“No,” said Grace, finding her voice. “No, it's all right, but people don't usually-- talk to me in gardens. You might want to find Petra, she's better at this sort of thing than I am.”
“You're so much more interesting than Petra,” said Alex.
Grace felt cross. “There's nothing wrong with Petra.”
“Right now, Petra would be smothering me with reassurances and trying to convince me that no one really thinks that because she's never met someone she doesn't genuinely like. Meanwhile, you're standing there looking like I'm some species of insect you've never seen before and don't trust.”
“I didn't say that,” said Grace.
“You didn't? My deepest apologies, Princess.” Alex's eyes crinkled with laughter as she swept into a bow.
Grace felt a smile tug at her lips in spite of herself. “You're interesting, too,” she found herself saying, stepping closer.
“That's good,” murmured Alex. “I was worried you might be as bored with me as I'm bored with everyone who apparently speculates that I bite people I don't like.”
Grace would have sworn she could feel Alex's eyes on her as if they were a physical touch and tried to pretend that she could control the suddenly erratic rhythm of her heart.
“They tell stories about the princess who runs an army, you know,” Alex went on. “A princess who defeats pirates.”
Grace caught the hem of her tunic in her fist and held on. “It gets me out of meetings. They tell stories about you, too.”
Alex’s laugh rippled across the patio like the folds of a well-worn blanket. “Not very nice stories, are they? And you’re still here. May I kiss you?” Alex asked abruptly, and Grace nodded before she'd processed what Alex had asked.
She processed it a moment later when Alex bent her back over the balcony, cupped the nape of her neck, and covered her mouth with hers.
Grace stayed, shocked still for a moment and then struggled until she was firmly back on solid ground.
“I'm sorry,” said Alex, stepping back hastily. “I thought you said--”
“No!” said Grace, aghast. “I mean-- yes, yes, definitely, kiss me” and lunged.
Alex managed to keep both of them from overbalancing and Grace was horribly embarrassed for a moment until Alex started kissing her again and Grace stopped thinking.
“They'll miss you if you don't get back,” Alex whispered some time later, too close to Grace's ear for Grace to think properly.
“I don't care,” Grace whispered back, even though it wasn't precisely true.
“Petra's coming looking for you,” said Alex, “and I need to go, but--” she pressed a small card into her hand-- “we should get together sometime.”
Alex kissed Grace one last time and stepped coolly over the balcony railing and dropped into space.
Grace leaned over the balcony in horror before her hand hit the rappel line. Alex must have attached it while Grace was-- distracted-- and Alex had almost reached the ground in a controlled descent. She watched, hanging over the balcony, as Alex tugged the rope free, winked, waved, and disappeared into the shadows.
“Are you throwing up again?” Petra's voice came from behind her, sounding worried. Grace whirled around, blushing.
A grin spread over Petra's face. “You weren't, were you? You were kissing someone. Oh my god, you have to tell me everything.”
Grace grinned back and shook her head slowly.
“You're going to make me guess? Please tell me it wasn’t Dylan.”
Grace made a horrible face.
“No, no, it couldn't be,” said Petra, laughing. “I saw him walking with one of the delegates from Picara, I think they play tennis together.”
Grace shook her head again and followed Petra back to the ball.
Grace woke up the next morning with excitement clenching in a ball in the pit of her stomach. She sternly told herself she oughtn't get any sort of hopes up, and that she wasn't likely to see or hear from Alex at any point in the near future. Still, she was up out of bed, scrubbed, dressed, and halfway down the hall to ask Petra for her advice when she remembered it was a secret.
Without the smell of night-blooming flowers and cinnamon twining around her in the darkness, she couldn't quite remember why it was a secret, but she didn't see how she could tell anyone, either.
She went to breakfast instead.
The pot wasn't on yet, which meant she'd beaten early-riser William downstairs. It was well enough, she decided, because she could busy herself with slicing and measuring fruit and oats and not think about anything.
The diversion didn't last long enough: William came downstairs just as she'd tipped the last cup into the pot, and she had to sit with him while they both waited for the porridge to be cooked enough to eat.
“It will be a fine morning,” he said, looking out the window.
Grace looked out herself and saw a number of clouds heavy with rain. “The crops will be happy.” She felt like a storm herself, ready to fling sheets of water over streets and buildings just for being so confusing and horrible.
Something flickered over William's face, as if he was catching gusts of wind from Grace's heart. She began counting the ceramic tiles, running her fingertips over the smooth glaze and rough joins as she let the numbers fill her head. She couldn't think of any other way to keep him from hearing things she never wanted to say to him.
William said, “If the harvest is good enough, perhaps this year we can expand the data lines again,” rather than anything else, and Grace was stupidly grateful. The data lines branched out from the river. When they had been completely new, five years before, they had only connected the villages right on the river itself, and had proven themselves worth the effort within six months of installation when a band of pirates had come in from it.
Most Courans couldn't fight: pain from someone physically close to a Couran would burst through the connection, and even though it didn't do damage, it hurt everyone else nearly as much. A connected Couran had to either use a pitifully ineffective ranged weapon or be so angry that the pain couldn't cut through enough to stop them.
Grace could rarely feel anything through the connection, and when the distress call came through, anger had settled comfortably onto her shoulders. There were a few in every village who weren't connected and a few more who didn't care about the pain who trained as doctors and soldiers, and Grace knew them all. Her instructions for them hummed back down the lines, the work of a moment before she gathered the Couran capital force. It took twenty minutes to shove off down the river in a broad, flat-bottomed bazaar barge. By the time she reached each village, there was a small group of volunteers waiting, and every time they slowed a little less because there were more hands to haul them aboard, even as they carried more and more gear.
By dark, aided by a swift downstream current and traveling faster than Grace had ever gone in her life, they had nearly reached the Couran border and overtaken the pirate ship. Its hull was scarred from an encounter with one of the sea monsters that ringed the coast once you got too far from the continent. Grace stood ankle-deep in water that had spilled over the sides and that no one had bothered to bail out, feeling cool and dry as if her anger-cloak made her truly waterproof, and cast ropes to the ocean ship. They hauled themselves up with muscles more used to hauling barrels of wine, bushels of oats, and bags of clay.
The pirates were drunk on stolen Couran wine and hadn't expected resistance from the notoriously peaceful Couran citizenry. Grace shouted, and her people shouted back, and in a flurry of staffs, they had backed the pirates into their own hold and barred the doors: an effective jail in a country that had none of its own.
Then it was the data lines again, to send a message for an Arbiter to come down to figure out what to do about the pirates.
Grace spent the next day helping rebuild buildings that had been on fire and replanting trampled fields. The pirates hadn't managed to do much damage to the thick brick walls of the houses, but Grace still woke
up the next day with her muscles singing with every step she took. Petra was there for breakfast. Grace hadn't expected her sister, but she should have known that the biggest disruption that Coura had had in forty years would also call for the best Arbiter Coura had had in 40 years.
Grace went to hug her, and Petra looked at her with misery written clearly over her face, flew at Grace, and let Grace take her weight.
Hastily trading her cheerful greeting in for something more appropriate, Grace said: “What happened?”
“Most of them were just hungry and desperate,” Petra said. “Most of them can pay their debts with a year of working for a family here.”
A standard punishment for a first-time robber wouldn't upset Petra. “The others?”
The color drained from Petra's face. “Execution.”
That meant Petra had seen enough violence in them and little enough contrition that they couldn't release them, couldn't call upon Arrosa or Irigona to imprison them.
“You could go home,” Grace whispered, even as Petra shook her head.
It was done the next day with both princesses standing watch, Grace supporting Petra while Petra shared the pain. Grace could have felt satisfaction if it hadn't been for the look on Petra's face, fleeting as it was.
Calling the villagers who had fled into the countryside home took another two weeks. It felt like an age had passed between when Grace left with Petra for home and when she got the line that everyone had been accounted for. They went back down to honor the dead, and for once it was a formal occasion Grace didn't try to squirm out of.
When she didn't think of Petra's face, it was a mostly good memory for Grace, one of the few times she felt truly useful to the country. Maybe that had been William's goal in mentioning them. Perhaps he had taken his glimpse of Grace's turmoil as a cry for comfort.
Grace's parents arrived and saved her from trying to come up with a response. It was much easier to hide her thoughts once William and her parents had begun discussing how much of the metals Arrosa exported they thought they could successfully buy, and which public works they could support.
Grace bolted her bowl of porridge the moment it was ready and had almost escaped with a scalded tongue when Petra arrived. No pretense ever fooled Petra, who gave Grace an extremely knowing look. Grace told herself she didn't even feel a tiny bit guilty as she finished the last bite and gave her family hasty goodbyes.
“She must be working on something, to have been up so early,” Grace's mother remarked as the door closed.
Grace thought she might go for a nice run in one of the mountain valleys that bordered the city. Trails ran behind all the buildings that weren't built into the mountains and snaked around the manse, which used the mountain as part of its construction. She needed to clear her head so she could focus on her practice without giving herself away to Derrick or anyone else who might happen into the staff shop. The normalcy should be enough to allow her emotions to settle, and she could get on with everything.
The windows showed more clouds hanging heavy in the horizon. Setting out with such ominous clouds in the sky would be a gamble. She would need to run fast to beat out the incoming storm. Walking quickly down the hallway, she weighed the odds.
She did not expect to be pulled into an alcove in the second cross hallway she passed after leaving the private family apartments into the outer ring of public spaces that ringed the manse. Still, there she was, enveloped in the scent of cinnamon with a warm thigh pressed against hers and hands steadying her against the wall.
“This is probably not the best way to do this,” said Alex, breath warm on Grace’s cheek, “but would you like to go out with me?”
“Yes,” said Grace's mouth, before Grace's brain had processed the words.
“I'm heading out of town today,” Alex said, as Grace's brain scrabbled at the ends of a dozen follow-on questions without any ability to string anything useful together, “but I should be back in two weeks. Meet me Tuesday? In the little wine bar next to the theater?”
“Yes,” said Grace's mouth again, because “where are you going” and “how can I reach you” seemed too far out of her current ability to speak. She leaned in instead, and Alex's mouth met hers again. Her hands couldn't get purchase in Alex's short hair, but she tried anyway, reaching up and hanging on.
They stayed there, pressed together in the infrequently-used hallway, for several long moments, until a soft chime sounded.
Alex pushed away and grimaced. “I'm going to miss my boat if I don't hurry.” She started down the hallway.
“Wait,” Grace said, her mouth and brain finally syncing up.
Alex looked back over her shoulder. “Two weeks, on Tuesday.”
Grace smiled in spite of herself as Alex disappeared around a corner. She really needed that run.
The run didn't help. The rainclouds delivered on their promise ten minutes before Grace meant to turn around. Since she was going to get drenched no matter what she did, Grace couldn't think of a reason to cut the run short. The wind grabbed at her hair and snatched chunks out of her ponytail, whipping it into her face and against the top of her shoulders.
She needed a bath, she reflected as she calculated the route back that would drip as little mud onto the floor as possible while also avoiding any visiting dignitaries who might think less of her for her messiness. She thought she recalled half a dozen functions on the east wing, so she went in a door through some event spaces on the west side. She congratulated herself when she made it back into the private section of the building without meeting a soul.
The water was cooling on her skin rapidly. The mountain held the inside temperature steady, which was usually nice, but it did mean that a wet summer run needed quick attention.
She couldn’t avoid passing Petra’s centrally-located room. Her mood cooled further when she turned into the corridor and found Dylan framed by Petra's lintel. Grace increased her pace to avoid them, but Petra, invisible behind Dylan, called out to her.
“Petra,” Grace replied, caught and a bit guilty. “I was just going to have a bath.” She shivered more visibly than necessary to demonstrate her bona fides.
Petra took it entirely the wrong way. “Grace, you must be freezing!” She slipped out under the arm that Dylan had braced against the door frame, drew Grace into the room, and bundled Grace into Petra's bathrobe, which was pink and had sleeves that both constricted her arms and draped over her hands. It also didn't quite cover her butt, to which the tunic had molded.
“I missed you at breakfast,” Petra said, spreading a towel out over her bed.
Grace sat on it with as much dignity as she could manage through the mud collecting on the tile of Petra's floor. “I woke up early.” Petra's brow wrinkled with something that indicated she'd caught part of Grace's discomfort, and Grace had some idea that Petra didn't mean to do anything to assuage it until Petra thought she knew what was going on.
Grace would really have preferred to have this out with Petra without Dylan around.
It was most unexpected, then, that Dylan was the one who saved her. “Are you looking forward to your trip?” he asked.
“What trip?” Grace twined the bathrobe cord around her finger, trying to think of some detail that would satisfy Petra.
“You might not have heard yet, but you’ve been selected to accompany William on a visit to Picara while the seas are as calm as they get.” Dylan smirked, more drenched in superiority than Grace was in water.
“How long?” Normally, Grace liked visiting Picara, but it took two days to get down the river and another four to travel west along the coastline. It took even longer to come back against the current. She counted on her fingers, trying to figure out whether she’d make it back in time.
“Trying to figure out how many court engagements you’ll wriggle out of?” asked Petra. “You’ll only be there two nights.”
“Will you be going?” Grace asked Petra.
She shook her head. “I have to go north. Y
ou’ll be fine with William.”
“Guess I better go pack.” Grace pushed off the bed, grateful for the excuse. She dropped Petra’s bathrobe into the laundry hamper and squelched out the door.
Chapter 4
She had showered and was folding a tunic into her single pack when her mother walked in. Her packing habits had been informed by dozens of camping trips, and less stuff made for less hassle.
“I see you’ve heard.” The queen lowered herself regally on Grace’s hard-back chair. “It’s a good opportunity.”
A good diplomatic opportunity. Grace fastened the bag shut and turned to face her mother. “I’ll do my best,” she said.
“Are you all right?” Queen Maura asked. They didn’t often have these conversations. Grace tried to make herself inconspicuous, to keep out of the way if she couldn’t be helpful. It was diplomacy; she could rarely help.
With her packing finished, Grace had nothing to busy herself with, so she perched on the end of her bed. “Why wouldn’t I be?” she said, lightly. She rolled the edge of her sleeve between her thumb and forefinger.
Her mother reached out, took her hands, brought them to stillness. “Petra is worried.”
The bottom dropped out of Grace’s stomach. What had she given away?
“Your friends will make it to the bazaar next year,” Queen Maura went on. “In the meantime, staying busy will be good for you.”
Grace stared. “You’re getting rid of me?”
“Don’t think about it that way.” The queen smoothed Grace’s hair, the way she’d done when Grace was a child. “Think of it as a different way to help. A more constructive way.”
“I do plenty of constructive things here,” Grace pointed out. “Half the city guards attend my militia practices in order to stay in shape.”
“And, as always, Derrick will run them just as well in your absence.” The queen paused, a tell that she was looking for a way to convey something delicately. “He will keep his conversation to happier matters than the dangers of our mountains.”
Misfit Princess Page 4
