It wasn't until the guardsman was gone that Yun realised he hadn't even asked the man's name. So caught up in his thoughts of Ava…
Tonight he would show her his work, Yun vowed. Good or bad, it would at least tell her the depth of his feelings for her. Perhaps they might even share a kiss, a prelude to something more…
He walked the walls as though wings were attached to his feet. The sunlight sparkled on the river particularly prettily today. Shun the gooseherd had a new assistant this morning, who was quite the dullard, to hear him shout at her. But the girl had been foisted on him by his superiors, so he was stuck with her, or so he said.
Yun watched, bemused. Who would give a girl to the gooseherd?
But as the girl and her hissing flock passed beneath the wall, Yun felt a jolt of recognition. She wasn't just any girl. She was Ava's maid, the girl he'd carried into the palace on the day they arrived. It was madness to make a lady's maid into a bird herder.
This was his father's doing, Yun decided. He'd talked of separating Ava from her maid, and this was how he'd accomplished it. Sheer foolishness, is what it was.
Yun descended to the courtyard and marched purposefully toward the throne room. Ava was no danger to them, he was certain of it. Where was the harm in letting her see a familiar face every day on one of the maids who helped her dress? He would speak to his father and secure the services of the new goose girl. Without her geese.
An hour later, Yun emerged from the throne room, his head full of his father's words, but he still did not have the goose girl. His father insisted she must stay where she was, for her own good, if it was to be believed, for she had some sort of brain fever, the physicians said, and she must be kept away from other people lest the disease spread.
Yun shook his head. He didn't understand it. Who had ever heard of a disease that attacked the mind? Unless this madness had infected the physicians, too…
"Your Highness!"
Yun slowed to a stop. "Yes?"
The servant halted, breathing hard. She wore silk, marking her as a lady-in-waiting to someone of importance. Yun didn't recognise her, but then he didn't know all of his mother's servants. And who else would send for him?
"Your Highness, you are needed in the pleasure garden. Your wife has gone mad!"
No. Not Ava. Yun broke into a run.
Twenty-Six
A week passed, each day much the same as the others. Every night she shared a bed with Prince Yun, who said little to her and didn’t touch her at all. Each morning, the maids would serve her breakfast and help her bathe and dress before accompanying her to the pleasure garden for another day of sharing palace gossip.
Mostly, Ava just let their voices wash over her, drowsing in the sweet-scented air like the other wives did. Yet after a week, the endless stream of stories began to irritate her.
“I don’t care whose wife is sleeping with which official in order to get her daughter on the list of potential brides for the crown prince!” Ava burst out. “How can you know so much about who shares whose bed when you can’t tell me where Lagle is!”
The maids babbled their apologies, but today Ava would have none of it. Whenever she had been this frustrated in the women’s palace, Bianca had dragged her to the stables. A day spent with the horses always helped.
“Have my horse saddled. I wish to ride,” Ava said, wondering for the first time where the palace ponies were kept. None of the other wives seemed to want to do more than sit and stare into space in the garden, but that only made Ava feel useless.
One of her maids hurried away to relay her order to the grooms, while the others ushered her back to her chambers to change into suitable riding clothes. The skirt of the robe she wore today was wrapped so closely around her legs that Ava struggled to take more than the tiniest steps. Attempting to mount a horse would show a scandalous amount of her legs, or rip the fine silk asunder, neither of which Ava wanted. Especially if Lagle discovered Ava had destroyed her favourite new gown, as surely this must be.
More appropriately attired, Ava returned to the garden to wait for her horse. She didn’t have to wait long – her breathless maid hurried across the grass, dropped to her knees and said, “Mistress, I asked for your horse, but the grooms say it’s no longer in the stables. It’s gone.”
A red haze misted Ava’s vision. “First Lagle, now my horse! Can you find nothing in this palace? What will I do when you lose my clothes as well? Go naked?”
Amid exclamations of horror and another round of apologies, one maid’s voice quavered, “But you did not bring any clothing, mistress. The Emperor commanded that we only bring you new gowns fit for a princess in the Emperor’s palace. If we were to lose these, the imperial tailors would only make more for you.”
Ava’s mouth gaped. She wasn’t wearing Lagle’s clothes after all? Her own clothes had been in the saddlebags strapped to her own horse, so Ava knew her things had arrived with her. One of the gowns had been a gift from Bianca, embroidered by her own hand. And the cup Militsa had given her as a parting gift had been among her things. Was all she owned to be lost in this enormous, heartless palace?
Her maids cowered as Ava began to shout in earnest, venting her frustration at the top of her lungs to the very trees themselves, for it felt like no one else was listening.
“So have you truly gone mad?” a loud male voice interrupted.
Ava whirled.
Yun stood before her with his arms folded, an amused look on his face. “One of Princess Lan’s attendants told me that my wife had gone mad and I had best deal with her before my father heard about it. I suspect it’s too late for that. Half the palace has heard you, and that half is terrified.” He gestured around the garden.
Only now did Ava realise the effect of her outburst. Lan and Fang had curled up on their benches, their hands over their ears, oblivious to the attempts of their attendants to calm them, and the other wives looked almost as frightened.
“I only wanted to know where Lagle and my horse were. And my things,” Ava said. “No one will tell me.”
“You never asked me,” Yun said.
“No, I didn’t,” she said slowly. “Do you know where they are?”
He grasped her arm, firmly but without hurting her. “Come, I’ll show you.”
Willingly, Ava walked with him through the passageways of the palace, trying not to hold her breath. If she could just be sure Lagle was safe and she found the gifts from her family, it would be all right. Her horse and her clothes were nothing special. Not like the gowns packed for Lagle, fit for a queen, or Falada, the magnificent warhorse who had seemed intelligent enough to make his wishes known.
Ava barely managed to keep up with Yun as he took the stairs two at a time, to a level of the palace Ava was sure she hadn’t seen before. Surely she had to be at the very top of the palace, she thought as she struggled to catch her breath. No one would keep horses up here. Falada would break down the door of his stall rather than be stabled so high.
“Here.” Yun pulled Ava out onto a balcony where the overhanging roof hid them in its shadows. “There’s your maid.”
Ava scarcely recognised Lagle as the girl garbed in brown like a nun. Her clothes certainly weren’t silk, for Lagle paused to itch a spot where the rough fabric evidently troubled her.
Ava started to ask why her sister was dressed so poorly, when a deafening cacophony filled the air. The honking of what appeared to be a hundred geese, which flapped and waddled around Lagle’s feet, drowned out anything Ava could say.
A man emerged from among the geese, aiming a cuff at Lagle’s head. Ava gasped at the thought of him striking her, but Lagle ducked aside so the blow never landed. Almost as if she’d had practice. She flapped her hands like wings at her sides, urging the geese out the gate. The birds obeyed her, rushing to put themselves between the man and Lagle.
“Who is that man?” Ava asked.
“Shun, keeper of the royal geese,” Yun said. “He’s the only one who was willing to
take on a girl whose head is addled, but I think he heartily regrets agreeing to it.”
“Addled? Her head is addled?” Ava repeated. The Queen would never forgive her if Lagle didn’t recover. She would…
“When she seemed recovered, my father ordered her put to work, but not for you. He still thinks you’re a spy. He sent her to the kitchens, but she burned the rice and has no skills with a knife when she was set to peeling the vegetables. They sent her to the laundry, but she ruined one of my mother’s favourite gowns, so she was sent back. She cannot remember how to do anything, it seems. She can’t sing or sew or cook or wash, and my father ordered one of his guards to execute her, for there is no place in the palace for a servant who has forgotten how to serve. She fell to her knees in the courtyard, begging to be allowed to live, when Shun came in with the geese. The whole great honking lot of them. The birds attacked the guards, the way geese do, and it was chaos for some time until she shouted at the birds to be silent. They did, so my father gave her to Shun to be his assistant. She doesn’t even remember her name, so they all just call her the goose girl, for she’s the only one who can command the geese.”
“What did Lagle say about it?” Ava asked.
Yun shrugged. “I don’t know. Thanked my father and the ancestors for sparing her, I suppose, and hurried off to tend the geese before he changed his mind.” He nodded at Lagle. “This is as close as you’ll get to her. You won’t be allowed to speak to her, or give her any messages to take out of the palace. As for your horse…”
Lagle had stopped at the gates. She wiped something from her hair and looked up.
Ava gagged. Someone had suspended Falada’s head from the gate. Recently, too, for blood still dripped from it – that’s what Lagle had wiped off her hair.
“Why?” Ava choked out. “Why kill a perfectly good horse and do that to him?”
“That horse injured three grooms before one of my guards took his head,” Yun said. “Quite uncontrollable. Didn’t you say he threw your maid and nearly broke her head?”
“Yes, but…” Ava wanted to say that Lagle had been a poor rider, goading him into it. “He was spooked,” she said instead.
“Well, he’s a horse spirit now, and maybe he can do some good to fix the damage he did. The healers swear the best way to cure her head is to hang up the horse’s head until his spirit restores her mind. I didn’t quite understand the details – they spoke of humours and elements and all manner of things that are beyond the knowledge of a simple poet,” Yun said.
“Not just a poet,” Ava said. “A prince and a soldier, too.”
“And a husband, who has his duty to perform,” Yun said gravely. “Do you know the cure for a wilful wife, who asks too many questions and shouts when women should be silent?”
Ava shook her head, though she suspected she knew the answer.
“A properly masterful husband, who shows her where her place is. And yours is in bed, wife!” Yun said gleefully as he took her arm once more and escorted her back to his chambers.
Where he would abandon her to spend all evening on his poetry again, as he had every other night she spent with him, Ava knew. For all his talk of bedding her, this was the first time he’d laid a hand on her all week, and he released her the moment they were alone.
It wasn’t until much later that night that Ava remembered her cup, and by then, Yun was asleep in the bed beside her, snoring softly in the dark. She hadn’t the heart to wake him, so she resolved to ask in the morning. Nothing seemed to change here, so one night couldn’t make a difference, surely.
Or so Ava thought.
Twenty-Seven
The goose girl felt something drip onto her face. She glanced up, expecting rain, but all she saw was the red-painted gate with a horse head hanging beneath it. As she watched, a large drop of blood detached from the head and splattered to the cobbles by her feet. Something landed in her hair and when she touched it, her fingers came away red. Nothing made sense to the goose girl; this least of all.
Herding geese, hanging horses from gates, wearing a scratchy brown robe, sleeping on a straw pallet that she was certain contained fleas…she longed for a hot bath, big enough to immerse herself in to scrub off all the filth. The thought was gone as quickly as it had come, for how would a peasant girl who tended to geese ever receive the luxury of a hot bath? She bathed with a cloth and a jug of water when she could. If she wanted to bathe her whole body at once, she had best take a dip in the river.
A gobbet of flesh landed on her shoulder, staining her robe red before she could shake it off. A dip with her clothes on, the goose girl promised herself, so that she might wash her robe along with herself. Best to find a private spot, where Shun couldn’t watch her. She’d already caught him leering at her in the servants’ sleeping chamber, when she washed, and he hadn’t been the only man who did. The only thing that kept their hands off her was the whispered rumours of her being a foreign witch.
The goose girl had almost laughed when she heard it – how could a girl who couldn’t remember her own name be a powerful witch, capable of casting spells? Yet they saw the way the geese obeyed her and said it was witchcraft. One night, one of them would grow bold enough to do more than watch, though, and she knew she had no spell to stop him.
Best to bathe in the river, then, the goose girl resolved, chivvying her charges through the gate, toward the lake where they spent their days. Like every other day she could remember, the goose girl followed the river, then walked along the bank of the canal that led to the lake. When the lake was full, it emptied out into a little stream the rejoined the river a half mile downstream, but the hot spring days had drunk the lake water until the water level had dropped so much that the stream ran dry.
The goose girl shooed her birds into the lake, then waited for Shun to catch up. He came huffing and puffing down the hill, then flopped down under a tree. He drank deeply from the water bottle he kept tied to his belt, then threw it at the goose girl. “I’m empty. Fetch me a drink, girl.”
“From the lake?” she asked. Surely it would have been easier for him to sit beside the lake, where he could drink as much as he pleased, instead of sitting under a tree ten yards away.
“Of course not, dolt. The geese and the city foul the lake so it’s not safe to drink. Fill my bottle in the river.”
The goose girl snatched up the bottle, darting into the dry stream bed. She jumped down the steps that had once been a pretty waterfall, following the sound of running water to the river. She found where the stream fed the river, then turned upstream. The river curved a little to go around a massive tree, and she had to fight her way through underbrush to reach the bank on the other side of the tree. When she did, she drew in a breath.
The pool before her was perfect. The tree had dammed part of the river to create a pool that had none of the river’s turbulence, yet it looked deep enough for the goose girl’s longed-for bath. Dappled sunlight glinted on the pool’s surface, enticing her in.
First, she opened the water bottle and filled it in the pool, before jamming the stopper into the neck of the bottle. She set the bottle between two tree roots, half immersed in the pool, to keep the contents cool. The remains of a tiny broken glass bottle were caught between the roots, but the goose girl paid it no heed. Now, her time was her own.
The goose girl had no patience for getting in slowly. She simply stepped in and sank, letting the water close over her head before realising the pool was deeper than the expected. She thrashed to the surface, relieved to find it wasn’t far.
Coughing and spluttering, she stayed at the surface until she had caught her breath once more, before she slipped out of her hated robe. She scrubbed it against a tree root, rinsing it until she could no longer see the blood. Then, she draped it over a branch, hoping it would dry while she washed herself.
But washing was thirsty work. The goose girl shifted to where the river fed her pool, and cupped her hands for a drink. The water was cool in her hands, but the
first sip burned her tongue. Nevertheless, she drank more, sucking the drops from her fingers until they were dry.
A princess should drink from her golden cup, not her hands, her mother’s voice insisted. A princess bathed only in perfumed water, brought to her by her many servants.
Knowledge blossomed in the goose girl’s head.
“Where’s my drink, girl?” an irate male voice demanded. Shun’s head appeared over the underbrush.
“Fetch it yourself,” Lagle told the fowl keeper. Princesses did not serve peasants.
“If I have to drag you out of there, I’ll box your ears, girl,” he threatened. “I’m not scared of no witch.”
Witch. Lagle tasted the word, feeling it curl around her tongue as she drank more of the river water. It burned her throat like the finest wine. “You should be scared,” she purred, stepping out of the pool. Water cascaded down her naked body, shimmering in the sunlight. “I am the most powerful witch your pitiful kingdom has ever seen. I will ensorcel your king and eat his heart.”
“I’ll tell the guards you said that!” Shun said, backing away.
“Do. Tell them to bring me robes fit for a queen when they come for me. I will wear nothing but silk now,” Lagle said, lifting her cupped hand over her head so that more of the enchanted water trickled into her mouth. The more she drank, the more powerful she felt. “Have them deliver me to the king.”
Shun disappeared out of sight.
“You forgot your water bottle!” she called, but received no answer. “My water bottle now,” she said to herself, as the enchanted water within her began to whisper what she needed to do to become a queen.
Lagle listened.
Twenty-Eight
Constant worry about what the Queen would do to her nagged at Ava’s mind until she could scarcely sleep. In the garden the next day, she drowsed while her maids gossiped, until she heard a voice urgently calling her name.
“Princess Ava, you are summoned to the throne room.”
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