by Jodi Meadows
“Exactly.” Patrick rested his forearms on the table, his fingers interlaced. His tone was steady, but weighted with something I would have called grief if he had been anyone else. “As for the third goal, this is a bit more disturbing and crucial.”
I held my breath.
“I’ve heard rumors that the people of Aecor are being drafted into the Indigo Army to fight on the front lines of the wraithland—that they’re being used to patrol the borders, fend off wraith beast attacks, and track the wraith’s progress. Wilhelmina. Melanie. I need you to verify this as soon as you can.” Patrick pressed his palms to the table and stood, leaning forward. “If this is true, those are our people sent out for slaughter in the wraithland, breathing in that toxic haze. Those are our farmers and fisherman, our chandlers and cobblers. Those are our people,” he said again.
My heart felt like it had climbed into my throat. Those were my parents’ people. My people. “I’ll find out if it’s true.” My voice was deep, grave. “If it is, I will deal with it.”
“I know you will.” Patrick gazed over the assembled Ospreys, and his tone shifted like fire. “We will have our army. It will come from refugees who recognize the Indigo Kingdom’s nefarious nature. It will come from the resistance fighters still in Aecor. And it will come from the people being drafted into the wraithlands.
“Most of all, it will come from the people living in fear, without hope, and under the false rule of a conquering king. People will come to our call when they hear we have the most important piece of all: Princess Wilhelmina. She’s alive. She’s with us. And she’s going to take back her kingdom.”
I kept my posture straight and my expression stiff as a few of the others cheered and Melanie smiled at me. Maintaining morale was a necessary endeavor, and Patrick was good at it. He was good at a lot of things.
And to him I was a name and a title.
Patrick leaned on his fists and focused on me. The scar over his eyebrow stood out stark and white. “There’s one more thing I want from your time in the palace.”
I waited.
“A map. I want to know which windows lead to which rooms. I want to know where the armories are, where guards are stationed, and even where King Terrell sleeps at night. I want to know everything about that place, that way, if your disguises are compromised, we can come and get you.”
I’d want a map for myself, too, so making a copy for him wouldn’t be trouble. “Consider it already done.”
“Good.”
He wanted me to write a report every three days, gather information, plant false information, free drafted soldiers, and draw a detailed map while disguised at all hours because I was living in the palace of my enemies. It was amazing Patrick didn’t want me to stop the encroaching wraith while I was at it.
He tapped the documents in front of me. “How do these look?”
“They’re close.” I motioned at a smudge of ink where someone had tried to conceal a mistake. “That . . .”
Patrick’s voice deepened into a growl. “Close isn’t good enough. They need to be perfect.”
“Presumably, we’ll have traveled for leagues across the wraithland.” Melanie’s tone was placating. “Our papers won’t have survived the trip in perfect condition.”
Patrick frowned, but acquiesced. “Finish these, then. We’ll put them in the envelope and leave them outside with the rest of the supplies.” He pushed himself straight and paced toward the other side of the room. Everyone watched him, as though he were magnetic and their compasses declared him north. “I’ve gotten word of an army supply caravan leaving Skyvale in one week. It’s heading for Aecor.”
Quinn’s breath hitched. This was the other mission, the one Patrick had said was for her. I lowered my pen.
“Quinn, you will take Ezra and Ronald. You will identify what supplies exactly are being transported, and ride with the caravan until it’s four days out of the valley. Then you will take whatever measures you think wisest and halt the wagons. Bring back whatever is immediately useful to us, and hide the rest. We’ll need it when we march to Aecor to prepare for the anniversary.”
“I can do that.” Quinn lifted her chin and smiled.
“That is a risky mission, Patrick. Are you sure Quinn and Ezra are the best for this?” I asked. The siblings glared at me, and Melanie winced.
“Everything we do is a calculated risk,” Patrick said.
My voice strained. “Quinn is good, but she’ll have to look after Ezra. His first mission was only last night, and a glowman nearly killed him. This isn’t safe. We could all go if we postpone the palace mission another week.” We’d gone from nineteen to twelve people thanks to jobs like this. I didn’t want to lose more.
“The glowman didn’t kill me, though. I can do this easy mission.” Ezra crossed his arms.
Quinn’s glare was deadly. “We can do it.”
Patrick shook his head at me. “They’ll be fine. We can’t put off the palace mission any longer. The anniversary of the One-Night War is approaching. I want us to be in Aecor before winter is over, so that we can take back our kingdom on the day this all started.”
“I realize we have a deadline,” I said, “but I’m not willing to unnecessarily risk our lives.” I cast my gaze around the group. “Those who vote we postpone the palace mission and send more experienced Ospreys, raise a hand. Those who vote Quinn, Ezra, and Ronald go, raise a fist.”
Quinn, Ezra, and Ronald raised fists immediately. So did Patrick, Paige, and Oscar.
I lifted my hand. Connor did, too, of course, and Theresa followed a moment later.
“Carl? Melanie? Kevin?” I lifted an eyebrow. If they sided with me, we’d be tied.
Kevin raised his hand, voting with me. Carl glanced between Connor and Ezra, his two best friends, and heaved a sigh. “I would like to abstain.”
“You can’t,” said Melanie. “Everyone votes. But”—she glanced at me—“it doesn’t matter either way. I vote Quinn and Ezra go. Ezra needs the experience. Ronald and Quinn will look out for him.” She raised a fist. Seven against four and an abstainer. “The only way they get experience is by sending them out there, Wil.”
“Fine.” I flicked my little finger at her and smiled like I didn’t mean the gesture, but no doubt she could see the truth.
I might have been the future queen, but here, in the Ospreys, Patrick was the leader. Every time we disagreed and the decision was put to a vote, Patrick got what he wanted.
Theresa had once explained it by saying it wasn’t so much that I lost as Patrick won. It was hard to deny him.
At least I’d always been able to count on Connor to vote with me, even when it meant he voted against his best friends.
“Moving on,” Patrick said. “Ronald, pass the map. I’ll show you all the route the caravan is taking. . . .”
Quinn smirked and returned her gaze to Patrick.
Trying to ignore the tightening in my chest, I focused on the residency papers once more. I added the signature of the priest who supposedly witnessed my birth in Liadia. Fortunately, the sample we had to copy from was still clear and sharp, and recent enough that he could have witnessed both my birth and the birth of some duke born five years before me.
She had been a real person, this Julianna Whitman, the girl I was impersonating. She was my age and her general description fit mine as well, but I’d chosen her because as far as I knew she’d never visited the Indigo Kingdom.
It seemed very morbid, going around with a dead girl’s identity.
Melanie was doing it, too, though she was able to use her real first name. We’d found evidence of a girl named Melanie Cole who’d probably come into contact with Lady Julianna a few times. They would be best friends now.
“We need those supplies.” Patrick’s attention stayed on Quinn and Ronald, while Ezra sat bouncing in his chair, excited for such a dangerous mission. “Our return to Aecor may depend on our having them.”
Everyone nodded solemnly; their rapt attenti
on never left Patrick. I finished my work with the residency documents and moved them aside, then let my gaze slide toward the open window where cool light filtered in through the sand-speckled glass.
Far beyond the horizon, past the piedmont and the plains and rivers—past the dirt and cobble roads our prison wagons had bumped over almost ten years before—lay Aecor, a home only a few of us remembered. A home we wouldn’t recognize when we returned.
Aecor was my responsibility, but how could I rule a kingdom when I couldn’t even lead the Ospreys?
THE FIRST WINTER in the old palace was awful. In spite of all our stolen clothes, blankets, and the fireplaces we’d cleaned and lit, the ancient castle was always freezing. The wind blew constantly.
One morning while the other Ospreys were cleaning or looking after the youngest children, Patrick summoned me to the common area, where the big table in the center of the room was covered in stacks of paper, jars of ink, and wooden boxes with rusty latches.
My breath caught at the scribal bounty. “Is this for me?”
Patrick was leaning on the windowsill, his arms crossed. He smiled faintly, an expression that looked out of place on him. It softened him, and eased the sharp effect of the scar above his eye. “I know it’s not the best quality, but it’s what I could get.”
I beamed as I unlatched boxes to peek inside. Pens, spare nibs, and wax-sealing supplies. “These will work just fine.”
“Will you need anything else?” He cast a cool gaze over the table, as though he weren’t proud of all this, but there was a light in his eyes, and one corner of his mouth tipped up.
“We’ll need lots more paper. Lots of different kinds. Inks. Um.” I touched the unlined papers, trying to recall everything that had been on my father’s writing desk in Aecor. “Rulers. Candles. Cleaning cloths. A blotter. Perhaps copybooks, if we can find any. Samples of other people’s handwriting.”
Patrick nodded, keeping everything in his head. He wouldn’t forget anything we needed. “You don’t actually know anything about forgery, do you?”
I cringed and shook my head.
“It’s fine.” He pushed off the windowsill and slid a notebook toward me. “Your idea was good. We will be a lot more effective if we can deliver false notes and forge official papers, but if we’re going to do this, we need to do it correctly. I’ll figure out what else we need and make sure we get it. You get to work actually learning what you’re doing.”
The simultaneous praise and criticism made my emotions knot up. Patrick rarely complimented, but he was right: I’d rushed into the idea of tricking my way into places, not having a solid foundation of experience behind me.
“You can do this, Wilhelmina.” Patrick patted my shoulder awkwardly; he was two years older, but we were the same height, which I could tell annoyed him. His father had been taller. “I’ll do anything I can to help you get back Aecor. So will the other Ospreys.”
“Thank you.” I took the notebook off the table and flipped through the evenly bound pages. Each sheet was lined and unusually perfect, while the cover was rubbed dull from handling. “This looks old.”
“It’s pre-wraith, I think.”
Ah. From before the ban over ninety years ago, when people used magic to manufacture and power everything. It must have been such a different world then, with the freedom to use magic and the ability to get whatever was needed with minimal inconvenience.
If only I’d been born then. It sounded like a better world than this one.
“You should keep it,” Patrick said. “Practice writing in it.”
“It’s too special for practice. That’s what all the scrap paper is for.” My fingers traveled across the cover, bumping through the shallow grooves where braids or vines had been stamped along the edges, but worn away over the century. “Father kept a diary. I don’t know what he wrote in there—he never let me see—but it might be good for me to write about reclaiming Aecor. When I am queen and you are my top general, historians will read what I write here and our efforts will never be forgotten.”
A pleased smile turned up the edges of his perpetual frown. “So you like it?”
“Yes.” I took a chair and ink and found a pen and nib that wasn’t rusty. The curved end of the nib fitted into the holder perfectly. “I like it very much.”
Patrick sat next to me, watching as I shook and then opened a jar of ink, tested the color and flow on a scrap paper, and wrote my name on the inside of the leather-bound notebook.
Property of Wilhelmina Korte, Princess of Aecor.
The following is an account of my return to my kingdom. It is real and true.
The sharp pen nib scraped the paper, making a pleasant scratch scratch as I wrote the date and location. My pen strokes were slow, careful so that the black lines were an even thickness and had proper spacing, just as my tutor had taught me. In fact, the letters looked exactly like my tutor’s.
“You have nice handwriting.”
Well, my tutor had nice handwriting. But I smiled anyway.
Patrick held open his hand for the pen, and I placed it in his palm. “Can you copy mine?” he asked.
“Let’s see.”
He dipped the pen in ink and wrote on a scrap paper.
I, Patrick Lien, son of General Brendon Lien, do hereby swear my life to helping Princess Wilhelmina Korte reclaim her kingdom, no matter the cost.
I blinked up at him.
“Go ahead.” He slid the paper toward me. “Let’s see what you can do.”
Our writing was very different. Where mine was all elegant lines learned from a patient tutor, Patrick’s penmanship was scratchier, with uneven lines, and he allowed letters to fade at the end of words when the ink ran low on the nib. The letters weren’t the same height, and they didn’t have a uniform roundness. Those were mistakes my tutor would have drilled out of him, but perhaps his didn’t care, or his father wasn’t interested in his studies.
“It’s not as nice as yours.” Patrick shifted away a hair.
I dipped my pen into the ink. “I wasn’t thinking that. I was just studying the differences. But if you don’t like your handwriting, maybe I can help you change it.”
The motion was small, but he nodded. “I’d appreciate that.”
I hid my smile behind a strand of hair as I began copying his words. It was tricky; my training made his scratchy lines difficult to emulate.
The rough paper caught a tine, and all the ink sluiced out of the pen, making a huge inkblot over Patrick’s name.
I slammed the pen on the table and shouted a word I’d heard the older boys use.
“Wil!” Patrick’s voice was sharp. “Not as a queen. Would your mother have ever had an outburst like that? Used that word? Over a pen?”
My mother wouldn’t have lived in a freezing old castle, but I did. There wasn’t another choice. But I shook my head because I didn’t want Patrick to be angry with me.
“Try again.”
I dipped the nib into the ink and began writing. This time, I focused more, letting the point glide lightly over the paper to avoid the rough patches. I rounded or narrowed my letters like Patrick’s, noting which ones he tended to make the same way every time and which ones changed depending on where they were in the word. I caught myself refilling the pen where he’d have let the ink run out, though, so I pressed open the tines and let the black seep back into the bottle before completing the word.
Finished, I sat back to inspect my work.
“That’s not bad.” Patrick cocked his head. “Your lines are still more even than mine. See how mine taper at the tops and bottoms?”
I scowled. “You don’t even do the same things regularly, though. See this g here? You don’t curve the y descender the same way, even though they’re both at the end of the word.”
“That probably makes my handwriting easier to forge, since it’s inconsistent.”
“Oh. Hmm.”
“Try again,” he said. “Then we need to go out and train with
the others. Our goals won’t be easy to accomplish, Wilhelmina, and we won’t get Aecor back this year, or even next year. But one day we will. One day you’ll take your rightful place on the vermilion throne, and your parents will be so proud.”
I muttered a thanks, not sure how to respond to such a heartfelt statement from Patrick, of all people.
When I finished the next attempt at copying his handwriting, he gave a sharp nod and minuscule smile. “You have a real talent for this,” he said. “I’ll make sure you have everything you need. Maybe I can even find a tutor.”
I wanted to hug him, but he was Patrick; he didn’t like hugs. Instead, I cleaned the nib, closed the bottle of ink, and said, “Thank you. I hope you know how much I appreciate you, and how happy I am that you’re here with me.”
He placed his palm on my shoulder, carefully, deliberately. “I’ll always be with you, Wilhelmina.”
FOUR
WE’D LEFT OUR disguises outside to accumulate mud and grime: Patrick and Oscar—who’d be playing the parts of our escorts—and Melanie and I hadn’t bathed since our last trip to Skyvale, either. My skin felt slimy as I wiggled into my dress; my hair wasn’t in much better shape, but I’d plaited it into a tight and complicated coronet that would hold up for days of travel.
Authenticity was the key to any deception.
Sometimes authenticity was disgusting.
After a quick rap on the door, Melanie walked in, wearing her dirty clothes. “Ready, Lady Julianna, Duchess of Liadia?” she asked, using an accent that thinned out her vowels. We’d learned it from refugees and had been practicing for weeks. She gave an exaggerated curtsy and giggled.
“Don’t look too happy.” I slipped the envelope with our papers into the side pocket of my bag, and hid my sheathed dagger inside my dress, at the small of my back. My other dagger, as far as I knew, was with Black Knife, assuming he’d taken it from that glowman’s hand. “If Patrick sees you smiling, he’ll send you to run laps around the castle until you’re not.”