Palace of Lies

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “What’s started up again?” I asked in bewilderment. “You mean the war? No, the ceasefire is still in effect. I think. We just—”

  Could it be—did the woman think we were refugees? I remembered that that had happened to Ella when she first arrived at the refugee camp. But Ella had said she looked awful then. I looked down at myself, at my sunburned skin, my ragged dress, my holey shoes with the bandages sticking out.

  Maybe I looked worse than Ella ever had.

  I shook my head, and tried to think how to explain. This must be Mrs. Smeal, a camp worker Ella had told me about. Ella had said Mrs. Smeal could be really nice if you stayed on her good side.

  “We just had a long trip,” I said, trying to smile in a respectable, not desperate way. It was hard to do through the sunburn. I also reminded myself to keep my tongue flat and sound more like a Fridesian than a Sualan. “We were so eager to see Ella and Jed we, um, didn’t stop to wash up or change out of our, um, traveling clothes.”

  Mrs. Smeal frowned disapprovingly.

  “Well, Ella and Jed aren’t here,” she said. “And they might have warned me that they were going to invite company to drop by! I’m not happy with those two right now. Not even giving me the pleasure of attending their wedding!”

  She sniffed.

  Janelia had never even met Ella and Jed, but I wasn’t surprised that she stepped forward to try to smooth over Mrs. Smeal’s anger.

  “Oh, I’m sure they wanted to invite you,” Janelia said. “They probably thought of it as a kindness, not asking you to travel all the way from here to the capital just for the ceremony.”

  Mrs. Smeal sniffed again.

  “You think I wasn’t invited?” she asked. “That’s not the reason. Of course they invited me. But then—” She leaned in as if she was about to impart some shocking gossip, and she wanted to see our reactions close up. Her eyes glittered. “They went and canceled the wedding! They’re not getting married after all!”

  27

  I jerked back from Mrs. Smeal as if the woman had punched me. It certainly felt like someone had knocked the air out of my lungs. Or like the earth had suddenly tilted wrong on its axis.

  “Ella and Jed love each other!” I protested. If I couldn’t count on that, what could I count on?

  “Well, now, that’s what I thought too,” Mrs. Smeal said. She patted my arm, almost as if she were viewing me once again as some devastated refugee. Or a comrade in sorrow. Maybe the glitter in Mrs. Smeal’s eyes was unshed tears, not gossipy glee. “You just never know sometimes. Those two are both so headstrong—when they get something into their minds, they’re like dogs holding on to bones. Two stubborn people like that really shouldn’t marry each other, I guess. Nobody ever gives in.”

  Jed and Ella are the type who never give in, I thought. Or give up.

  I remembered the hours of peace negotiations with Jed, the way Ella had stuck by my side when I whispered to her about secret princesses locked in the dungeon. I remembered the way Jed and Ella looked into each other’s eyes.

  And that’s why they wouldn’t call off their wedding. Unless . . .

  Unless something else was going on.

  I had prickles at the back of my neck, as if my skin understood better than I did that the news I’d just heard was tragic.

  I looked helplessly toward Janelia and Herk and Tog.

  “But . . . Ella and Jed are still in Fridesia, right?” Janelia asked. “Back at the capital?”

  “So far as I know,” Mrs. Smeal said. “They left here a week ago and all the plans were set. Everything seemed fine. Then new supplies arrived yesterday, and the wagon driver brought me this.”

  Mrs. Smeal picked an embossed card from the desk in front of her and held it out to us. The script was as fancy as anything from back at the palace:

  We regret to inform you that the intended nuptials between Jedediah Reston and Ella Brown shall not take place as previously planned. Pray do not inquire further as to details, as this is a painful time for us both. And we pray that you will not be insulted if we do not contact you again for many a month, as we require a period of silence and introspection as we recover.

  It didn’t sound like Ella or Jed. The handwriting didn’t look like Ella’s or Jed’s either, but perhaps it had been copied out by a scribe.

  “As long as I’ve worked with them, and I don’t even get the courtesy of an explanation?” Mrs. Smeal complained. “Just a ‘leave us alone, please, so we can suffer in silence’?”

  I handed the card back to her.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I suppose we should just be on our way, then. We’ve got a long walk ahead of us, all the way to the capital.”

  Somehow my legs and feet had gone back to aching even worse than before. I remembered Ella describing her walk from the Fridesian capital to the refugee camp, and it had taken her weeks. We probably had more time ahead of us on the road than we’d already spent walking from the Sualan capital.

  “Could we at least have something to eat first?” Herk said plaintively behind me. I turned and saw that he had his face pressed against the window. He was staring out at the hundreds of bean pods hanging from the plants outside.

  “We could work for you, in payment,” Tog added quickly.

  Mrs. Smeal frowned.

  “You think I would have sent you off hungry?” she asked incredulously. “And—so filthy? What kind of an establishment do you think we’re running? The four of you are going to wash up, and then you’re going to have a big meal while I have some of our girls who are training to be laundresses tend to your clothes. . . .”

  She touched the sleeve of my dress and pulled her hand back as if it pained her.

  “Er, no,” Mrs. Smeal decided. “I’m not sure those clothes would hold up to being pounded against the rocks in the river. It may be the dirt actually holding them together. So we’ll give you new clothes instead.”

  “We couldn’t possibly accept all that,” Janelia said. She had her fists clenched, as if it was a struggle to say the polite thing. “We have nothing to pay you with.”

  She, too, looked longingly toward the garden outside.

  “Enh, with the war stopped, it’s been a little slow around here,” Mrs. Smeal said. “A lot of our refugees moved back to their homes as soon as they could. And the supplies we got yesterday were more than we needed. Some of the food is just going to rot if nobody eats it.”

  “That would be awful!” Herk said, and even Mrs. Smeal laughed at the way he said it.

  “Right, right, just what I thought.” Mrs. Smeal nodded as if she and Herk were sharing a secret. “We might even have to send some of it along with you when you get back on the road.”

  Mrs. Smeal was good. I’d had fourteen years of experience sifting lies from truth, and even I couldn’t tell if Mrs. Smeal really did have a lot of extra food or if she was making that up to get us to accept it.

  Or was I just out of practice with my lie detection after two weeks away from Suala’s palace?

  Mrs. Smeal put her arm around Herk’s shoulders, as if she planned to lead him off to some elaborate feast. Then she froze.

  “Oh, I should have thought . . . ,” she began.

  She raised her face toward the same window Herk had peered through, and she must have seen something, because she instantly went dashing for the door.

  “Hold on! I’ll be right back!” she called over her shoulder as she shoved her way out.

  We all looked at one another and shrugged. None of us understood what was going on. But Herk went over and held the door open behind Mrs. Smeal.

  Now I could see a man hitching a pair of horses to a wagon.

  “—promise it won’t delay you more than another hour,” Mrs. Smeal was saying to the man.

  The man lifted his hands in resignation.

  “No skin off my nose,” he said. “And I know you’ll keep nagging me until I say yes, anyway, so I might as well start with that.”

  Mrs. Smeal hugge
d him, and then came racing back toward me and the others.

  “You don’t have to walk all the way to the capital, after all!” she announced joyfully.

  “Yes, we do,” I countered, sounding just as stubborn as Ella and Jed. “If that’s where Ella and Jed are, then . . .”

  How could I explain without giving away that we were from Suala?

  “I’m not trying to stop you from going to the capital,” Mrs. Smeal said, her eyes dancing. “It’s the walking part you don’t have to do. Because the wagon driver who brought our supplies yesterday is going back that way, anyhow. You can ride in style and be there the day after tomorrow!”

  28

  Riding “in style,” was a bit of an exaggeration, considering that we were sitting in the open air in the back of a rough wooden wagon. Budley, the wagon driver, had the odd habit of chewing on dried leaves—maybe it was a Fridesian custom? But every time he’d had enough of a particular dried leaf, he spat it out in a huge glob. During my first moments in the wagon, I’d learned that ducking was a good idea whenever I heard Budley start to clear his throat.

  But the others and I were all freshly scrubbed—Herk’s face was actually pink under all that dirt he’d been carrying around. And we were wearing fresh new clothes that Mrs. Smeal had insisted would have just gone to waste otherwise. Two weeks ago I would have sneered at my new pink cotton dress as too simple and peasant-like. Definitely beneath me. But it didn’t smell like sweat, and it didn’t have smears of dirt and ash on it, and it was soft against my skin. . . . Right now it felt like the most luxurious item I’d ever worn.

  And we had sandwiches stuffed with thick slices of roast chicken and a pot full of cooked beans and a whole sack full of raspberry tarts and enough bread and cheese and potatoes and grapes to last us not just to the Fridesian capital, but for two or three days afterward.

  “Heaven,” Janelia murmured beside me. “We have died and gone to heaven.”

  “No, we haven’t,” Herk corrected. “I’m too clean. In my heaven, there’s going to be a lot more dirt.”

  “But all the girls in the Fridesian capital will fall in love with you, looking so clean,” Tog said.

  I met his eyes and looked away. I’d spent practically every moment of the past two weeks in his company—and he’d seen me screaming and sweating and limping and covered with nearly as much dirt as Herk. But ever since we’d climbed into the wagon together, I felt strange just sitting near him. Cleaned up, he didn’t look like a beggar boy anymore. He looked . . .

  Royal? My mind suggested.

  No, that wasn’t it. But I didn’t know how to describe it, even to myself. I felt funny just trying.

  “You want to impress the ladies in the capital, you need to stop calling it ‘the Fridesian capital,’ ” Budley the driver said, turning around from the front of the wagon. “Like there’d be any capital besides Fridesia’s! Best you just call it by its name, Charmeil.”

  He made the word roll off his tongue so elegantly that for a moment I forgot he was old and fat and balding and prone to spitting plant juices.

  “Shaar-may-eeell?” Herk repeated, drawing out all the vowel sounds.

  The driver winced.

  “Where are you people from?” he asked. “I’ve never heard anyone talk like the four of you before!”

  I put my hand over Herk’s to make sure he didn’t blurt out the truth.

  “We’ve moved around a lot,” I said. “I guess we picked up some odd accents.”

  “I’ll say!” the driver said, shaking his head. “So you’re, what, itinerant basket weavers?” He nodded at the pile of reeds Janelia had placed beside us.

  I had to hold back a snort. I was glad that Tog answered for us: “That’s probably the best way to describe it.”

  Budley flicked the horses’ reins to get them to move a little faster.

  “Well, any friends of Ella and Jed’s are friends of mine, too,” he said. “You may not have encountered many swell types like I have, but I’ll tell you, not many of them are like Ella and Jed. Sure, he’s a lord and I guess she’s a lady, but they still treat people like us like . . . like we’re practically equal or something. Most swells act like I might as well be a horse or a cow.”

  For a moment, I was afraid I might choke on my roast chicken.

  I treated servants like they might as well be horses or cows, I thought. That’s kind of how I saw Janelia and Herk and Tog at the beginning of this trip.

  I thought about how most of my sister-princesses were always friendly with the servants. I’d thought the other girls just needed to learn how to act royal.

  It’s not fair if they’re the ones who died while I got to live, I thought.

  As long as we sat in the wagon, I couldn’t talk with Janelia, Tog, and Herk about our plans for once we reached the Fridesian capital—No, I corrected myself, Charmeil—because we couldn’t risk Budley overhearing. So we feasted and wove baskets and slept. Once or twice Tog or Janelia offered to take the horses’ reins so the driver could sleep.

  I told myself we needed to rest up before Charmeil. But the empty sky above us started seeming frightening to me again. I had to bend my head forward and concentrate on weaving basket after basket to block out the fear. But I couldn’t weave constantly. And every time I closed my eyes to sleep, my mind began racing with questions.

  What if we can’t find Ella and Jed?

  What if Cecilia and Harper don’t show up for the treaty signing?

  What if I can’t rescue any of the other sister-princesses?

  I always tried to stop that thought from continuing, but sometimes a worse one sneaked in anyhow.

  What if they were all dead from the very start, and this whole trip has been for nothing?

  And then there were more.

  What if even Janelia and Tog and Herk give up on helping me?

  Even if I get my throne back, what if I’m all alone on it—again?

  What then?

  29

  We arrived in Charmeil late on a Friday afternoon. If I had counted my days right, the treaty signing was scheduled for the following Tuesday, and Ella and Jed’s wedding had been intended for the following weekend.

  But if the wedding date changed, anything else might have changed too, I thought, looking around anxiously at the strange houses and stores of Charmeil. It wasn’t as if I had seen that much of my own country’s capital except for the palace, Janelia’s basement, Madame Bisset’s prison house, and the other houses around the palace courtyard. So I didn’t have much to compare. But Charmeil looked as if it was trying too hard, with too many decorative sconces on its walls, too many lacy-looking wrought-iron fences around its trees, too many pointless frills on its women’s dresses.

  Janelia and Tog were looking around just as silently as me. Herk, meanwhile, commented on everything.

  “Can you imagine climbing that fence?” he asked. “Do you think I could stand on that point at the top? And why are all the men wearing hats that make them look ten inches taller? Or do their heads really go up that high?”

  Budley didn’t even try to answer Herk’s questions. He just threw out his arms and proclaimed, “Welcome to Charmeil! You could travel the entire world and never see a finer city!”

  I was pretty sure I’d heard Budley say that the refugee camp was the farthest place he’d ever traveled from Charmeil. So how did he know? But I decided not to point this out.

  “What if the Sualan capital is nicer than Charmeil?” Herk asked, before rest of us could stop him. “Huh? Did you ever think of that?”

  “You mean Cortona?” Budley asked, pronouncing the word like it left a bad taste in his mouth. “Piffle. I’ve talked to soldiers coming back from the war. Up in Suala, people pretty much just live in pigsties.”

  “But that’s not—” Herk began.

  “—any way to live,” Tog interrupted.

  “No. Of course not,” Budley agreed. “Why else do you think they’re giving up on the war? It’s not
like they could ever defeat us.”

  Behind the driver’s back, Tog put his hand over Herk’s mouth.

  “I’m sure everyone will be glad to have peace again,” I said, and even though I was trying to talk with more of a Fridesian accent, I felt for a moment as though I was back in the Palace of Mirrors. I spoke with the same modulated voice I’d always used there, the one that hid all signs of anger, annoyance, or fear.

  Budley glanced at me in surprise. It was almost as if, for the first time since I’d stepped into his wagon, he suspected I might not be the simple peasant he’d been told.

  “Enh,” Budley said, shrugging. “You know how those royal types never seem to stay out of wars for long. I think they get bored. I expect we’ll be fighting Domulia next.”

  Janelia flushed as if she was the one fighting to hold back anger now.

  “But don’t you think it matters?” she asked. “Don’t you think children should grow up knowing their fathers, wives should be able to live with their husbands for years and years—not just long enough for them to always be getting killed in some war?”

  “Sure,” Budley said, shrugging again. “But you know it doesn’t matter what I think.”

  Budley let us off at a street corner not far from the Fridesian palace. We all shook hands and thanked him, but something had changed when we were talking about the war. Now he just seemed glad to be done with us.

  Even after he flicked his reins at the horses and they trotted on, the others and I stood still for a moment.

  Does everyone else feel as foreign and out of place as I do? I wondered. Even though we were surrounded by a bustling crowd and tall buildings with frilly spires that mostly blocked out the sun, I was starting to get the empty-sky feeling again. I remembered how foreign dignitaries always looked so impressive arriving at the Palace of Mirrors: dressed in their fanciest clothes, riding the showiest steeds, accompanied by large entourages.

  I had none of that. I was on foot once again; if I had to walk very far, I’d probably start limping. Tog, Herk, and Janelia hardly counted as an entourage. And, now that we were in the city, my simple cotton dress no longer felt luxurious just because it was clean. Now it seemed like a sign around my neck announcing, I’m poor! Maybe even a beggar! Cross the street to get away from me!