A Princess of Landover (37 page)

W
hen Mistaya came awake again, she was lying on a straw pallet in a dark, windowless room with only a single candle sitting on the floor beside her for light. She had a splitting headache, but otherwise she felt all right. She lay without moving for long moments while her eyes adjusted, trying to remember exactly what had happened to her. When she did remember, she wished she hadn’t.

A figure moved out of the darkness, coming over from another part of the room to sit on the bed beside her. She flinched involuntarily and hunched her shoulders, frightened that it was His Eminence or Rufus Pinch. But when she saw Thom’s worried face, she exhaled sharply in relief.

“Are you all right?” he asked her, leaning close, his voice a whisper.

She nodded. “Are we alone?”

He nodded back. “But they might be listening.”

“They brought you here, too?”

“Actually, they brought me here first, then you.”

She tried to lift one arm to rub her pounding head, but her hands were surprisingly heavy. When she glanced down to find out why, she saw that they were encased in what looked like clouds of swirling mist that completely hid them from view.

“What’s happened to me?” she gasped, shaking them wildly, struggling to free them. “Who did this?”

“His Eminence.” Thom put his hands on her arms to quiet her. “No, don’t. Not yet. Stay still. Your hands are bound with magic so that you can’t work spells. If you try to free them, you will only hurt yourself.”

She stopped thrashing and stared at him. “He knows everything, doesn’t he? He knows who I am. I heard him call me by name before I passed out. What did he use on me?”

Thom shook his head. “A spell. He had me frozen in place with another one so that I couldn’t do anything to help. He’s a much more accomplished wizard than we gave him credit for. And, yes, he knows who you are.”

She gave a long sigh and lay back. “So now you know, too.”

He smiled. “Oh, I knew who you were all along. Right from the moment I saw you standing in the doorway.” He laughed softly when he saw the look on her face. “I told you I saw you when I was at court all those years ago, when you were just a child. You looked different then, but you had the same eyes. No one could ever mistake those eyes.”

To her horror, she found herself blushing. Her face turned hot, and it was only the darkness that hid her reaction. “You must have gotten closer to me than I would have thought possible for a servant.”

He shrugged. “Other things gave you away, as well. Your hands are too soft for a village girl’s. Also, you are too well spoken, and you’ve had training in how to carry yourself.”

“You seem awfully well informed about Princesses.”

“Not really. I just pay attention to things.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew?”

He seemed to consider. “I’m not sure. Once I had you here, I didn’t want you to leave. I wasn’t making that up, you know. I was afraid that if I told you I knew you were Mistaya Holiday, it would change the nature of our relationship and you might decide you had to go. It just seemed easier to go on pretending I believed you to be
who you said you were.” He paused. “I actually do have a sister named Ellice, but she’s much older than you.”

She grimaced. “I don’t know whether to be angry with you or not. I guess I’m not. It just feels funny, knowing I was pretending with you for nothing.”

“We were both pretending. It was a game. But there wasn’t any harm done. Except now that it’s out in the open that you’re a Princess, I’m afraid you might not want to have anything more to do with me.”

She laughed despite herself. “It doesn’t much matter what I want at this point, does it? I’m a prisoner of His Eminence, and so are you. We can’t pretend much of anything now. What do you think he plans to do with us?”

Thom shook his head. “I don’t know. He didn’t say. He brought me here and left me, and a little later he brought you here, too.”

“If he knows who I am, and he’s keeping me prisoner anyway, then we are in a lot of trouble. He can’t be planning anything good for either of us if he’s willing to risk all that.”

“No, I don’t suppose so.”

“This is all my fault,” she declared, sitting up next to him, resting her mist-encased hands in her lap. She was already trying to think of a spell that would free her from the bindings, running through the lessons she had studied under Questor’s tutelage. “If I’d stayed in my room instead of going back into the Stacks, none of this would have happened. I was so stupid it makes me want to scream.”

“So that’s where you were. I came looking for you earlier, but you weren’t in your room.”

“I didn’t want to tell you,” she admitted, giving him a rueful smile. “I’m sorry about that. I wish that I had.”

“It isn’t too late for you to do so now, is it?” he asked.

She smiled and proceeded to tell him everything she had been keeping from him. She even told him about Edgewood Dirk, despite her promise to the cat. It was necessary, she reasoned, given her present situation.

She had kept so much from him, she told Thom, because she was worried about involving him further.

“Also, I was worried about the same things you were,” she added. “I thought it would change how you felt about me, and I didn’t want you not to be my friend.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Funny that we were both so worried when there was no reason for it.”

“Funny peculiar,” she agreed, just managing to meet his gaze. Then she looked quickly away. “Anyway, I messed up.”

He looked away. “Maybe I was the one who messed up. Your getting caught might not have been your fault. It might have been mine. If I hadn’t come to your room looking for you and then gone prowling around out in the Stacks, His Eminence might not have caught me and found out about you.”

“Well, it doesn’t much matter now. It’s over and done with, and we can both take some share of the blame.” She swung her legs around to rest her feet on the floor. “Where are we, anyway?”

“One of the storerooms, down by the kitchen. There’s no way out; I’ve already searched. Even if there were somebody who might try to help us, the walls are two feet thick. We can yell all we want, but no one will hear.” He paused. “Any chance the Prism Cat might help us?”

She shrugged. “There’s always a chance. But Dirk thinks mostly of himself. I don’t think his attention span is all that long, either. If he knows we’re here and feels so inclined, he might choose to help us. But he might just as easily not.”

“Some friend.”

“I wouldn’t call Edgewood Dirk a friend. More on the order of a particularly nettlesome aunt or a nagging teacher.” She was thinking now of Harriet Appleton. But that wasn’t fair, she knew. She tossed the comparison aside. “Dirk is unpredictable,” she finished.

He shifted himself on the pallet so that he was sitting closer. “You told me how you happened to come to Libiris, but not why. You said you were escaping from your grandfather and hiding from your family so you wouldn’t have to come here. But why was your family making you come here in the first place?”

She told him. She started all the way back with her time at Carrington and her troubles with the school administration, culminating in her suspension and disgraced return to Landover. She related the events surrounding her flight from Sterling Silver, although it was unexpectedly hard to explain why she hadn’t wanted to come to Libiris but had ended up coming anyway and then staying. He listened without comment to all of it, and not once did she see even the flicker of a grimace or a look of disbelief cross his face.

“I guess I still don’t understand what happened,” she finished. “I mean, I still don’t know exactly how I ended up here.”

“Well, I think you just wanted it to be your idea,” he said, giving a shrug to emphasize that it wasn’t all that complicated for him. “I think you wanted to come here on your own terms, and that’s what you did. I also think you did the right thing.”

“You do?”

“Yes. Both for you and for Libiris. Maybe for your father and the Kingdom, too. After all, you’ve stopped the book theft and done something to heal the library so that the demons no longer have a way to escape Abaddon.”

“But His Eminence will already have found out what I’ve done! He’ll put everything back the way it was!” She felt suddenly disheartened. “A week ago, it wouldn’t have mattered. I didn’t even want to be here. Libiris was just an ugly building. But now I know the truth about her. She’s so much more—and she’s in such pain, Thom! I wanted to help her get better, and I thought that by tricking the Throg Monkeys into returning her books I had. But it will all have been for nothing.”

Thom shook his head quickly. “Don’t be too sure of that. He didn’t say much of anything when he caught up with me. He doesn’t necessarily know what you’ve done.”

“Maybe. But he’ll figure it out quickly enough, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know. Just don’t give anything away. He’ll try to get you to do that. Make him find it out for himself.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t do anything to help him.”

“Tell him he has to let you go. You are a Princess of Landover, and
if your father finds out what’s happened, His Eminence won’t be able to run fast enough or far enough. That ought to make him sit up and take notice.” He paused. “Wait a minute! I’ve got a better idea. Tell him your father already knows you’re here!”

“Of course!” she exclaimed, remembering suddenly. “Questor told him! And Father’s on his way here to bring me home!”

“That’s right! He might even get here before sunset today!”

Mistaya looped her bound arms over his head and shoulders and hugged him as hard as she could. “Yes, yes, he might!”

Thom hugged her back instantly, and then as if realizing what they had done, they released each other at the same moment and looked in different directions, eyes lowered.

“Well, that deserved a hug,” she declared finally, looking him in the eye again.

“I thought so,” he agreed, and gave her one of his quirky grins.

T
hey sat together in the small glow of the candle until the tiny flame went out, leaving them in darkness save for a faint wash of sunlight creeping with a thief’s hesitancy under their locked door from the hallway beyond. Time passed with agonizing slowness, and no one came. Mistaya was hungry and tired, but there was no food to eat and sleep was impossible. Instead, she talked with Thom about ways they might escape and things they might do to make His Eminence sorry for what he had done. The conversation helped keep her growing fears at bay—fears that seemed increasingly well founded. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that His Eminence was not going to be intimidated by anything she said. If he was willing to lock them up in the first place, he couldn’t be all that worried about what her father might do.

She spent a goodly amount of time during the silences between exchanges thinking about how she could summon spells that would help them. The problem was that virtually everything she knew how to do required a combination of voice and hands. You had to speak the words and make the signs if the spells were to work. It was a
safeguard against accidental summoning and unfortunate consequences. If all that was needed to conjure a spell was a word or two, you might act inadvertently. But if you also needed to gesture, it was less likely that you would make a mistake. Questor had taught her this, explaining that using magic always required measured consideration beforehand.

She wished suddenly that she hadn’t left all her possessions tucked away in her sleeping chamber. She might find something useful in Questor’s book of magic if she could get her hands on it. There were all kinds of spells, incantations, and conjuring in there—maybe even something that didn’t require the use of her hands.

Nor, she realized with a shock, did she have the rainbow crush on her. That, too, was back in her sleeping chamber. She had been so sure she wouldn’t need it, so sure of herself.

Well, maybe Edgewood Dirk would come to rescue her.

Sure, and maybe cows would fly.

She had no idea how long she had sat in the darkness with Thom when she finally heard footsteps outside the storeroom door and the sharp snick of the lock releasing. She sat up straight at once, readying herself for whatever was to come. Beside her, Thom whispered, “Remember. Don’t tell him anything. Don’t let him trick you.”

The door opened and a flood of light spilled through, momentarily blinding her. His Eminence appeared, tall and vaguely spectral, his strange head canted over to one side, as if it were too heavy for his neck. Rufus Pinch followed close on his heels, sour-faced and pale from his illness, apparently determined not to miss out on whatever punishment was to be dispensed to the prisoners.

“Good day, Princess,” His Eminence greeted, beaming down at her. “Good morning, Thom,” he added, nodding to the boy.

“You had better let us go, and right now,” Mistaya snapped, glaring at him as she came to her feet and stood facing him, ignoring the weight of the restraints on her hands.

“Had I?” asked the other, an astonished look crossing his face. “Oh, dear. What will happen if I don’t?”