The Decoy Princess (32 page)

“I take it you like them?” he asked, awkwardly patting my back. He gripped my shoulders and set me back upright. I wiped my eyes with the inside of my sleeve, and he turned away, clearly uncomfortable.

“How did you get them?” he asked again. “I told that man to keep them until I sent for them. They were going to soften the blow of, er—”

“Of me not being the princess,” I said, imagining the news would have spoiled my delight with them quite thoroughly, even if his intentions had been good. “I sort of stole me mare, and Jeck stole the gelding, though in actuality I paid for mine—well, I paid for a horse, but the girl ran away with it, so you see I had to take one of the others—”

Kavenlow waved me to silence, and I winced. I thought he would be angry, but his look was of concern. “Captain Jeck stole one?” he asked. “He’s not at the palace? He’s is out here?”

I nodded, suddenly worried. “Garrett sent him to find me. He caught up with me two days out from the capital. That’s when he let it slip about players. He was going to take me back, but I escaped with his horse.” Embarrassed at my double thievery, I dropped my gaze. “I left his pack in Saltwood for him, except for his knives. I kept those. He’s either behind us or ahead, depending on whether he cut across the bay like I did.”

Kavenlow went still, as if looking for strength. “You escaped him, stole everything he had, then left most of it for him to find a day down the road?”

“Yes.” My voice sounded defensive, even to me. “I didn’t need anything he had.”

Kavenlow silently untied Pitch and Tuck and led them to the path, leaving me to wonder if I had done something wrong. “Let’s get back to the others,” he said, his thoughts clearly on something else. “As you say, he might be before us, or behind. Either way, we will want to meet him together.”

I followed with Jeck’s horse, my thoughts uneasy at his continued silence. We were nearly back to the camp when I scraped up enough courage to break into the noisy frogs. “Kavenlow?” I questioned, his dark shadow beside me seeming suddenly foreign. “Did I do something wrong?”

He was silent for so long I was sure I had, but then he shook his head. “I don’t think so. Have you…

told anyone?” he asked, his tone carrying a forced casualness. “About players? Duncan, perhaps?”

“No.” I took a long step to match his pace. “But he accidentally darted himself and now thinks I’m an assassin. I told him I was the princess’s decoy, but he doesn’t believe me.”

His motion hesitated for an instant so brief I might have imagined it. “Ah, how did you explain the venom?” he asked guardedly.

I met his eyes, black in the dusk. “I told him you made me immune to it so I could defend myself from assassins. It only enforced his belief that I was one.”

“And he probably thinks I’m the same,” Kavenlow said around a sigh. “No,” he said, raising a hand as I took a breath to apologize. “It’s my fault. It’s not against the rules for someone to know about the venom, but it’s risky. They might jump to the proper conclusion.” His head drooped. “I’ll try to reinforce the idea that I’ve been training you to be the princess’s armed chaperone. It’ll be all right.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, really meaning it.

Kavenlow smiled thinly. “He hasn’t had much opportunity to tell anyone else. And it’s only been a few days. It shouldn’t be too hard to cloud his thoughts.”

“But he nearly died!” I exclaimed.

“Really? I’ll make it food poisoning so it’s a small shift of his memory.”

I frowned, not liking that I had cooked dinner that night and would be blamed for it. But a thought stopped me cold. “What do you mean by
shift of his memory
! Duncan’s memory?”

We rounded a turn and found camp. Duncan stood up from beside the fire as the sound of the horses reached him. The princess was still crying, but at least she was being quiet about it. “Kavenlow, what did you mean by shift of his memory?” I asked again.

Kavenlow waved a distant greeting to Duncan. “Did Jeck tell you about the venom?” he asked, his eyes bright.

I made a small face. “He implied it came from an animal of some kind.”

He nodded. “It does. But he didn’t say anything else?” I shook my head, and he leaned close and whispered, “It’s rather special, Tess. I said I will shift Duncan’s memory, and that’s exactly what I can do.”

Twenty-three

I pulled my cloak, tighter against the cold. My bedroll was some distance from the fire, and the dampness of the ground had soaked into me. The princess was sleeping sweetly right before the coals, her sundry blankets—which she had haughtily told me she had purchased in Brenton—were strewn in a careless disarray. Kavenlow sat upon the log across the fire from her drinking his tea, keeping watch over us as we tried to sleep through the freezing spring night.

Everyone had agreed a watch was necessary. Duncan and I were slated to stand together later, Thadd and Kavenlow again just before dawn. The princess had protested she could stand guard as well, and I found a perverse satisfaction in that Kavenlow told her to sleep. Only Kavenlow and I were resistant to Jeck’s darts; one of us would remain awake all night.

I pulled my blanket to my chin, accidentally exposing my feet. I still had on my boots—just the thought of which made my lips curl—but it was either that or suffer all the more from the cold. My evening had been a frustrating mix of awkward hesitations and Kavenlow’s put-offs. All my requests that he explain his last words before we rejoined the camp had been brushed away with an infuriating,

“Later.” Depressed, I sat up to tug my blanket down over my feet.

“Can’t sleep, Tess?” Kavenlow said softly, and I met his eyes over the fire. “Come sit.”

Freezing, I rose and, draped in my blankets and cloak, shuffled to where he made room for me on the log. “Is it later now?” I asked dryly.

Kavenlow’s salt-and-pepper beard shifted as he smiled. Pulling a sheaf of wormwood from behind him, he threw it on the fire. A musty smell came up, tickling my nose and memory. My eyes shifted closed, then jerked open. “You didn’t burn it,” I said, snapping full awake.

“Beg your pardon?”

“The gypsy. You didn’t beat her, you didn’t kill her horse, and you didn’t burn her van.”

“No.” He poured a second cup. “Have some tea. It will help keep you awake.”

I almost slopped the dark brew in excitement as he handed it to me. He wasn’t trying to lull me to sleep; he was making sure no one else woke up! “The gypsy is a player, isn’t she?” I asked, not caring to get my jar of honey for fear Kavenlow would make me share it with the princess in the morning.

“She used to be.” Kavenlow watched the princess’s slow breathing. “She willingly handed her sphere of influence to her successor almost a decade ago. Now she wanders, acting as an arbitrator and judge over the rest of us. I don’t like her. Players don’t ever stop playing. They just use more powerful pieces.”

I pushed my frozen toes up almost into the coals. “You took me to see her. Why?”

He sipped his tea, his fingers still showing the ink from my last history lesson, black shadows the firelight flickered against. “I took you as my apprentice long ago, but I never cared to present you to her before. It was nothing. Don’t waste time trying to find significance in it.”

“She tested me,” I said, remembering it now. A shaft of anger colored my words. “She said I was lacking.”

The wrinkles across his brow deepened, and he looked pained. “By her definition, you are lacking: you’d rather work to find a compromise than face a conflict directly, and though you can defend yourself, you can’t bring yourself to kill, even when you think it’s deserved.”

Miserable, I lowered my cup to rest on my knees.
How had he known I hadn’t been able to kill
Garrett
? “I’m no good at this, am I? That’s what she said. That you should start over.”

Much to my astonishment, he put an arm across my shoulders and gave me a sideways hug. “Tess, you lack those abilities because that’s what I wanted my successor to be. I didn’t want a soldier. I wanted an intelligent, sophisticated, beautiful woman who would search for an answer rather than go in with arrows flying and swords flashing. Someone who could enslave with charm instead of chains.”

I smiled weakly, and his arm fell away. “The game is changing,” he said. “The old methods aren’t going to work much longer. When opposing forces fight, there’re no choices. When one side refuses to fight, they have all the options. Your skills give you possibilities your competition will only wonder at.

That bitter old woman doesn’t see that. She never will.”

I failed to see it either, not reassured at all by Kavenlow’s proud smile. Despite what he said, I knew I had no skills. But then I wondered. Kavenlow had said he could shift Duncan’s memory. The gypsy had said the same about me, and Kavenlow had told her it wouldn’t work.

Curious, I pulled my toes from the fire before my boots caught. “The gypsy,” I said, not sure I was remembering everything properly. “She asked me if I could ride a horse? And—if I had dreams? No. If my dreams came true.”

Kavenlow started. “You remember all that? Tie me to a stake at low tide, I warned her you would.”

Smiling past his beard, he threw a second sheaf of wormwood on the fire and fanned the smoke away.

From behind us came a stomp from the horses.

“It’s the venom,” he finally said. “It’s a player’s first weapon, yes, and I imagine players began strictly as assassins. But it was found long ago that if one increased their natural immunity by repeated exposure to the venom as a way to protect against a rival’s dart, they were able to take on the abilities of the animal it came from.”

I stared at him, not understanding. “Abilities?” I prompted. “Like what? What animal?”

He leaned closer, his eyes catching a glint of the fire. “A punta,” he said, deadly serious.

My mouth dropped open. “A punta?” I finally said. “They’re all dead.”

He straightened. “No, they’re not, and the next time I need to replenish my venom, you’re going to help me. It’s about time you start earning the poison I’ve been giving you.”

“They’re just stories,” I protested. “Big magical cats that…” My words trailed off, and my breath caught.
Magic
?

Kavenlow grinned through his beard. “I’ve waited so long to tell you. Every player has cheated death, surviving a killing dose of venom to balance on the edge of oblivion, returning with the magic puntas possess. You were three months old, struck by an assassin’s dart. I think it ironic that a rival player found my successor for me. I’d thank him, if I knew who it was.”

He had to be jesting
. “A punta?” I looked at him quizzically. “I can’t do anything a punta can do.

Neither can you.” I hesitated. “Can you?”

“I’ll show you,” he said. It was just what I was going to demand, and it took me aback. “See Pitch over there?” he asked, pointing with his chin. “Try to get her to come to you.”

Pitch had wandered from the other horses, trying to get at the hay in the wagon’s bed. My eyebrows rose, giving him a pained look. “You mean, here, horsy, horsy, horsy…”

He gave me a severe look, but his eyes were glittering in a repressed amusement. “Don’t be impertinent. Put the thought into her head that you have a handful of grain in your pocket.”

“Like calling wandering sheep…” I said, and he inclined his head as if I had said something wise. He was in a grand mood despite the cold pinching his cheeks red.

I took a deep breath and slowly let it out. I stared at Pitch, thinking thoughts of grain overflowing my pocket. My heart pounded when Pitch swung her head and looked at me. She didn’t move, though. I flushed, and a whisper of vertigo swept me. My knees started to tremble from the cold, and I felt nauseous.

Kavenlow silently eyed me rubbing my knees. Reaching up, he plucked a dart from my topknot.

Before I knew his intent, he stabbed it through my blanket and cloak and into my thigh.

“Ouch!” I cried, shaking the spilled tea from my hand. “Why did you do that?”

“Try again,” he said as he set the dart on the log between us.

My leg throbbed—from the needle, not the venom—and I rubbed it. Irate, I nevertheless imagined a juicy apple. My dizziness eased, and I stared at Pitch, feeling like an idiot. “Nothing is happening, except my leg hurts,” I said sourly. In fact, Pitch seemed utterly sleepy, her tail going still and her head drooping as the wormwood smoke swirled about her hooves.

Something shoved me from behind. Cup dropping, I spun on my seat to find Jeck’s horse.

Frightened, I raised my hands to touch him as he dropped his head and snuffed at me with his prickle-velvet nose. “Kavenlow?” I quavered, frightened.

He chuckled, pushing the horse’s head out from between us. “That wasn’t quite what I had envisioned, but you did it.”

“I did it?” I said, not really believing. Jeck’s horse stomped impatiently, waiting for the nonexistent apple. I rubbed his ears in apology, thinking I’d have to get him an apple as soon as we got back to the capital. Much to my amazement, he blew heavily and turned away.
Chu
, I thought. I not only enticed him to me but told him to go away, as well! “Is that why I’ve been so dizzy?” I said, pulse hammering.

“Saint’s bells, I almost passed out the night I got over the palace wall when I told Banner to stay. Was that magic? I thought he was just obedient.”

Eyes catching the amber light, Kavenlow picked up my cup. “He is, but a portion of that is because he’s used to taking venom-induced direction from me. Animals become sensitive to it and respond better.

And your abilities gain strength as you build up your resistance to the poison. You can also find a temporary boost by taking some, such as I did here, though that’s a good way to end up unconscious on the floor and vulnerable. You might get dizzy when you try to do more than your skills have risen to, or your muscles might spasm—just as if you had an overdose of venom. Your knees were shaking before I darted you, yes?”

“Oh!” Excited, I turned to snatch a glance at Jeck’s horse. “Is that why my hands hum?”

His eyes widened. “Your hands…” He grabbed one, alternating his attention between my eyes and my palm, looking small in his. “Oh, Tess,” he said softly, frightening me. “I had no idea. They really…