Viola squeaked in embarrassment and whirled around to face the opposite wall. “That’s not what I meant!”
“Oh, no need to be shy,” he told her. “I still have my own clothes on underneath.”
The Prince’s headdress flew past her, tossed in a cavalier manner. Viola instinctively stepped forward to retrieve it. She smoothed the rumpled folds of material in a distracted manner. She didn’t want to turn again, half-afraid that he had lied about wearing his own clothes, but she chanced a peek over one shoulder nonetheless. He stood in all his golden radiance, still fully attired as he removed the Prince’s shirt from atop his own. The sash and pants had already been discarded, draped across the litter next to him.
“See?” he mused with a friendly smile.
“How did you get in here?” Viola asked miserably.
He gestured to the window. “From the balcony.”
“That balcony is three stories up!”
“Yes, I know. It was a wretched climb, but I was trying to be unobtrusive.”
“And how… how did you switch places with the doll? And why would you do such a thing?”
Those golden eyes studied her for a long moment. Then, “It was for your own good,” he said after a longsuffering sigh. “That doppelganger wouldn’t have fooled a village idiot.”
“I was rushed!” she said defensively.
“Yes, I know. Most uncharitable of them. Even so, I’d wager you haven’t studied much anatomy, have you?”
Viola recoiled. “Of course not!”
“Well, you should. You can’t exactly expect a doppelganger to act like a human when its creator doesn’t know about muscles and tendons and such, to say nothing of other essential body parts. He wasn’t even breathing, because you didn’t bother to give him any lungs.”
“The doppelganger only needs to sit and blink on occasion,” said Viola hotly, hardly able to believe that she was having this conversation with someone outside her own family.
“He needed to do more than that today, didn’t he?” the stranger replied. “Really, my dear Viola, I should think that you would be grateful to me rather than angry.”
“No one’s given you leave to call me by my name,” she snapped.
“Would you prefer ‘Darling,’ ‘Dearest,’ or ‘Sweetheart’?” he asked in all sincerity.
“I would prefer that insolent strangers vacate the premises immediately and never return!”
His mouth rounded. “Oh, I see. It’s unexpected, of course. I thought your Prince’s non-existence was some sort of secret, but if you don’t mind insolent strangers disappearing back into the general populace after uncovering such a thing, then it must be general knowledge. I suppose I’ll pop down to the local tavern and swap stories with the regulars, yes?”
He watched intently as her defenses crumbled. She couldn’t force him to leave, she realized in that moment, because he knew about the Prince. “What do you want?” she murmured brokenly.
“I want a lot of things,” he replied, and his golden eyes darted around the room in a speculative manner. “But, as I seem to recall telling you before, I am a poor, tired traveler, so right now what I want most is a place to stay. This looks like it’ll do all right.” He strode shamelessly over to the Prince’s bed and dropped onto its downy mattress.
Viola’s teeth gritted together. “You can’t stay here,” she said. “These are the Prince’s private quarters.”
“And right now, I am the Prince,” the stranger responded, “so there shouldn’t be a problem. If the fellow doesn’t actually exist, then I don’t see anything wrong with it. Unless, perhaps, someone else is occupying these chambers?”
Technically, no one was. Viola and each of her brothers took turns mussing things up to make it appear occupied, so that when the servants came in to clean they had something to do. The Prime Minister’s family lived on the floor just below, and a secret stairway granted them access to do as they pleased. Most of their time was spent in the library, though.
“It’s a very comfortable bed,” said the golden stranger. “I think I’ll sleep quite well on it.”
“What’s your name?” Viola asked as fatigue settled over her.
He hesitated. “Why don’t you just call me what you call the Prince?”
“As you have so aptly pointed out, there is no Prince.”
“But surely your imaginary Prince has a name,” he countered.
She could feel a headache coming on. “He’s known only as the Eternal Prince of Lenore. We call him ‘your Royal Highness’ when we have to.”
His mouth broadened into a wide grin. “Then I am ‘your Royal Highness’ to you.”
“Over my dead body,” Viola growled.
“That’s not a very pleasant thought,” he said. “I much prefer you alive.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to think straight, trying to figure out how this conversation had gotten so far out of hand. A perfect stranger had come, had usurped the position of the Prince, and she was powerless to do anything about it. Where was Charlie when she needed him, really?
“You never told me what happened to my doppelganger,” she said for lack of anything better.
“Oh, he’s here under the bed. The doll is, at any rate. The doppelganger should have disappeared long since. I took one look at him and knew he would never do. I’m rather proud that I was able to divest him and dress myself so quickly while you were out placating those guards, I must say.”
“Are you looking for some sort of congratulations?” Viola asked waspishly.
“Well, you haven’t said a word of thanks yet,” he replied with a winning smile.
She didn’t intend to say any word of thanks, either. Instead, she stepped forward to collect the Prince’s discarded clothing, which she folded over one arm. She glanced around for the laundry basket. They tossed various items of his clothing into the laundry on a regular basis, but that was usually Edmund’s job not hers. The basket was next to the Prince’s wardrobe, and there went the shirt, sash and pants. The headdress, with its veil attached, would rest among its brothers within the wardrobe itself. As she moved to replace it there, she could feel that golden stare boring into her back.
“You’re really not going to argue with me any further?” asked the stranger, and he sounded disappointed.
Viola ignored him in favor of carefully arranging the silken headdress within its small drawer. Edmund was supposed to come take care of the doll after its doppelganger wore off, and she needed to figure out what she should tell him when he appeared. She couldn’t keep the newcomer’s existence a secret, that was for certain. She and Charles and Edmund, along with their father, were the only ones with ready access to the Prince’s apartments, so no matter what she did, someone would discover him sooner rather than later. She thought it was a good idea to disclose his presence instead of having to explain it after the fact.
She was jarred from her thoughts when she heard the outer door open. After shooting the stranger a warning glance where he sat upon the bed, she shut the wardrobe and hurried to intercept the newcomer—Edmund, she assumed.
The bedchamber door began to open. Viola quickly pulled at the knob and slipped through the opening. This movement took her brother unawares and gave herself the chance to shut the door firmly behind her. Only, it wasn’t Edmund she now stood facing. It was Charlie.
“Oh, there you are, Vi,” he said with a good-natured grin. “I thought you might be in the library, but you weren’t. I came to tell you…” He paused and glanced surreptitiously back to the outer doors that separated the Prince’s quarters from the rest of the palace. Guards were always stationed there, and speaking in this front entrance was always done with caution, lest some conversation be overheard through the wooden portal. Charlie’s voice lowered to a near-whisper. “Capital job on that doppelganger,” he commended her.
“Charlie,” she started to protest.
“I mean, the voice was perfect! I was quite surprised,
because the last one you made talked like a sissy. But when he shot that superior glare down at Conrad—absolutely brilliant, Vi! You’re really—”
“It wasn’t a doppelganger!” she interjected in a hiss.
“—getting a lot better at… What?” Charlie recoiled as his brain finally registered her words. “What did you just say?”
Viola took a deep breath and repeated her statement very slowly. “It wasn’t a doppelganger, Charlie.”
He blinked, still not comprehending.
“There was a man at the well. I thought I got rid of him, but he must have followed me back here, and he climbed in through the window… somehow… and I was interrupted while conjuring the doppelganger, and he substituted himself, so that when I came back in, I didn’t realize, but—”
“What on earth are you saying?” her brother asked, mystified.
“He knows about the Prince,” she whispered, all too conscious of the doors only a few feet away, and of the guards standing just outside of them. “I don’t know what to do. What am I to do, Charlie? He’s inside, and he intends to stay.”
Charles promptly pushed her out of the way. He shoved the door open and charged into the chamber beyond. Viola followed. Her heart faltered as she looked first to the empty bed and then quickly around the rest of the room. It was vacant, but the door on the east wall stood ajar—a door that led to the library. Her breath hitched in her throat.
Her brother, meanwhile, had glanced around frantically, but he suddenly froze. A laugh shook his shoulders. “Oh, Viola, you really had me going there for a second,” he said with a rueful smile. “You looked so serious, that I thought there really was someone. I can’t believe I was so easily duped!”
“I am serious, Charlie,” she retorted, poking at him viciously. “There really is someone, and he’s—”
Their conversation was interrupted by a barely audible “clunk” from the next room, and a more than audible, “Oops!”
Viola started toward the open door, but her brother caught her shoulder, his expression suddenly serious again. “If that turns out to be Edmund, I’m skinning you alive,” he said as he unsheathed the saber at his belt. He knew as well as she did that Edmund’s voice did not hold that low a timbre, though. “You stay here,” he instructed. Then, he crept forward on silent footsteps and slipped through the door, which he shut softly behind him.
Viola anxiously sidled up to the closed portal. The stranger did not seem violent, but she felt instinctively that he was not to be underestimated, either. He had recognized her doppelganger as a doppelganger, for one thing. Anyone unfamiliar with magic would not have known that. His subsequent commentary on the quality of doppelganger and what was wrong with it showed her that he was more than familiar with that spell and implied that he was probably versed in others as well. Charlie was an accomplished enough magician and quite good with his sword, but that did not stop her from worrying on his behalf.
She pressed her ear to the wood and listened for any sounds of conflict beyond. She heard Charlie speak in stringent tones, but could not make out his words. The stranger answered in much the same voice he had been using with Viola—that amused, superior lilt that was starting to grate against her nerves. They exchanged a few comments, and then there was silence.
Viola frowned. Had the stranger cast some sort of nefarious spell on her brother? Were they getting ready to do battle with one another? Would Charlie kill the stranger in a duel, or would he get killed himself? So many possibilities swirled in her mind that she felt sick. This suspense would be the death of her, she decided.
And so, contrary to her brother’s instruction, she eased the door open. An unexpected sound met her ears: two voices, quietly laughing.
Suspicion crept up Viola’s spine, and she wondered if Charlie had been hoaxing her all along, if he had coerced one of his friends into helping him play an astounding prank on her. But that didn’t make sense, she thought as she stole through the shadowed back entrance to the library, because it would mean that Charlie had told someone the truth about the Prince, and Charlie would never do that.
“…imagine what a sorry-looking doppelganger it was,” she heard the stranger saying innocently. “I didn’t think there was anything else to do but replace it—it could barely sit up, all half-formed as it was.”
Charlie snorted. “She’s usually better than that, I assure you, but she gets flustered when she’s hurried, and today’s was an odd situation. Really, all things considered, we should be grateful to you for interceding.”
“Yes, that’s what I told her, but—” The golden stranger bit off the last of his sentence as he caught sight of Viola standing behind her brother, her arms folded sternly. He swallowed guiltily and looked away as Charles turned in apprehension.
“Oh, Vi, I’ve just met your friend—”
“He’s not my friend,” she snapped. She was annoyed that Charles was so unperturbed by the presence of an intruder in their midst. He had even sheathed his saber, as though the stranger were someone who could be trusted.
“Well, he seems like a capital enough fellow, and if he knows the Prince’s secret, there’s really not a lot we can do. Besides, he did you a good turn today—hey!”
Viola grabbed the lapel of his uniform and wrenched him forward, glaring daggers at him. “What good turn did he do? I wouldn’t have been so hurried if he hadn’t accosted me by the well earlier! The doppelganger would have been fine, if not for him!”
“Well, but…” her brother faltered. “Conrad would have had you thrown from the meeting, and then the doppelganger would have failed.”
“And then we would have made up some story about how the Prince was so irritated by the change in today’s schedule that he sent a dummy to oversee the meeting in his stead,” Viola shot back rapidly.
“There’s no sense in mulling over what might have happened, Viola,” said her brother. “Everything turned out all right, so we should just be thankful.”
“There’s a stranger here who knows the Prince’s secret,” Viola hissed. “How is that ‘all right’?”
Charles pulled himself from her grasp at last. “Well, about that… he’s promised not to tell anyone if we let him stay here—not for too long, right?” he added over his shoulder, and the stranger nodded innocently. “And,” Charlie continued, “to be entirely honest, I’d rather like to have another magician about. Edmund’s too young to cast any useful spells, and Father has gotten too busy with his duties as Prime Minister—like they’re suddenly trying to drown him in work, or something—and it’s just you and me, Vi. And while I know you’re improving…”
“I’m not good enough to be much help to you,” she finished flatly. Everything had been much easier when her grandfather had still been alive and her father was the Prince’s primary magician. Charlie had had to become primary far too early, gifted as he was. In the last year, he had been carrying a heavier burden between his military commitment and his duties to the Prince, and Viola could hardly blame him for wanting help, especially since her own contributions were so meager. “How do you know that person is any better, though?” she asked, and the stranger stiffened in feigned umbrage.
Charlie glanced over his shoulder and back again. “I don’t,” he said with a shrug. “But he already knows the secret, so we might as well give him a chance. Besides, he plays the Prince quite well. It’ll give us all a nice rest not to have to conjure doppelgangers for the next few weeks or so. It’ll give the magic a bit more time to replenish as well,” he added in a lower voice.
Viola considered his words carefully. They did spend a considerable amount of their magical resources on maintaining the semblance of the Eternal Prince’s existence: doppelgangers to attend meetings and public appearances, hallucinations to make the servants and guards catch a “glimpse” of his retreating figure. On occasion, Charlie himself had masqueraded as the Prince, just as their father had done while their grandfather still lived as Prime Minister before him, but ther
e always carried the risk of being recognized. The stranger, though, was not from Lenore, and if he was a decent magician, he could even command some of the wonder that characterized the Eternal Prince.
Still, “I don’t like it,” she said. She peered past her brother to where the stranger pretended not to eavesdrop on their conversation. “Father must have the last say.”
Charles looked hesitant, and Viola instantly knew that he had not planned to tell their father anything. “Father must have the last say,” she repeated firmly. “You can’t keep this from him, Charlie. This is serious, that someone outside the family knows the Prince’s secret.”
“All right, all right,” said Charles. “Father will have the last say. Until then, though, we’ll just move forward with the plan.”
Viola wondered when it had become a “plan.” A keen sense of unease curled in her stomach when she caught a self-satisfied smile ghost across the stranger’s mouth. “I don’t suppose he told you his name,” she said to Charles.
The surprised expression on her brother’s face confirmed her assumption. Charlie twisted around to look inquiringly at the stranger, who cast an exasperated glance in Viola’s direction. She scowled back at him.
His face broke into a disarming smile then. “What’s in a name? For the time being, I’m his Royal Highness, the Eternal Prince of Lenore.”
A protest rose on Viola’s lips, but Charlie spoke before she could. “Actually, that’s not such a bad idea, not knowing your name. I’d hate for one of us to slip and address you as anything other than ‘your Highness’ during some critical moment.”
The golden stranger dipped his head in that imperious gesture he seemed to do so well, and Viola clenched her teeth in annoyance.
“I’m going to speak with Father,” she said in a clipped voice. “Charlie, I suggest you keep an eye on this character for the time being—unless you have somewhere to be, in which case you should probably pull Edmund in and give him proper warnings.”
“Oh, you’ll like Edmund,” Charles said to the stranger. “For a runty little brother, he’s not bad at all. And he can draw a chimera better than Viola or me, even if he is only twelve. The game is ever so much more entertaining when you can actually look at the creature you’re inventing, you know.”
Kingdom of Ruses Page 4
