Leaning against the wall, Grace fidgeted with the sleeve of the overdress. It occurred to her that she didn’t really need it any more, so she pulled it off and folded it carefully into her pack.
Harold found her just as she’d fastened the pack shut. “Lunch?” he suggested. “I’m starving.”
“Brilliant idea,” said Alex, breezing out of stable. “I can pick up my horse in an hour.”
Grace trailed after them. “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” she told Harold as Alex led them down the street.
Lunch was a quiet affair. Harold dug in to his food as if he hadn’t eaten in two days and Alex watched Grace from behind a carefully tilted wineglass. Grace didn’t know how to break the silence. She pushed her food around her plate instead.
She wasn’t hungry when she went back to the stable, but her stomach hurt anyway.
Alex spun her around and kissed her thoroughly.
“What was that?” Grace asked, a little breathless.
A stablehand brought the horse around to the street, and Alex swung herself easily up into the saddle. “Something for you to remember me by. I’ll see you next time I’m in Coura.”
Grace watched shamelessly as Alex rode out of sight. Once even the brown blur had subsided into the background, she turned and found Harold smirking at her.
“Time to go?” he said mildly, instead of anything else he could have chosen.
Nodding, Grace resettled the weight of her pack on her back. “Time to focus,” she muttered under her breath.
“It’s not so bad,” said Harold, as they turned towards the mountains. “Nice hiking weather.”
The nice weather turned out to be the best part of it. After the first night in the foothills, the going turned hard. The map didn’t say anything about sheer cliff faces, impenetrable brambles, and streams full of slippery moss-covered rocks and icy water.
Their days fell into a rhythm of checking the map, trying a path, and backtracking when it didn’t work. Harold didn’t complain.
They had made camp at the same spot for the third night in a row when Harold said, quietly, “I don’t know how they do it.”
“They probably know the way better than we do.” Grace passed over a travel dish of boiled root vegetables that Harold had foraged while Grace was trying to figure out if she could find a way around a pile of fallen rocks. There hadn’t been, and she’d nearly twisted her ankle when the ground started shifting under her on the way back down.
Grace lost count of the days. She focused on the map and the terrain. They had adjusted to the altitude and were no longer breathless by mid-morning. She tried to keep track of the time by the color of the leaves, but as they climbed, fewer and fewer adorned the branches and more and more crunched under her boots.
She had almost given up hope when they crested a rise and a vegetable garden overgrown with weeds spread out in front of them.
She broke into a run, beckoning to Harold, as she followed the dirt path around the garden. There were scraggly plants beginning to grow at intervals, and she did not like to think about why they hadn’t been trodden into the packed earth.
A building came into view. Its windows were broken, and ominous black marks stained the exterior. The roof drooped.
Grace stopped abruptly. She stood, staring at the terraced vines laden with grapes. Several grapes had fallen to the ground and begun to rot on the soil.
Her nostrils flared and her lips thinned as she took deep breaths, looking around. When she remembered she wasn't at home, that she was out in the wilderness where no one cared if she was polite, she screamed, rage and frustration and helplessness, and stopped just as abruptly, feeling silly and not finding the catharsis she sought.
Gritting her teeth, she walked forward, through the door that hung loose on one hinge, into the building, and just stood. The stone shelves built into the walls of the cottage still held most of the dishes, and shards of ceramic littered the floor and accounted for the rest.
“They had a fire,” said Harold softly. “That's all.”
“So we'll find them.” Grace reached out to touch the wall. Her fingers came away covered in soot.
Harold offered a weak smile. “I promised Petra I'd see you home safely.”
“So?”
Gently, Harold took Grace’s wrist and began to pull her away from the destruction. “It's only three weeks to winter. We need to go home. At least now we know the way.”
Grace knew getting home would take two of the weeks.
She had one week to find Jack and Nell, and they could have gone anywhere in the mountains. Grace looked around. Her eyes caught on a doll lying on the floor. It was wearing a tiny dress, and the fire had scorched the hem.
A single week to find them. She punched the wall over the scorched stone, the sun streaking in where the roof used to be.
Harold caught her other wrist, unimpressed. “I can see how injuring yourself provides you with navigational assistance.”
Grace tore away and stomped outside. It wasn't enough time, even if she had brought the whole Couran army with her. It wasn't enough time, even if they'd had three times that number of volunteers.
She didn't say another word to Harold for the rest of the day, not trusting herself not to spew bile at him. He had kept her company and kept her safe. He didn't deserve the force of her rage directed at him.
It grew late. Grace prowled around the edge of the clearing, trying to think as she watched Harold get ready to sleep.
He settled into his bedroll. “Well, good night, I suppose,” he told her before he pulled the blanket over his head.
When she was certain he slept, she crept into the dark cottage and lifted the doll from the ground. Straightening its dress, she tucked it carefully into her pack.
Her eye caught on an axe. The moon shone bright overhead, and Grace snatched it up and set herself to the task of replenishing the wood pile the fire had ruined. In the dark, with the burning in her shoulders and arms comfortably masking any errant emotion, she kept a steady pace at the wood-- thwack, thwack, thwack-- while Harold snored. Finally, she exhausted her helpless frustration and crawled into her sleeping sack.
The next morning, she woke with eyes feeling like they'd been coated in crushed glass. The sun streamed warm on her face, and she could tell Harold had let her sleep in.
Harold smiled at her and said, “Good morning.”
Grace smiled back, and said, “Good morning. We should head for home.”
Harold looked like he wanted to say something, but he nodded instead and started packing up the camp.
Chapter 7
They got back the day before the end-of-market reception. Grace had tried to convince Harold that they needed to stay and do something for the family with whom they had left Harold's excessive book collection. Perhaps, she had suggested, they needed help with the harvest, their roof patched, their stable mucked out.
He had given her a very pointed look over the nose of his glasses. “Grace,” he said, “You know better.”
The worst of it was that Grace did know better. She gave half a thought to arguing for the sake of it, but it didn't seem worth the breath.
In any event, Petra's reaction made up for the hated reception. She ran across the courtyard and managed to sweep them both up with sheer momentum. Grace listened to her laugh as Harold told her outrageous fabricated tales about how he'd battled a twelve-foot mountain lion through quicksand and watched the smiles bloom.
That evening, Grace watched her parents over the supper table from her usual seat, which was as close to the door as she could manage. The table was covered in tureens of vegetables seasoned with a familiar mixes of spices, and her parents had busied themselves in conversation with a half-dozen high-ranking delegates from various countries. No recriminations seemed forthcoming. Grace breathed a sigh of relief.
As soon as she could get away without causing a stir, she slipped out into the hallway. Making certain no one was there, she skipp
ed over the hexagon tiles in the patterns she'd invented when she was eight and learning geometry from the tessellated patterns on the floor. She put fresh sheets on her bed to replace the ones that had gotten musty when she'd been away, and they smelled just like they did when her father used to tuck her in and lull her to sleep with stories of Couran history, of nimble-tongued diplomats and clever trade agreements. Nestled between layers of strong cotton, only a little threadbare around the edges, she smiled: even if she had to go to a reception tomorrow, she had the evening for herself.
Coura was home, and she was back where she belonged.
Her sense of relief evaporated shortly after she stepped into the auditorium where the reception would be held. Even as the scents and sounds of home settled around her, Grace wanted to leave before the various guests of honor had even been announced. She'd let Petra persuade her to wear a new tunic in some stiff fabric with sparkly bits tacked on somehow, and she couldn't take a full stride in it. Also, it itched.
The people flowed in through propped-open doors like a broken faucet: they sprayed into the room in brightly-colored dribs and drabs with the hissing noise of unintelligible conversation. Each new person heated the steamy room more, even though Grace could see naked branches out the window. Later that night, while Arrosans bundled into furs, Myriarans into multi-hued cloaks, Irigonans into thick capes and glittering hats, and Geneanans into leather jackets, Grace would be able to feel the sweat freeze on her cheeks. She'd forgotten her coat.
It wasn't entirely unintentional. The evening would epitomize stuffiness, so Grace had deliberately dawdled and arrived at the last acceptable second. If she left a little early or a little late, she could feign dignity and gravitas until she got out of eyesight, and then dash the way home and climb in the window, like she'd done a few times when she was a teenager.
She held her glass of wine with purpose and insinuated herself into a group of Myriarans chattering with equally animated Irigonans, because if she carried herself like she belonged there, they wouldn't even notice she wasn't talking. The speeches would start soon enough, and that would be boring but entirely bearable. Then, out of a corner of her eye, she saw a column of black moving across the room, flitting from group to group like the death god of butterflies.
Alex. She almost lost her composure, and one of the Irigonans noticed her enough to ask. She murmured something enthusiastic and affirmative, and tried not to look at Alex.
She settled in as delegates from Myriara and Irigona took the stage and let their words-- something about a new jewel-toned stain for wood-- wash over her.
The evening was nearly over when she shook herself out of her stupor. Petra, radiant in petal-pink and shimmering in the lights, had mounted the stairs to join their parents, who had just finished outlining the dates for next year's bazaar registration. Grace paid attention: it wasn’t worth Petra’s wrath if she zoned out during her sister’s speech. In any event, it had never been a burden to listen to Petra, who always kept her comments concise.
Petra smiled her public smile and announced: “To complete our gathering, one of our delegates from Arrosa would like to present a very special development plan.”
Grace's mood soured immediately when she watched Dylan rise and join Petra on stage, and grew sourer when Petra smiled her smaller, secret smile-- the one she reserved for family, intimate friends, and baby animals-- at him.
When he reached the center of the stage, Dylan cleared his throat. “Arrosa has benefited from Couran trade expertise for decades, and Coura has in its turn benefited from Arrosa's mineral wealth. Every country in this room has benefited from the openness and prosperity Coura fosters among us. And yet we keep ourselves siloed in our own countries. We send our children around our countries only to our own expert craftsmen to learn what they might be best at. So it is a Geneanan leatherworker, who knows a bit about herd management and a bit about how to avoid the sea monsters with a ship full of cargo, may know nothing about Arrosan semiconductors or the hydroelectric power that enables their own telephones. In order to better foster relations between our countries, we have developed a proposal, to foster learning across the entire continent, where young people will also travel between countries, will learn from not only their own countries' experts, but from experts from shore to shore.
“In this capacity, I am pleased to announce one of the first class of exchange students to visit Arrosa to share technology, the foremost Arbiter of Coura, Her Highness Petra, Princess of Coura.”
Petra stepped forward to join him, glowing. “The winter months can seem long when there is little to do. I'm pleased to have been chosen to participate in this first year of the pilot program: I have so much to learn, and I can only hope I will be able to teach something as well. We will set off in two weeks: I encourage everyone who can alter their plans with such short notice to join in.”
The room burst into applause.
Grace shoved her chair back, checked herself, and rose slowly, maintaining a careful neutral expression. She kept her head down and her steps measured as she made her way to the side door while everyone in the crowd, as one, surged to their feet. The cheering drowned out her footsteps and the noise of the door, and Grace made her escape.
Once the door had closed safely behind her, she began walking more quickly, putting distance between her and the horrible ballroom. She'd only just gotten back, and Petra would be leaving almost immediately-- and to spend time with Dylan, of all people. It felt like a cruel joke.
She didn't see the other person in the hall until she'd walked straight into them.
“I'm sorry,” Grace said, wondering where she'd gone wrong. “That was incredibly reckless of me-- are you all right?”
“Never better,” they said, clasping Grace's hand briefly. “Stay safe and warm, Highness.”
Grace nodded, warmed and grateful, and hurried away.
The moment of comfort didn’t last. She went through the streets and they offered none of the usual familiarity of home. Instead, they reminded her of every place she’d visited with Petra. Every game they’d played winding through the alleys and roads with youthful exuberance. She let her step quicken, hoping to run so the betrayal would not set.
Once she got back to her room, safe from the prying eyes of court gossips, Grace hurled the hated stiff tunic against the wall. When that didn’t soothe her ire, she followed it up with the contents of her bed: pillows first, followed by blankets and finally the sheets. They thudded against the wall with a soft thump, and Grace wanted to scream.
She stomped off to the bathroom and started the tub filling, and then stomped back to her room to get a glass of wine.
She had just slid into the water when her family came home, bubbling over the new announcement. Each time someone passed her door, she caught snatches of excited conversation that faded out just before she could make out the actual words. Under these conditions, sulking under a mountain of bubbles wasn't soothing at all.
On the bright side, it gave her an excuse to not open the door when the knock sounded. She called out an excuse and listened as the noise of their bright conversation faded down the hallway. Once it was completely inaudible, she ducked her head under the water and held her breath until she could hear the roar of blood in her ears.
She didn’t go back to her room until she felt numb, emotions locked behind a wall with every trace scrubbed away from the outside. She opened the door and found an unholy disaster. Reminding herself she had only herself to blame for the mess, she took several meditative minutes to restore it to some semblance of order. It wasn’t until she was hanging her tunic back on its hook that she noticed the folded strip of paper nestled in its long sleeve.
She unfolded it. The paper barely whispered under her fingers. It read:
Meet me at the bazaar tomorrow. I think I found some information related to Jack and Nell.
-AL
It was the distraction she needed. She crawled naked into her bed, trying to figure out wh
o had sent it.
Off the top of her head, Grace couldn't think of anyone called Al who she'd told about the Jack and Nell situation, but she appreciated any offer of help, given her spectacular failure to do anything useful in the mountains.
The next morning, Grace turned the note over and over between her fingers as she walked through the deserted bazaar streets. The market had ended so recently that flies were still scavenging for bits of fruit that had dropped. Usually, the abandoned pavilion husks and tent skeletons comforted her as much as the crowds did. Now, the silence pressed against her like backpack straps at the end of a long hike.
Thinking about Jack and Nell, she could nearly taste the crack of fabric, could imagine flames around her. Wandering gave her too much time to think about what could have happened
She wasn’t paying attention when a hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. Insistent pressure dragged her off balance. She found herself smooshed into a stone alcove and dropped her weight, suddenly alert. The edge of a low bench dug into Grace’s calf.
“Easy, Princess,” murmured the assailant, voice familiar and annoyingly soothing. Alex.
“Stones and mortar, what is wrong with you?” Grace meant to sound angry, and suspected she hadn't managed it.
“So jumpy.” Alex curled onto the bench, motioning for Grace to sit. “They're missing in Geneana, too.”
“What?” Grace ended up sandwiched between Alex’s lean form and the wall. She pressed up against the cool stone as best she could: Alex was too warm. Too distracting. It was best to keep such confusing things away, at least for long enough for them to have a conversation.
“People. People have been going missing in Geneana, just like your Jack and Nell. It took some digging, because it's whole families without a lot of outside connections, so no one has made any reports of it. But it's everywhere, families from outside of the towns on the northeastern border.”
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