The captain stood from his desk. His jacket had been dispatched, his white shirt rumpled. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing sculpted golden forearms. ‘Dellara is not human. She will not succumb to a mere fever.’
‘Does it not bear considering that even if she does not perish, she is suffering?’
Captain Legat hesitated. ‘Leave it with me. I shall see what I can do.’
‘Good.’ Marietta crossed her arms, anger still carousing through her veins. She refused to be derailed by the captain’s less than polished state. ‘Why did you not save her?’
‘I wish that I could have. You know well I harbour nothing but distaste for the king but I am afraid that once he succumbs to that mindset, he cannot be roused from it until his wrath is spent.’
‘Very well,’ Marietta said. ‘I am still awaiting to hear why you summoned me.’
He walked around his desk and pulled a chair out for her. ‘Show me your leg.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
His flicker of amusement only served to rile her further. ‘I saw your injury. I was concerned you might be too consumed with caring for your friend to change your bandage,’ he explained.
‘I assure you, I am capable of executing more than one task,’ Marietta said coolly, ignoring the chair. She had been resting her ankle and both it and her wound were healing fast.
The captain leant back against his desk, crossing his arms as he surveyed her. ‘Have I offended you in some way?’ he asked at last.
‘Not at all. I merely find it difficult to reconcile myself with your kindness towards me.’
His eyes were locked on hers. ‘And why is that?’
‘How can you be so compassionate in one regard and yet utterly unconscionable in others? I understand you have other obligations and perhaps I am incorrect in this, perhaps running an underground rebellion is a far nobler cause than all others, but does it justify your callousness elsewhere?’ Her words were soaring arrows. And each one hit their mark.
The muscles in his jaw worked. ‘I—’
‘And furthermore,’ she plunged on, all the pain, fear and rage she kept locked inside bursting out like stardust, ‘you took advantage of my being in a vulnerable situation to … to make me feel things.’
Captain Legat looked taken aback.
‘Sympathy,’ Marietta said. ‘I felt sorry for you. As if you were the victim in all this. As if your king was torturing you alongside us.’
The captain stepped towards her, her anger proving to be infectious. ‘I may not be the king’s plaything but do not make the mistake of thinking I do not care. I fed you when you were at risk of starvation.’ His eyes burned. ‘I am working day and night to ensure his reign of terror ends.’
‘You can leave,’ she hissed at him. ‘Step outside the enchantments that encase the palace and retain me as his prisoner. Do not pretend to understand how it feels to be confined within these frozen sugar walls. Waking each morning into the same endless night. I feel as if I am losing my mind.’
‘Once you have joined the King’s Army, it is disloyal to leave. And disloyalty is treason. I am risking my life for the people of Everwood, for carrying everyone’s freedom on my shoulders. I am sorry you are his prisoner, I truly am, but you do not have the liberty to proclaim your privileged existence is more perilous than the families I visit in Everwood. Their grief is deep. Bodies of children are left on the ice cliffs each night for the mountain vultures.’
His words hit Marietta with searing clarity but she could no more stop their argument than she could hold up the tides of the ocean. It ran between them, taking on a rhythm and wildness of its own. Nor could she elucidate why she felt such anger, burning inside her, why her breath hitched when she looked at him, why she longed to raise her voice and shout and lose her fingers in his tangle of hair. ‘And yet you were the one to save his life.’
‘An action I shall regret until the day I join the stars. Every time I am forced to watch you bleed and break at his command, I long to be in your place, to be the one to bear the brunt of his wrath,’ he said fervently, breathing hard.
Marietta looked up at him. He was closer than she’d realised. He smelt of the forest, of fir trees and snow and a hint of smokiness, and his jawline bore the shading of burgeoning stubble. She wondered if he’d been up all night. She watched his throat bob up and down as he swallowed. ‘Marietta, I want you to know, I—’
‘Yes?’ she whispered.
He looked at her for a long moment before shaking his head as if to dislodge whatever thought had taken root there. His timepiece sounded, shattering the fragile spell in which they had been locked. He looked as though he wanted to speak further and she was disappointed when he cleared his throat. ‘You ought to leave before we attract attention.’
Marietta inclined her head and walked back to her suite in a daze that failed to abate when the guards locked her back inside and she took up the mantle in monitoring Dellara’s condition. That night, there was a small vial of medicine perched alongside their dinner. The following morning, Dellara had regained her senses.
‘King Gelum has long since ruled with a frozen fist,’ Dellara told Marietta, reclining on a chaise as she polished off a rich gingerbread cream cake. ‘But he failed to both take into account what resided within his council room, and that I could possibly notice it.’ Her eyes were shadowed storms.
Fairy, King Gelum had called her. If Dellara was truly a fairy, she was far from the kind that had flitted through Marietta’s imagination as a child, dainty in petal dresses, sipping on nectar. No, she was cut from a different, fiercer mould. ‘I am afraid to ask,’ Marietta said after Dellara had devoured another slice.
‘There’s something about you.’ Dellara drew the words out as if she was tasting them. ‘You’ve captured his imagination. Stirred something up. There are drawings of dancers plastering his walls, parchments written imagining the specifications of your world and its possible locations. Drawings of you.’
Sickened, Marietta set her cup of molten chocolate down.
‘It isn’t safe for you here,’ Dellara said. ‘I’ve never seen the likes of his obsession with you.’ She paused to drink two cups of chocolate in quick succession. ‘Worse still, I managed to glimpse his desk. There were strategical maps of Crackatuck there. Reports on the number and skillsets of Crackatian fighters. Information pinpointing their whereabouts. It appears the unrest during the Festival of Light has been playing on the king’s mind. I would wager he plans to dispel any further thought of an uprising with a show of strength. Inciting war ought to do the trick.’
Pirlipata sighed. ‘There has not been war in Celesta for an age. Not since the peace-keeping accords were signed between our three lands.’ She stared out at the sugar wall. ‘My people are loyal and brave and intelligent but they do not possess the cruelty that King Gelum does. The majority are scholars. If he intends to invade, they must be warned, as must Mistpoint. I shall not let our world fall to a vindictive petty man who refuses to accept my rejection of him.’
‘I had a feeling you might be so inclined,’ Dellara said.
Marietta pressed Pirlipata’s hand. ‘What do you suggest we do?’
Dellara indulged in a languorous stretch. ‘I believe you were right last moontide. There is no sense in waiting for either our impending doom or the rebellion to take hold. We shall have to engender our own escape.’
When the guards unlocked the door to allow a server through, they were greeted with the women conversing on which scent best complemented which shade of tulle. The server kept his eyes averted as per custom and sat a heavy silver tray down on a cushion before scurrying back out. Marietta eyed the tray, waiting for the guards to leave. She’d risen early by habit to stretch her limbs and perform barre exercises using the curved headrest of a chaise longue. As she had performed sets of relevés, small, ankle-strengthening rises, some hidden emotion had soared up within, deep and unavoidable, until she had poured it out into dance. Gentle at first
, testing her weakened ankle, then stronger, fiercer. Frustration at Captain Legat, veined with anger and something else, something unidentifiable and entirely new. She danced in silence, her sole witness the cold moon-soaked land beyond the sugar wall. She had not eaten after, both she and Pirlipata choosing to pass their share onto the ravenous Dellara. Now the scent of souffléd root vegetables, crispy, brown-sugar-glazed slices of cheese, bowls of frostberries, spiced apple cake and whorls of pastry dripping with salted caramel sauce summoned she hunger.
The faceless guards scanned the room, paying no heed to Dellara’s argument for vanilla-scented magenta against Marietta’s sudden predilection for praline-scented pearl. She suffered a bite of fear that they might decide to search the armoire where she’d hidden Legat’s notebook. But at last they retreated, locking the door once more. The talk turned fiercer, growing teeth and talons.
Diving into their dinner, Marietta now well accustomed to eating with her fingers from a shared tray, she and Pirlipata were reining in Dellara’s bloodthirsty imagination.
‘As I reiterated earlier,’ Marietta said, ‘the aim is to be discreet. The fewer witnessing our exit, the better. We must be intelligent, not cause carnage.’
Pirlipata looked nauseated. ‘I am in agreement.’
Dellara took delicate nibbles out of a pastry, sprawled over the carpet beside Pirlipata clad in nothing but a furred cape. ‘And if we’re attacked?’
‘Then we shall allow you to wreak your devastation upon them.’ Marietta was unable to quell her simmering hope. Her ankle healed, Dellara back to her usual spirits, they were stronger than ever. There was nothing Marietta wouldn’t do for these women and she knew they felt likewise. It reminded her of her bond with Frederick and how dearly she missed him, but they were bound together by blood and family. These women had chosen her.
Dellara’s grin displayed her sharpened teeth.
‘And you are certain we cannot obtain one of those golden keys?’ Marietta asked.
‘Too costly and rare,’ Pirlipata sighed.
‘Then according to what I have noted, there are three main problems to overcome,’ Marietta said. Dellara, licking salted caramel sauce off her fingers, motioned for her to continue. ‘First, there is the suite door. It is perennially locked and secured by a pair of faceless guards. Secondly, the staircase. As it is the main thoroughfare of the palace, we shall require a way to traverse it without being sighted. And finally, the door to the palace. Not only does the throne room reside before it, which is habitually filled with an assortment of soldiers and guests at any one time, the passageway is enchanted to return you to King Gelum.’
A silence fell. The barriers laid out before them, the impossibility of their task loomed. Yet Marietta refused to allow her hopes to diffuse. They had all suffered too greatly to not press on. She wished she could dispel the memory of Dellara’s blood-soaked appearance and subsequent ice fever. Dellara had dismissed it, instructed them not to pay it a second thought. Yet there was the occasional tremble in her fingers and the sudden, vehement dedication to escaping. Both whispered of more than an impending invasion fuelling her desire to tear her way free. Marietta forced her attention back to the matter at hand. The silence deepened.
Pirlipata lanced through it. ‘What about disguises?’
‘I’m sorry?’ Marietta asked.
‘Why do we not don disguises to traverse the stairs? No one would toss us a second glance if they believed we were soldiers.’
‘This king doesn’t believe in female soldiers.’ Dellara’s tone turned venomous. ‘He outlawed them.’
Pirlipata continued speaking before Dellara had the opportunity to descend into her darker thoughts. ‘Servers, then. Or apprentice confectioners or pâtissiers perhaps.’
Marietta tapped a finger against the tray, considering. ‘An excellent suggestion. Though where might we acquire the necessary clothing?’ It was a small piece of a much larger puzzle but it necessitated solving one piece at a time before the grander picture was revealed.
Dellara’s smile was caramel-slow. ‘The captain.’
Marietta came back to the conversation with a start. ‘Captain Legat?’
‘Oh, that is an inspired idea,’ Pirlipata said, selecting the ripest frostberries. Tiny gold rings stacked up her fingers twinkled in the glow from the frozen sugar wall.
‘I disagree.’ Marietta looked between them. ‘It would mean crossing the king and he would never do that.’ He wouldn’t risk drawing any attention his way, not when he had invested everything in the rebellion. Her face warmed upon remembering his accusation of her privilege. Worse, she held no arguments against it. He had been right. And she would not pitch herself against the greater good of his actions for Everwood.
‘I’m sure you could think of a way to surpass his loyalty to the king.’ Dellara twirled her fingers above the tray, plucking a slice of spiced apple cake from it with slow deliberation. ‘Use your imagination. He’s attracted to you.’
Marietta felt a hot tinge creeping up her neckline. ‘You are mistaken.’
‘Not at all.’ Pirlipata bit into a frostberry. ‘Anyone can see that he favours you.’
Marietta fumbled for a response. She thought once more of her last visit. Of his eyes burning into hers, burnished in the lanternlight. Of how they’d darkened as her breath had hitched. Marietta, I want you to know I … What had he been on the verge of saying? Her blood warmed and she shook off the thought.
‘You’ll ask him,’ Dellara said. ‘Do flirt a little when you do though, hmm?’ She gave Marietta a salacious look that sent any possible responses flying from her head. She grinned. ‘I’m sure you’ll enjoy that, too. Don’t think we haven’t seen the way you look at the good captain.’
Marietta drank some water. She ignored the sly smile Dellara sent in Pirlipata’s direction. ‘Would it not be wiser to consult one of the other soldiers I became acquainted with before entering the palace, Claren perhaps?’
‘They’re lower-ranked soldiers. I’m sure they’re capable of charming a wanderer when they set their mind to it.’ Dellara bit into her cake, taking care not to dislodge the fuchsia-pink gems affixed to her lips. ‘But they’ll be more tentative about calling notice to themselves. Besides which, Fin’s too shy for such a task and Claren’s too invested in his own frivolities.’
‘Yet you do not believe that the captain of the King’s Army would be concerned with getting caught?’ Marietta pointed out.
‘Not as a leader, no. He’s accustomed to thinking for himself and he’d be better placed to formulate a plan and act upon it without having to concern himself with sneaking around behind his commanding officers’ backs.’
Dellara’s explanation poured out in a manner that Marietta found she couldn’t refute. Perhaps she ought to consult the captain. After all, she was merely seeking a few purloined items of clothing, nothing more.
‘Very well, I shall put the question to him,’ Marietta said, ignoring the looks Pirlipata and Dellara were now trading. She wondered if he would invite her to his study again. Now she was healed and no longer starving, there was no excuse for them to dwell in each other’s company. A fleeting sadness swept over her. She firmed her resolve against it; she still had his notebook in her possession. ‘Then we shall move along the staircase in disguise. What might be the best manner to flee this suite?’
‘We ought to work backwards,’ Pirlipata said, digging out another handful of frostberries. Deep magenta with a frosted skin, they were plump and bursting with a sweet sticky juice. ‘None of this is worth contemplating if we still do not have an inkling on how to leave the palace.’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Dellara’s voice drawled, painting her words in honeyed tones. Marietta and Pirlipata looked at her, waiting. ‘We don’t leave through the main door.’
‘I was not aware there was an alternate exit to the palace,’ Marietta said.
Pirlipata crinkled her forehead. ‘If there is one, I am not aware of it either.’
>
‘Neither of you are thinking outside the globe. We don’t leave this palace. We leave this world,’ Dellara said with a flourish.
Pirlipata’s muddled expression cleared. ‘Oh.’
Marietta’s confusion didn’t abate. She frowned. ‘What am I missing?’
‘All those doors running alongside the staircase?’ Pirlipata turned to Marietta in an excited glaze. ‘Where do you think they lead?’
‘Tell me,’ Marietta said, catching the spark of her enthusiasm.
Dellara leant forward, her gem-encrusted lips sparkling, lending her an eerie glow. ‘They lead to different worlds.’
Chapter Thirty
Other worlds. A frisson fired through Marietta, raw with nerves and hope and the inconceivable knowledge that she was an insignificant speck in the universe that had swollen far greater than she could picture. Her one foray into another world had culminated in her capture but Dellara was dagger-sharp and if she believed this was a more likely escape route through the ensorcelled palace then Marietta was inclined to agree. ‘How might we find our way back to this world? Or return me to mine?’
‘There are doors located across the worlds,’ Dellara said.
Pirlipata gave Marietta a reassuring smile. ‘Do not fear, we shall not stop searching until we are able to return you to your home.’
‘Or find you a better one,’ Dellara added.
Pirlipata gave her a look, deep with meaning and the unique irritation that tended to run between siblings or the oldest of friends. ‘That is far from helpful.’
Dellara flicked a shred of pastry off her dress. ‘I was under the impression she wasn’t enamoured with her own world. She only mentions it in passing and never seems happy to speak of it. And then there are the nights she’s seized with nightmares.’
Marietta toyed with the crispy-coated slice of cheese she’d picked up. ‘I was not aware I spoke in my sleep.’
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