Palace of Lies (11 page)

“So the truth is, you
were
an orphan by the time the queen gave you to Lord Throckmorton,” she said.

“Fitting,” I muttered.

Janelia's expression turned beseeching.

“I didn't know what Lord Throckmorton was like,” she said. “Not then. I just saw that I had given you to the one knight who was going to keep his baby in the palace, where I could see you. And that I had guaranteed you would continue to get milk and food. Don't you see that you would have died if I hadn't let the queen give you away? Died, like . . .” Her eyes darted about, as if she couldn't find a single place to let her gaze rest comfortably. “Died like our other brothers and sisters when I couldn't take care of them?”

I winced. I had thought the palace a hard place to grow up, but at least nobody there had talked about death so bluntly. Nobody there had dared to let pain show as nakedly as Janelia was doing right now. Everything bad and ugly at the palace had been muted, prettied up, covered over, hidden.

I had no idea what to do around anyone else's pain. I closed my eyes. Perhaps now would be a good time to pretend to faint?

I was just thinking about the best way to lower my torso back to the dirt floor without actually hitting my head, when a loud
bang
startled me into opening my eyes again.

The door of the basement room had swung open so violently it slammed against the wall. Herk and Tog were scrambling back into the room.

“Mam, Mam!” Herk cried, as Tog shoved the door shut again behind them. “They're saying in the marketplace, they're saying—”

“They're saying all the other princesses are dead!” Tog finished for him.

I braced myself, locking my elbows into place.

You already knew from Madame Bisset that this is the rumor the palace officials are spreading,
I told myself.
That doesn't mean it's true. Remember? Palace officials always lie.

But the boys weren't done.

“And,” Herk said breathlessly. He gulped. “And they're saying Desmia's the one who killed them!”

My arms buckled and my
shoulders slammed against the ground. Was this a real faint? My mind felt so vacant all of a sudden that it seemed possible. But I didn't lose consciousness. I could see a spider crawling across the beams above me, spinning its web.

I couldn't be imagining that,
I told myself.
I couldn't make up a spider with such intricate detail. . . .

A moment later, Janelia's face floated into view, hovering above me.

“Desmia, we know that isn't true,” Janelia said. “We know you wouldn't have done that.”

How do you know?
I wondered.
How is it that you think you know me at all? Just because you say we were sisters fourteen years ago—before you gave me away? When you weren't able to protect me any more than I . . .

I tried to hold it back, but the thought came anyhow . . .
than I could protect my sister-princesses?

Janelia wrapped her arms around my shoulder, pulling me back to a seated position. Or, no—was she just trying to hug me?

Herk pulled on my right arm, wrapping it around his own shoulder to help in raising me. Tog stood off to the side watching curiously.

I had a million questions flooding my mind, but I didn't have the chance to ask any of them before the door to the basement room banged open yet again, and other ragamuffin boys began streaming in.

“Mam, we have news!”

“Mam, I heard—”

“Mam, I have to tell you—”

“Shh! Not until you shut the door!” Janelia called back.

But the door kept banging open again, revealing yet another boy shouting that he had news.

I recoiled, just as I would have if the basement room had been overrun by rats.

“How many sons do you have?” I murmured to Janelia.

It was Herk who answered.

“Oh, none of us are her
sons
,” he answered. “We just started calling her Mam because she's the only one who'd take care of us after the orphanage closed.”

My mind stumbled over his words,
after the orphanage closed.
I didn't want to think about that right now.

“But you all look alike,” I protested. “Are you at least all brothers?”

“We don't look alike!” Herk laughed. “Tog has darker hair than me and Jake has crooked teeth and Arno has a big nose, and . . .”

I lost track of all the other differences Herk pointed out. I could see now that the boys did indeed have a variety of features and hair colors and textures—even Herk and Tog, whom I'd at first seen as different-sized versions of the same boy, actually bore little resemblance to one another, except that they were both dirty and dressed in rags.

And, really, hadn't that been the only thing I'd noticed?

I stopped examining the roomful of boys. Because suddenly they were all examining me.

The door slammed shut a final time. All the boys fell silent. And then one of the smallest ventured, “Is that—”

Janelia beamed so radiantly she practically glowed.

“Yes, this is Desmia,” she announced joyously. “After all these years of having you all watch over her, we have her back.”

“Years of w-watching . . . ,” I stammered.

Janelia turned back to me.

“I didn't quite make it to that part of the story, did I?” she apologized. “For years I've had at least one of the boys posted as a sort of guard near the palace, doing the best they could to watch for you. I tried to get notes to you too, but . . .”

But I never got any of them
, I thought.
Wonder who always intercepted them?

It had to have been Lord Throckmorton.

Janelia had moved on to a more cheerful topic. She went back to addressing all the boys.

“Herk and Tog saw where Desmia was taken after the fire,” she told them. “And then they rescued her!”

Well, I kind of rescued myself, starting out,
I thought with unusual crankiness.
At least the part about getting out of the prison house.

I didn't say anything to the boys but a shy, “Hello.” Several of them dropped to their knees before me, either as a worshipful gesture or as a way to let the boys behind them catch a glimpse too. I was reminded of something out of a fairy tale—maybe that one about the lost princess being greeted by dwarves and woodland creatures?

And how is it that I even know fairy tales?
I wondered.
Who in my childhood would have taken the time to tell me fanciful, purposeless stories like that?

Why did it seem that it might have been Janelia?

“It would be nice to make introductions,” Janelia said. “To let Desmia know how all of you have been helping me—and her—the past several years. But first—you all say you have news?”

“I heard that Marindia is still alive, and she's being taken to Fridesia,” the tallest of all the boys said.

“And Elzbethl is alive and being taken to Fridesia,” a curly-haired boy beside him said.

“And Sophia is being taken to Fridesia,” a crooked-toothed boy—perhaps Jake?—agreed.

“Let's make this go faster,” Janelia said, holding up her hand. “Did all of you hear that the princess you'd been
assigned to is still alive and being taken to Fridesia?”

Heads bobbed up and down, the motion lasting long enough that I had time to count . . .
eight, nine, ten, eleven
 . . .

Were they each nodding about a different princess? Did that mean that all the other princesses were accounted for except Cecilia—and I could assume that Cecilia was safe because she was with Harper and already planning to go to Fridesia?

“And did any of you besides Herk and Tog actually
see
the princess you were assigned to find?” Janelia asked.

Now all the bobbing boy heads changed their motion from up-and-down to side-to-side.

“Did any of you see
any
of the other princesses?” Janelia asked.

This time the heads just kept shaking side to side. More nos.

“So there's no proof any of this is true,” I heard Tog mutter, off to the side. “This could be more palace lies.”

“Palace can't lie when it don't even exist no more,” the tall boy who'd reported on Marindia taunted.

“The people who burned down the palace could still lie,” Tog retorted. “There can still be palace liars without a palace.”

Back at the palace, I had been taught to have the patience to practice minuets and études on the pianoforte for hours on end. I'd been taught to have patience to make small talk through court dinners where each course could last an hour. On my own, I'd learned to have patience to hide for entire days in the secret passageways, spying on meetings of palace
officials where the one detail I wanted to know could be buried in boring discourses about the rising price of flaxseed or the productivity of tin mines.

But I found I had no patience for listening to these two boys argue. Not here. Not now.

I started to rise up by pushing back against Janelia and Herk.

“If the rumors are either that I killed all my sister-princesses—which I know isn't true—or they are all still alive and being taken to Fridesia,” I began, “then I'm going to Fridesia to find them. And rescue them!”

It had been awkward enough sitting in front of all these boys in nothing but a nightgown. But I felt even more ungainly trying to squirm into an upright position when every motion made my legs and feet scream with pain. I managed to raise myself onto my left knee and gingerly began sliding my right foot back into position.

Is it safe to put any weight on the ball of my foot?
I wondered.
The heel? The tips of my toes?

Just touching my foot to the ground brought such stabbing pain that I lost my balance and toppled over backward.

Janelia, Herk, and Tog dived to catch me.

“Desmia, you can't go to Fridesia right now,” Tog told me, clinging to my arm. “You can't even stand up!”

I lifted my chin—evidently the only part of my body I was capable of lifting without pain.

“Then,” I said, “someone will carry me.”

The room exploded in chatter
—how could these boys talk so loudly in such a small room? Were they agreeing or disagreeing? Who could tell?

It didn't matter. I knew I was going to get what I wanted as soon as I saw Janelia's face.

She feels guilty for leaving me in Lord Throckmorton's clutches when I was a defenseless baby,
I told myself.
Whether or not the story she told me is true, she seems to believe it. And she needs to act like she believes it. So I can use that to get her to do anything I want.

I felt guilty thinking that. Back at the palace, everybody manipulated everybody else; it was as natural as breathing. You figured out who had power and who had secrets and who could accomplish what you wanted—and if you didn't have enough power to get what you wanted, you used your knowledge of the secrets your target wouldn't want revealed. Lord Throckmorton had been the cruelest and most extreme manipulator in the entire palace, but manipulation might
as well have been the coin of the realm. I had seen maids manipulate submaids, chefs manipulate sous chefs. I'd always assumed that the lowest of the low—the stable boys who mucked out the palace horse stalls, perhaps, or the scullery girls who peeled potatoes down in the kitchen—simply took their manipulation out of the palace, lording their palace positions over the peasants outside who were never allowed past the palace gates.

But Janelia had been the lowly scullery girl peeling potatoes in the kitchen, and even though she now seemed to run an entire network of ragamuffin boy spies, somehow I couldn't believe that she'd used manipulation to achieve that position.

No, Janelia somehow seemed . . . sincere.

Should I believe her?

You can think about all that later,
I told myself.
After you've rescued your sister-princesses in Fridesia. After there's no reason for anyone to suspect you of murder.

I realized all the boys were arguing about who deserved to go to Fridesia with me. Who was worthy to carry a princess.

“I'm the strongest!” one bragged.

“But I can run the fastest!” countered another.

“But I know the most about traveling in the wilderness!” argued a third.

“You're scared of ants!” a fourth boy sneered at the third.

“Herk and Tog will take me,” I said. “And Janelia.”

I couldn't evaluate the usefulness of the attributes the boys
were arguing about. I didn't even know how to judge whether the boys actually were strong or fast or knowledgeable, or whether they were just making hollow boasts. I was simply looking for another trait: loyalty. Herk and Tog had already rescued me once, at risk to themselves. And if Janelia's story was true, she'd spent the past fourteen years wanting to make amends for her mistake when I was a baby.

Show quiet authority,
I told myself.
Don't go on explaining. That would just leave an opening for someone to argue against you.

I shot a glance at Janelia and saw there was no need to worry. Janelia was nodding.

“If you wish,” Janelia said. She gazed out at the crowd of boys and narrowed her eyes warningly for a moment. “I'll expect that all of you will stay out of trouble while I'm gone. And watch out for one another.” Then her face eased back into a more thoughtful expression. “But I think we should have one other person go with us so we can switch off more with the carrying—Terrence?”

The tall boy who'd bragged about being the strongest made his hands into fists and pumped them up and down.