Palace of Lies (31 page)

“You're not as stupid as—” I almost said,
as Ella told me you were.
But then I caught myself. “I mean, not as stupid as you try to make people think.”

The prince sighed, the melancholy expression of mourning returning to his face for a moment before he hid it again.

“I think the better way to describe it is, I'm not as stupid as I used to be,” he said. “If Ella told you about me, probably whatever she said was true. Then. But now . . .” He shook his head, as if he regretted everything that had turned him into a deeper thinker. “After we left the dungeon, I made Lord Twelling accompany me to the family crypt. You were right—I had the power all along to do that. I was just afraid.
But seeing them just proved that my beloved wife and child are dead. Will I ever know what killed them?
Who
killed them? Will I ever know if God took them from me or if it was murder?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I'm sorry.” I waited a moment, letting the swirl of the dance steps turn me so I was facing only the opposite wall. So no one who was inclined to read lips could do so. “But . . . wouldn't it help at least a little if you could vanquish the ones who are gleeful about Corimunde's death? The ones who are plotting against us all—Lord Throckmorton and Madame Bisset. And maybe Lord Twelling, too?”

The prince spun to the right, then the left.

“Yes,” he finally said. “It would help. But . . . what are you playing at? What are you trying to do?”

Again, I waited until I was facing the opposite way.

“I want the plotters arrested and imprisoned where they can never trouble any of us again,” I said. I thought about how Lord Throckmorton had already escaped once. “Maybe somewhere remote, like in the old war zone, where no one would think to look for them. And with guards we know we can trust.”

I didn't give the prince a chance to answer before I was finished.

“And I want to rescue my sister-princesses if they're still alive,” I continued. “The real princesses, I mean. I want to find Ella and Jed, and make sure they're all right too. I know there
was
somebody in a palace dungeon that you weren't supposed to know about. What if it's them? And . . . I want to save my kingdom. And that means signing the peace treaty with Fridesia.”

The prince seemed to be pondering all of this. Maybe he wasn't stupid, but he was much too deliberate of a thinker for my taste.

Maybe he just wasn't used to doing much of it on his own.

“You have the power to arrest whomever you want,” I reminded him. “Right now. You could take care of Lord Throckmorton and Madame Bisset. We could do everything else in safety.”

The prince frowned, adding to the lines of grief marring his handsome face. He and I turned, so now he faced away from the crowd.

“But I don't know if Lord Twelling is one I should arrest alongside the others,” he said. “You leave one monster free, it doesn't matter how many others you send away. You're still in danger. No . . . We need to keep up our charade a while longer. To flush out any other plotters.”

That actually made sense, as much as I hated having to wait.

Maybe my sister-princesses and I should have adopted a similar strategy back in Suala?
I wondered.
Maybe we should have held off letting the truth out, until we were sure of our own power?

Somehow I didn't think that would have worked either.

Maybe we just needed to go through this whole disaster for everything to work out right?

That could only be true if my sister-princesses had survived the fire.

I realized I was the one frowning now. But the prince was still talking.

“I'll send guards out to look in all the dungeons, and to look elsewhere for Jed and Ella, and to try to get information about your other princesses,” he said. “I'll do all that right now. I should have done that for Jed and Ella anyhow when I got word that their plans changed and they weren't coming back to Charmeil.”

“
That
was what your advisers told you?” I asked. “That's what you believed?”

The prince winced.

“I know—it sounds suspicious, doesn't it?” he asked. “I was just too . . . bereft to do anything. To care about anything.”

Fridesia with its grieving prince and aged, out-of-touch king and queen,
I thought.
And Suala with its jumble of unexpected princesses. Of course we were both prime targets for scoundrels and rogues.

“And about the peace treaty—” I prompted.

The prince spun out, then whirled back to face me.

“Why don't we just sign that tonight at midnight?” he asked. He grimaced. “So I have something big to announce when I
don't
select a new bride?”

Dong . . .

I heard the first chime of midnight. The royal orchestra must have been timing things very closely, because they finished the last notes of the last waltz in exact harmony with the chiming clock.

Dancers bowed to each other, their faces flushed with exertion.

And maybe, in the case of twelve of the girls, they're also flushed with fear of discovery?
I wondered.

All the substitutions had been made. Twelve fake princesses had been replaced with even bigger fakes: palace servants dressed in royal clothing. To my eyes, they didn't look all that different. And, to my surprise, I hadn't seen any missteps or etiquette gaffes out on the dance floor.

Probably palace servants knew every bit as much about acting royal as the royalty and courtiers did.

But could it be that everyone in the ballroom has noticed the
switch and is just too afraid to speak out?
I asked myself.
Or are the plotters just biding their time? Have Madame Bisset and Lord Throckmorton—and maybe Lord Twelling—already planned their retaliation?

I didn't dare glance at any of them to find out.

“Hear ye, hear ye,” the royal herald cried, silencing the crowd of courtiers, royalty, and fake royalty. “The prince has come to a decision.”

Prince Charming stepped forward from his position beside me.

“It has been a pleasure this evening to meet so many lovely princesses representing Suala,” he said. “Had my ancestors but known the extent of female pulchritude in our neighboring land, I am certain they never would have started our long-simmering enmity.”

Oh, that was awkward,
I thought.
The prince doesn't need anyone telling him what to think, but maybe a speechwriter . . . ?

The prince stopped, and for a moment I feared he'd lost track of what he intended to say. But he gritted his teeth, and I saw he was only gathering his strength for what came next.

“It is a delicate moment between our two kingdoms, as we balance between war and peace,” he said. “I do not wish to do anything to disrespect Suala, or disrespect our delicate peace. But I also do not want to disrespect the memory of my beloved, my late wife Corimunde.”

The ballroom was instantly pin-drop silent. I suspected that not a single person was even daring to breathe. Courtiers
froze, as if the slightest movement or rustle of silk would be treasonous.

Then Lord Twelling stepped out from the crowd.

“Your Highness—” he began.

Prince Charming held up his hand.

“Let me finish,” he said.

Lord Twelling stood uncertainly, on the brink of insubordination.

Will he—?
I wondered.
Is he going to—?

Lord Twelling didn't take another step.

“It is much too soon for me to marry again,” the prince continued. “It would be unfair to the memory of Corimunde. And—” He turned toward the cluster of doubly fake princesses. And then he took my hand in his own. “And it would be unfair to whomever I would marry next. For those reasons, I will not choose a bride tonight.”

Whispers broke out in the assembled crowd. Madame Bisset and Lord Throckmorton were too far back for me to see their reactions, but Lord Twelling's face went instantly red with fury. He still didn't step forward but seemed to be mouthing instructions at the prince:
Take it back! Take it back this instant! Say you were only joking! That girl standing right beside you is pretty enough! She—

Lord Twelling froze, midsentence, his gaze on my face. No, not just on my face—burning into my eyes.

So he really didn't notice who I was until now?
I marveled.

It was amazing how much people could be blinded by a simple thing like a dress and a fancy hairstyle.

I nudged the prince, because if we were going to succeed at our plans tonight, we had no time to stall. The prince stayed silent, his lips pressed tightly together, his chin trembling.

He's fighting tears,
I realized.
He doesn't think he can speak without crying.

I squeezed his hand.

“As one of the princesses of Suala,” I began, “I want to be clear: We are honored by the way Prince Charming honors his late wife.”

All right, then,
I thought.
Maybe I could do with a speechwriter myself?

I kept going anyway.

“And we are more concerned about the future well-being of our kingdom than the possibility of matrimony,” I said. That sounded better, didn't it? “To that end, the prince and I have agreed that we shall move up the signing of the peace treaty. To tonight. Perhaps if the prince's adviser would be so good as to—”

I looked straight back at Lord Twelling. I could feel the defiance in my expression, but it couldn't be helped. Maybe it was necessary.

Lord Twelling gave a little jump of surprise, but then he whispered to someone standing beside him. It was evidently another of the prince's underlings, because a moment later servants appeared carrying a heavy wooden table. A parchment, a quill pen, and a bottle of ink lay in the center of the table.

By now, the prince seemed to have recovered his
composure enough to gesture chivalrously at me.

“Ladies first,” he said.

A servant uncapped the bottle of ink. I picked up the quill.

Just sign the treaty,
I told myself.
Get your signature and the prince's signature down on paper, and then all the doubly fake princesses can run away, the prince can get his guards to arrest Lord Throckmorton, Madame Bisset—and maybe Lord Twelling—and then you can . . .

I could what?

I had not exactly allowed for how I myself was going to get away safely. If the prince decided he needed to keep up his charade in order to flush out Lord Twelling, then was I still in danger after the treaty signing?

Not if Tog comes back with Janelia and Herk,
I thought.
And he will. He will if it is humanly possible.

It was odd how much this thought filled me with confidence. I'd told Tog to think about the others' safety. And I was fully aware of how many obstacles lay in Tog's path. But I trusted him to do everything he could for me. And somehow that trust was worth as much as certainty about what was really going to happen.

Because . . . because he's someone who looks at me the way Harper always looked at Cecilia?
I thought.
 And . . . because I wish I could let myself look back at him the same way?

This was not the right time for revelations of the heart. Not when the entire ballroom was staring at me.

I gripped the quill a little harder, and looked out at the
cluster of doubly fake princesses. I thought the sight of them would steady me, would remind me that I had already managed to make sure thirteen girls would get away safely.

But I got a jolt: There weren't just twelve doubly fake princesses standing in that corner of the room. There were also about a dozen other girls, all wearing various servants' costumes.

The impostor princesses that I had been so proud of saving were back. Back in the ballroom—and back in danger.

What is wrong with them?
I wondered.
Didn't they believe me after all? Did even those girls lie to me? Were they setting me up for betrayal all along?

But then I saw Catrice, the blond girl who had seemed to be the leader of the others down in the dungeon, mouth the words,
We thought you might need our help.

There was a reason they hadn't let me save them: Because they thought I might need them to save me.

I glanced at the faces of the other girls behind Catrice. Some of them looked just as eager as Catrice; some, I suspected, had come back because they still kind of wondered if maybe there would be an opportunity to marry a prince. That didn't make them insubordinate or evil. That just meant that, like Prince Charming, they had started thinking for themselves.

But it ruins the one thing I was sure I was going to be able to accomplish tonight,
I thought.

There was still the peace treaty, but now I doubted even
this. To hide my uncertainty, I began to read the parchment in front of me, starting at the top:
Be it known throughout the world that the kingdoms of Fridesia and Suala shall cease their long-standing war once and for all as of ____________________.

I filled in the date and read on. The next section was flowery language describing the glories of both kingdoms, and how decades of enmity should not be allowed to
continue to have a detrimental effect on or inhibit the progress of either kingdom.

I was only skimming now. Then I tripped over a phrase:
This barrier of land between the two kingdoms shall be subdivided into equal thirds and governed by rulers to be known henceforth as King Eldridge, Queen Estrelline, and King Lochlin.

I blinked. Was it possible that my enemies' schemes were even more diabolical than I'd suspected? I backed up and reread the previous paragraph, which was as dense as a thicket and even easier to get lost in. As far as I could tell, it seemed to refer to a huge strip of land, perhaps more than of a third of each of the two kingdoms. And that land was to be set aside to keep the warring kingdoms of Fridesia and Suala safely apart.