The Decoy Princess

by Dawn Cook

  I said nothing, feeling sullen. My stomach rumbled at the smell of honey.

  Apparently unconcerned, Jeck brushed a crumb from his beard. “I knew you’d want a horse, and the man wouldn’t stop talking about you. How his girl ran away with the mare he sold you. How you stole the one that belonged to the palace, and what was he going to tell the palace when they came to collect them? Oh, woe is me,” he finished in a mocking voice.

  I felt ill, realizing I’d left a trail as clear as Kavenlow’s. My eyes flicked to the black gelding. It was the twin to my mare. “That’s my horse,” I said. “He was holding them for me.”

  Jeck’s narrow mustache rose as he grinned. “He’s a fine animal, and a great deal more rested than my horse. Being the captain of King Edmund’s guards has its privilege.”

  He had taken my horse when it came right down to it. Turning the hem of my dress up, I looked for a fold of less-begrimed fabric I could use to clean myself.

  Jeck leaned to his pack and tossed me a wad of cloth. It arched over the fire and landed squarely in my lap. I picked it up—fully intending to throw it back into his face—but it was soft and clean, smelling of soap. Abandoning pride for comfort, I dipped it into the warm water.

  Jeck set his travel cake aside and picked up Kavenlow’s bag. My mouth opened as he undid the tie and upended the pouch. “That’s mine,” I protested. His eyebrows rose as he took in my anger, and I added, “Get out of it!”

  Ignoring me, he ran his fingers over everything. “Fishhooks,” he said, dropping them back in the bag. “Candle, needle and thread, flint.” He glanced at me from under the brim of his black hat. “Dry tinder, cord . . .” He held up my packet of dried torch flowers. “What’s this?”

  “A mild sedative and pain relief,” I said, seeing no harm in him knowing. His soft cloth felt like heaven against my travel-torn fingers, and my hands were humming from the hot water.

  Never dropping my gaze, Jeck slipped the torch flowers into an inner pocket of his jerkin. Outraged, I stiffened. “Put that back!” I cried. But my anger shifted to alarm when he opened Kavenlow’s venom and took a sniff.

  “Still a liquid?” he murmured. “Interesting.” As I watched, unable to stop him, he removed his hat and slipped a tiny dart from the hatband. I knew he used a dart pipe, but I had yet to see it. He dipped the dart into the venom, then touched it to his tongue. “Chu,” he swore, recoiling with a grimace. “No wonder you put me down with two.” The skin about his eyes wrinkled as he replaced his dart into his hatband. “And why you were still running after four of mine. What does Kavenlow do to keep the venom from coagulating after you kill it?”

  Kill what? I thought as I struggled with my desire to either smack him for pawing through my things or thank him for the information. He recapped the small jar when I remained silent, tucking it into his saddlebag. My face flamed. “That’s mine,” I said.

  “What’s yours?” He meet my eyes with a blank expression.

  “That’s my dart venom. Put the jar back in my bag.”

  He gave me a handsome grin. “What jar?”

  Giving up, I scrubbed the cooling cloth against my face. Keeping even my hair ribbon, he shoved everything into Kavenlow’s bag, which he then knotted to his belt. “You’re a thief,” I said, unable to think of anything more derogatory.

  His eyebrows rose. “I prefer ‘using my means to their fullest potential.’ ”

  “And a coward,” I added, coming up with something vastly better.

  Jeck’s face emptied of all expression, and I wondered if I had gone too far. “No,” he said softly. “Not a coward.” I couldn’t tell if he was angry, and somehow that frightened me.

  “What are you going to do with me?” I asked as I braided my hair, despairing of the sticks and leaves my fingers kept finding.

  He scuffed a boot into the leaf mold. “Return you to Prince Garrett as ordered.”

  I looped the braid about itself, shaping the entire arrangement into a decorative ball at the base of my neck. It would hold as long as I didn’t move about much. Sniffing at him, I tried to find the air of misplaced confidence that worked so well on the palace guards when they caught me where I shouldn’t be. “This morning you seemed to be acting on your own. And now you’re back to taking orders from a spineless, sniveling, worthless excuse of a royal who has as much right to rule as a barnacle worm.” Excitement went through me as Jeck stiffened in unease. I’d found a sliver of truth, but how did it fit?

  “This morning I thought you were someone else, Princess,” he said.

  “Don’t call me that,” I demanded, pretending disinterest as I scrubbed between my toes to turn the cloth brown. “We both know I’m not.”

  Jeck rose to take the saddle off Tuck. “People act within the expectations they’re given. I say you’re a princess. Act like one. And keep your burning hands away from those knots.”

  Disgusted he had known I was working my way to them, I made a face and dropped the cloth into the water. “I’m her double, that’s all,” I said tightly. But Jeck never noticed my frustrated anger as we both turned at a scuffling in the leaves. My breath came fast in hope, but I slumped when I spotted a squirrel, not Duncan. There was a thump and a squeak. A knife pinned the rodent to the ground, dead.

  Shocked, I spun back to find a second knife in Jeck’s hand, his arm cocked to throw it. Frowning, he slid the knife behind his belt. “But I’m in no hurry to get back to Prince Chu-head,” he said. “And you look hungry. Skinny. All legs and arms.”

  Ignoring his insult, I sourly picked the mud from my hem. He could throw a knife. How wonderful. And though I was starving, I wouldn’t eat. He might tamper with my food.

  “Well, I’m hungry,” he continued as if I had said something. “We can’t make it back by sundown, so we’ll leave in the morning. Garrett can stew for a while. Maybe he’ll realize what he has started.” Putting the last of his travel cake in his mouth, he went to get the squirrel.

  The captain’s casual disregard for Garrett’s standing still shocked me, serving as more proof that Jeck held more power than he ought. He had said I was a player, that I was Kavenlow’s apprentice. What the devil was a player? A specialized body-guard, maybe?

  As Jeck butchered the squirrel, I finished washing my feet, thinking about that. Kavenlow had taught me my letters and numbers, and countless ways to dally the hours away, but nothing about protecting anyone except myself. Then again, Kavenlow had kept me alive my entire life through a score of assassination attempts. A chancellor.

  Feeling as if I was close to figuring something out, I dried my feet on my red underskirt. Jeck had hinted at a huge conspiracy. His few words—at first glib and bewildering, then hesitant and obscure—had filled me with unease. Things weren’t as I thought. My ingrained beliefs—the beliefs of my entire society—were based on a veneer that even the royals thought went all the way through. I had very little to shape my new wisdom upon.

  Fingers slow, I placed my damp cloth on the rim of the pan. Kavenlow’s note had said that though the king and queen held the crown, we kept Costenopolie intact. It went along with what Jeck had implied about him controlling Misdev. But I had grown up in the palace. I knew the king and queen ruled. Didn’t they?

  A wash of unreal feeling coursed through me as I recalled how often my and Kavenlow’s diversions had been interrupted by private councils with men of importance, the letters without the royal seal passed by Kavenlow’s hand, and his excursions to the docks at all hours. Suddenly Jeck’s hints of Kavenlow pulling hidden strings sounded not only plausible but obvious.

  I raised my head to find Jeck butchering the squirrel at the edge of camp. “You said I was a—a player,” I said, trying to pull more information from him. The familiar word felt odd as I said it, and Jeck’s first expression of shock melted into a fierce look.

  “Don’t,” he said with a frightening harshness. “Don’t ask me.”

  I leaned forward, feeling as if I almost had it. I recalled Je
ck’s whipping, the frustration in his eyes—and the control. “You aren’t just the captain of King Edmund’s guard,” I said, thinking I was closer to the truth than I had been my entire life. “You’re a player.”

  “No,” he said, raising a protesting hand, fingers red with the squirrel’s blood. He saw it, and put his hand down. “It was a jest. A very bad jest. I’m the captain of King Edmund’s guard, charged with keeping his second son alive until he’s safely married. That’s all.” But his brown eyes looked too determined.

  “No, you’re more. You’re a player,” I prodded.

  “Princess . . .” His shoulders shifted as he took a deep breath and slowly let it out. Returning to the fire, he flicked my damp rag into his grip and wiped his hands clean. He looked worried as he stood before me. “Damn it, Jeck,” he swore. “Your big mouth finally caught up with you.

  “Listen,” he said, crouching down before me. “Do us both a justice and keep your thoughts to yourself. Kavenlow is going to be angry enough with me as it is for letting Garrett make an unannounced bid for Costenopolie. But forcing his timetable with you?” The corners of his eyes crinkled, and he took off his hat, making him look younger as it tousled his hair. “I’d rather swing from King Edmund’s rope as a traitor than interfere with you. That it was an honest mistake means nothing. I’m going to salvage what I can and get out.” Clearly worried, he carefully set his hat on his bedroll and moved the pan of bloody, brown water out of my reach.

  My pulse raced. He was more concerned about what he had told me than about Garrett killing the king and queen? I was learning bits and pieces, each one more confusing than the last. “You’re afraid of him,” I said. “You’re afraid of Kavenlow?”

  Jeck looked up from the squirrel, his wide shoulders tensing. “No. I’m not.”

  “I think you are, Captain.”

  He turned around. “No, Princess. I’m not.” He hung the rodent upside down to drain into the pan. “It’s not all my fault, though. Why he kept you in the dark this long is beyond me. You have a considerable tolerance to venom. He should have had you recognized years ago.”

  “Recognized,” I whispered. An image of fox lapping water drifted through me. I could smell burning wormwood. My heart hammered as memories flooded back.

  Kavenlow had been angry, but he hadn’t burned the gypsy wagon. He had carried me to my room, kissed my forehead, and went to talk to my parents. Why hadn’t I remembered that before?

  Suddenly frightened, I met his eyes. “What is going on, Captain Jeck?”

  “Nothing,” he said, staring at me.

  “That’s a lie,” I said, knowing it was.

  Jeck carefully wiped his fingers clean. “You keep telling yourself that, Princess, and we both might survive.”

  Fourteen

  It was cold. The clear skies had allowed the heat Of the day to abandon the earth quickly once the sun set, and even the spring frogs were too numb to sing. Everything I owned but the clothes I had on were in Jeck’s saddlebags or with Duncan, thoroughly out of reach. I wondered if “my thief,” as Jeck had come to call him, had taken Pitch for his own and headed for better pickings. A part of me hoped he had. The more frightened part of me hoped he hadn’t.

  My head throbbed dully where Jeck had knocked me. There was a lump the size of a walnut, but it didn’t seem feverish. Feeling sorry for myself, I scooted closer to the fire and licked the last of the grease from my fingers. The previous empty ache in my middle—and watching Jeck prepare the squirrel—had convinced me it was safe to eat.

  “Thank you,” I said as I glanced over the fire. I froze, embarrassed; I had bolted down my meal before he had even finished half of his. He sat on his log well back from the fire, looking plenty warm with his boots, coat, and heavy cloak. My eyes lingered on his blanket folded neatly beside him. I wouldn’t ask for it. I had my pride.

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “I’ve never seen anyone eat the meat from toes before.”

  “Dinner last night wasn’t very good,” I muttered. A sudden sneeze shook me, and I clutched my arms around my drawn-up knees and pulled my thin cloak tighter. The tight band about my ankles had been replaced by a length of rope that hobbled me like a horse. It was humiliating. If I had my knife, I might loose my bonds. If I had my boots, I could run. If I could knock Jeck unconscious, I might elude him entirely. If, if, if . . .

  “So,” I said hesitantly, not liking the silence, “you learned to cook while a guard?”

  Jeck laughed, and the pleasant sound of it startled me. “No,” he said. “My father taught me, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t his cooking that got me my position of captain.”

  “How could cooking do that?” I asked, not liking his rough language.

  He pulled a bite from a tiny bone and chewed thoughtfully. Wiping his mouth, he said, “King Edmund sends his foot soldiers into the field for a month every fall. You know that strip of forest you left him?” I nodded, and his eyes went distant. “They camp there and fend for themselves. At the end of it, there’s a contest. Fighting, climbing, swimming, that sort of thing.” He flicked the stripped bone into the fire. “The best join the palace guard.”

  “And you won it your very first year.”

  I couldn’t keep the sarcasm from my voice, but Jeck’s eyes held laughter, not anger. “No. It’s generally the big hulks of men who win. After two years of being beaten black-and-blue, I befriended one. Fed him the entire time. I invented so many ways to cook squirrel, you wouldn’t know you were eating the same animal for a week. He agreed to hoist me up the rope, push me over the wall, and fight beside me in the final melee if I kept his belly full until then.”

  “You cheated,” I said, not surprised.

  “No.” Jeck gave me a sideways smile from behind his beard, his eyes glinting in the firelight. “You have to have rules to break them, and there weren’t any. I couldn’t do it by brawn, so I did it by brain.” Jeck wrapped a cloth around a pot of boiling water and pulled it from the fire before adding what I thought was a ridiculously small amount of tea leaves.

  “I had a life expectancy of about forty in the army if we never went to war,” he said softly. “I didn’t like the idea that my life was that close to being half over. Being in the castle guard would have increased it dramatically.” He met my eyes. “It did increase it dramatically.”

  I clutched my knees to myself, uneasy. “Have you ever killed anyone?” I asked.

  “Of course.” He frowned, then added, “I don’t enjoy it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  I thought of Garrett and the shudder of lust I’d felt in him while he watched his guard kill another. He had enjoyed it. My throat tightened as I remembered watching my parents die. How could I have let him live? Next time I would be strong. “Does it get easier?” I whispered.

  “The doing? Yes. Much as I’d like to think otherwise, yes. It does. The afterward, though, gets worse.” His eyes met mine. “Why? Do you wish you had killed Garrett?”

  Defiance mixed with fear and anticipation in a nauseating mix. “He deserves to die.”

  Jeck nodded in an absent fashion. “True, but that doesn’t mean it’s in everyone’s best interests that he should. But I won’t let you kill him. I’m not eager for another pointless Misdev war, which is what you’ll get if Garrett dies.”

  “There won’t be a war. Kavenlow can convince King Edmund I was justified,” I said.

  “Justified . . .” Jeck stretched his feet out to the fire and loosened his bootlaces. “So the contest ended, and I and my dinner companion were left,” he said, continuing his story. “I hadn’t yet grown into my height, and I lacked the power that the men who lost had, but I was smarter. It wasn’t long before it was recognized, and after I got my growth, I moved up to captain. Life became interesting after that.” He met my gaze from under his hat, the firelight flickering to make shadows. “How about you? How did you become the princess’s decoy?”

  “Uh,” I stammered, caught off guard. “I
was bought in the streets. The only one of three decoys to survive the earliest Red Moon Prophesy assassination attempts.” I tucked the hem of my dress under my feet to keep them off the damp ground. “I’m a beggar’s child, I suppose. I didn’t know until”—I thought for a moment, surprised—“four days ago. Before that it was the usual princess tasks: reading and sums, how to draw a map, how to play a tune, how to step a dance, how to seat visiting dignitaries at dinner so no one is beside the person who snubbed them last spring.” I flicked my gaze to his and then looked away, seeing a worried confusion in his eyes.

  “That’s it?” he asked. “He hasn’t taught you anything. Anything of value, I mean.”

  “Who are you to know?” I snapped, but it lacked conviction. I had a feeling Jeck was right. Kavenlow had been responsible for my schooling, and most of that had revolved around the political niceties of being a princess. Perhaps because there was always the chance I might end up on the throne if anything happened to her. Like her royal snotship meeting the soul reaper on her way home, I thought, almost hoping she would.

  An animal screeched, the same as last night, and I edged closer to the fire. Kavenlow hadn’t taught me anything special. If he had, I wouldn’t be sitting here with my feet tied together, shivering. I would have chewed my way free when Jeck had been digging a shallow privy, whipped him into submission when he returned, then stolen the horses to run away.

  “I was bought for silver, too,” Jeck said suddenly. I looked up at his quick-worded admission. His brown eyes held a hint of vulnerability, and I didn’t think he had ever told anyone before. “Before that, I lived with a childless farmer. A passing priest saw me throwing rocks at the birds to keep them off the corn. He took me right there, yanking me onto his horse and shouting for my father. I was eight.”

  Shivering, I pulled my cloak tighter. Jeck must mean his surrogate father. He had said the farmer was childless.