Palace of Stone (6 page)

Each day a palace carriage drives me to the Queen’s Castle, where I take my studies. I am glad of the carriage. I dare not edge a single toe onto a busy Aslandian street. Are you surprised that I am such a trembling baby?

There are so many things to learn at the Queen’s Castle my head hurts. And even more things I am supposed to learn, and those scare me some. I feel like a tiny bug, and the world is a hungry bird looking down at me.

I have not seen Peder in five days as he is only free at week’s end. Britta says Gus’s stone-carving workshop is close enough to walk to, but then I would have to enter the streets of Asland. The ones that terrify me to trembling. Are you laughing at me yet? I hope so.

I do not see Britta much. She is very busy preparing to be a princess. I do not see the other girls much as I am in my studies all day. How can anyone be lonely in a city seething with people? If you were here, you would poke me and tell me I am doing a fine impersonation of a grumpy old billy goat.

I miss you. I miss Pa. I wonder if I was wrong to come.
Perhaps when it is time to send this letter, I will feel much, much better. That is hard to imagine. It is easier to imagine that you are here. It is easier to imagine rain is honey and stones are bread.

If you have not guessed yet, this is from your trembling baby of a sister,

Miri

Chapter Six

‘Tis I, my sweet, your rough-and-ready man

Well hid by night to beg your fine white hand

Though king of bandits, draped in chains of gold

I’m poor in love and suffer grief untold

In Asland, most people did not wake at dawn. Even the poor were rich in candles and fuel. They could afford to light a house after sundown and stay up late in the evening, window after window golden and flickering. Miri was in awe of the homemade sunshine of candles and kerosene lamps and hearths fat with wood and flame. Such a luxury to be awake while the sun slept, and then to ignore dawn and sleep while the world lightened.

I’m an Aslandian now
, Miri thought.
I’m richer than morning.

The girls woke slowly, stretching in their beds like cats in a patch of sunlight. It was week’s end, and Miri did not have to rush into a carriage.

Their chaperone, Inga, shuffled in. “Wake up, girls. His Majesty the king invites you to the royal breakfast.”

Katar sat up. “The king? When?”

“Now,” Inga said.

There were several gasps, and then the room was all squealing girls scrambling for dresses and stockings and shoes, rubbing water from pitchers on their faces and underarms, and elbowing for space at the mirror.

Inga hastened them down several corridors to the threshold of the king’s wing, where guards asked the password. Inga gave it and motioned the girls forward, but no one moved. The walls, floor, and even the ceiling were made of polished linder, rich as cream. Miri could
feel
the stone surrounding her, a kind of silent hum, a subtle vibration that lifted the hairs on her arms.

Gummonth, the chief official, approached, telling them to hurry along. But the girls just stared, mesmerized. Never had any of them been completely surrounded by linder, and Miri was tempted to see if quarry-speech worked differently here.

The people of Mount Eskel used quarry-speech to communicate in the quarry, where clay earplugs and deafening mallet blows made it impossible to hear instructions or shouts of warning. Miri had discovered that quarry-speech moved through linder and communicated with memories, not words—the speaker’s memory nudging the same or similar memory in others.

“It’s as if we’re
inside
Mount Eskel,” Esa was saying.

“I miss home,” said Gerti. “I even miss sleeping beside the goats.”

Miri quarry-spoke of the academy tutor running terrified through the village, chased by a particularly saucy nanny goat, an event Miri knew the other girls had witnessed. It was more like singing in her mind than thinking, the way she silently poured the memory into the linder. Usually only a quiver in her vision accompanied quarry-speech, but this time the memory burst into Miri’s mind so full of color and motion that for a moment she seemed to live it again.

The girls inhaled sharply, apparently experiencing the heightened quarry-speech as well, and then they laughed. Gummonth looked around in vain for the cause of the hilarity. That made the girls laugh harder. Only people of Mount Eskel were able to use quarry-speech, though by the end of her year on the mountain, Britta had seemed to recognize faint sensations.

Gummonth looked over them with a dead-eyed expression. “Bumpkins and peasants. I am made to bow to the children of goats.”

The girls frowned, straightening dresses and smoothing hair. Miri had thought Gummonth a handsome, striking man, but now she noticed his sour mouth, his pinched voice. As the girls followed after him, Miri sniffed her braid just to make sure she did not smell goaty.

They entered the royal breakfast room, where King Bjorn and Queen Sabet perched on high-backed chairs before a dining table.

“Your Royal Majesties,” said Gummonth, “the ladies of the princess.”

“Hm?” The king was spooning cream and raisins onto a dish of rye bread. “Yes, all right.”

The queen barely glanced up from her tea. She had dark hair and skin as pale as parchment.

The academy girls sat at a table opposite Britta, Steffan, and other members of the court. Britta waved at Miri and then quickly resumed a ladylike posture.

There seemed to be enough food for a village. Miri devoured a pecan-encrusted fish, and oat porridge with several globs of honey. The king and queen did not look at the girls. They did not look at each other. No one spoke.

Then Miri noticed the mantelpiece over the hearth.

“Oh! Mount Eskel’s gift!” she said. “Peder, the boy who did the carving, will be so happy to hear you had it installed. Thank you, Your Majesty.”

Katar kicked Miri under the table. Should she not have spoken? But it would have seemed rude not to acknowledge the kindness.

Though perhaps not as rude as kicking someone
, Miri thought, rubbing her ankle and glaring at Katar.

The king frowned, his beard bristling around his lips, and he waved a spoon at Gummonth. The official stooped and whispered to Miri, “You are not to address His Royal Majesty. Ever.”

Miri felt the heat of shame burn her face. She watched the king dribble fish broth in his beard and wondered for the first time if Danland actually needed a king.

After breakfast, the academy girls accompanied the king and queen to the chapel for services and then to the palace theater. On a stage, a troupe of actors in extravagantly colored costumes enacted a play about forbidden lovers: a noble girl and a bandit king. Miri knew her mouth hung open, and she did not care. It was the most enchanting thing she had ever seen.

I hate bandits
, she reminded herself.

But she could not help cheering the bandit in the story, with his expressive eyes and lavish words. She squeezed her arms, anxious for the lovers to triumph over evil.

When at last the noble and her reformed bandit wed, Miri had to stifle a happy sob. She spied the royal couple in the first row. The queen stared at some point above the stage. The king snored.

Britta came to find Miri at the end of the play.

“I’m sorry this has been so formal and dull—”

“Dull? That play was … was …” She exhaled grandly, lacking better words.

A tall boy with dark hair and a square chin came up beside Britta, his arms behind his back, his face impassive.

“Speaking of formal and dull …” Miri shook her head. “Now, Steffan, don’t tell me you’re working on your imitation of a stone column again.”

“It’s good to see you, Miri,” he said, his mouth finding a smile. “I hope you’ve been keeping out of mischief. For once.”

“None to be had in Asland,” she said, playing at a haughty tone. “This place is just so boring.”

He knocked her with his shoulder, and she knocked him back.

“Let’s get into mischief together, shall we?” Britta said, hooking arms with Miri and Esa. “I’ve been dying for the week’s end so we could finally—”

“Lady Britta?” An official in a green dress approached. “If your ladies are available, then we should begin fitting you for your trousseau.”

“That is mischief I’m not fit to tackle,” said Steffan, nodding farewell as he departed.

“Trousseau?” Miri whispered.

The official started to walk and clearly expected the girls to follow. “Lady Britta will need a ball gown, a chapel gown, and a marriage gown, as well as receiving gowns …”

In Britta’s chamber, the seamstress unrolled fabrics and went over the styles of sleeves and trains and skirts and bodices. The Mount Eskel girls stared. How could there be fourteen different kinds of skirts?

“Traditionally, the ladies of the princess do the lace-work on the marriage gown,” said the official.

“Um, we’ll be helpful if Britta needs a stocking darned,” said Miri.

“Or a block of stone quarried for her wedding,” added Esa. “But lacework …”

The seamstress clicked her tongue.

“Then we won’t take up any more of your time,” said the official. She ushered the girls out. Miri caught Britta’s forlorn expression just before the door shut.

“What is lacework?” said Frid.

They’d started back to the girls’ chamber when Katar pulled Miri aside.

“Learn anything?”

“Not yet,” said Miri, “but I met someone who might help me.”

“Hurry. If enough commoners are serious about making change, who do you think they’ll come for after the king? The delegates, that’s who. And then the rest of the nobles. If the commoners will succeed, Mount Eskel needs to side with them right away, or we’ll be taken for royalists and tossed onto the fire with the rest.”

“And I’m somehow supposed to find out on my own?” said Miri.

“I told you, I’m a
delegate
,” Katar said, annoyance in her voice answering Miri’s grumpy tone. “And do you really trust the other girls to keep—”

Katar straightened. Gummonth was strolling down the corridor, shoulders back and chin up, sure of his importance. No, Miri decided, he was definitely
not
handsome.

“So many Eskelites,” he said. “It does make one ponder. I don’t think the king has ever received a tribute from your people.”

Miri froze, still as a mouse under a hawk’s shadow. She heard Katar hiss under her breath.

“I must check the books. Surely Mount Eskel has a hefty debt to pay. Delegate Katar,” he said, nodding as he walked past.

“Lord Gummonth,” Katar said, as if his name tasted like moldy cheese. As soon as he was gone, she cursed.

“How much tribute could the king take?” Miri whispered.

Katar slumped against the wall. “As much as he wants. A common tribute is a gold coin per person.”

Miri thought of the two gold coins her family kept wrapped in her mother’s old shawl. At least once each day, she and Marda would unwrap the red shawl and marvel at the coins, beautiful as tiny suns. They’d never had money before this year. Coins meant hope, coins meant safety.

The threat of the tribute made the palace feel like a cage, and her longing to be with Peder sharpened into a keen ache. Miri told Inga she was going for a walk and ran outside.

Her fear of what Gummonth might do displaced her fear of the city. Britta had described the way to Gus’s workshop. Hoping she remembered, and with a deep breath before the plunge, Miri entered the streets of Asland.

When she was not killed instantly, her mind returned to churning over tributes. What if two gold coins were not enough? Would the officials demand a goat as well, or even all five? No more milk and cheese. No more meat during a hard winter. Even with goat milk, some families nearly starved before spring.

“Watch it!” yelled a man, reining in his mount just a handsbreadth from trampling Miri.

Miri bolted to the nearest building and hugged its wall. Her legs wobbled as if afraid the ground beneath her would give way.

She took a shaky breath and continued on, determined to keep focused. There were a few more near misses with carriages, but she was mostly unscathed when she found the entrance to Gus’s workshop, a narrow alley between a grocer’s shop and a potter’s. Down the passage she discovered a small courtyard hedged by other buildings. Cluttered with stone blocks, heaps of rock chippings, an open shed, and a small square house, the workshop was like a slice of home hidden in the middle of the city. Despite the fear that tributes and thoroughfares had rattled in her, she could almost relax.

Gus was a stout man, his forearms thick with muscle and his belly thick with fat. Miri tried very hard not to stare. She had never seen that much fat on a person.