Palace of Stone (16 page)

I honestly believed that we would not have to go hungry anymore.

Britta’s wedding is near, at least. I wish she were safely the princess already and that no one could try to stop it. I want change, but I want Britta to be happy too. Why is that impossible?

I cannot stop the tribute. I cannot do anything. Except maybe be Britta’s friend. And your sister,

Miri

Chapter Fourteen

Loan me your lace of yellow, sister

Lend me your fine kid gloves

Tonight is the bridal ball, sister

Tonight I’ll meet my love

Present me a sash of blue, sister

Gift me a ribbon of white

My love awaits me below, sister

I am a bride tonight

Britta finished Miri’s hair by pinning a white hothouse rose at the back. It was the night of the bridal ball, the first of three ceremonies that would bind Steffan and Britta as husband and wife. By this time tomorrow, they would be wed. The Queen’s Castle was on hiatus for the week, so Miri had been free to help Britta practice the ball dances and her part in the coming formalities, as well as to make her laugh during her final dress fittings.

It was so easy to be with Britta, there were moments Miri forgot why her insides felt like a twisted rope. Then she would remember—the leaflet, the tribute, the revolution. Sisela believed the commoners would rise soon, and Miri was not as happy as she thought she should be. She had decided to put it out of her mind for the wedding and focus on Britta.

“Tradition holds that single young women who attend a bridal ball will marry one of their dance partners,” said Britta. “Steffan says every girl in the city has probably been checking daily for an invitation!”

“Who gets to attend, Britta? Just the noble girls of Asland? Any commoners?”

“I never thought to ask.” Britta rubbed a rose petal against her chin. “You see, this is why you would be a better princess.”

Miri remembered Sisela declaring the same thing. The truth of the leaflet was heavy on Miri’s tongue. She would not spoil Britta’s wedding with her confession, not before she could figure out how to fix everything. She hoped Britta did not realize how many Aslandians opposed her marriage.
Just one more day, and Britta will be Steffan’s wife.

Servants came to ready Britta, but she sent them away.

“I want to do my own hair tonight and put on the dress of my choosing,” she told Miri. “Maybe that’s silly, but I want to look
myself
, not what the palace has made me. Steffan is still distant. Maybe he’s just busy, or else he always acts stiffer in Asland than he would in Lonway. But if he’s the tiniest bit hesitant … well, when I walk into that ball, I want to be sure he knows I’m just me, no flounces or pearls to distract him.”

Britta had asked to borrow the silver-and-pink dress Miri had worn at the academy ball and lowered the hem. In turn she lent Miri one of her new ball gowns, a deeper blue than the open-sky robes, with full skirts over layers of tulle.

“I saw a crocus this color, working its way up between cobblestones,” Miri said, letting her hand slide down the tight middle and over the exploding skirts. “Exactly this color.”

Miri wore a pair of Britta’s heeled shoes so her skirts would not drag too much.

“You look so …” Britta smiled shyly. “I’m going to keep track of everyone who asks you to dance tonight.”

But Peder won’t be there
, Miri thought, and then quickly shrugged the worry away. It was just an old wives’ tale that the bridal ball paired girls with their future husbands. She need not take it seriously.

Britta would enter the ball later, so Miri walked with the girls into the linder grandeur of the king’s wing.

“Why is it, Miri, that you always try to be the fanciest?” Liana asked, looking over her royal gown.

“If I looked like you, I wouldn’t have to try.” Miri said it smiling, but Liana answered the compliment with a glare.

“She thinks you’re trying to outshine her,” Esa whispered. The palace seamstresses had added a pocket to Esa’s gown so she could tuck her limp arm away. In bright pink silk, she looked like a princess herself.

“Liana spent
three hours
putting all those tiny curls into her hair and a week fixing up that gown,” said Gerti, running her fingers through her own wavy hair that never grew past her shoulders.

“And she looks pretty,” said Miri. “She always does. I don’t know why she has to be the
prettiest
.”

They arrived at the ballroom doors and gave their names. Miri had attended a ball at the princess academy and thought she knew what to expect. This time, she was determined not to gawk like a coarse mountain girl.

And then she entered the palace ballroom and gawked as she had not since first arriving in Asland.

She had never seen so large a room. There were countless candles lit and sparkling in massive chandeliers. Hundreds of people resplendent in gowns and suits of silk spoke and laughed, moving fluidly as if aware of their own beauty. An orchestra played sounds so sweet and resonant, Miri felt herself reduced to sand, swept up and flying.

“You look beautiful.”

Miri opened her eyes to find that she was not actually sand blowing about on the music but a mountain girl in a ball gown, and Timon was looking at her.

“I meant, you
are
beautiful,” he said.

She wanted to shake her head but managed to say “thank you,” because a rule of Poise stated that one should always accept a compliment. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“Commoners can attend, for a price. My father is always willing to pay for a chance to rub shoulders with nobility.” Timon smiled, and she realized how tense he looked, afraid even. Of her? “For once my father and I agree on something—you.”

“Me?”

“He approves of my courting you because I told him you are a noble. But
I
know you would throw off your title in a moment if that would help release others from the shackles of poverty.”

She smiled to show he was correct, but it slid off her lips too quickly.

“Do you forgive me?” he asked. “Will you forgive me and dance with me?” He bowed over her hand. His eyes were blue as mountain ice.

She nodded. Though her insides were still as knotty and worried as ever, she could not muster any more anger. He closed his eyes and kissed her hand. Heat ran from that kiss up her arm and into her cheeks till she suspected she looked more apple than girl.

Timon put his other hand on her lower back and guided her into the center of the dance floor.

She had never danced like this, one body in the swirl of many bodies, spinning so fast she seemed part of everything and Timon too. The room spun. The world spun. And Miri was at the center of it.

The orchestra played another song, and Miri and Timon danced on. She worried at the unfamiliar tune, but he led her easily through the steps. She whirled. She skipped. She lifted her head and smiled. In her extravagant gown at an Aslandian ball in the arms of a scholar, she did not feel a bit like the girl from Mount Eskel.

At that moment, she did not miss it. At that moment, she did not care if she ever returned. She skipped. She swayed. She spun.

The music thrummed out of the dance tune and into a march of state. At the head of the room, the king and queen arose from their chairs, Gummonth beside them as he almost always seemed to be. Golden doors opened, and Britta entered alone. She’d plaited her hair in two braids as she had often worn it on Mount Eskel and tied them with ribbon. Her braid loops and ankle-length skirt made her look very young. At the academy ball, Miri had thought the silver-and-pink dress as royal as diamonds, but in the palace, it looked humble, a poor girl’s dream of royalty.

All eyes were on the hopeful princess. Britta clenched her skirts, and Miri wanted to go to her and hold her hand. She made a wish on the flower in her hair that Britta could be happy tonight.

The dancers parted as a procession, led by Steffan, crossed the ballroom. Despite Britta’s fears, Steffan went straight to his intended bride, bowed, and offered his hand. Britta took it. The crowd applauded politely. The music began again, and Britta and Steffan danced.

“And so ends the first act of marriage,” Timon said. “Britta has become Steffan’s partner on the dance floor, a symbol that they intend to be partners for life.”

Miri exhaled, one knot inside her relaxing. “So they’re almost married.”

“Until they complete both the chapel ceremony and the presentation on the Green, nothing is official,” said Timon. “Britta need not be the princess.”

“But she will.”

“Logically, is Britta the best choice?”

“Yes, she is. I’ll write a Rhetoric paper on the subject and get back to you, Master Timon.”

He smiled. “Sorry. I know I sound like an old man. I have a tendency to feel things too strongly, and I’ve worked hard to
think
instead.” He was holding her gloved hand, feeling her fingers beneath it. “I love to think about things with you, Miri. But sometimes when I’m with you, all I can do is
feel
.”

Miri could not find her breath to respond, but she did not need to. They were dancing again, her crocusblue skirts swishing. Timon held her waist so that her feet seemed to barely touch the ground. They leaped and whirled, and Miri imagined wings on her back. Her breath was fast. Timon’s hand was warm.

They danced for hours, it seemed, and Miri did not ever want to stop. But at last Timon offered his elbow to escort her from the floor to the refreshment room, where she drank cucumber-scented water and ate cups of red currant pudding drizzled with browned butter and crunchy sugar. He kept his arm around her waist to hold her close in the crowd, and they whispered about recent protests.

It was not until she saw Peder that Miri recalled what Britta had said about the bridal ball.

Peder was wearing his nicest clothes. Miri knew his mother had scavenged the best bits of cloth she could and carefully stitched each piece of the trousers, shirt, and vest. How grand they had looked on the mountain. Miri’s chest pinched.

“Excuse me,” Miri said to Timon, and hurried away.

Peder was looking around as if unsure how he’d arrived in this place. His gaze stopped on Miri, but he stared at her for several moments before seeming to recognize her underneath all the tulle and silk and roses.

“Peder!” she said. “You came!”

“Britta sent an invitation, but Gus let me go only now.” Lifting a cautious finger, he poked at her skirts. “How do they stick out so big?”

“It’s all padding for show. For some reason, huge hips on a girl are supposed to be pretty.”

“Huh. I don’t think I’ll ever understand lowlanders.” He smoothed out his frown and offered his arm. “I mean, you look pretty.”

“Even though my hips are as wide as a wagon?”

“Even though.”

She took his arm and pulled him toward the music.

“I feel like I haven’t seen you in weeks,” she said.

“I’m sorry. It’s your fault, you know,” he said with his teasing smile.

“Oh really?”

“Absolutely. You think I’m so amazing and talented.”

“I do, do I?”

“Uh-huh, and so I’m forced to prove you right by working like a dog.”

“Because it would be horribly impolite of you to prove me wrong.”

“And if I was ever rude to a girl, you know what my ma would do to me.”

“Hang you by your ankles on the clothesline and whack you like a rug?”

“Or make me sleep on the floor of the goats’ pen.”

“So that’s why you used to smell like a dung heap. And I thought you’d just dabbed on some lowlander cologne.”

He jostled her with his shoulder, a playful nudge, and she caught a whiff of his clothes. He must not have worn them since leaving the mountain because they still carried the smell of Doter’s homemade soap. As if the scent were a quarry-shout in the linder palace, the memory of home became vivid. She imagined they were tending goats on a hilltop, looking out at the eternal chain of mountains. The dazzle of candlelight was just the sun sparkling off Mount Eskel’s snowy head. The music was the sensation of her heart beating.

“That’s funny,” Miri breathed. “All winter I haven’t been able to remember home clearly. Not till just now. Here, smell.”

She lifted the corner of his vest, and he breathed in. His smile was softer but just as real.

“Every day I finish up my chores and stay awake as long as I can to practice carving, and then I fall into my cot, too tired to take off my shoes. But even then, all I want to do, more than sleep even, is talk to you. Talk like we used to when we tended the goats or hiked to the summit.” He shifted, looking at his shoes. “The longer we stay here, the more you seem to belong, and the more I miss home.”