper drew herself up tall and steeled her gaze on Cyril. “Enough,” she said. She did not raise her voice.
She did not have to. Alta fell away to the side. Cyril struggled to his feet, wagging his head in a last grasp at self-confidence. But his moment was gone. He only has the power I allow him to take, Juniper realized. Cyril had already been soundly beaten; it was time he learned his place.
“Let’s get one thing very clear,” she said, her words icy. “There is nothing that we need from you, Cyril Lefarge. You believe you have some information that would be of use to the group. You might, or you might not. That is for me to decide—me alone, as the ruler of Queen’s Basin. The ruler both appointed and chosen by the people,” she added, and saw him wince. She took a step forward, pressing her advantage.
“Now, I’ve made you an offer of guarded freedom around Queen’s Basin, but that offer is quite conditional. I’m going to hear your bit of information, and I’m going to hear it now. And if I like it, if it proves useful, then we’ll talk about what comes next. If not, you can stay in that cave till the snows come. And your pimply face with you.”
Cyril swallowed. He glanced toward Alta.
“Now, Cyril,” said Juniper. She stepped even closer, noticing Cyril’s eyes widen and his head duck slightly on her approach. For once, she appreciated all those boring old Comportment classes. Acting like a pompous ruler could come in handy after all! She yawned theatrically. “Already I grow weary of waiting. Perhaps I should—”
“I can show you,” Cyril said quickly. Stammered, really. Cyril! Stammering! Of all the little wonders. “Though, uh, it’s possible I may not know quite so much as I implied just now.”
Juniper huffed and started to turn away, but Cyril put a hand on her arm.
“Don’t go—listen. I meant what I said; I do have information you will want to know. Hear me out.”
“Go on, then.”
Cyril swallowed. “All right. Root and I had gone back to my camp that night, and Root was already abed. But I was restless, and that infernal music from your party at the Great Tree didn’t make sleeping any easier. So I set off to hike about the cliffs awhile.” He looked at Juniper as though for approval, then lowered himself onto a nearby stone. Juniper stayed standing, hands on her hips.
“It was Jessamyn’s shrieks that first caught my notice,” Cyril went on. “I hurried over to the embankment, where I found I could see quite clearly down into the Basin. It was perilous dark out, but the stones carried enough light that I could see a cluster of man shapes gathered at the horses’ pen.”
“We know that already,” Alta snapped. “That’s the very story told by Jessamyn. What actual new information is it you’ve got, then?”
Cyril glowered at her. “As I said, I was not near enough to see any detail upon these thieves, but I did see them start to move very quickly away once Jessamyn began her ruckus. They were bathed in a certain orange glow that made it possible to track them in the dark.”
Juniper nodded; Jessamyn had mentioned the orange lights, too. But Cyril had stopped talking.
“And?” Juniper said impatiently.
“And I followed them,” said Cyril. “I cut across the pass above the waterfall quick as I could, and made to see where they might be headed. I will tell you straight out, I did not find much worth noting. But I did see their destination, such as it was.” He paused. “And I can take you there.”
• • •
After a quick stop to collect Erick, the group set off across the cliffside to investigate their new lead. Cyril navigated the rocky trails easily, scurrying up escarpments and across stony banks at an unwavering clip that Juniper found impressive. To Juniper, each mountain trail looked nearly identical. Cyril had probably spent more time clambering about up here than she had, given all the free time he’d had over the last weeks. Still, his sense of direction was unerring, and he kept up a stiff pace.
The path was upwind from the waterfall, which rattled and roared below them—it was, in fact, a fine vantage point for looking down upon the pool where the group had spent more than one relaxing day swimming and taking in the sunshine.
It did not escape possibility that Cyril might be taking them on a daisy-chase. But when he finally stopped by a shallow gap in the stone face halfway between the South and North Banks, Juniper saw, with quickening pulse, that the ground held the faint but unmistakable sign of hoofprints. And not only that . . .
“Look!” said Alta. “It’s those mystery tracks—same as we saw around the horse pens that night, Erick, the ones you couldn’t figure out.”
Erick dropped to his knees and squinted at the hard-packed earth. “That’s them, all right,” he said grimly.
The tracks were vaguely foot-shaped, but unusually big and pocked through with sharp, clawlike ridges. Juniper shuddered, remembering how scared they’d been that night and how Jessamyn’s screams had echoed all through the Basin.
And now they were going to follow these prints . . . where?
“There you have it,” said Cyril. “As promised, so delivered.”
“Where’d they go, then, your mystery bandits?” Alta said, obviously impressed by the prints but trying not to show it. “Tipped off into the falls, did they?”
Cyril cocked his chin toward the dip in the wall. His confidence was returning, but before he could say anything, Juniper pushed past him for a closer look. The spot where they stood looke
d like a simple rest area along this shingled trail that hugged the mountain face. But Juniper had not roamed the Hourglass Mountains these last weeks without learning a thing or two. The way the rock wall curved ever so slightly in, mirroring the pool beneath, suggested there was more to this spot than first met the eye. The heavy curtain of hanging bluevines looked familiar, too.
She’d walked through something very similar to reach that first cave that had led them, ultimately, to the Basin.
This was an opening in the mountain—a path. She knew it was.
Erick stood and caught Juniper’s arm. “Are you sure about this?” he whispered. “These prints . . . We don’t know anything about them. Or where they might lead.”
Juniper pinched her lips shut. She wasn’t sure, and that worried her as much as anything. “We’re just investigating,” she reassured him. “We’re not going anywhere right now.”
She looked at Alta, who nodded. Erick settled for a shrug. Cyril started drumming his index fingers on the stone in the vein of an announcer, until Alta elbowed him in the ribs and he broke off with a yelp.
Juniper plunged at the rock face.
As she’d suspected, the vine-draped wall was not a wall at all. Right in the center, where the faint prints disappeared on the stone track, the dense vines pulled aside to show the rock face narrowing to a V-shaped opening.
Juniper could see clear through the gaping mouth into the secret passage of a mountain tunnel.
• • •
After dropping Cyril back in his cave while they figured out next steps, Juniper and Erick and Alta gathered in the Great Tree to talk things over.
“What a marvel!” said Erick. His fingers were twitching in the way they did when he’d been away from his books for too long. “I’ve got six different things to research now, based on this new information. But another secret-passage cave? Astonishing!”
“I guess it makes sense,” said Juniper. “The intruders vanished so quickly and quietly—and it explains how the tracks were just gone back when we were trying to follow them. Of course they would have a passage taking them out of the valley. The same way they came in, no doubt.”
“So what’s our next move, then?” Alta asked.
“We should take the final decision to the group,” said Juniper, “but for my part, I want to follow these tracks and find out where they lead.” She wasn’t sure when she’d decided this, but suddenly, it was the truest thing she knew. Her heart thumped with excitement.
Alta nodded. “We need to, don’t we? It’s the best lead we’ve got.”
“I’m not sure,” said Erick. “We don’t know anything about these people, and they’re likely dangerous. I mean, they might not even be people; how can we know?”
“We’ve got to reclaim our horses,” said Alta.
“The way I see it,” said Juniper, “is that it’s an exploratory mission. The cave’s a tunnel, just like the one that led us here. So we’ll send a group through. We’ll move with care. And if anything looks risky, then we’ll turn back. What do you say?”
It was clear Erick still didn’t love the idea, but he gave a reluctant nod.
“All right then, we’re agreed,” said Juniper. “And we’ll see what the rest say before we set any plans in motion. But first—just to change the subject a titch—there’s one more thing I wanted to ask you both: Have you noticed anything different about Jessamyn these days?”
“Jessamyn?” said Erick. “I guess she just seems like . . . a regular girl to me. Ouch!” Alta’s elbow cracked hard into the middle of his back.
“Oh, excuse me,” said Alta sweetly. “Did that feel girly enough for you?”
“Come on, you two,” said Juniper. “I just feel that something is off with Jessamyn recently. Since we left the palace, we’ve all gotten to know her, right?”
Alta snorted. “Such as is worth knowing.”
“Exactly,” Juniper said grudgingly. “I’m not one to badmouth others, but . . .”
“It’s no secret that Jessamyn has been the perfect picture of a spoiled, indulgent little layabout,” said Alta.
“Hmm,” said Erick. “And now that I give it some thought . . . is that picture almost too perfect?”
“Yes,” Juniper agreed. “That’s just what I thought. Or . . . I guess I didn’t think it, really, not until today. But you saw the way she was going on this morning.”
Alta nodded, as though trying the impression on for size. “You’re right. All those brash ideas and that talk of warfare and sending messages and so on. Very unlike her. Unlike the normal her, that is.”
“Skipping back and forth, too, wasn’t she?” said Erick. “Almost like another person was pushing out from time to time, only to be shoved back inside.”
“Exactly,” said Juniper. “And there’s something more we just learned.” She filled Erick in on the new information they’d gotten from Cyril about Jessamyn’s father, even though it shed no real light on anything. “And that’s all we know. What I can’t figure is what we should do about it. If we even need to do anything. It all seems important, but . . . how?”
“We could have a look around her cave,” suggested Erick. “See if there’s anything in there that’s out of the ordinary.”
“It’s right next to mine,” Alta agreed. “And I happen to know that milady is off a-lolling by the far riverbank, slathered in some nourishing skin potion or other.”
Juniper considered. “It doesn’t seem right to go poking through someone else’s belongings.”
Erick cleared his throat. “I think that when something seems fishy in your kingdom, it’s pretty much a law that you need to look into it. As your chief adviser, I recommend action in this case.”
Overlook a wasp, and you will face the swarm, her father had once told her. With a war on and traitors recently uncovered, they couldn’t be too careful. “All right,” Juniper said. “Let’s all go together, though. And no poking or prying. We’ll be there strictly as investigators, not nosy parkers.”
With that, she jumped up and followed Alta and Erick down the tree and along the path toward the apartment caves. When they reached Jessamyn’s door, they found it shut but not locked. It swung smoothly on its hinges, and the three stepped inside.
Juniper took in the room at a glance: neatly made-up bed in the corner, several dresses and a rainbow-hued robe hanging from pegs on the wall, a small tabletop covered in a brilliantly white cloth and topped with a sturdy porcelain vase. Juniper had been in Jessamyn’s apartment only once before, the night of the disastrous horse-thieving. But she’d been so distracted then, trying to calm the girl down and discover what was going on, that she hadn’t paid any notice to her surroundings. Now, as she studied the space, she found herself surprised at how . . . spare it seemed. Where were all the frills? Where was the gaudy, garish décor, the visual froth to be expected from someone of her personality? Their everyday Jessamyn was a peacock on full display. Yet her dwelling was plain and functional, containing the basics and nothing more.
“Curious,” murmured Juniper, running her hand along the bedspread.
“Look here,” said Erick. He was standing by a shelf cut along the rock wall that held a row of books.
Of course he was.
Juniper moved closer. The full collection of Flower Bard epics took up pride of place, but Erick had reached a hand to feel behind them. From this rear spot he tugged several slim, clothbound volumes that were wedged behind the front display row. He held these books out to Juniper and she read their titles, eyebrows lifting higher and higher on her forehead: Political Instability in Our Times, read the first. And, Bellamy Bellingham: On the Trail of the Lower Continent’s Most Notorious Renegade. And the last one was The Face of Deception: How Your Body Betrays Your Innermost Thoughts.
“A little light reading, with her peppermint bonbons?” said Alta doubtfully.
“Well, if this doesn’t beat the cream to peaks,” said Juniper. The more she learned about this girl, the more confused she became.
Who was Jessamyn Ceward?
And what was she really doing in Queen’s Basin?
4
IN THE DINING AREA A FEW HOURS LATER, Juniper sat looking around the circle at her gathered subjects. “There you have it,” she said. She’d given them the quick version of the morning’s events, from the offer she’d made Cyril, to the information he’d shared, to the mysterious tunnel that seemed to open on the next step in their investigation. She hadn’t mentioned their suspicions about Jessamyn, of course—what was there to say, after all? But Juniper kept a close watch on the girl in question, who lounged nonchalantly on the far side of the circle. “As for the new tunnel, we didn’t venture past the opening, but the prints were plain to see. A whole group of horses went that way in recent weeks, and their kidnappers besides.”
“You think Cyril is telling the truth, then?” said Leena skeptically. “He really did see all that hugger-muggery, just as he said?”
Juniper looked at Erick, who shrugged faintly. “Alta?” she said.
“He led us to the cave, didn’t he?” said Alta. “And there were the prints. I mean, no offense to his pompous self, but I think making up a story that detailed on the turn of the moment would take a dab more creativity than he’s got in him.”
“I agree,” said Erick. “More importantly, he wants to get out of that cave—and stay out—so he has nothing to gain by feeding us false information.”
Princess Juniper of the Anju Page 3
