0425277054 (F) (27 page)

Then she turned casually to Alette. “Would you like us to pull some for you?”

Alette hesitated a moment before nodding. “Yes, please.”

Corene didn’t know about the other two, but she felt nervous as she swished her fingers through the bits of brass and hoped she picked out something useful. The one that came to her hand wasn’t exactly reassuring—and awfully familiar. “Courage,” she said.

Melissande pulled a coin and searched for it on Josetta’s list. “Hope,” she pronounced.

Liramelli did the same. “Love,” she said softly.

There was a long silence while Alette thought over their words and the rest of them tried not to breathe. Finally Alette said, “I would be grateful to be given such blessings.”

“You can have them made into charms or rings or paintings or anything, really,” Corene said. She tugged on her necklace to show them the blessings stamped into the metal; she didn’t draw their attention to the rings on her fingers, though, because she was still a little spooked by that coincidence. “See? My lifetime blessings are clarity, change, and courage, and I wear them all the time. You could do something similar.”

“I will think about that,” Melissande said. “Some sort of memento to remind me of my time in Malinqua.”

That caught Liramelli’s attention. “Remind you? Does that mean you plan to leave us sometime? Go back to Cozique?”

Melissande shrugged with her usual elegance. “Perhaps. I like Malinqua—very much!—but will I want to stay if I am not chosen as bride to the next heir? I am not so sure.”

Liramelli looked oddly sad at this news, despite the fact that scarcely a nineday earlier she had mentioned that she didn’t think Melissande liked her.
We have become friends in these last days,
Corene thought. She would bet Liramelli was as surprised as she was.

Liramelli glanced at Corene. “What about you? Do you plan to stay or go?”

Corene shrugged, too. “Depends on whether or not there is a role for me here. I like the idea of being the next empress, but if I’m not picked for that job—” She lifted her hands in a gesture of uncertainty.

“Would you go back to Welce?” Liramelli asked.

Ah, that was the question Corene wrestled with every time her thoughts reached this juncture. “I don’t know what I’d do.”

Melissande nodded at Alette. “What about you? Would you stay or go home?”

And that was the point of this whole exercise,
Corene thought, admiring how artlessly it had been done.
Trying to pry information out of Alette.

Alette’s face went very still and for a moment Corene thought she wouldn’t answer. When she did speak, her voice was so low that they had to lean forward to catch her words.

“I cannot go home,” she said. “My father would not have me.”

They all exclaimed out loud at that, speaking over one another as they expressed shock and demanded to know how such a thing could be.

“It would be a failure to return, and my father does not tolerate failure. Just ten days ago he had my mother and my sister put to death.”

They should have cried out again, but the words were so stark that they could only stare at her.

Alette briefly lifted her eyes, saw their expressions, and dropped her gaze again. “You are wondering what their crimes were,” she said, her voice even softer. “But there were no crimes. My sister failed to win the interest of a Berringese suitor, and my mother failed to prepare her well enough that she would succeed in that task. Thus the order for their executions.”

“But—but—that is so awful, I have no words,” Liramelli stammered.

Melissande’s voice was hard. “Your father has many wives, does he not? And many children? Does he consider them all expendable?”

Alette nodded. “Ten wives when I left—nine now. Twenty-one children. Sixteen living.”

Another strained silence.

“He’s had five of his children put to death?” Corene asked.

Alette merely nodded.

“Then it is good you are here in Malinqua,” Liramelli said firmly. “We won’t send you back no matter who gets married and who is sitting on the throne. You can just stay here as our guest.”

Alette’s face looked even more sad. “You cannot protect me if he wants me dead. If I am not married to the man who is chosen as heir, he will send assassins to dispose of me. You do not understand what a blot it is on his honor to have his children fail.”

“Oh, I think there are many more
blots
on his
honor
!” Melissande exclaimed.

“Maybe you should run away from Malinqua,” Corene said urgently. “To Welce or Cozique or even Berringey—though I don’t know that they treat people any better in Berringey, to tell you the truth.”

“I think he would find me anywhere in the southern seas,” Alette said. “To be truly safe, I would need to flee to Yorramol.”

It was a country so far away none of them had ever met anyone who had actually lived there, though now and then exotic shopkeepers claimed to sell wood or jewels obtained in that unlikely place. The journey could take half a quintile, and who knew what kinds of savages might await travelers on those mysterious shores?

“You could never go so far,” Liramelli said. “Not by yourself.”

Alette was silent for a moment. “There is someone,” she said at last. “Who would travel with me. Who would keep me safe. But first I would have to leave Malinqua undetected, and there appears to be no way to do that.”

Melissande flicked a look at Corene, and said in the airiest voice, “Yes, I have noticed that! The empress’s guards are
most
attentive to the comings and goings of Filomara’s guests. It would be quite difficult to leave the palace and head for the wharf and book passage on a ship without royal soldiers trying to prevent you from leaving.”

Liramelli frowned. “That’s not true.”

“I assure you, it is.”

“I agree with Melissande,” Corene said reluctantly. “The empress does seem to keep a very close eye on us.”

“Only to guarantee that you’re safe. Think what trouble there would be if you were harmed while under her care!”

“I think it is more than that,” Melissande said. “I think she does not want us to leave the city—or the country.”

“But that’s ridiculous,” Liramelli said. “If you want to go home, tell her that. But you can’t blame her for having guards watch you closely while you’re her guests and she’s answerable to your families.”

She seemed so upset that Melissande made a graceful gesture. “Perhaps you are right. I am not used to so much—supervision—in Cozique. Perhaps any monarch would be so assiduous when hosting foreign guests.”

Corene laughed. “I promise you, if you were visiting Chialto, my father would know where you were at all times. He wouldn’t care
where
you went, and he certainly wouldn’t stop you from leaving, but he’d pay attention. My father pays attention to everything.”

“You see?” Liramelli said. But Corene thought she sounded troubled. “It’s not so sinister after all.”

“It does not matter what Filomara’s guards do or do not do,” Alette said. “I am watched by my father’s men at all times, and they will do whatever he asks.”

Melissande looked straight at Alette. “Yes, let us return at once to the pressing topic of your safety,” she said. “You say there is someone who would spirit you away if you could get out of the palace undetected? We pulled the blessing of love for you. Is it a man—or perhaps a woman—who would act so heroically on your behalf?”

Alette’s dark face flushed and she looked down again at the scraps of food on her plate. “A man,” she said softly. “And I do love him.”

“Then you should never have been sent to Malinqua to try to make a match with one of Filomara’s heirs,” Liramelli said.

Alette glanced at her. “He is not royal. He is not
cocho
—unworthy—but my father would never have let me marry him. My mother told me that if my father knew—”

But just speaking the words “my mother” made her voice choke up and her words trail off. She covered her eyes with her hands and turned her face away. Liramelli jumped up and flew around the table to hug her, though it wasn’t clear Alette welcomed the embrace. Corene just sat there in horror, staring; for a few moments she had almost forgotten the bitter news that had made Alette so grief-stricken she wanted to die. She and Melissande exchanged brief glances full of wretchedness and pity.

Liramelli was patting Alette’s back and making useless promises into her dark hair. “We’ll work something out, you’ll see. We won’t let you go home to be killed. You’ll be all right now.”

Alette pulled away and tried to put herself in order, scrubbing her face with the heels of her hands and tugging her clothing back in place. “I do not wish to be rude after you have all been so kind to me,” she said at last. “But I find I am anxious to be alone.”

Corene and Melissande quickly stood up and the three of them made disjointed, awkward goodbyes. “I’ll leave the lassenberries, if you’d like them,” Melissande offered.

Alette attempted a smile. “That is generous indeed.”

“Oh, I have two more boxes in my room that I will not share with anyone.”

“Then I accept.”

The three of them headed toward the door, but Liramelli turned back to brush her hand along Alette’s shoulder. “Come talk to me anytime. I mean it. I will help you anyway I can.”

“Yes—me, too,” Corene said.

“And I. All of us. We shall be your champions from now on,” Melissande added.

“Thank you,” Alette said. She sounded sincerely grateful and utterly exhausted. “It is very good to know.”

A few more offers of friendship, a few more expressions of gratitude, and the three of them were finally out in the hallway and heading back toward their rooms. The minute they considered themselves out of earshot they began voicing their outrage over Alette’s impossible situation. “We must do something,” each of them said at some point, though it was hard to think of exactly what that might be.

“I’m glad she told us, at any rate,” Liramelli said as they came to a halt outside Melissande’s door. Melissande and Alette both had rooms on the third floor of the white wing, but they were so far apart from each other they were hardly neighbors. “All this time I just thought she was unfriendly. And it turns out she’s horribly sad and in fear for her life. It makes me feel terrible for not trying harder.”

“I am not sure she would have told you much, no matter how nice you were to her, until she became desperate,” Melissande said. “But she
no longer cares if she lives or dies, so she has little left to lose now by speaking the truth.”

“We have to do something,” Liramelli repeated.

“We’ll come up with an idea,” Melissande replied, opening her door. “Corene, do you want to come in and get that hairpin you asked to borrow?”

Corene had asked for no such thing. “Oh, sure. Thanks.”

Liramelli waved and headed toward the stairwell. “I need to change before dinner. I’ll see you both later.”

Corene stepped inside the room, Melissande shut the door, and they stared at each other a moment in silence. “There is still a piece of this puzzle missing,” Melissande said quietly.

Corene nodded. “Garameno told us Alette hadn’t received any news so dreadful she would want to leap from the tower,” she said. “And we know he’s been reading her letters, or
someone
has. So either he didn’t think she would be upset by learning that her mother and sister had been executed—”

“Or she’s getting mail from another source.”

“So she has at least one ally within the palace or without.”

“Not enough, though,” Melissande said. “Not someone with the power to set her free.”

“I’m not sure we have that power, either,” Corene said.

“Perhaps not,” Melissande said. “But we are very clever. We will think of something.”

•   •   •

N
aturally, Corene recounted the whole conversation to Foley before dinner. She had gotten in the habit of telling him everything that transpired during her day; he often had insights that hadn’t occurred to her, and she liked to see things from his perspective. And oddly, sometimes it seemed that things hadn’t actually
happened
until she’d told Foley about them. Even to herself, she didn’t try to explain why that might be.

He listened closely, and when she finished, he said, “It seems Princess Alette would have an even better reason to try to escape from the palace than you would.”

“Yes! But we still haven’t figured out how
I
could do it.”

“I keep wondering about something,” he said. “The day we arrived, Lorian mentioned that the palace is safe from a siege because it has an underground water source. Maybe it’s time to look for that and see if it offers any possibilities.”

“Excellent idea,” she said. “I’ll get Jiramondi or Liramelli to take us to it.”

“Will they wonder why you’re curious?”

She laughed. “I’ll think of a way to work it into conversation.”

He grinned. “I admit, I’d like to see how you do that.”

“Oh, this is the sort of thing I’m very good at. You’ll be surprised how easy it will be.”

TWELVE

A
few days later, on a lazy afternoon when rain had kept them all indoors, Corene threw down her penta cards.

“A dreadful hand. I don’t want to play anymore. Let’s
do
something,” she said, letting petulance edge her voice.

Jiramondi gathered up the cards while Steff, Melissande, and Liramelli regarded her with varying degrees of exasperation. “Naturally, I would be happy to
do
something as well, but we seem confined to the palace,” Melissande observed.

“It’s a big building,” Steff said. “There must be things we haven’t seen.”

“The storerooms on the sixth level,” Liramelli suggested. “They’re full of odd stuff.”

“They’re
creepy
!” Corene exclaimed.

“Oh, then I want to see them,” Steff said.

“Not creepy in a fun way,” Jiramondi told him. “In a dull, depressing way.”

Liramelli was smiling. “Anyway, we should go late some night when it’s dark and we have to carry candles and every little noise is terrifying.”