Waking beauty, p.25
Waking Beauty, page 25
Bo turned away when he saw them studying him, but not before Arpien saw his face. Bo was hard to read. It was one of the things that made him an effective bodyguard to the king. But Arpien knew his brother well enough to recognize that haunted look.
“You, I think,” Arpien said to Nissa. “I imagine you remind him of Kirren.”
“Kirren?”
“Our sister. She drowned when I was six. Bo was twelve and blamed himself for it. They were very close—only a year apart in age.”
“Yes, I’m sorry, I remember now. You mentioned her the day you and Brierly arrived.” She squirmed, which again increased her resemblance to his sister. “But you don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like—like I’m going to do something horrible to you personally.”
“Well, I’ve had time to get to know you. I look at you, I see Nissa. He looks at you, he sees a ghost of Kirren.”
“I thought you said I didn’t look much like her.”
“You don’t, except for the dark hair. It’s the mannerisms. And Kirren loved books too. She used to read to me by the hour. Bo would do the dragon voices.” He had forgotten that, until now.
He nearly missed the trace of poison in his wine. An acridity so faint you didn’t taste it; you felt it smirk in the back of your throat. If he hadn’t tasted it before, his mouth would not have been sensitized to detect it. Cryndien had toasted him with poisoned wine on his seventeenth birthday, to celebrate his majority. Not enough to kill, but enough to make him vomit for hours. The palace blamed his illness on too much celebration. At least publicly.
Arpien spat his mouthful of wine across the table. He knocked Brierly’s cup out of her hand and it too splattered the table, the floor, even a few passersby. The courtiers exclaimed in protest. So did the head laundress, from a low servants’ table.
“The wine’s poisoned,” Arpien sputtered.
The king’s taste-tester, had Emol been disposed to loan him or Arpien disposed to let him die, couldn’t drink from empty glasses. No one was falling insensate into their herbed potatoes and roast meat. Once again Arpien looked like a paranoid idiot.
Across the room, Eusar silently toasted Arpien with his own goblet. That unnerved Arpien more than the attack itself. Hadn’t Cryndien planned the poisoning? It was, after all, something Cryndien had done before. But then why was Eusar smiling? And who, come to think of it, would have had access to Arpien’s glass that night? Far easier for Eusar to speak to the servers than Cryndien.
They’d have to start watching for threats on both fronts.
29
Brierly
Although it wasn’t officially a fairy Gift, Rumor Gathering had always been effortless for Brierly. Fleetsome Feet were excellent tools for investigation. Even when she wasn’t actively Charming secrets from people, her cadre of admiring young nobles blurted out plenty of juicy revelations in an effort to win her attention. And Animal Speech gave her a literal fly-on-the-wall perspective that would make spies drool. Animals were her favorite informants. Some animals might have vicious teeth and claws, but their tongues weren’t so vicious as humans’, and their motives were easier to track.
Brierly learned more than she wanted to know about the queen from the royal lapdogs. Albertus loved reciting pedigrees, both human and canine. He had the queen’s down to a stately cadence, and moved his tiny brown paws back and forth as though he were marching to his own performance. Squeezie raved about his Queenie as he raved about anyone who fed him, including “Flash-Boom Man.”
“Who?” Brierly said.
*He means His Royal Majesty King Cryndien Trouvel of Conquisan.* Albertus sniffed at his nephew, who was stalking bubbles. *Squeezie, use your titles.*
Brierly had offered to give the dogs their weekly bath, and the Royal Dog Attendant was glad to surrender the Royal Canine Scrub Brush. Squeezie in a tub was a hurricane. Which was why Nissa was reading her book in the dry safety of the hallway as she waited for Brierly.
*Flash-Boom Man scratches the spot that makes my foot thump. And he feeds me treats if I catch the flying things.* Squeezie wiggled his hindquarters and pounced. Water slopped over the rim of the washtub. *He calls me a ferocious hunter.*
Funny. Brierly had heard Cryndien refer to the lapdogs as “useless rats.”
*I wish you wouldn’t be quite so forthright with your enthusiasm for the Conquisani king. It isn’t politic.*
*You eat his treats, too, Bertus.*
Albertus dog-paddled his hundredth lap around the wooden tub, head held high. The fur on his head was not even wet. *Yes, well, only as a diplomatic duty. And only when the Queen is otherwise occupied.*
Squeezie looked up from his latest kill. *So we do like Flash-Boom Man or not?*
*The point, dear fleabrain, is not whether we like him, but how the thing is perceived.*
Squeezie cocked his head. Suds slid off his ear.
*It depends on the situation*
Squeezie cocked his head the other way. *Do I still get my treats?*
*Yes, my little cat-bait.* Albertus nodded toward the bubbles. *You missed one.*
Even with Fleetsome Feet, it was difficult to dodge the queen long enough to hold a substantial conversation with the lapdogs. Luckily, compared to briar-ridden, barren Estepel, Boxleyn was infested with animals to talk to. Brierly took an immediate liking to a pair of spotted pigeons for building their nest in the open mouth of Nissa’s Great Great Aunt Zalia, whom Brierly had known and disliked. The statue consisted of a boulder-sized head and a six-foot-long arm that extended over the ledge of the roof and pointed to the horizon. Brierly climbed up on the arm to fully appreciate how the twigs made the statue look like it was foaming at the mouth. Even Nissa had allowed herself to laugh at her relative’s expense, though she was not brave enough to inspect the statue from Brierly’s vantage point. In fact, Nissa objected when Brierly made her own roost on top of the statue’s hand. It might have had something to do with the five-story drop, but how else was Brierly to properly converse with the birds?
She took to visiting the birds at dawn, when birdkind was most talkative, and any other time she felt like dodging well-meaning people who lectured her about wearing the ill-intention-ometer. Today she’d managed the slip during the bustle before the evening meal, by telling Arpien she was eating upstairs with Nissa, and Nissa that she was eating downstairs with Arpien. The dying sun was a corpulent ruby in the sky.
She didn’t turn around when her Fine Ears detected human footsteps. Not Nissa’s. Male. Not Arpien’s, either. Not even Cuz’s, who she could easily imagine trying to sneak up on her.
“Not hungry, Eusar?”
She turned then and saw she’d guessed right. Nissa’s cousin Eusar jumped as though he had not noticed her fifteen feet away. “Princess Brierly. You startled me. Out enjoying the sunset?”
“As are you and your friends.” Two of them, she noted as she turned further.
Eusar smiled. “I heard you talking to your—friends—as well.” He glanced at the nest.
“Actually, they were doing most of the talking.”
“Careful, Princess. People will think you’re daft if you say such things. Some would say you’re daft to sit so high up, in such a precarious position.” He smiled and extended a courtly hand. “May I help you down?”
If there was anything more tiresome than death in the dream world, it was death accompanied by bad puns.
“Thank you, no.”
He climbed onto the ledge. “Please take my hand, princess. How could I bear it if you were to fall?”
Her eyes were fixed on Eusar, so she did not see the attacker behind her. Nor did she need to, with her Fine Ear. But it would have been helpful if she’d been prepared for the broomstick that jabbed her in between her shoulder blades.
She barely had time to hook her arms around the statue’s chubby one. She dangled there for a moment. The ground looked miles beneath her. Eusar cursed.
It took the broom smashing down on her knuckles for her to realize she was not afraid, but annoyed. This was her dream. She was in charge.
She swung forward and caught her toes in the stone gutter. She walked her hands forward until she stood upright. Then she was ducking again, as both broomstick and scabbarded blade reached for her. Fleetsome Feet gave her excellent balance, and she scrambled along the gutter to the next statue. The gutter ran the perimeter of the building, several feet beneath the wall that outlined the roof. It was hard for her attackers to coordinate a deadly attack around the unwieldy stone limbs of pompous Montaines. If Brierly somehow swung herself up to the ledge of the wall, she couldn’t make it up and over before they caught her. The route down appealed even less.
As quickly as she dodged and scurried, there were still three of them and one of her. Eusar and one of his companions caught her between statues. The third could now leisurely beat at her unsheltered back until she fell.
“Grab hold, little bird.” The broom dangled close to her where she crouched on the ledge. Bristles teased her hair. “I’ll pull you to safety.”
He leaned over the wall. She tore the broom from his grasp and knocked his head with the other end of the broom.
He fell.
He grabbed a fistful of her skirts in an effort to save himself. Her right elbow smacked the ledge with a jarring sting that reverberated through her entire skeleton. The rough grit of the stone gutter grated burning ridges into her left palm as it took the entire weight of his flailing body. She could not will her tingling arm to grab the gutter overhead.
The cloth tore free.
She decided she was more attached to this particular dream than she thought.
A cry of pain from overhead called her attention upward. Steel rang against steel. She heard Eusar’s shout. “Quit attacking, idiot! We were trying to help her! She thought she could fly off the building.”
The clash of swords ceased. “Then get out of my way.”
Arpien’s head jutted over the ledge. For a moment Brierly couldn’t determine if she was more afraid of what lay above or below her. For now Eusar would push him from behind, or stab him …
Arpien’s head gave her some inane advice to hold on, disappeared from view, and demanded sword and cloaks of Eusar and his companion. Their swords Arpien chucked over the wall. The cloaks he knotted together with his own cloak and doublet to form a makeshift rope. It was not quite long enough for Brierly to reach it. Moments later she heard a sound she’d never heard before—the pumice-melon sound of metal slicing through rock. He’d sunk the vademecum sword into the ledge.
Arpien anchored the rope of cloaks to the sword, climbed down, and reached his hand out to her.
If she took his hand, would she be saving herself or condemning him?
Arpien flashed her a shaky grin that reoriented gravity. “Do you want me to save you now or does later fit better into your schedule?”
A grunt drew her attention once more to the roof. “Eusar, stop!” she shouted.
Too late. Eusar pried the vademecum sword loose and both Arpien and Brierly fell in a tangle of limbs down the side of the palace.
Suddenly the vademecum sword bit into stone again. The makeshift rope jerked taut. Brierly and Arpien crashed through the Reception Room window. Arpien struck it feet-first and rolled on top of her so that he sheltered her from the worst of the falling glass. When the shattering stopped, they both sat up.
“Careful. There’s glass in your hair.” He brushed a shard from her tresses, which was funny given the myriad tiny shards that glinted in his own hair. She looked her recurring prince over in wonder. How was he intact?
“How did you know?” she asked.
“A bird told me.”
“You can talk to animals now?”
“Not in words, but why else would two pigeons grab me by the scruff of the neck, unless they came from you?”
A few weeks ago he never would have taken advice from birds.
He glanced down at the blond lock of her hair still between his fingers. He released it and stood. He extended a hand to help her up, and this time she took it. It was warm and strong and—she wasn’t imagining it—it shook the slightest bit. She noted as much aloud in surprise. He flushed.
As soon as he lifted her upright he tried to extract his hand, but she wouldn’t let him. They both stared at their joined hands, as though they’d been glued together by some mysterious prank of Cuz’s, and then up at each other. Brierly didn’t name what she read in his face, but it had something to do with the tremor in his hand. Only the tremor was in her own hand, and spread to unlikely places throughout her body. His brown eyes had gotten much closer to her own. She leaned in too, pulled in by the same inexplicable force that glued their hands together. One of the birds had broken into her ribcage and was now frantically trying to beat its way back out.
She hauled back and slapped Arpien.
If she’d done the slapping, why did her own ears ring?
She picked her way through the shards.
“Oh, no. Eusar just tried to kill you, and you think I’m letting you go anywhere on your own?”
She’d never heard that edge in Arpien’s voice before—jagged as the glass that littered the ground.
Heat surged through her again. Didn’t he understand? She was in no danger. He was. Hadn’t that been Voracity’s plan all along? Send him to rescue her, with that brave intensity and endearing vulnerability? Then when Voracity had proof that Brierly had fallen in love with her own figment, she’d destroy him.
Don’t let her see. Don’t let anyone see.
Brierly turned and shrugged. “If you like.”
Servants rushed in from the lower level to investigate the great crash. Even Eusar appeared. His surprise to find them alive was likely not entirely feigned. “Thorns. Arpien, my friend, are you all right? And dear Cousin Brierly? What happened?”
Pointless questions didn’t deserve answers. If they accused Eusar of causing their fall, he would simply tell another version of the story, perhaps the one where the crazy princess who talked to birds tried to fly like one. The bystanders might suspect Eusar capable of removing his competition—her Fine Ears had picked up plenty of gossip about Eusar’s envy of Timothy’s royal inheritance—but in the end they’d profess whatever was in their best political interest.
Arpien’s fingers whitened as they clamped the handle of the vademecum sword. Brierly hadn’t considered that her recurring prince might die as punishment for dueling Eusar in the middle of the atrium. She caught Arpien’s eye and shook her head slightly. He would not ignore her unspoken advice. Still, it was no gentlemanly arm that hauled her to the safety of Nissa’s chambers.
Arpien ranted and paced, Nissa tried to piece together what had happened in concerned confusion, Kendra listened in while she pretended to sweep the hearth, and Brierly retreated to the bedroom to collect the rags of her indifference. Eusar’s lackey had torn a whole panel from the peacock gown when he fell. Brierly could not rub out the memory of his wide eyes as the last threads snapped. His fingers groped and scrambled like fleshy, desperate spiders. Her own fairy-Gifted fingers felt sluggish, bloodless, detached. It took them five minutes to hook up the fastenings of her new gown.
So he was dead. What did it matter? He was a figment. A nasty figment. It wasn’t the first time she’d had to kill.
Why then did she keep thinking of eggs splattering into a bucket?
Through the door she could hear Arpien’s fury. “It’s unendurable. Am I supposed to sit on my thumbs when they attack her? I’m not proving my morality, but my cowardice.”
“What Eusar did is inexcusable,” Nissa said. “But he’s my cousin. Please remember that before you threaten his life.”
“He threatened mine first. Mine and your closest friend’s. Who will make him answer for it? Your uncle? He probably asked him to do it. Timothy? He might disapprove, but he won’t embarrass the Rosarian royal line with such scandal. Cryndien would pretend to be outraged if he knew, but only because it’d make a glorious excuse to start a war, and Bo always sides with Cryndien. No, Nissa, in the end no one cares about right and wrong, because the mighty make the rules.”
Brierly took a breath and strolled into Nissa’s sitting room. “Don’t take your anger at me out on Nissa.”
“I’m not mad at either of you. I’m mad at Eusar.”
“Fine. Be mad at Eusar.” Brierly shrugged. “Seems like a great deal of effort for something that doesn’t really matter, though.”
“You almost died today.” Despite his claim that he wasn’t angry at her, Arpien whacked the cushioned back of one of the mismatched parlor chairs. “Someone else did die. A real, flawed human being. Will you never get the truth through your head? You’re awake. This world is the real one. Listen to reason!”
Arpien’s fingers indented the surface of the blue velvet. Perfect pools of cushion supported the legs of a water bug.
Fingers grooming a shard of glass from her hair. Fingers glued to her own. Fingers motionless on Kendra’s broom handle. Fingers groping for a handhold in aquamarine fabric.
“Reason?” Brierly flopped onto a stuffed chair in a philosophic pose copied from one of the statues on the roof. She furrowed her brow and supported her chin on her fist. “Believe in this world because its rules are consistent. Horseradish. People determine their own truth, you said it yourself.”
“I never said that.”
“You just said the mighty make the rules.”
That silenced him for a moment, but only a moment. “I believe in the Greater Good. Whatever serves society is right.”
“Which society? If Emol keeps Sentre Forest, Cryndien can’t have his hittal trees for ships for Conquisan and your economy suffers. If Cryndien gets his trees, Lord Culmney can’t get his egg sacs and people die in Strand. If Lord Culmney gets his egg sacs, the mantizes die. Greater Good? Squirrel nubbins. Everyone’s in this for himself. Your ‘waking world’ is no different from the rest of the dream world. So I might as well be there, if it’s all the same to you.”
