Palace of Lies Read online

  “I should have my guards search through your pockets just to be sure,” Madame Bisset snarled. Her voice was harder to hear at the end, as if she was turning around, searching for her guards.

  “Say, that girl you be looking for . . . might she have had blood on her feet or shoes?” the little boy asked. “Because, look, there are bloody footprints coming into this alley, and then you can tell, they go back out . . .” The back end of the rug dipped perilously low, and I had to dig my fingers into the filthy, unraveling cloth closest to my hands, just to keep from sliding down. “Look—feel it. The blood isn’t even dry yet.”

  He touched it? He actually thinks Madame Bisset would touch it too? I thought in disgust. Though I didn’t know why this should bother me: He’d already touched my blood in order to plant the appearance of fake footprints.

  I accidentally let myself breathe out and in again. This brought in such a reek of rot and unthinkable bodily functions that it was all I could do to hold back a gagging noise. I forced myself to concentrate on Madame Bisset’s response.

  “Ah yes, I see. . . . Guards! Come quick! Follow this trail!” Madame Bisset called out. I could guess that the woman was backing away from the offered chance to touch blood. Then her voice went even louder, as if she’d turned back to face the two boys directly. “And begone with you, beggars! Don’t let me see you in this part of the city ever again!”

  “No, mistress. Of course not, mistress. We’ll be out of your sight directly, mistress,” the two boys said, their words running over top of one another.

  I felt the rug around me spinning in the other direction. The boys seemed to be settling it back on their shoulders; they seemed to be walking out the rear of the alley at a brisk pace.

  I went back to holding my breath. When it came time that I either had to take another breath or faint, I judged that we’d moved far enough away from Madame Bisset and her “prison house.”

  “Let me out!” I whispered to the section of the rug that I guessed might be closest to the older boy’s ear.

  “It isn’t safe yet!” the boy hissed back. “There are soldiers and guards everywhere! And we don’t know who they’re loyal to . . .”

  “I’m going to faint!” I complained.

  “Then faint if you have to!” the boy whispered. It came out more like, “ain i’ oo have oo,” so I guessed that he was trying to speak without moving his lips. “We’ll wake you up when we get where we’re going.”

  I was about to ask, And where’s that? when the boy hissed, “And stop talking! You aren’t safe yet at all!”

  Was this true?

  I had no way of knowing. I’d been trying to keep track of the path the boys seemed to be following—right turn, left turn, right turn, right—but I’d never seen anything of the capital city, Cortona, beyond the palace courtyard, so I wasn’t sure if it was likely that there were guards and soldiers about or not. I drew in a measured breath. I could at least try to stay alert, even if I couldn’t be sure if it was wisdom or foolishness to trust the two ragged boys.

  “Fresh fish!” someone cried nearby. “Get your fresh fish here!”

  So are we close to the river? I wondered. Do the fishmongers sell the fish straight out of the water?

  The voice calling out about the fish blended into another one bragging, “Freshest apples in the market!”

  So are we just walking through some large, open market where all sorts of goods are on sale? I wondered. Could I slide right out of this rug and blend into the crowd?

  I had very little idea of what the common people of Cortona looked like—I’d only ever seen them from behind a veil, from high over their heads. But I suspected that it’d be hard to blend in wearing nothing but a nightgown.

  And a nightgown fit for a princess, at that, I reminded myself. I’d marked the difference between the two boys’ patched, tattered clothing and the snowy-white perfection of my own garb.

  So I’m stuck in this filthy rug until the boys decide it’s safe for me to come out?

  The horrific odor of the rug seemed worse than ever. The bristly surface pressed painfully against my body; the places where I suspected I had cuts and bruises hurt worse with every bit of jostling. And I had no idea where we were going. Even if I asked, I had no guarantee that the boys would tell the truth. I’d just heard how skillfully they’d lied to Madame Bisset.

  In the palace, when I had grown most panicky and despairing, I’d taken to skulking through the secret passageways, listening secretly at hidden doors.

  You’re already hidden now. So pay attention. Listen.

  For a while there seemed to be nothing to hear but vendors plying their wares. Then I started noticing an occasional undercurrent of whispers.

  “Get your fresh-baked bread here! Fresh bread!”

  “—burned to the ground—”

  “Grapes! Pears!”

  “—heard nobody found out until—”

  “Walnuts! Almonds!”

  Why isn’t anybody talking about what happened to the princesses? I wondered.

  Or were they talking about it, and I just missed every reference?

  It was incredibly frustrating to catch only bits and pieces of the conversations around me.

  And then we evidently left the marketplace behind, because the voices of the shouting vendors faded. Now it was quiet enough that I could hear the older boy breathing beside me.

  It was strange to listen so intently to another human being breathe. I had never done that before. It was too . . . personal. Private. I felt like I had back when Cecilia and Harper first came to the castle, and I’d watched them without their knowing it. That was when I believed that I was the one and only true princess of Suala, and they were impudent interlopers—perhaps even treasonous interlopers. I’d trapped them in my tower, which I thought was the only safe thing to do. And yet, listening to them talk, I felt like I was doing something wrong, in a way that I never worried about when I eavesdropped on the various royal advisers and ministers.

  Older raggedy boy was starting to breathe hard. He was probably carrying the bulk of my weight. They’d probably been walking for nearly an hour since they’d left Madame Bisset behind.

  “You’re going to wear yourself out,” I started to say, because I’d learned at the palace that sometimes you could get people to do what you wanted by convincing them you only had their selfish interests at heart.

  But at the same time, the little boy started giggling.

  “Did you see her face when I touched that blood?” he asked.

  “Shush, Herk,” the older boy said. “I know it looks like there’s nobody around, but, remember, sometimes the walls have ears.”

  “Fraidy-cat Tog-dog,” the younger boy mocked—Herk? Was his name Herk? I guessed that was probably right. I wasn’t sure what to pull out as the older boy’s name. Surely his parents hadn’t named him “Dog.” “I’m just talking about the blood I told that lady about. It’s not like the walls are going to hear anything I didn’t tell her straight out. Was she half-blind? I thought she was never going to see it.”

  “The likes of her, they’re not used to seeing things like blood,” the older boy countered. “They’re not like us. They pretend messy things don’t exist.”

  “Blood, pee, poo, guts . . . We’ve seen it all, haven’t we, Tog?” Herk crowed.

  I felt slightly queasy. Were people even allowed to say words like that on a public street? Hadn’t someone in the palace passed a law against it?

  I made myself focus on the fact that the younger boy must have just revealed the older boy’s name: Tog. It had to be Tog.

  “But, by pointing out the blood, you could have made that lady think you were the one who put it there,” Tog said. “Like you were trying too hard to make her see it.”

  Tog’s smart, I thought, and this surprised me. Cecilia and Harper had looked a lot like ragamuffins too when they arrived at the palace just over a month ago, but Cecilia had been screaming, “I’m the true pr
incess! I’m the true princess!” pretty much the whole time.

  Tog and Herk had seemed perfectly fine with Madame Bisset assuming they were not just filthy beggar children, but stupid as well. Why hadn’t they protested?

  Oh. Because that would have made it harder for them to rescue me, I realized.

  I had plenty of experience with people pretending to be something they weren’t. But usually they were pretending to be richer, wiser, craftier, prettier . . . better. Everyone at the palace always pretended to be better than they were.

  So Tog and Herk pretended to be worse than they are to rescue me because . . . because . . .

  For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why they would care. It was as big as mystery as what Madame Bisset wanted to use me for, or what had actually happened to all the other princesses.

  “Oh, that lady would never have suspected me of anything,” Herk was bragging. “I make my voice go like this”—it shot up, high and innocent—“and people think butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth.”

  “We’d have to have some butter, first,” Tog muttered. “Anyhow, Mam always sees through you.”

  Herk didn’t argue with this.

  Mam, I thought. So even these beggar boys have what I’ve always been missing. A mother.

  The front of the rug dipped down, and even with my face wrapped tightly in the rug, I could tell by the deepening shadows that the boys were stepping out of the sunshine and into a darker area. Perhaps they were descending stairs into a basement?

  They stopped and there was a creaking noise—a door opening? And then I felt the rug around me sliding lower, lower, lower . . . Was I on the ground now?

  “We found her, Mam!” Herk cried, his voice so jolly that I could imagine him doing a jig for joy. “We found her! She’s alive!”

  “Praise the Lord!” a woman’s voice called back to him. “Where? What are the fortifications like? Would it be possible to rescue—”

  “Mam, we already rescued her!” Tog said, and his voice was even merrier than Herk’s. “She’s right here! In the rug!”

  And then I found myself spinning out of the rug. Eager hands rolled me out into the light. The last bit of the bristly, reeking rug came off my face, and I found myself practically nose to nose with a beaming young woman. She crouched down and threw her arms around my shoulders, lifting me up into a seated position to be swallowed in a huge embrace.

  “I’ve missed you so much!” the woman cried. She held me at arm’s length for a moment, then drew me back into an even tighter hug. “And you’ve grown so since the last time I saw you . . .”

  When had this woman ever seen me? From high overhead, on the balcony of the palace? And why would that make this woman think she had to right to touch me, let alone hug me? Nobody hugged me in the palace. Actually, Cecilia and one or two of the other sister-princesses had tried, but it always felt strange. Unnatural. The last time someone had pulled me this close, it had been Lord Throckmorton trying to strangle me.

  I pushed back at the woman, shoving her away.

  “Who are you?” I demanded.

  The woman looked . . . hurt. Was she some sort of lunatic who didn’t understand the rules of polite society? Or was she just as much of a beggar as Herk and Tog, and that was why she didn’t understand how to behave?

  Her clothes were clean but awfully ragged. She was dressed as simply and poorly as the boys, with a threadbare dress and apron and kerchief. Her long dark hair seemed to be tied back with a raveling string.

  “Desmia, don’t you remember me?” the woman gasped. She still had a hold on my shoulders, but it was shakier now. Less certain. “I know I’ve changed in the past ten years, but . . . I’m Janelia.”

  Something about that name burrowed deep into my brain. Or sparked something in my mind. But it was just a momentary flash and then it was gone, and I could do nothing but stare blankly at the woman.

  The woman slipped her hands down to clutch my arms, one on each side. It was hard to say if she was trying to steady herself or me.

  “I’m Janelia,” the woman repeated. “Desmia—I’m your sister.”

  10

  I jerked back, breaking the woman’s hold on me.

  “I’m an orphan,” I said numbly.

  It took me a moment to realize that that wasn’t a denial—orphans could easily have brothers or sisters.

  “All my sisters are the same age as me,” I said. I resolutely kept myself from wondering how many of my sister-princesses were still alive. They’re all fine, I told myself. They’re all fine, and you’re going to find them. . . .

  I went on with my explanation.

  “We all came from the orphanage,” I said. This part of the story had not exactly been released to the public, but somehow I felt I had to tell it now. “The queen secretly sent her servant girl out in search of little baby girl orphans she could pretend were the true princess, because her own baby had died—”

  “Desmia, you should know the rest of that story,” the woman—Janelia?— interrupted. “I was that servant girl.”

  I blinked. Was it possible? Could the servant girl herself have been from the orphanage too? A month ago, when I had learned the truth about my origins, there had been twelve other fake princesses to keep track of, along with twelve knights who were so protective of each of their princesses. I had had no time to think of minor players in the story. Or, really, I hadn’t believed the servant girl was worth thinking of, because undoubtedly Lord Throckmorton would have had her killed to keep her from ever telling her story. He could have done that before I lived more than a day in the royal nursery.

  I peered more intently at Janelia. The woman’s ragged clothes and too-thin face made her look older, but perhaps she had lived only a dozen or so years past my fourteen. She was the right age, then, to have been a servant girl when I was a baby.

  “But . . . but . . . how—” I sputtered.

  Janelia’s expression shattered. The hollows in her cheeks sagged; her heavy eyelids dropped, shuttering the joy that had been glowing forth from her gray eyes.

  “You forgot,” she whispered. “I tried so hard to make sure you remembered—well, as much as I could safely tell you—and you . . .”

  “Mam, she was only four,” Tog interrupted. “You tell Herk and me things all the time that we don’t remember.”

  “But she knew this was important,” Janelia said, speaking slowly, as if still dazed. Or horrified. “I was so sure that she understood. . . .”

  “So what you tell us isn’t important?” Herk said, plopping down on the floor in a cross-legged position. “Hurray! We don’t have to listen anymore!”

  I was glad that Herk at least thought this was funny. He started giggling. And there was something about the sound of a child’s laughter, something that went with Janelia’s voice. . . .

  Do I remember her? I wondered. It was like I almost did, or almost thought I did, or almost could be convinced that I did. But the almost-memory kept slipping away, like a fish that couldn’t be caught.

  Why would I even think about catching fish? I was a princess. I’d never gone fishing. I’d heard Cecilia and Harper talk about their fishing exploits, but for myself—never.

  Unless, maybe, with Janelia, when I was almost too young to remember . . .

  The almost-memory was gone again. I winced and closed my eyes momentarily.

  “Mam, maybe you should look at her wounds first?” I heard Tog say. “I think she’s still bleeding.”

  Janelia gasped. I opened my eyes and looked down. The nightgown I’d been thinking of as snowy-white perfection was smeared with blood. Some of the blood had dried to a brownish color, but other spots were fresh and bright red.

  It looked like the gown of a murder victim.

  “Oh, you poor, dear child!” Janelia cried. “Did they stab you when you were escaping?” She looked frantically up at Herk and Tog. “Were either of you injured? Are you sure nobody followed—”

  “Nobody could hav
e followed us, the way we went,” Herk bragged.

  Janelia turned her frantic gaze back to me.

  “I had to break a window to escape,” I said. Just saying those words made me dizzy. “I didn’t have shoes. I stepped on some glass. Oh, and slid down a pillar.”

  It already seemed impossible that I had done those things.

  Janelia nodded, a troubled bobbing up and down of her head.

  “It could be worse, it could be worse,” she muttered. She scooted back and peered more directly at my bloody feet. “Tog, put on the kettle so we’ll have hot water to clean the blood away.”

  I remembered how much it had hurt when Herk touched my foot.

  “I think there might still be some glass left inside,” I said hesitantly.

  Janelia kept nodding.

  “We’ll get it out,” she said. She lifted the bottom of my nightgown slightly, looking at my scraped legs. “Boys, while I’m helping Desmia, I’ll need you to go to the market to purchase—”

  “Mam, there’s no money left to buy anything,” Tog said, backing away from a fireplace where he’d just hung a kettle. “If you want us to leave so we don’t see a girl’s leg—the leg of a girl we just rescued, remember?—just tell us to leave.”

  Herk scrambled up.

  “Bye, bye,” he said.

  And then both boys walked back out the door.

  I missed them.

  Maybe I was dizzy from losing so much blood. Maybe it was just too strange to have lost my palace, lost the girls I thought of as sisters, endured so much to get away from danger—and now have this strange woman claiming a relationship I was supposed to remember. Or, was the strange part that I almost did remember?

  While Janelia busied herself pulling out cloths and watching the kettle, I made myself focus on looking around the small room.

  Dirt floor, I thought. Bedding over in the corner—do all three of them actually sleep on the floor? Table that looks like it would fall apart if someone put his elbows down on it, three rickety stools . . .

  I had never seen such a poor-looking space. Of course, I’d never seen inside any home except the palace and the “prison house” where Madame Bisset had kept me, so for all I knew, maybe most of my royal subjects lived like this. Or maybe, by the standards of ordinary Sualans, this was actually a fine home, an upper-class living space.