Waking beauty, p.22
Waking Beauty, page 22
“And if Emol decides not to give Sentre Forest to you?” Arpien meant the question to sound defiant. At best, it sounded hypothetical.
“Then you will stand back and let me persuade him by whatever means I deem appropriate.” Cryndien beamed with sudden charisma and thumped Arpien on the back. “Come, let’s be friends, brother. Why can’t you be more like Bo? He always agrees with me.”
No, Bo always obeys you.
Arpien left because he couldn’t bring himself to argue further. Not now, when he felt like a six-year-old next to Cryndien’s power and certainty. What if Cryndien were right? What if Nissa were right? What if in his attempts to become a hero, he had only managed to become a traitor to his own country?
Yet whether or not he won his lady’s heart, duty would not allow him to leave now. Rescuing a fair damsel came with certain obligations. The first was that you did not leave her in worse circumstances than you found her. How easy it would be for Emol to lock her up as mad, for either king to eliminate her. Suppose Arpien convinced her to leave Boxleyn and any hope of ruling Sentre Forest. Would she be any safer outside of Boxleyn? Whatever human threat Boxleyn held, it kept Brierly safe from evil fairies, at least so long as none of the Rosarian royal line invited Voracity into the palace. Brierly was by no means helpless, but she never seemed to take any threat seriously.
His stomach churned as though he’d swallowed the ill-intention-ometer.
25
Nissa
Nissa intended to wait up with Brierly for Arpien’s return. Her vigil fell pathetically short as Brierly hummed in the parlor chair opposite her. The impossibly beautiful notes wove a blanket of sleep around her. With Brierly’s Fleetsome Feet, Nissa never heard her friend leave, but she woke in the early hours and noticed her absence.
Nissa threw a chunky shawl around yesterday’s sleep-rumpled gown and checked the likely Brierly burrows: whistling with pigeons on the roof, holding loud conversations with Squeezie through the door to the queen’s chambers (Aunt Perturbance suspected Brierly was the reason Squeezie yapped unstoppably at the door in the wee hours, but she’d never been able to catch her), or visiting the horses in the stables. Brierly wasn’t in the stables, but all three horses were, which meant Arpien was back. Probably Brierly as well, for both Windried and Neef were damp with recent exertion. Nissa wasn’t surprised Brierly had refused to be left out of anything dangerous, but Nissa was sheepish she’d stayed behind. She wondered if Fearless felt the same way.
Nissa returned to her own chambers to find Brierly snoozing with conviction, head buried under a down pillow. Nissa forced a few grudging and unhelpful comments from Brierly before the Sleeping Beauty reenacted her name again.
Arpien arrived, perturbed and disheveled. His back was smeared with dirt and twigs. The secondhand prince was hard on clothes. “What did Brierly tell you?” he said.
“Nothing coherent. She went right to bed.”
A defiant snore from the other room reiterated the point.
Arpien guided Nissa to one of the parlor chairs, but she popped up again. “Arpien, what happened?”
“Consulan Sitral—Voracity—is outside the gate.”
Only when Nissa heard the high-pitched squeak of a chair leg skidding against floorboards did she realize her knees had given out. She had flopped onto the stuffed blue armchair behind her.
The reality of swooning was nothing so graceful as her rehearsals.
“Voracity can’t get in, can she? Brierly will be safe as long as she stays inside Boxleyn, right?”
“Not every threat requires an invitation.” He told her about the Grey Cloaks, the murdered brigand, the thorns, and a threat she couldn’t visualize, something he called tornado seeds.
Nissa worried her right hand around her left pointer finger. “We have to warn my family.”
“Why would they believe me? I’m Conquisani.”
“Timothy listens to me. I’ll go with you.”
Timothy listened to them both with a forbearance that denied his likely annoyance at being dragged outside the gate before breakfast. Breakfast was a Montaine family virtue.
Regardless of fairy involvement, a murder so close to Boxleyn called for immediate investigation. Timothy took with them a guard of two dozen men.
Though Nissa saw nothing to distinguish one trail from any other, Arpien retraced his steps to the clearing. Nothing remained but an unnaturally perfect ten-foot circle of singed woodchips. Every sapling, every fern, every fallen log within that circumference had been sawed off at exactly the same height, about a foot from the forest floor. Barren stumps and stems poked up from the scarred deadfall like boney fingers grasping their way out of their graves. Even Timothy’s rationalized explanations were dented a bit by the eeriness of it.
Into the nervous silence broke an unearthly wail. Several of the guards drew their swords. One even whispered, “Prince save us.” Even in Rosaria a man was allowed his superstitions when faced with the hair-raising.
It was Nissa who first stepped forward to investigate the sound.
Timothy laid a restraining hand on her shoulder.
“It’s only my ill-intention-ometer,” she said.
Arpien drew the vademecum sword. “Yes, but Nissa—it’s going off.” He poked the sword into the cluster of ferns some five paces away and fished out the clunky necklace. He whacked it three times against a tree trunk. The guards rumbled low relieved laughter into the ensuing silence, like a retreating storm. Only Nissa noticed how tightly Arpien clenched the ill-intention-ometer in his hand, as though to disguise the vibrations.
Timothy kept a protective hand on her shoulder. “Nissa, what in the name of reason is that thing?”
Her explanation made the guards taunt each other. It was no supernatural thing, of course not, just one of Lady Nissa’s eccentric artifacts. Arpien did not relax, nor did Timothy.
Timothy remained cordial as they returned to Boxleyn and as he dismissed the guards to their other duties. He thanked Arpien for his concern and told him he would handle it from here, but his brotherly hand kept Nissa from following Arpien. Timothy steered her into the privacy of the Reception Room.
“What are we going to do?” she said.
“Nothing.”
“You saw the evidence. Voracity’s back.”
“Yes, let’s talk about the evidence.” He flicked off each item on his beefy fingers. “There was no dead body, no troop of assassins, no thorns, no fairy, nothing to support his story.”
“There was the circle of destroyed woodland.”
“Which any average mortal with a handsaw and a torch could have constructed.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“Maybe to draw the Rosarian royal line out of the walls of Boxleyn and into a trap?” He fixed her with a tutor’s gaze. “How well do you really know Arpien Trouvel, Nissa?”
He never took that tone with her, Aunt Perturbance’s tone.
“Arpien wouldn’t trap us.”
“You’ve known him for three, four weeks? How many generations of Conquisani have tried to swindle us out of Sentre Forest? Fact: Cryndien wants Sentre Forest. Fact: Arpien is his brother.”
“Arpien doesn’t even like his brother.”
“So he told you. I’ve thought this could be some twisted Conquisani plot from the moment Arpien arrived with that daft beauty. Someone is exploiting your love of the old superstitions.”
“Superstitions!”
“Think, Nissa. A passing blonde claims to be the Sleeping Beauty, you let her in. A bunch of Conquisani nobles claim to have a legendary magic device—the invisibility box or what have you—you let them in. Arpien claims to see fairies—you wander out blindly to meet them. If I were a Conquisani, I’d manipulate the most gullible link to the Rosarian royal line, too.”
Nissa had been scolded and laughed at a hundred times before for clinging to the old tales, but never by someone she respected so much. Warmth streamed down her right cheek. Timothy wiped her cheek with a gentle thumb that belied his frown. “Nissa, you know I didn’t say this to hurt you.”
“You said”—her throat felt tight as a rag wrung in the hands of the laundress—“you said I’m going to bring down Boxleyn with my stupidity.”
“I do not think you’re stupid. Naïve, perhaps. Not the same thing at all. You’re a very smart young girl.”
She sniffed. “I’m not a child.” How would she ever prove that if she cried like one?
Timothy produced a square of linen from inside his sleeve. “Really, you women know how to make a man feel a right scoundrel.”
The linen looked less than pristine, but she needed to blow her nose. “I wasn’t trying to manipulate you.”
He tapped his knuckle under her chin. “I know you weren’t, duck. Whatever you believe, you believe with unwavering sincerity.”
“Timothy, if Voracity really is out there, isn’t it just as blind to deny the old tales as to believe them blindly?”
He considered her, all red-eyed and runny-nosed as she must be, and nodded. “All right, then. Prove your argument.”
That afternoon Nissa armed herself with the strongest weapons from her stockpile of books and went to convince her family. She took first aim at Uncle Emol. “The—the old tales say—”
“Speak up, girl.” Uncle said. The perfect black curls of his beard were too well-oiled, too well-behaved, to even sway when he snapped his jaw shut.
“The old tales say evil fairies have great power, especially if they can trick humans into dealing with them. If Voracity is bargaining with King Cryndien, you—you have to consider that the threat she poses could be worse than any army King Cryndien could muster by himself. After all, she would have murdered Brierly if Gowsma hadn’t altered the spell.”
Uncle Emol’s response was typical. “There are no such things as fairies.”
“Then what was Gowsma?”
“An exceptionally old and ornery human. If you want to defend your country, you could use your position with the youngest Conquisani prince to learn their plot against us instead of reading fairy stories.”
Nissa tried to gesture, but her fingers were caught between the pages of the book. “But these aren’t made-up stories. Look, I can show you three different examples of the tale of—”
By the time she flipped to the passages, Uncle Emol was gone. Her other family members vanished just as quickly when she tried to convince them.
Eusar ruffled her hair as he left, but was “too busy for that right now, Nissa.”
Aunt Perturbance took Nissa’s insistence she listen to the old tales as an insult to her child-rearing skills. “You’re such a child. Grow up.”
It didn’t aid her argument that no magical attacks came as Nissa warned. In the end the only one who was convinced of anything was Nissa. She now saw she was too small to be taken seriously. To drive the point home, she kept dreaming that she was Thumbelina—no doubt a result of her excessive exposure to the old tales. In her dreams she was no bigger than a thumb. The giants around her ignored her squeaky warnings. Uncle Emol stepped on her. Brierly watched Nissa’s performance as though Nissa were an incompetent minstrel, then drifted off to sleep. Cuz caught Nissa in a mousetrap. The lapdogs, who given her reduced stature seemed like great lions, snarled and chased her around the room.
Nissa could not silence her insecurities entirely, but she found that they usually didn’t follow her into the library. There she could lose herself in the wonder of the old tales and forget she was small, plain, easily-ignored Nissa Montaine. What a fearless believer she was when she faced no opposition.
She wasn’t imagining it all, just swept away in a good story, was she?
If she kept researching, maybe she could find that one irrefutable passage that would win over her family and Brierly. Maybe she would find reference to a secret weapon that would protect Rosaria from Voracity. They already had a vademecum sword and an ill-intention-ometer. Arpien claimed the vademecum sword had a mind of its own. The ill-intention-ometer seemed to work, but Brierly refused to wear it.
“If you think it’s so grand, you wear it,” Brierly had told Arpien in one of their many arguments about it.
“It’s for your protection.”
“I don’t take orders from princes,” she said.
Arpien threw his hands in the air and grumped in unprincely terms for Nissa to explain it to her.
The best compromise Nissa could see was that she wear it herself, and accompany Brierly whenever she left Boxleyn Palace. As a result she spent a lot of time dragging books on top of roofs and beneath trees, so she could read while Brierly visited with birds and squirrels. (The local squirrel population, Brierly insisted, was in political upheaval and needed her constant counsel to avoid any more tail-tweakings.) In fact, Brierly spent far more time addressing animal politics than human politics.
Nissa was immersed in the tale of The Forging of the Vademecum Swords when a long string of chittering broke her focus. Nissa was glad she didn’t speak Squirrel. The tone indicated some juicy profanity. She glanced up from the book. General Bo, Arpien’s brother, strolled across the lawn.
No, strolled wasn’t the right word. Strolled implied casual, and no one planned casualness so thoroughly as the Trouvel brothers. Bo watched her as he passed. The ill-intention-ometer rattled against her leg, but the squirrels might have triggered it. Should she grab Brierly and walk away? But that was stupid; Bo wasn’t attacking. So she gave him a respectful nod. The General frowned, ripped his gaze forward and walked on.
“Do you think he was carrying word to Voracity outside the gate?” Nissa asked Brierly.
“I agree. The punishment for flinging an acorn ought to be harsher than the punishment for flinging a flower seed. Acorns have pointier ends.” It took Brierly a moment to come out of squirrel mediation. She blinked and turned to Nissa. “Who?”
“General Bo.”
Hadn’t Brierly seen him? He’d come within five yards of them.
“If he was, I don’t know what we can do about it,” Brierly said.
It was the opening Nissa had been waiting for. Nissa turned the pages of her book to the passage she’d carefully marked days before. “You can stop Voracity, Brierly. It’s just like it predicts in the old tales.”
“You know I can’t read.” Brierly glanced down at the book, but her eyes refused to focus. The same way Cuz managed not to see wadded-up laundry. Such things existed only for other people. Laundry for the laundress, books for Nissa.
So Nissa read it aloud. “An evil fairy will gain control over the Prince’s lands. Only a Steward can stop her. Only a Steward can call the Prince back.”
“I think it’s talking about the Prince of Here and There,” Nissa said, her eyes on Brierly’s bored ones. Bored but absolutely still. “They say he once ruled all the lands. The evil fairy must be Voracity.”
Brierly gave that dainty “hm” of bland fascination.
“You’re the last Steward.”
“I can’t summon the Prince.”
“You could try.”
“I have tried,” she snapped.
Nissa started. Brierly never snapped.
“You think I don’t know that prophecy? I was raised with it. How else do you explain to a child that she’s under a Curse, so she must never ever touch any spinning wheels? Of course I asked why Voracity would hate me so much as to condemn me to death at my own christening. So my parents showed me the prophecy. It didn’t necessarily mean me. It could have meant one of my parents.”
“You are the last Steward. It has to be you.”
“Do you know how many times I’ve called out to the Prince to save me?” Brierly pushed down on one of the tree’s lower limbs so hard it started to crack. Did she notice? “My parents and godparents were always talking about how good the Prince was, how he came to the kingdom in times of need. So after I pricked my finger, I was certain he’d come. Maybe scare me a bit as punishment for disobeying my parents about the spindle. But I knew he’d come. Then I thought, he’s waiting for me to play along with Gowsma’s christening Gift. I should be asking for him to send my true love to my tower. I remember the first prince who came for me. Herren, of course. I leapt up into his arms and we both cried. Bluebirds circled overhead. Sunlight burst from behind the clouds.” Brierly shook her head. “At the gate of Estepel a dragon ate him.”
The limb made a snapping sound and Brierly released it. “My rescuers didn’t all look like Herren. But they did all fail. Geoffrey was trampled by his horse. Hubert fell into a moat of lava. Kendar lost all his skin and bled to death. A few of them rescued me and then killed me. Or worse.”
Nissa didn’t ask what or worse was. “Brierly, I’m so sorry.”
She rolled a shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. I’m only bringing it up to point out that the Prince is no use to us. Either those rescuers were from Voracity, and the Prince was too weak to stop them, or the Prince sent them himself, which makes him just as bad as Voracity. And our final option—the Prince doesn’t exist at all.”
“But Brierly, the Prince did send a rescuer to wake you.”
“Arpien?” Brierly sighed. Nissa didn’t know whether to read it as disappointment or affection.
“You still don’t want to believe you’re awake.”
“I believe in self-reliance. You’re sweet, Nissa, but you’re going to disappear, too. It will be as though we never had this conversation. Which maybe we aren’t.” A faraway, fierce look blazed in her eye. “There are only two of us.”
Did she mean Voracity? Nissa had never been overlooked in quite this way. She could tell Brierly liked her. But as long as Brierly believed she was dreaming, the bonds of friendship were nothing compared to the power Voracity had over Brierly. In this moment Brierly was once more a figure of legend. The artist in Nissa wanted to capture that image of the heroine gazing to the horizon, to that inevitable, final confrontation with her doom. She was beautiful and brave and impossibly larger than life.
