“Oh indeed,” Valka sneers, and turns on her heel. Her gaze falls on Maralinde and me, and I find myself stepping back from the glittering wrath in her eye. I hope, oh how I hope, Maralinde and her family leave in the morning.
Valka doesn’t speak as she nears, she just strides right between us, giving Maralinde a shove to the side as she passes.
“Mother?” Maralinde asks uncertainly as Valka disappears through the doorway. I take my friend’s hand, and that seems to bring her back to herself. She crosses to the table with me in tow.
Emmanika breathes a sigh as we join her. “It’s nothing, dear. But I do hope your father will be ready to leave tomorrow. The less time you spend around that child, the better.” She glances at me and smiles faintly. “Ah, Alyrra. Will you be sitting with us this afternoon?”
“Perhaps,” I say, as I always do. “If Mother doesn’t come.”
“Of course,” Emmanika says, and hails a servant to ask if the queen will dine in the hall this afternoon.
The following morning, I make absolutely certain I will not be late for my lessons. I send for a breakfast tray as soon as I wake, and am dressed and ready for it by the time it arrives. Since Mother takes breakfast in the main hall only when all our vassals are present, it’s relatively safe to assume she’s dining in her rooms this morning, or perhaps in a withdrawing room with a few chosen nobles. Either way, she doesn’t require my presence.
One slice of hearty brown bread with a serving of cheese and a boiled egg later, I slip out, padding softly past my brother’s room and through the halls to the other wing where my tutor will be. If he has forgiven me yet.
I pass Maralinde and her parents on their way to the hall for breakfast, as well as a handful of other nobles, one of whom detains me to ask if my mother will be joining us—as if she truly did not know—and then, much more to the point, if I can say why Maralinde’s family has stayed back, and surely I must know something?
I duck my head. “‘Fraid not,” I say apologetically. “Perhaps Lady Emmanika can tell you?”
My questioner rolls her eyes, pats me on the head, and finally lets me go. I turn the corner, pass the open doors of the temple, and take the stairs up to the hallway above. Here lie the remaining nobles’ bedrooms, as well as the meeting rooms, and there, in the very middle of the hall, stands Valka, her head tilted as she studies something in her hand. A bauble of some sort, no doubt. Her father is always gifting her small pieces.
She doesn’t notice me at first, and so I am only a few paces away when she hears my footsteps and looks up with a start, her fingers curling over a glitter of gold and blue. A sapphire? That’s a pricey bit of jewelry indeed.
“Oh, it’s you,” she says with evident relief, and stuffs the trinket into her skirt pocket. “What are you doing here this early? Everyone’s at breakfast.”
“You’re not,” I point out helpfully.
“I’m going, silly.”
“I’ve already eaten.”
Valka shrugs, an elegant and yet contemptuous shift of her shoulders, and starts past me. “Can’t be helped if you won’t eat with the rest of us. Perhaps you’ll grace us with your presence at lunch.”
“That’s not—” I bite off the rest of my words with a grimace as her laugh rings through the air. I should know by now not to take her words, her mockery, seriously.
“You’re such a goose,” Valka says, and disappears down the stairs.
I stand a moment, listening as the pat-pat of her slippers fades away. Valka’s rooms aren’t in this hall; Lord Daerilin is one of Mother’s most important vassals and his family has rooms beside ours. So what was she doing here, looking at her jewelry? Had she come to show it off to someone? But no, then she likely would have shown me too.
I glance around once, but the doors are closed, the hallway quiet. The only sounds are the faint murmur of voices and the occasional thump from the main hall, filled with diners.
Never mind. Whatever little intrigues Valka is playing at she can keep to herself. I don’t want her secrets, told to me or discovered on my own.
“I want every servant who has set foot in this hall called here at once!”
At the sound of the voice, I look up from the map I am studying under the jaundiced eye of my long-suffering tutor. It depicts a rather over-large vision of Adania, and the rocky, mountainous borders we share with all of our neighbors—middling kingdoms to the north, south, and west, all bigger than our own, and then the much larger kingdom of Menaiya to the east.
“Continue,” my tutor says at the same time as the woman outside in the hallway exclaims, “It is gone, I tell you, and I shall not allow such a theft to stand.”
There are other voices, low and garbled, and I can hear a number of doors opening along the hallway as people poke their heads out to see what’s amiss. I think of Valka’s story yesterday, the reality that my brother cost the hostlers some of their already paltry pay, but shake the thought loose. This has nothing to do with that, even if there are servants involved.
“Your Highness,” my tutor says with a heroic attempt at patience. “Our northern borders . . . ?”
“Were secured through the marriage of Great Aunt Larimi to their crown prince at the time,” I say dutifully as the woman in the hallway says something else, and the level of noise from the assembling crowd rises another notch. “When she was very young,” I add, at my tutor’s silence. “Now that it’s her grandchildren on the throne, our alliance is not quite so strong.”
“Indeed. Alliances by marriage usually only hold strong through the first generation of children, but they are still an excellent method to assure peace.” He pauses. “Your Great Aunt Larimi caught the eye of the northern prince. It was an unexpected windfall for us, and not one we can expect to occur again.”
A kind way of observing I’m unlikely to have foreign princes falling desperately in love with me. I don’t particularly mind, though. I would much prefer to marry someone who has as little interest in politics as me and just wants to live quietly on their lands.
“So,” my tutor continues, “how else might we strengthen our political alliances with them to assure they do not take it into their heads to invade us?”
I look down at the map and work through the possibilities with him: what we have to offer in trade, in support of them, and how we might also make ourselves look like too much trouble to bother with. Whatever was happening in the hallway appears to have died down, and I dismiss the incident as over until I hear the woman speak again.
“Bring them forward.” Her voice is loud and carrying and clear, and I finally place it as Lady Emmanika’s.
Oh no. My mind flashes to the memory of Valka facing Emmanika yesterday. I don’t want to know—and perhaps I’m wrong. What are the chances that this trouble with the servants has anything to do with Valka? But what if it does?
Valka does love her pranks, her malicious little methods to mete out vengeance. And she was very angry with Emmanika for correcting her.
I don’t want to know Valka’s secrets, I remind myself as my tutor goes on about the intricacies of our trade relations. I can just stay here, and—and I will still find out anyhow. And then, whatever injustice it is that has come to pass, it will be too late for me to do anything, just as it is with the hostlers, and Edlyna. And I will still have my family’s contempt, and regrets I don’t know what to do with.
I take a deep breath. I could just step outside. I don’t know what’s happening, but perhaps I can—I don’t know what I can do. But at least I should be there.
“Excuse me,” I say, sliding out of my seat and interrupting my tutor mid-sentence.
“Your Highness!”
I wince. “There is something wrong outside. I will just be a moment,” I say apologetically. I swing the door open to find the hallway crowded with nobles as well as nearly half my mother’s warriors.
I stand on my tiptoes and spy Maralinde’s father—a tall, thin man with a sparse beard and gaunt chee
ks—standing halfway down the corridor. Most likely beside his wife. I thread my way through the onlookers, arriving at the center of the commotion just as the people at the other end of the hall press back, allowing through a contingent of guards and four very frightened-looking servants: three girls and a wide-eyed page. The girls wear aprons over their dull-colored dresses, the page a tunic and sagging leggings, probably handed down to him from a larger boy.
I cut sideways through the crowd and come up behind Maralinde, standing beside her mother and father.
“What’s happened?” I whisper.
Maralinde glances at me, and it’s the first time I have seen her looking truly angry, her brown eyes dark and her features pale. “Someone stole—”
“This morning,” Lady Emmanika says with such cutting, cold precision that everyone falls silent, “something was taken from my rooms. A brooch that has been in my family for generations.”
A brooch. My gaze flicks from the servants to the onlookers, searching out a face, and there, standing to the side, is Valka, with my brother beside her. He appears faintly entertained, she amused. Was it a brooch she was holding this morning?
Surely not.
“I understand that only the servants have been through this hallway during our absence. So I ask each of you, who has it? Return it to me, and you’ll escape with a flogging. If you do not, I shall have everyone searched, and all your belongings, and whoever is found guilty shall be executed. That is the law, and I shall have no compunction in seeing to it.”
The servants shake their heads. “Please, my lady,” the eldest says. “I don’t know how it’s happened. Perhaps we can help look for it? None of us would have taken anything.”
“There is nowhere to look,” Emmanika snaps. “It was taken from my jewelry box, which I set aside this morning in preparation for our departure. The box was left open, no less, and the brooch is nowhere around it. The work of a foolish, thoughtless thief.”
Or an arrogant, uncaring one, who wished to cause trouble. When I look toward Valka again, she is whispering something to my brother, their heads bowed together. What did she intend? Just to cause a disruption? If she has the brooch, no amount of searching will turn it up. But surely she won’t keep it? She likes creating a scene, and she should be well-pleased with this one. No doubt she’ll slip the brooch back into its place later today, and Emmanika will have to admit it was found—a humiliating admission for her to make after all of this, but she has enough dignity and self-respect to know it must be done.
Valka steps forward and gives a small curtsy. “I think I might be able to help, my lady.”
“Indeed, child?”
“I was passing through earlier and saw a girl coming out of your room.” She lifts a finger and points to the youngest of the servants, a girl no older than I am, with limp brown hair pulled back in a braid. I’ve seen her before, darting between tables at dinner, trying to avoid attention even as she sets out the meal. “Perhaps you should have her searched.”
No. I shake my head, even as the girl immediately pleads her innocence, and Emmanika orders the guard holding the girl to search her. No, no, no.
I grip my skirt, fingers fisting around the cloth as the girl shrieks, and a second guard steps in to help hold her while the first empties her pockets: a half-slice of bread, three old acorns kept, no doubt, for a game, and that is all. “I’ve nothing,” the girl cries. “Please, my lady, I didn’t take it!”
“You were seen going into my rooms,” Emmanika says. “If you did not take it, who did? Come, child, tell me where the brooch is, and your punishment will be light. We do not suffer thieves here, you know, but if you confess, you shall not pay for it with your life.”
“I haven’t got it!” the girl cries. Her panic, her absolute terror washes through me.
“You are certain this is her,” Emmanika says, turning to Valka.
“Oh, yes, my lady,” Valka says earnestly. “I remember thinking she ought to clean that splotch on her apron.”
“Very well.” Emmanika turns back, and in her expression, I see the girl’s future: a flogging for certain, and if the brooch is not found, perhaps even execution.
I cannot stay silent—not anymore, not in this moment with the girl’s terror before me, and Valka’s lies in my ears, and the stark reality of what Emmanika intends staring back at me.
“No.” The word breaks from me as if I’ve spent a lifetime holding it in.
Maralinde glances at me, bewildered. “What?”
Emmanika, her actions arrested by the double onslaught of my command and her daughter’s voice, turns to stare at me. “Alyrra?”
I take a single, shaking breath and step forward. Valka blinks at me in disbelief. And then she laughs. “Oh, you are just worried about the girl, aren’t you, princess? Never mind, though. She’ll only be punished for what she’s done. And you’re too young to be watching. We all know how soft you are.”
“I’ll walk you to your rooms,” my brother says, stepping forward. “We’ll let Lady Emmanika deal with the servant, won’t we, sister? It’s not our concern.”
Does he know? Would it matter if he did? In any event, he will walk me away, and the girl will be beaten, or killed, and Valka will have had her game—for that’s what it is. Emmanika, who lectured her on respecting the servants, will be found out to have wrongly punished or even executed a girl, for the brooch will be found. I’ve no doubt of that. It will destroy the girl, and haunt Emmanika, and Valka will laugh about it all.
“No,” I say again, loud and clear. My brother stops three paces away, taken aback, and then his eyes narrow with fury. He has never turned such a look on me before. I force myself to swallow down my fear. I have to do this. I can’t stop now.
I step to the side, look Lady Emmanika in the eye. “Lady, what did your brooch look like? Was it sapphire and gold, by any chance?”
Emmanika nods, her brow creasing. “It was.”
“Then you should know that I walked down this hall when Valka did, and I saw her with it. That serving girl was not here at all.”
A silence rolls out around my words, riding a wave of gasps that die away to nothing.
“That is absurd!” Valka cries, in an accent of absolute disbelief. “Me? Steal jewelry? I am helping to find who stole it!”
Her outrage fuels my own, pushing back the terror roiling at the edges of my mind. How dare she pretend she is just a helpful bystander? She planned this.
“Where is it now, Valka?” I demand. “Did you put it somewhere, or is it still in your pocket?”
Her fingers twitch, and I know in that moment she still has it, that she hasn’t bothered to hide it away somewhere. She never believed she would need to.
“Alyrra, shut up,” my brother hisses. “What are you doing?”
“I—I cannot believe that the daughter of such a nobleman as Lord Daerilin would steal,” Lady Emmanika says.
“I would never,” Valka says, green eyes gleaming with fury as she glares at me. “Really, Alyrra, your imagination has run away with you!”
“Come along,” my brother says, his hand closing on my arm, tight as a vise. But I won’t go with him. I won’t.
“Search her,” I say, my voice hard and strong, an order that takes the guards by surprise. They stare at me as my brother turns, yanking at me. I can’t twist out of his grip, so instead I brace my feet and shout, “As your princess, I demand you search her!”
And they do. I don’t know who is more surprised, my brother or I. He manages only a growl before one of them reaches Valka, pulls her hand away from where it covers her pocket, and plunges his own hand in.
“Get away from her!” My brother releases me, surging toward the guards, but it’s too late to stop them, too late to save her at all, for there in the guard’s hand gleams the brooch, gold and sapphire.
“That’s it,” Maralinde says in a strangled voice. “That’s my mother’s brooch.”
The hall erupts in shouting.
“She would have let that girl be killed,” I say earnestly, as if I could make my mother see the injustice, the ugliness of Valka’s intention. “And she had the brooch all along!”
“And you betrayed her!”
That silences me. Even if it was Valka who betrayed the girl, knowing she was innocent, picking her out because she was the easiest target of all the servants there. And did it out of spite, to get back at Emmanika for yesterday’s altercation.
“Do you know,” my mother goes on in a low voice, “how hard I have worked to keep the throne for your brother? Almost, we were exiled! We nearly lost it all—and you would have grown up a nothing in a foreign court, and then even less, if we could not prove our usefulness. I have kept you both here, kept your power and title for you, and this is what you do? Do you know what it has taken to make an ally of Daerilin—do you understand that it is his support that kept our throne? And now you have destroyed his daughter, publicly revealed her as a liar and a thief! All for some nameless servant.”
I stare at the ground. I am sorry, sorry for what my mother has gone through in order to hold onto the throne. But is that all that matters to her? Holding onto power, regardless of everything else? Isn’t the point of ruling to also take care of those below you—as Emmanika tried to tell Valka? Although she’d also counseled Valka not to make a scene—and that is precisely what I did.
“Know this,” my mother says softly. “You have chosen your future. I must keep the throne for your brother, and if that means you fall for your stupidity, then fall. There is no one here who will catch you.”
Brambles: A Thorn Short Story Page 2
