Palace of Lies (28 page)

“You must have loved her very much,” I said.

“I . . . did,” the prince said, looking jolted. “I still do.”

Had I made a mistake, touching on something so real before we reached the dungeon? Had I made it impossible to ask what he knew about Ella's and Jed's whereabouts?

“The stairs are this way,” Lord Twelling said, smirking. “The prince's grandfather made a renovation of the palace fifty years ago, so perhaps this section is different from Suala's.”

I let him lead the prince and me down a dark hallway, which lacked the frilly bows and ornate sconces that had been so abundant behind us. The prince let out a pained gasp. When I glanced curiously toward him, he mumbled, “This is the end of the area that my wife redecorated. I forgot . . . how bare the entire palace looked before she arrived.”

So all the crazy decor was because of Corimunde?
I wondered.
Good thing I didn't begin by insulting
that.

The prince leaned against the wall for a long moment, as if he had to steel himself to go on.

“It intrigues me that you would choose the dungeon as a place to confide in the prince,” Lord Twelling murmured, once we continued forward again. “It is my experience that princesses would prefer to stay out of dungeons. To pretend, in fact, that a palace can exist without such a place.”

Was that a reference to Princess Corimunde neglecting to bring her decorating skills to the lower levels of the palace?

Or was it a something deeper—maybe even a threat?

“It is my experience,” I countered, “that dungeons are places where hard truths cannot be avoided.”

Take that,
I thought.

We were descending the stairs now: down and down and down. The stairway narrowed so much that we had to go single file, and further conversation wasn't possible. Finally we came out into a room that felt more like a stone cage. A chamber-pot-scented cage, perhaps. The stench was so overwhelming I could barely breathe.

“The air is so bad down here, even torches don't burn well,” Lord Twelling said, indicating a flickering wooden torch in a rusted ring on the wall. It seemed to create more shadows than light. “But this is where you asked to go, and we Fridesians always accommodate our guests. I present you . . . our dungeon.”

He made a mocking gesture, almost a bow. And then he lit a second torch and waved it around the room.

I looked around and—there was no one there. No gravelly-voiced jailer, no mystery prisoner or prisoners that the prince didn't know about. All the doors of the row of prison cells before me stood open, the cells empty.

I had begged for us to come down here for nothing.

“Does the palace perhaps have
some other dungeon space besides this?” I asked desperately.

“You wish to imply that the Fridesian royal family has so many enemies it needs multiple dungeons?” Lord Twelling asked. I could hear the threat in his voice.

“No,” I said faintly. “Of course not.”

How could I have messed up so badly? If this was the right dungeon, had Lord Twelling arranged to move the secret prisoner or prisoners? The prince and I had been with him every step of the way since the ballroom, but perhaps there'd been some secret signal I'd missed. Perhaps he'd rapped his knuckles a certain number of times against the wall at the top of the stairs and I hadn't even noticed. Or perhaps one of his coconspirators had dashed out of the ballroom the very minute I mentioned the dungeon, and hidden all the incriminating evidence.

For all that I'd spent almost my entire life skulking around
the Palace of Mirrors listening to other people manipulate one another, it turned out I was really bad at it myself.

What was I supposed to do now, when I had no bargaining chips left?

You do still actually have the truth on your side,
I reminded myself.

I saw the prince wince as he glanced around the empty dungeon, and that made me think of something else I could try. It was a long shot, but it was all I could think of at the moment.

“Well?” Lord Twelling asked.

I took a deep breath, or as much as I could when the air around me felt so stale and lifeless.

“Suala's royal family had secrets that endangered us,” I said. “They endangered us when we were hiding them, and they endangered us once everything was revealed. They made us vulnerable to the lies of a woman named Madame Bisset—whom I am sure you both know.”

Lord Twelling nodded ever so slightly, as if to encourage me to go on.

The prince only looked blank.

“But the Fridesian royal family has secrets as well,” I continued.

Be diplomatic,
I told myself.
Handle this as delicately as possible.  Watch their reactions.

Lord Twelling's expression didn't change.

The prince furrowed his brows as if he didn't understand.

“Given Suala's history, I am sensitive to the fact that secrets can be ruinous,” I said. “But secrets are my proof that I am who I say I am.
Your
secrets. So I didn't want to reveal them in front of the entire ballroom.”

I tried to peer directly into the prince's eyes, to make the connection:
I am a Sualan princess who was used as a pawn, and you are the Fridesian prince who was used as a pawn. I know it got ugly when Lord Twelling and Madame Bisset wanted to force Ella to marry you. You and me, we've both made mistakes. But we are
royalty
! We of all people should be able to control our own lives, make our own decisions—do what is right! If we can't act on our own, who can?

I was stunned at how quickly the prince responded. He grabbed Lord Twelling by the ruff around his neck and slammed the older man against the nearest slimy stone wall.

“Princess Corimunde yet lives, does she not?” the prince screamed at Lord Twelling. The prince slammed the other man's head against the wall again and again. “This has all been a lie—her illness, her death, the child's death—why else did you refuse to let me see the bodies? Why else did you not let me say good-bye?”

“Prince—” Lord Twelling attempted to choke out. His head lolled side to side, as if he'd lost control of it. No—he was trying to lock eyes with me. “Please, princess, I beg of you—tell him you know nothing of Princess Corimunde!”

I narrowed my eyes, calculating. Was it possible that Princess Corimunde
was
still alive, and
she
was the unknown
prisoner I'd heard the jailer talking to? That seemed wildly unlikely—preposterous, even—but could I spin a convincing tale for the prince? Could I make him trust me long enough to get what I wanted?

I peered at the prince's anguished face. I couldn't do it. I couldn't exploit his grief.

“I'm sorry, Prince Charming,” I said. “I know nothing about your wife's death. I only meant that I know how you came to marry her. I know you were betrothed to her stepsister Ella first, and Ella changed her mind. I know that Ella was imprisoned in the castle dungeon because of that. And I know these things only because—”

I stopped because the prince wasn't listening.

He'd collapsed into a sobbing heap on the stone floor.

“I still had hope,” he wailed. “She made me think there was still hope. . . .”

Lord Twelling stepped over the prince and toward me.

“Ella had a servant girl she was friendly with,” he said. He hung his torch carefully on the wall between us. “It was believed that servant girl must have helped Ella escape. Perhaps you are only that servant girl, grown-up and returned to cause more problems.”

He seemed to be trying out his story, trying to figure out what would stick.

“No!” I protested. “I know about Ella because she came to Suala with Jed Reston. She's my friend. I'm worried about her! She—”

I stopped this time because Lord Twelling had stepped too close to me—indecently close. He glanced back once toward the sobbing prince on the ground. And then he gave me a shove.

I landed hard on the slimy stone floor and slid backward.

“How dare—” I began.

But my words were drowned out by the sound of a door slamming behind me, then a lock clinking together.

Lord Twelling had just trapped me in a dungeon cell.

I sprang up from the
stone floor and rushed for the door.

“You can't do this!” I screamed. “This is an act of war! You'll start the fighting between our countries all over again!”

Lord Twelling regarded me calmly through a barred window in the door.

“I am protecting Suala from a pretender to its throne,” he said. “I should be made a national hero in your land.”

I slammed into the door. It held solid. I wrapped my hands around the bars on the window and shook. Nothing moved.

I decided to ignore Lord Twelling and appeal directly to the prince.

“You know I am the true princess of Suala,” I said. “You know that pretending otherwise doesn't change the truth.”

The prince didn't raise his head from his sobbing.

“A true princess would never travel to a foreign land alone,” Lord Twelling taunted me. “A true princess would
never agree to share her throne with twelve other girls who have only scant claim to the crown. A true princess would have such rivals executed.”

“I—” I began, and stopped. It would not do to mention Tog or Janelia or Herk, because that would only endanger them.

But there's hope, as long as I know they're out there,
I thought.

Except that I had told Tog to think mostly about keeping Janelia and Herk safe.

I decided I couldn't think about the three of them right now. Not unless I wanted to join the prince as a helpless royal sobbing on a dungeon floor.

Lord Twelling leaned close to the bars.

“A true princess would know that truth is worthless,” he hissed. “What matters is what you can get people to believe. Who was ever going to believe you?”

Tog,
I thought.
Janelia, Herk, Ella, Jed, Harper, Cecilia. And all my other sister-princesses. They believed me and trusted me, even when I didn't trust them.

It was possible that half the people I was listing were dead. It was even possible that all of them were.

But I felt buoyed by their names anyway.

“A true princess would have known not to challenge
me
,” Lord Twelling whispered.

He drew back from the door. Too late I realized that I'd missed my opportunity to scratch his face or grab his waistcoat and reach into the pocket for a possible key.

Now Lord Twelling bent over the sobbing prince.

“We're done here,” he said. “I took care of the impostor. Come along.”

He reached down to pull the prince upright.

“Prince Charming—you
know
Lord Twelling lies to you,” I said. “But
you
are the prince. If you want to see your wife one last time, nobody can stop you. If you want to set me free, you can do that, too. If—”

I stopped because Lord Twelling had pulled the prince around the corner to the stairs and out of sight.

A moment later, Lord Twelling poked his head out again from behind the wall.

“One more thing,” he said. “If you decide to search for a chamber pot in that prison cell, or even just a hole in the ground for your, ah, elimination . . . your search will be in vain. We had a bit of a problem with a previous prisoner—perhaps you heard of it?—and so we filled in all possible escape routes from all of the cells. And you have no shovel, anyhow. And, of course, how could a true princess do such filthy work?”

Then he was gone again.

How long will he and the prince still be in earshot?
I wondered.

“You say the truth doesn't matter, but it does,” I called out after them. “In a palace people start believing that it's just one person's word against another's, and the word of whoever has the most power is considered to be true. But outside the palace, people are truly starving or truly prospering. People
are falling in love or having their hearts broken. Things are
real
. People live and people die, and the lies people tell in the palace don't change any of it. But what people
do
in the palace can change things. Prince Charming, I don't know if your wife and child are alive or dead—but don't you deserve to know the truth? Don't I deserve to know the truth about my real sister-princesses? And Ella and Jed?”

No one answered. I listened hard, and could hear nothing but water dripping steadily somewhere overhead.

Trembling, I started to sit down on the floor. Then I remembered Lord Twelling's warnings about the lack of a chamber pot—and what that implied about the condition of the floor. I reversed my motion midsquat, poking my knee against the side seam of my dress.

R-rip!

I stared down at the damage, the broken threads poking out from the skirt that I must have muddied when I hit the floor to begin with.

And Tog says I always look like a princess . . . something else he was wrong about!
I thought.

I'd been wrong to take his advice to appeal directly to the Fridesian royalty. I'd been wrong to think that coming to the dungeon would do any good. Probably I'd been wrong to leave Suala in the first place.

But what else was I supposed to do?

Just then I heard footsteps coming toward me. I sprang back toward the barred door in time to see a cloaked figure
taking the torch from its holder. The light glowed eerily around the cloak. And then the figure turned around just as a trimmer figure stepped up alongside him.

“Are you sufficiently humbled?” the first man asked. “Shall I take this chance to gloat?”