This was pure gold. Story of the century. But it was all too fanciful to write up for the Herald without something solid to tetherit.
An interview. He would have to interview the midnight princess.
“I could smell your bluebell bullshit a mile off. Come out here and face me, you bastards!”
The princess fled the scene, and Kai went after her, scrambling around urns and hedges until he got in front of her. She was hurrying too fast to stop, smacked directly into him and fell into a silver peartree.
“Oof!” The princess stared up at him in horror. “I know you — are you one of those quills who were sniffing around the staircase my firstday?”
“Yes,” Kai said breathlessly, to the Princess Most Likely To Poison his Coffee. “And I can find a hiding spot where the Hounds won’t find you. Interested?”
Why had he even said that? He barely knew this castle at all. And yet… and yet, the ink was tugging him, and he always followed where the ink led him. It had brought him to this kingdom, this job, this castle.
The princess glared at him for a moment, then lifted one hand imperiously so he could help her out of the bushy tree. “What do you want in exchange?”
“Your story,” Kai blurted. “I want to tell your story to the world.”
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Can you make the king hate meless?”
“If I can’t,” he promised in a moment of valiant exaggeration. “No onecan.”
Fourteen
MIDNIGHT PRINCESS EXPOSED!
Ziyi must be crazy to trust this stranger — a reporter, no less — but she didn’t want to stick around while the Hounds and her feckless substitute fairy godmother went at it tooth and claw in the gardens.
So, she followed the quill.
“Kai,” he told her, as he led the way through a copse of trees to a tower she had never noticed before, well away from the castle. “My name is Kai. I’m new around here, likeyou.”
“Not a lot like me,” she observed.
He gave her a lopsided grin. “No, not a lot like you. Um. Your highness.”
“Goodness, don’t,” she sighed. “If you can’t be on first name terms with a scandalous young man who rescued you in a garden, then what’s the point of being a princess?”
“If you say so.” Kai seemed bemused at being labelled a scandalous youngman.
“Ziyi,” she told him, because in for a pearl, in for a diamond. “I’m not much of a princess.”
“That’s all right,” he told her. “I’m not much of a quill. I’m working on it, though.”
As she watched, he found a key under a loose paving stone and opened up the tower.
“Have you been here before?” she asked.
There was a pause that went on a little too long before he said “No,” in a voice that sounded almost as confused as hewas.
“Then how did youknow —”
“Look, a kitchen,” he announced, pushing through the door to a small, shabby room with the basic requirements of a kitchen, including a wood stove that burned low, as if it had been abandoned for the night.
“If that’s your way of saying you can make me a cup of tea,” said Ziyi. “You can have my firstborn child, if youlike.”
So the Chipped Sapphire of the Gunpowder Kingdom sat at a clean but small kitchen table and rested her chin on her hands while the young reporter lit a cozy fire in the grate, and heated up a kettle of water. “How did you even know about this place?” she asked.
“I don’t know, exactly,” said Kai, frustrated. He plucked aside a makeshift curtain and gaped for a moment into the next room. “Oh. That explains alot.”
Ziyi followed him, peering around his shoulder. She had been expecting this to be some kind of servant’s quarters, or a space for the gardeners to take their tea during the day, not… well. An artist’s retreat?
The studio was the canvas. Every inch of wall, ceiling and floor was covered with strange, arcane drawings in vivid black ink. Ziyi saw dragons and fairies, historical battles, flowers and knights. The ceiling blazed with what might have been a royal family portrait from the old days — when the princes were toddlers, and their siblings babes in arms — but a large smear of ink had ruined the image.
There was a chill to this room, despite the warmth from the stove in the kitchen behind them. They had both made footprints in thedust.
“Ink,” Kai said, sounding subdued. “That’s why I became a quill, you know. I’ve always had an affinity with ink. It speaks to me — like, literally, I could hear these walls halfway across the garden, pulling mein.”
“A useful talent,” Ziyi observed.
“You don’t think it’s strange?”
“I’m not sure if I can judge what’s strange any more. Not since I put my life in the hands of a fairy godmother.”
“I used to make art like this,” Kai said dreamily, his eyes on the ink-daubed walls. “My mother disapproves of art almost as much as she does of magic — she thinks that sort of thing is all aristo indulgence. Not for ordinary folks likeus.”
“So,” said Ziyi thoughtfully. “You came to write for a newspaper, where you would be surrounded by magic and ink all the time. To torture yourself, I presume?”
“Mama hates that I spend my days hunting royal gossip and scandal,” Kai said. “She was furious I wanted to move here for this job. Once I turned eighteen she couldn’t stopme.”
“It’s a shame, that families can have such an effect on your future prospects,” Ziyi mused, as they returned to the kitchen. “I don’t know if princessing counts as a trade or a profession, but I’m not cut out for it. Meanwhile I’ve had maids who would do better at being a princess.”
“The midnight princess scandal wasn’t your best work,” Kai said awkwardly, pulling his eyes away from the studio to return to his tea-making duties over the stove.
She sighed, leaning on the doorframe. “It’s a disaster, that’s what it is. Can I have teayet?”
“Water’s boiled, I’m just brewing,” he said, adding tea to a pot and topping it with the hot water.
“Your newspaper thinks I’m a nutcase,” Ziyi accused him. “Or a gold digger, I suppose?”
“Isn’t that what you all are?” Kai said absently, busy about histask.
She sucked in a breath.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to insult you or anything. But you came here to marry a prince, didn’t you? That’s pretty much a definition of — well. Um.”
She glared at him. “All this friendliness will be wasted if I have to slap you before I’ve had my tea. Tell me more about how the ink invited usin.”
“The artwork in there,” said Kai. “It’s ink, the same kind of enchanted ink we use to make the newspapers. I felt it scratching away at me, like a cat wanting to be let in the door. When I stepped inside, I feltsafe.”
“Good to know someone does,” said a third voice, filling the kitchen. “Hello, strangers. Is there tea? I’ll forgive your trespassing if you’ve madetea.”
Ziyi froze in the act of accepting a cup from Kai. He looked horrified.
“Oh,” said Ziyi. “Have mine.” She immediately regretted the sacrifice.
“No, I’ll pour another,” said Kai desperately, to cover his embarrassment. “My lady, I’m — I wouldn’t have set foot in here if I thought it was someone’s home. I’m so sorry. It looked abandoned.”
“Indeed,” said their unexpected hostess, stepping down from the shadowy stairwell in the corner, to join them. “That was deliberate, to keep peopleaway.”
She was a young lady of quality from the look of her, old enough to have been presented at court, though her dark hair spilled down her back like she had never been out in public. She wore a bohemian smock and a beaded belt, but her accent was pure cut glass. The kind of voice that elocution instructors insisted upon, once the foreign languages had been mastered.
Ink patterns spiralled up and down the lady’s arms, tattoos that danced and moved as if alive. She was quality, and
she was magic. A rare combination.
Ziyi might be a failure of a princess, but she knew how to act royal in a jam. She sipped her tea as if nothing in the world could bother her. “Ziyi of Xix,” she introduced herself. “One of the visiting princesses, here for the season.”
“But of course you are,” said their hostess, accepting a cup from Kai as her due, and taking a seat of her own at the kitchen table. “Camilla of Charming,” she added. “I’m what they call the hometeam.”
Kai dropped the teapot.
“Damn,” said Camilla, the hidden princess, the younger sister of Chase and Cyrus, the one never seen in public. “I liked that teapot. Never mind, there’s another above the cheese barrel, if we require more tea. We will require more tea,” she added to Ziyi, with an air of exchanging confidences. “I never feel right until I have at least two cups. Didn’t your people invent it? They must all be terribly clever.”
Fifteen
FAIRY GODMOTHERS FIGHT DIRTY
“I could smell your bluebell bullshit a mile off. Come out here and face me, you bastards!”
There was a splash of water, and a thud, and a grunt.
Dennis and Jack ran after the Sarge, to find him in a grotto, rolling around in the contemplation pool with a yet another beautiful boy — seriously, why were all the men in this Palace so attractive, it was like the universe was trying to tell Dennis something.
They fought like equals, no holding back, all elbows and teeth and fury, though the fury was mostly on Sarge’s side. His opponent with his wild dark hair and clothes made of - oh, flower petals - was enjoying himself far too much, with a bloodstained grin and fiercely brighteyes.
“Where — is — Illyria?” Sarge growled into his opponent’s neck as he pinned him in the water, about to shove his face under.
“That’s not her name any more,” laughed the fairy. Because of course it was a fairy. “You know how to find her, sweetling. Light a candle in her new name, and make awish.”
Sarge snarled at him. The fairy kissed him on the jaw, laughed again, and vanished, leaving the angry human alone in the shallow pool of water.
Dennis and Jack exchanged silent looks, then came forward to help himout.
Sarge pushed them away once his feet were on dry land, then shook himself like a dog to get the water out of his sodden clothes and hair. “Not a word of this to anyone,” he growled.
“If it helps,” said Dennis. “I saw which way the midnight princesswent.”
Jack gave him a sharp look. “Oh really?”
He nodded, and managed not to confess that he had taken particular note of the direction when he saw her collide with that boy he liked, the quill from the night before.
There was something about Jack that made Dennis want to confess all his sins, but not today.
“Right then,” said Sarge. “Let’s catch ourselves a princess.”
Sixteen
A RIGHT ROYAL TEA PARTY
Kai tried not to panic. He was surrounded by ink — the paintings in the studio, the tattoos on the arms of this unexpected princess. The smell of vanilla and wet feathers was a comfort, and more thanthat.
The ink was inside his head in a way he hadn’t allowed it to be for a very long time. And it was telling him that he belongedhere.
Here, in a kitchen, taking tea with two princesses. This was not what he had expected when he decided: newspapers, as the compromise he and Mama would both have to livewith.
“It’s a stepmother thing,” said Ziyi of Xix, the dishevelled foreign princess who had finally stopped looking like she was about to pull out a hidden weapon.
“Oh, stepmothers,” sighed Camilla. “I was spared that at least.”
“My father’s new wife has a son of her own, the kind of horrid creature who likes to pull wings off beetles for the fun of it, and I’m very much the third spare daughter unmarried in the palace. One more failed Season is all it’s going to take for my father to be convinced that marrying that awful boy is a safe, sensible choice forme.”
“Kings never listen,” Camilla said grimly. “Not to daughters. They have dozens voices commanding their attention, and ours are so far down the list of priorities that they don’t feel the need to even tune in to the words. Never mind that royal women are trained from an early age to spot social dangers and subtle problems long before they become diplomatic disasters.”
“That’s my story,” said Ziyi, spreading her fingers wide. “The one you can never write about,” she added with a stern look atKai.
This evening was so surreal already, it didn’t even hurt to give her that promise. “We can find a better story,” Kai said. “If you really want to — if you need to find a better alternative. It’s going to have to be romance, not practicality.”
Camilla and Ziyi gave him equal expressions of disdain, as if it should have been obvious to him that romance and practicality went hand in hand, with princesses.
“I’ll shut up now,” he volunteered.
“I have an idea,” said Camilla brightly. “I shall introduce you both to my mother.”
Seventeen
LET SLEEPING QUEENSLIE
Thiswas.
This was without a doubt.
This was without a doubt the most difficult social situation that Ziyi had ever navigated, in her entire world-weary history as a princess on the marriage market.
Queen Ella of Charming lay on a bed made of glass, in the room at the very top of the tower.
It was an exquisite piece of artwork, that glass bed. It had pillars and platforms and blown roses. But to Ziyi, who had seen her own mother buried before she was ten years old, it looked like a coffin.
In every way, except that the glass panel nearest the Queen’s pale lips occasionally clouded over from her sleeping breath.
“So,” said Camilla, who sounded bright and cheerful and not at all as if she were about to cry. “This is the curse that broke our kingdom.”
Kai stood by the doorway, not wanting to even step inside the room. Ziyi did not blame him. This was the woman she had wronged, without realising it — the woman whose epic love story she had copied for her own selfish needs.
If her mother was like this, trapped in an endless state between life and death, she would break. It was amazing that Camilla’s eyes remained dry. Ziyi wanted to cry forher.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, not exactly to Camilla.
“Never mind that now,” said Camilla. “We need to resolve this midnight princess business. The question is, how are we going to do that without marrying you off to one of my silly brothers? Unless you really do want to marry one of them. I suppose someone hasto.”
“No,” said Ziyi, mortified. “I mean — I couldn’tnow.”
There was a thud at the door, and then again, a massive boom of a sound, and the breaking ofwood.
“Oh, hell,” said Camilla of Charming. “More visitors.”
Kai moved closer to Ziyi. She would have him as her witness, at least, someone who could swear blind she hadn’t tried to hurt the Queen, or the Princess.
“Royal Hounds!” shouted a voice from below.
“You’d better come up!” Camilla called into the stairwell. “Take your shoes off, this carpet can’t hold out againstmud.”
They burst through the door a moment later, without their boots — the Sergeant with the bluebell fixation, his two junior Hounds in casual clothes that didn’t fool anyone, and a platinum sylph of a young man in an embroidered silk dressing gown and a smirk that wouldn’tquit.
One of the princes, Ziyi realised with a flame of embarrassment. She couldn’t even tell if it was the twin she had dancedwith.
If only she had developed the art of the fake swoon, instead of spending all her training hours on useless crafts like the sword, and hand to hand combat. Now would be an excellent time to have some damsel skills to fall backon.
Eighteen
TOMORROW’S HEADLINES
This was the greatest story that Kai
would never be able to write. First, the two princesses, sharing confidences over tea. Then, the glass coffin of the cursed queen. He could not imagine that many quills had been allowed into this sanctum.
Now there was the sight of three tough-nut Hounds in their socked feet, pretending they had the situation under control.
Kai didn’t even have time to indulge in his awkward crush on Dennis, the wide-shouldered blond Hound, not now, not with so much goingon.
Not with a Prince of Charming in the room, smirking like he planned to write the headlines himself.
FOREIGN PRINCESS CAUGHT IN CURSED QUEEN’S BEDCHAMBER came to mind, and Kai was instantly ashamed of himself.
“Cyrus,” said Camilla, and kissed her brother’s cheek. “I haven’t seen you for an age. Why did they dig you out ofbed?”
“Sergeant Clay didn’t dare break into your private quarters without a royal permission slip,” said Prince Cyrus, looking triumphant. “We know how you value your privacy, darling.”
The Sergeant, who was dripping wet for some reason, looked annoyed at this summation of events.
Kai fell into a new wave of panic, because he had strolled in here as if he owned the place, just because he smelled some interesting ink, and the princess surely had every rightto…
He was so caught up in his thoughts that he missed the most obvious and newsworthy event of the evening, when Prince Cyrus was formally introduced to Princess Ziyi ofXix.
“Awk-ward,” Dennis said in an undertone. Kai had been creeping close and closer to the Hounds, possibly because they stood between him and thedoor.
“More tea!” announced Camilla, clapping her hands as her brother and the midnight princess stared at each other with a mixture of hesitation and suspicion. “So much tea. Kai, will you be godmother? Sorry, Sergeant,” she added, patting him lightly on the shoulder. “Didn’t mean to raise old ghosts. Let’s trot down, shallwe?”
Glass Slipper Scandal Page 4
