Palace of Lies

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  If I’d been back at the palace—if it still existed—I could have lit a candle and opened a book of poetry. Or whiled away the rest of the night by hunching over needlepoint.

  The thought of needlepoint reminded me of the basket Janelia had started me on. I used up a moment or two groping for it, but I’d only just learned basket-weaving—I couldn’t trust myself to do it in utter darkness.

  Wasn’t there light anywhere?

  My eyes prickled, searching for it. Wait—was there a hint of light over at the bottom edge of the sheet?

  Yes, and if there’s light, it’s outside the sheet, out where the landscape and the sky will terrify you, I told myself. Just go back to sleep.

  I closed my eyes.

  They popped back open.

  A jagged rock dug into my back, and when I squirmed to avoid it, another one just as sharp dug into my side. My wounded feet throbbed. But my muscles screamed for me to just get up, just do something that wasn’t lying still, wasn’t waiting, wasn’t worrying.

  Something that wasn’t imagining my sister-princesses dead. And wasn’t imagining Terrence bringing all my enemies galloping after me.

  I turned over.

  The slight glimpse of light at the bottom of the sheet was more definite now that my right eye lined up with the ground.

  You can keep yourself from screaming long enough to look out for a moment, I told myself. Just to see where that’s coming from. Just to know.

  I got up onto my knees on the stretcher, and shoved the opposite end of the stretcher to the side. I was pretty sure that that would enable me to crawl the length of the stretcher to the edge of the sheet.

  But crawling was awkward, and I wasn’t used to feeling awkward. I was used to gliding across the polished floors of the palace in silken dresses that whispered of grace and refinement. I hadn’t crawled since . . .

  Since the fire, I thought, slipping back into the memory of falling to my knees to avoid the smoke and gracelessly hiking up my ball gown to crawl toward the unconscious Fidelia.

  That memory reminded me to hitch up my rough-woven skirt now, and perhaps that saved me from pitching forward and smashing my face against the jagged rocks. I froze, seeing in my mind how easily that could still happen: One moment of losing my balance and then I’d have a cheek or even an eye bloodied by the rocks surrounding me. . . .

  Don’t be such a coward, I chided myself.

  That propelled me to scoot forward along the stretcher until my outstretched hands brushed the sheet. I inched it back, cautioning myself, Don’t scream, don’t scream . . . Even if you start to panic, don’t do anything to let anyone else know. . . . Just drop the sheet and go back to sleep. . . .

  The first glimpse I got beyond the sheet puzzled me. Were those . . . sparkling jewels studded in some rock wall at a distance far beyond me?

  I pulled the sheet back farther and gaped.

  No, not jewels . . . stars.

  The empty sky that had terrified me at high noon was no longer empty or terrifying. It was a velvet dome studded with stars everywhere I looked—stars so abundant and wondrous and beautiful that it was like seeing thousands of diamonds scattered across the sky and glittering back at me. I craned my neck and peered side to side, horizon to horizon.

  “Desmia?” a voice whispered. “You have need of . . . help? Shall I wake Mam?”

  It was Tog. I blinked, my eyes struggling to make out his location, halfway between me and the two slumbering lumps that had to be Herk and Janelia, out on the flat expanse nearby. Tog was beside the embers of the fire he’d built earlier. That fire must have been the source the glow I’d noticed before, from behind my sheet. In my awe over the stars, I’d forgotten that that was what I’d been searching for.

  I realized Tog was asking an indelicate question.

  “No, I have no need of a . . . chamber pot,” I said, even though we had no chamber pot with us. I had discovered earlier in the day that my only option was squatting over the ground, with Janelia’s help—an embarrassing procedure made even more difficult by my wounded feet.

  I went back to staring at the stars.

  “The sky doesn’t frighten you now?” Tog asked.

  I shook my head.

  “How could it?” I asked. “Not when it’s . . .” There were no words to fit what I wanted to say. I settled for gesturing and murmuring, “. . . like that.”

  Tog laughed, but it was a friendly laugh.

  “Your eyes are as big as globes,” he observed. “Have you never seen stars before?”

  “Of course I’ve seen stars,” I snapped indignantly. Tog looked hurt, and I softened my tone. “But . . . I don’t think they looked like this from the palace.”

  The truth was, I couldn’t remember even one moment at the palace that I’d spent gazing out the window at stars.

  Probably Janelia would tell me that she used to watch the stars with me, when I was little, I thought scornfully.

  But the thought tickled something in my brain—maybe I had watched stars with Janelia, years ago. Maybe I had just forgotten.

  “Probably all the torches around the palace were too distracting,” Tog offered. “I don’t remember stars looking like this from Mam’s basement, either. Maybe you have to be out in the wilderness to see stars properly.”

  “Maybe,” I said. I kept gazing at the stars. “In the chapel, back at the palace . . . there were gilt stars painted on the ceiling, and it was supposed to be a marvel. Whenever we had foreign dignitaries visit, we showed them that, and they were always amazed. But those painted stars were nothing compared with this.”

  I wondered now if the foreign dignitaries had only been pretending to be amazed—yet another show of falsehood in the palace full of lies. For surely, traveling to Suala, they’d seen the night sky in the wilderness for themselves.

  Or maybe they hadn’t, I thought. Maybe they’d gone from carriage to inn to carriage and never looked up.

  That’s how I would have traveled to Fridesia, if I’d had my way. And would I have had even a moment of noticing the stars in the night sky, on that kind of trip?

  I sneaked a shy glance at Tog.

  “Are you staying awake just to admire the stars?” I asked. Perhaps he wasn’t just a beggar boy. Perhaps he had the soul of a poet.

  Tog snorted, then stopped himself.

  “Uh, you may believe that if you wish, princess,” he said.

  “But it’s not true, is it?” I asked, suddenly annoyed just by the word “princess.” Or maybe it was the way he said it.

  I could barely see Tog’s face, because it was shadowed even so close to the fire.

  “No,” Tog said. He turned, and I could see his face more clearly. The dim light made his features stand out more than the dirt covering them. He had a nose as straight as any courtier’s. His eyes were a nice shade of green.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “Mam and Herk and I are taking turns standing watch through the night,” Tog said. “Mam took the first shift. I have until the moon reaches there”—he pointed toward what I thought might be the west—“and then it’s Herk’s turn.”

  I should have been able to figure this out. After a long day of walking and carrying me, of course Tog wouldn’t stay up for something as frivolous as gazing at the stars.

  “You think we’re in danger, even way out here,” I said. “You could have told me.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought I needed to,” Tog said.

  Was he calling me stupid? Was this the kind of insubordinate insult that any royal should quash immediately?

  “But . . . the stars are beautiful,” Tog said, and somehow that made it impossible for me to scold him. It was enough that he appreciated the stars as much as I did.

  He twisted something in his hands, and I realized he was weaving the same kind of basket that Janelia had shown me.

  “You’re almost done with that?” I asked in surprise.

  “Oh, Mam did most of it,” Tog said. “I’m
probably making it less valuable, because I’m not as good at this as she is. But I thought she’d be happy to have at least one basket done.”

  “I could do some of it,” I offered.

  Instantly I worried that I’d offended him yet again, but he walked over and handed it to me. Even in the dim light, I could tell that the last two rows of weaving were pulling the basket lopsided.

  “Keep in mind, I was trying my best,” Tog said apologetically.

  “I think, if you just don’t pull so hard . . . and let out the tension of what you just did . . . then maybe . . . ,” I murmured. I sat down and began tugging on the reeds.

  Tog crouched down beside me.

  “You are making it better!” he announced.

  “But here, can you pull this reed this way for me, while I pull back on it . . . ,” I asked.

  We worked together for a few moments, then Tog suggested, “Put it down flat, and let’s see if it looks better now.”

  It did.

  “Mam will be so happy if we finish this!” Tog cried. “She worries, you know, about food. . . .”

  I shifted uncomfortably. Maybe I could have found a way to tap into the royal treasury for money for the trip. Maybe there would have been a financial adviser I could have trusted.

  Maybe I’d been unfair to Herk and Tog and Janelia expecting them to take me to Fridesia in the first place.

  “Do you want me to finish the basket?” I said.

  “Be my guest,” Tog said, grinning.

  I expected him to go back to the fire and leave me alone. Instead, he slid down to the ground beside me, leaning his back against the rock.

  “Maybe if I watch, I’ll learn how to do it right,” he said.

  I fell into a rhythm with the reeds and the weaving. In no time at all, I reached the end of one of the reeds, and Tog and I agreed that the basket was tall enough.

  I leaned my head back against the rocks and started giggling.

  “If anyone from the palace could see me now,” I said, “they’d . . . they’d . . .”

  I couldn’t finish the thought; it was too absurd. I could imagine Cecilia, for instance, gawking at the sight of me sitting on a bare, dirty rock in the middle of the wilderness, wearing a cheap, rough-woven peasant dress instead of silk or satin, my hair neither brushed nor combed by any servant in days, not since . . .

  Since the night of the fire, I remembered. Since Cecilia and the other princesses and I sat in our chambers together, getting ready for the ball.

  Something twisted in my giggling. If it changed much more, it might be sobbing, rather than laughter.

  Tog began pounding me on the back. Evidently he thought I was choking.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “Should I get my mam?”

  “No, I—”

  “Is the empty sky scaring you again?” Tog asked frantically. “Do you need to go back into your tent?”

  “No,” I said. “No.”

  I looked back at the starry sky above, and somehow this steadied me. It made it possible for me to be silent again. After a moment I felt composed enough to explain.

  “This sky is too beautiful to scare me,” I said.

  “The sky is beautiful in the daytime, too,” Tog said. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Maybe you need to work up to appreciating it. Just glance at it a second or two at a time. Then a little more each day.”

  I squinted at Tog. It had never occurred to me that I could stop being terrified of the daytime sky.

  “Is that what the soldiers you know do?” I asked. “The ones you said I was acting like? Do they force themselves to get used to scary things gradually?”

  “Some of them,” Tog said, tilting his head thoughtfully. “The ones who survive.”

  And the others die? I wanted to ask. I found myself wanting to ask how many soldiers he knew in each category. What was the likelihood of each outcome? What were my chances of being cured of my fear?

  And was death the only other option?

  I didn’t ask any of those questions.

  “It’s probably very strange for you, out here,” Tog said. He brushed his curly hair back from his face. Somehow that just made his hair messier. “You probably miss the palace.”

  Was he being like Madame Bisset and assuming that I would miss the palace more than I missed the other girls? For a moment, something like fury threatened to overcome me. But then I heard Tog add, “. . . and everyone in it. You must miss everyone you love. Being out here is strange for me, too, but at least I still have Herk and Mam with me.”

  But not Terrence, I thought but didn’t say.

  I tilted my head back, gazed up at the stars, and whispered, “I don’t miss the palace. I’m glad it’s gone.”

  Tog jerked his head toward me. His eyes bugged out.

  “What? You wanted it to burn?”

  I looked down at the dark rock beneath me. Why had I admitted that out loud? Now I had to explain.

  “I didn’t want it to burn,” I said. “Because . . .” I had a moment of remembering the screaming, the running, the panicked crowd in the ballroom. And then, just like that, I walled off that memory in my mind. “I’m afraid people got hurt. I don’t believe my sister-princesses died, but . . . I think some people might have.”

  Somehow I needed the cover of darkness to actually admit that. Tog was still staring at me in confusion.

  “But you’re glad—” he began.

  “About losing the palace,” I said. “Yes.”

  Tog’s confused squint only deepened.

  “I was never inside it, of course,” he said. “But Janelia said it was beautiful. I thought you liked beautiful things.”

  I gazed out at the horizon, where the dark, formless land met the glory of the starry sky.

  “The palace . . . ,” I began. “I think everything about the palace was designed to make you feel small. To make anyone who stepped foot in there feel small. All those mirrors were so big . . . it was like they were there to whisper, You’re not good enough. You’re not worthy. I think the idea was that if people came to petition the king—or, in my time there, Lord Throckmorton—the palace made it so that they would feel so low and humble that they’d forget they wanted anything, except to get out of there alive. But I always wondered, did the palace make kings and queens feel small too? My ancestors? Did they have to keep adding on and making the turrets taller and the spires higher because that was the only way they could say back to the world, See, I do deserve this palace! I am the master of it all! Look upon me and tremble!”

  Tog tilted his head, listening intently. And thinking. He seemed to be thinking hard.

  “Mam would say those weren’t your ancestors,” he said. “Not your real ones.”

  “I always believed they were my ancestors,” I said. “And the way everything turned out, they might as well have been.”

  Tog opened his mouth, then shut it.

  “Were you going to tell me that isn’t true?” I asked.

  He looked away. His gaze seemed to be aimed toward the horizon too.

  “Mam’s been fretting about you for the past ten years,” he said. “I mean, she fretted about me and Herk and the other boys, too—she’s such a mother. But, you, the way she talked about you, it was like you were right there with the rest of us, growing up. Only, you were always still a four-year-old.”

  I let out a barking laugh.

  “Lord Throckmorton always treated me like a four-year-old too,” I said. “Like I didn’t have a mind of my own. Like I was a puppet.”

  “A puppet wouldn’t be on her way to Fridesia right now,” Tog said. “Only someone who was truly brave would be going to Fridesia.”

  I had had courtiers tell me that my face was lovely; I’d had music masters tell me that my lute-playing was exquisite; I’d had ladies-in-waiting ooh and aah over the perfection of my needlepoint stitches. Back at the palace, everyone from the lowliest servants up to the most influential advisers and counselors f
elt it their duty to blanket me in compliments all day long. It was like any pathway I stepped down had to be first lined with layers of praise. Perhaps once upon a time I had believed it all. But once I took to listening at palace doors from the secret passageways, I’d quickly learned to trust none of it: the same music master who praised my skill to my face called me tone-deaf when he thought I was out of earshot; the ladies-in-waiting gossiped and nitpicked and carped behind my back; even the courtiers, on their own, complained that my eyes were just a tad too big for their taste and I was probably too prissy for kissing.

  But this—this was a compliment.

  And somehow I was sure that Tog meant it.

  21

  In the morning when Janelia came to wake me, I considered saying, You can take the sheet down and I can eat breakfast out in the open with the rest of you. I’ll travel today sitting up on the stretcher, with nothing covering my face.

  But the world looked different by the light of day. I saw the pile of rocks I might have fallen into the night before, and they really could have destroyed my face. How could I bear seeing the dangers all around me every moment of the day?

  Gradually, I told myself. Tog said the soldiers he knew worked up to facing their fears gradually. So that’s how I’ll do it too.

  Janelia peeled the bandages from my feet and examined the wounds.

  “Oh, everything is healing so well!” she exclaimed. “You’ll be able to walk again long before we get to Fridesia.”

  Then she glanced up, wincing at her own words.

  “I mean—when you’re ready otherwise,” she added.

  “I’ll start going without the sheet over my face for short periods of time today,” I told her. “I’ll be able to go completely without it by the time my feet heal.”

  It was strange: Back at the palace, I had made a habit of keeping my plans to myself. Even after Cecilia and the others arrived, I shared very little. But something about Janelia’s hopeful, expectant expression made me tell her things.

  The other three packed up and moved out before the sun was fully over the horizon. I knew this, because I’d peeked out from the sheet soon after I’d settled onto the stretcher.