Palace of Lies (3 page)

“Why couldn't we have planned ahead and just said good-bye to everyone at once?” Florencia had argued.

“Because . . . not everyone is leaving at once?” Sophia argued back. “And would you want to make Cecilia feel like she's just an afterthought to Fridesians?”

Sophia evidently planned to keep lobbying for Cecilia's proxy vote right up until the moment Cecilia left. Either that, or she was trying to stir up animosity again toward the Fridesians.

Is there any reason she'd want us to go back to war?
I wondered.
Are there any sword makers or armor makers paying her off, or . . . is there some other reason I'm not even thinking of?

I couldn't be sure. I'd been ruling with the other girls for a full month now, and still the only one I was even close to trusting was Cecilia.

Is there any way I could convince her not to go?
I wondered.

I'd felt melancholy at the good-bye party for Ella and the other Fridesians. Tonight was even worse. Tomorrow I'd be without Ella, Jed, Cecilia,
and
Harper. I might as well be alone.

You were alone for fourteen years
, I told myself.
You can handle it.

That didn't help. Something was gnawing at me tonight, something that went beyond missing Ella or bracing myself to miss Cecilia. Some instinct, some intuition, some . . . fear. I found myself watching the dancers before me with the same kind of anxiety I'd always associated with standing on the palace balcony hoping that the palace mathematicians had calculated correctly, and no archer's arrow really could soar high enough to pierce my heart.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven . . .
It was hard to keep track with all the whirling and spinning and leaping, but I thought I saw twelve tiara-style crowns gleaming out in the midst of the dancing. So all the other princesses were out there. All of them had already paired off.

I should have warned them,
I thought.
Do they all understand that a dance with a princess is never just a dance? Do they know that they need to be on guard for entreaties and double-talk and deviousness even between dance steps? Do they know that their choice of dance
partners is never just a girl's whim, but a decision the rest of the court will be discussing and dissecting and probably disdaining the rest of their lives?

My gaze swept over the dance floor again, giving me a quick glimpse of Lydia's freckled face, beaming; Porfinia's lovely green eyes, glowing with excitement; and Adoriana's exquisitely tiny hand, cupped over her mouth as she laughed and laughed and laughed.

Even if I trusted all my sister-princesses enough to speak to them with complete honesty, how could I destroy all that joy? How could I ruin their innocence, their happiness like, like…

Like Lord Throckmorton ruined yours?
my brain offered.

“Don't tell me you of all people don't know how to dance the galliard!” a voice exclaimed behind me.

I spun around, the broad bell of my skirt twisting a little too vigorously before settling back into place.

“Cecilia!” I cried. “Never mind me—why aren't
you
dancing at your own ball?”

I tried to hide the panic I felt at finding out I'd miscounted the number of princesses dancing.

Hardly a disastrous mistake,
I counseled myself.
Don't look out and count again. Focus on Cecilia. It's all right for the two of you to be seen speaking together.

“What, you want me to
start
the trip to Fridesia with a broken leg?” Cecilia joked. “That's how all that leaping would end for me.”

“It's just the
cinq pas
—five steps—then a cadence, the
leap, and then the posture, the landing,” I said, narrating as the dancers before us swept through each motion. I refrained from adding,
It's easy
.

“Easier said than done, I'm sure,” Cecilia said, almost as if she knew what I had been thinking. But Cecilia also flashed me a grin that wasn't dignified enough to be fake. Or particularly regal. It was too wide, too open, too . . . happy.

I was strangely tempted to blurt out,
Why did you give me your proxy vote?
Do
you consider me a friend? Will you miss me in Fridesia? Whom should I trust while you're gone?

But of course I couldn't say any of that. Fourteen years of palace life had taught me the importance of being circumspect.

Like all the other princesses, Cecilia had also gotten fourteen years of royal training. But it was all at night, in secret—the rest of the time Cecilia had to pretend to be an ordinary peasant girl. I couldn't figure out if Sir Stephen, Cecilia's royal tutor, wasn't a particularly effective teacher, or if Cecilia was just too good at pretending to be a peasant.

If you didn't count servants, I'd never actually met any peasants, so how would I know?

Cecilia started giggling.

“Can you imagine if Sir Stephen
had
tried to teach me court dancing, rather than just showing me pictures?” she asked, gesticulating so wildly that she hit me in the arm. Again—very nonroyal. And yet . . . endearing.

“Perhaps he intended to,” I murmured diplomatically.

“With his arthritic gait?” Cecilia gave a very un-princess-like
snort. “And perhaps with Nanny Gratine helping?” Cecilia's nanny, who had also raised her, was just as ancient as the former knight Sir Stephen. “I would have thought the dance properly went like . . .”

Cecilia began a shuffling imitation of the steps of the galliard. In place of the leap, she lifted her shoulders and grimaced and looked down at her feet as if she couldn't understand why they hadn't flown up from the floor.

Cecilia had just as much of a talent as Lydia did for being comical, and she didn't mind showing it. Two or three people standing nearby began to chuckle. Out on the dance floor, the six couples closest to us began dancing exactly as Cecilia had: just as stiffly, just as humorously. I was sure I'd see this version of the galliard in the court jester's act soon—and probably in ballrooms the rest of my life.

Do you not see how everything we do is watched and imitated? How nothing is private?
I wanted to snarl at Cecilia.
Do you not understand how completely this is the Palace of Mirrors?

But scolding Cecilia would be like kicking a puppy. My only experience with dogs was one time when a maid smuggled a spaniel puppy into the palace, just to let me see. It was one of those rare moments in my childhood when someone tried to be kind. But the maid was caught, and Lord Throckmorton had . . .

Never mind,
I told myself, because it would not do for one of the thirteen princesses of Suala to be seen at a ball with tears welling in her eyes.

I turned slightly, to block Cecilia's view of the dance floor, and to check the nearest mirror to make sure my troubled thoughts left no outward sign or blemish in my expression.

Cecilia jostled me just as she had at the coronation, just as she did so often at council meetings.

“Yes, silly, you still look absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful,” Cecilia teased. “Like always. And, no, you don't have a single hair out of place, and neither your rouge nor your powder nor the balm on your lips has smudged . . . Don't worry. You're still perfect.”

“It is hard to glance anywhere in this palace without seeing a mirror,” I murmured, looking down.

“Perhaps you all should banish mirrors at the next council meeting,” Cecilia suggested. “So that when I come back, I won't have to see that
my
hair is perpetually mussed, and my crown is always crooked . . . and right now it looks like I'm even sweating—no,
perspiring
, I mean—”

“And you still look stunning, no matter what,” Cecilia's friend Harper said, coming up behind her. He handed her a crystal goblet of punch, and I understood that the only reason I'd had those few moments of talking to Cecilia alone was because he'd temporarily left her side to bring her something to drink.

I liked Harper. The way Cecilia told the story of their misguided journey to the palace to rescue me, Harper deserved far more credit than she did for worrying about me from the very start. But somehow, standing alongside the two
of them tonight reminded me of an odd sort of math, where two plus one didn't equal three, but stayed starkly separate: a couple and an outsider.

Cecilia put her free arm around Harper and drew him close, so both of them were leaning toward me.

“Can we tell you a secret?” Cecilia asked in a near-whisper. “We're not going to announce anything as official as a betrothal yet, but… Harper and I are going to get married. Someday. Not too far into the future.”

“If she'll have me,” Harper added, beaming. Clearly he was confident that she would.

“Congratulations!” I said. “Felicitations!”

I tried to smile sincerely. Shouldn't I be happy for them? Not . . . feel lonelier?

I told myself my problem was just that I could hear in my head how Lord Throckmorton would assess the situation:
Harper's just a boy, and a common one at that. How could a princess marry him? He talks like a peasant and he thinks like a peasant and he acts like a peasant, and putting him in courtier's clothing doesn't change that . . .

The truth was, even in his formal waistcoat, Harper still looked like a peasant. He just looked like one who happened to be wearing a courtier's clothing. He had even more freckles than Lydia, and his hair stuck up in a cowlick at the back of his head. And he'd pushed up his sleeves as if he were a common laborer in a cotton workshirt. Didn't he know how easy it was to crush the pile of velvet?

Can't you focus instead on how much they adore each other?
I asked myself.

“It will be wonderful to have a wedding here in Suala,” I said. I decided to tease a bit. “Is
that
why you were so insistent on going to Jed and Ella's wedding? To get ideas?”

“I would have wanted to go, regardless,” Cecilia said. “They're my friends.”

She clapped her hand over her mouth, as if she'd suddenly realized that that could have been viewed as insulting. Ella and Jed were my friends too, and I wasn't going.

“Anyhow, don't tell anyone else our secret. It's just between us.” Cecilia seemed to be hoping I hadn't noticed her gaffe. She angled Harper toward the mirror, as if to let him admire himself. “Doesn't Harper look handsome tonight?”

I nodded, even though it seemed that Cecilia and Harper were now too busy gazing at each other in the mirror to notice. This was not the time to say,
I'll miss you when you're in Fridesia,
or
, Are you sure you have to go? Can't you change your mind?

“Well, everyone should get an eyeful of me now if they want it, because I won't wear anything like this on the road to Fridesia,” Harper said. “Five whole weeks with no monkey suits!”

“You will take your harp with you, though, won't you?” I asked, to head off any debate about his attire once he reached the Fridesian court.

“Of course he will. Ella asked him to play at her wedding,”
Cecilia answered for him. “She loves his new style of music!”

Cecilia and Harper acted as though Harper had been tortured because his mother forced him to take music lessons his entire childhood. But his mother had just been appointed music master for the palace.

Is
she
someone I could trust after Cecilia and Harper leave?
I wondered.

I barely knew the woman.

“Everyone loves Harper's music,” I murmured, for politeness. But my gaze wandered back toward the great crowd of dancers.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven . . .

This time I really was certain that all of the princesses were accounted for: eleven whirling out on the dance floor, only Cecilia and me standing off to the side. The crowns of the eleven dancing princesses glittered more brightly than ever. It struck me that there was something odd about how dramatically all those crowns glowed, as if the ballroom was lit by something more than candlelight reflected by dozens of mirrors.

At the same time, I heard the panicked scream from across the room: “Fire!”

“Let's get you two out
of here, then I'll help put the fire out,” Harper said, grabbing both Cecilia and me by the arm.

I realized he was showing more chivalry than the actual, true royal courtiers I saw abandoning their dance partners and scurrying for the nearest door.

Harper tugged on my arm, but I stood firm, watching the flames. They were reflected so many times in all the mirrors that it was easy to be dazzled by them, and hard to see where they had begun. But all of the draperies along the north wall were ablaze now. The tapestries along the east wall were starting to sizzle and burn too.

Did a dozen candles slip and fall from the sconces on separate walls all at the same time?
I wondered.
In such a way that each one of the candles just happened to land on flammable fabric?

It was a ludicrous thought. It was impossible.

“The fire's been set!” I hissed. “Somebody started those fires. They're still starting them!”

Even as I spoke, the first of the south-wall draperies went up in flame too.

The three of us were standing by the west wall—the only one still untouched by flame.

“Quick—the secret passages!” I cried.

Now I tugged on Cecilia's and Harper's arms—and the two of them resisted.

“You don't hide inside a wall when a fire breaks out!” Cecilia protested. “You go outside! Where it's safe!”

“I don't think it's safe outside right now,” I argued. “I think that's where they want us to go!”