Palace of Stone (3 page)

“Your Royal Majesty,” said Katar, bowing to the dais. “The people of Mount Eskel, in honor of your noble reign, offer our harvest gift.”

The king glanced into the wagon without leaning forward. “My first gift from my favorite mountain. The crown gives thanks.” He lifted his hand in dismissal, and the wagon drove on.

Peder’s hopeful expression stuck to his face, as if he were afraid any change would show his hurt. Three months he had slaved over that stone. It was the greatest treasure Mount Eskel could offer the king, and yet it was worth no more to him than a moment’s glance.

Miri put her hand on Peder’s shoulder. His muscles were stiff.

No doubt the rest of the provinces would offer impressive gifts and grand displays of wealth. Miri readied herself to feel humiliated once again for being from poor, lowly Mount Eskel.

A white-haired man spoke to the king.

“He’s the delegate from Elsby,” Katar whispered as she rejoined Miri. “Full of mines.”

“In years past,” the delegate was saying, “we have honored you with but a handful of gems. In thanks for your kind attention this year—and for the many tributes you’ve requested from us—Elsby wishes to honor Your Royal Majesty with the
greater
portion of our excavations.”

He pulled the tarp off a wagon and revealed a heap of loose gravel. There was a quiet gasp from the dais.

“What’s happening?” Miri whispered.

Katar’s mouth hung open. “That’s probably the dirt that they dig the gems out of. I don’t understand ….”

Next, the delegate from Hindrick approached the dais with a dozen others, each carrying a sack in his arms.

“Your Majesty, you have been much on our minds, given the tributes you so often request. In the past we’ve sent you bushels of culled grain while always keeping to ourselves a substance our workers sweat and bleed to produce. Even now, great king, twelve wagons heaped with golden dross arrive at your granary.” With a flourish, the delegate and his men upended their bags, and dusty bits drifted onto the king’s boots.

“Dross?” asked Miri.

“After the grain is removed from the wheat stalk, dross is what’s left over,” Katar whispered. “Good for nothing but stuffing itchy mattresses.”

The king was on his feet. He whispered furiously with an impressive-looking man dressed in green with black sashes across his chest. Katar said he was Gummonth, the king’s chief official.

“Have any of you come with an honest gift?” Gummonth asked.

The remaining thirteen delegates were waiting their turn. Miri saw one holding a jug of water; another was in a wagon stacked with cattle bones. Some seemed uneasy while others stared back with defiant smiles.

A delegate with a jar of worms answered the king.

“Of course normally we would present our beloved monarch with our very best silks,” he said. “But the tributes this year—”

“His Majesty has suffered enough of this farce,” said Gummonth.

The king started down the dais steps, royal guards gathering around him.

Katar was shaking her head. “I was so determined we wouldn’t stick out as the ignorant poor folk. And yet we did anyway. The other delegates planned this, and they excluded me.”

Miri did not completely understand what was going on, but she could see the confused alarm on Britta’s face as she and Steffan followed the king.

A man in fine red clothing approached the royal party.

“One last gift, Your Majesty,” said the man. His trousers hit above his ankles and his jacket above his wrists, as if he’d borrowed the clothes from a smaller man.

“Is that one of the delegates?” Miri asked.

Katar shook her head.

“Which province do you represent?” asked Gummonth.

The man said, “The shoeless!” and pulled something out of his jacket.

Miri had never seen a pistol before and did not know until later that the loud
crack
and sizzling light came from the spark of gunpowder shooting a lead ball down its barrel and toward the king’s chest. But the king’s guards knew, and as soon as the man pulled it out, the guards were in motion. One jumped at the king, pulling him down. Others leaped between him and the man in red, while several more shot their long-barreled muskets. A volley of
pops
scratched the air with smoke and lashed Miri’s ears.

When the smoke cleared, several people lay on the ground. All but two stood up again—the guard who had thrown himself into the bullet’s path, and the shooter, downed by the guards’ muskets.

Miri seemed to see it all from far away, and she felt rather than heard herself scream.

Chapter Three

A queen there was in a palace of bread

Sing blue, sing white, stay up all night

She nibbled the walls and gobbled her bed

Sing white, sing blue, sing ballyhoo

The folk begged crumbs from their robust queen

Sing blue, sing white, she ate all night

She shared not a thing until it turned green

So white, so blue, the mold it grew

Miri was not the only one who screamed.

Guards massed around the royal party, pushing them into the palace. The crowd that had gathered for the gift giving was running for the gate. The courtyard felt like a cage.

“Inside!” said Katar.

The Eskelites followed Katar across flagstones toward a palace entrance, skirting wide the two bodies on the ground.

A group of guards blocked the doorway, their expressions a study in menace. Katar explained that she was a delegate and the girls were all ladies of the princess, but the guards held tight to their spears.

Britta came from inside. She looked darker, her hair no longer touched by sunlight. Her cheeks, often mottled, flushed a deeper red.

“Yes, let them pass, please,” Britta said, and at last the guards budged.

Tension filled the palace like smoke from a stopped-up chimney. When Miri had pictured her reunion with her best friend, she’d never imagined gunshots and bodies. Britta signaled Miri, Peder, and the rest of the girls to follow her down a corridor and into a large room. She shut the door and locked it.

Miri could no longer hear the clamor and calls from outside. Peder was beside her, their arms touching. Britta shut her eyes. Gerti, the youngest of the girls, was visibly trembling. Miri guessed that none of them was ready yet to talk about what had just happened.

She cleared her throat. “So, is this where we’ll be staying?”

Gerti took a breath and looked around, seeming relieved to have a distraction.

The room reminded Miri of how they had slept at the princess academy, all the girls in one open chamber. But that chamber had been bare. This one had carpets on the floor, mattresses on wood frames, and curtains hung from the ceiling so each girl could dress and sleep in privacy. The fabrics were colorful, patterned in florals, stripes, and swirls. Miri supposed it was meant to be beautiful, but she found it jarring.

“Yes, this will be home for the next year,” said Britta. “Please try not to worry. I’m sure we’re safe in here. The guards will take care of everything. Is this all of you? We won’t need as many beds then. My room is just across the hall.”

“We will live in the actual palace?” said Liana. Her dark eyes were wide, taking in the scene with pleasure.

“I thought the palace was made of linder,” Gerti said, brushing the cream limestone wall with her fingertips. Her father was head of the village council and built like a bear, but his daughter was more of a bird—thin, fair, and likely to sing.

“Only the king’s wing,” said Britta. “We’re in the south wing. There are strangely strict customs—that only the royal family may live inside linder walls, servants and guards can spend no more than eight hours inside before having to rotate to another section of the palace, that sort of thing.” She shrugged. “Crazy lowlanders.”

Miri laughed, and Britta smiled at her.

“Katar,” said Britta, “I thought you would want to stay with friends from home while they’re here, so I had your things moved from your room in the delegates’ wing.”

Britta smiled, sure she had done right, and did not seem to notice Katar’s hesitation.

Katar had never had friends, though Miri believed any cruelty on her part in the past simply stemmed from unhappiness. Perhaps now that she had left Mount Eskel and the father who had never loved her, she might be ready for friendship.

“You can have my things brought in too,” said Peder, throwing himself on the nearest bed. He groaned as he sank into the soft mattress and rolled onto his side.

“Um … I don’t think boys are—” Britta began.

“Don’t mind me!” Peder pulled a blanket over his head.

Miri did not know how he could even pretend to nap. She could barely keep from pacing.

“Don’t worry, Britta,” said Esa. “We’ll kick him out before night. Off to your fancy apprenticeship, big brother.”

She nudged Peder’s shape under the blanket. Peder made an exaggerated snoring noise.

There was a knock at the door, and Miri startled. A voice called out, and Britta opened it to an official.

“I guess with all that’s happened there are bound to be meetings.” Britta sighed and met eyes with Miri. “I’m sorry this has been such a strange welcome. I
am
happy you’re all here!”

As soon as Britta left, Katar grabbed Miri’s wrist and pulled her to the chamber’s seating area. Miri hesitated at the soft, long benches Katar called “sofas.” Surely something so fine was not meant to be sat on like a common stool. But Katar yanked Miri down beside her.

“Oh!” Miri said, cozying in. “I have a feeling this sofa and I will become good friends.” Katar glared, and Miri pretended she did not notice. “That man shouted something about ‘the shoeless’ before—”

“Before he tried to shoot the king.” Katar explained about bullets and gunpowder, as well as the classes in Danland. “Nobles are the landowners. Commoners pay tribute to the nobles, who own the land they live on. Some commoner merchants and artisans are well off. But the poorest of the commoners—the farmers, laborers, and servants—are called the ‘shoeless.’”

Miri supposed that she and everyone from Mount Eskel were considered shoeless as well. “What does it mean that he tried to kill the king for the shoeless?” asked Miri.

“I guess it means that it’s begun,” Katar said. “It’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Katar glanced across the room, but the other girls were busy claiming their beds and investigating wardrobes full of clothing.

“
Revolution
,” Katar whispered.

Miri had never heard the word before, but it gave her a cold kind of thrill.

“Some commoners came to me after I arrived here in the spring,” said Katar. “Even though I’m a delegate, they thought the daughter of a quarry-worker might be sympathetic to the shoeless. Things have been rough for the shoeless the past few years. The king keeps demanding higher tributes from the nobles. In turn, the nobles take higher tributes from the commoners on their lands. The shoeless must give so much of their crops and income to the nobles, they fear starvation. When people are afraid, Miri, they do crazy things.”

“Like that man in the courtyard.”

Katar leaned closer. “These rebels want me to pledge my loyalty to the commoner cause and be a spy among the delegates.”

“Did you agree to spy for them?” Miri asked.

“No! I said I’d think about it and have avoided them since. If the king’s officials even suspect I spoke with such people, I could lose my place as a delegate. Or something worse—like my head.”

“Don’t talk to them,” said Miri, suddenly afraid. “Avoid them.”

“I do. But they send me messages; they wait for me outside the Delegate House with questioning looks. I don’t think they’re bad people. Just desperate. And probably half starved.” Her voice quieted even more. “You and I both know what it feels like to go to bed hungry.”

Miri nodded. Hunger ran through her childhood like a string through a bead necklace. But surely Katar was exaggerating about the poor of the lowlands. How could anyone go hungry in a land of such abundance?

“What we did last year—what
you
did, Miri—that was revolution. Turning things around. You said just because things had always been one way didn’t mean they couldn’t change. You persuaded the village council to refuse the traders’ terms and fight for fair value. That was pretty brave.”

Miri blinked, too surprised by a compliment from Katar to say anything but “thanks.”

“The gift giving is a tradition as old as Danland, but today the nobles used it to mock royalty. The nobles still pay the king’s tributes—they don’t dare oppose him and his royal guard. But the anger must be spreading if even
nobles
are refusing to honor the king. And one commoner with a pistol tried to overthrow him entirely.” She shuddered and rubbed her arms as if pretending she were simply cold. “Maybe he acted alone, or maybe there are thousands like him, uniting. I wish I knew. Things are pretty good for Mount Eskel right now. If the commoner cause is doomed, joining them against the king is
not
a good idea.”