His Royal Whiskers

by Sam Gayton

  “I’ll come back,” she whispered. “I’ll save you all. I promise.”

  Pieter nodded, a lump in his throat. Alexander dipped his head. His great green-flecked eyes were speckled with tears and pain, like cathedral windows in the rain.

  “Halt!” cried Sir Klaus, sword at Pieter’s neck. “Halt, or he dies!”

  “Let her go, fool!” roared the Czar from under Alexander’s paw. “The Tallymaster’s our only hostage—kill him and I’m doomed! Ugor and Lord Xin will deal with the girl!”

  As the Warmaster and Heirmaster sprinted down the hall, Teresa ran to the roaring fireplace. She threw her Alchemaster robes on the flames to smother them just long enough for her to scrabble up the chimney. As Ugor reached the hearth, Teresa dumped a pocketful of cobflour back down the flue.

  The white puff ignited—an enormous fireball burped from the hearth—and there was the sharp reek of burning hair. Ugor roared and toppled backwards, swatting at his knotted beard that had caught fire. Lord Xin sheared it off at the chin with his dagger, and stamped the flaming beard out on the floor.

  When at last all the smoke cleared, Teresa Gust was gone.

  Pieter never saw her again.

  Not while they were both still alive, anyway.

  3

  In the Gloom Room

  At first, the Gloom Room did not seem as bad as the other cells in the Czar’s dungeon. It was not freezing cold, nor pitch-dark, nor was it full of things that shuffled over the floor and nibbled at your toes. It had no bars and no chains. Parts of it were almost comfortable. There was a fireplace, a rug. Even armchairs.

  And yet the Gloom Room was, without a doubt, the most horrible and inescapable prison in all of Petrossia.

  What was horrible about the Gloom Room was the smell.

  It was a heavy, stifling stench that covered your face like a damp towel. A smell that sank your spirits and lowered your head and sent the tears spilling from your eyes.

  It was the smell, believe it or not, of defeat.20

  Defeat was in the gray carpet and the faded armchairs. It was in the beige wallpaper and the rust of the window bars and the way the fireplace did nothing but smolder and wheeze. It had wriggled into everywhere and everything, and if you were down in the Gloom Room, it was only a matter of time before it wriggled into you too.

  Breathing it in, defeat would settle deep down in your chest, gnawing and nibbling away at the fighting part of you, until eventually you lay down and surrendered. You gave up your escape plans, handed over all hope, and you never thought of your freedom again.

  No one had ever escaped from the Gloom Room.

  Pieter and Amna had been prisoners in there, all through Welkin and Worsen.

  “Wake up,” Amnabushka said, elbowing him in the ribs.

  Pieter groaned. He let the old sweep jab him. It was too much of a struggle to do anything now but lie in his armchair. “I am up,” he said.

  “Open those eyes then.”

  “I can’t.” Each word was a battle that was a little harder to fight. “My eyelids have given up. They keep sliding shut. I can’t stop them.”

  “Tie your eyelashes to your eyebrows.”

  He tried. “My fingers have surrendered.”

  “So learn how to tie with your toes!” Amna whacked him hard. “I’m thousands of miles old, and you don’t see me surrendering!”

  Somehow, Pieter managed to force his eyes open and sit up. It took all his strength to stop himself from slumping back into his seat.

  “This will cheer you up,” Amna said, pointing outside. “Look.”

  Pieter peered past the frosted windowpane. Out in the freezing cold courtyard, guards were rolling a red carpet from the gate to the Hall of Faces, and an orkestar was playing carols. The musicians were practicing “The Forest Raised a Yuletide Tree,” really fast so their fingers didn’t freeze up and drop off. Crowds of Petrossia folk, wrapped up in reindeer hides, had gathered to watch. Banners were unfurling from the gatehouse towers and flapping in the wind like flayed skins. The spiked heads above the gate were decorated with iron tinsel.

  Preparations for Yuletide: the day that marked the end of winter and the start of spring. Had they really been in the Gloom Room so long? Pieter had lost track of the date weeks ago. For the first time ever, he didn’t count the days. There was no point. Each one was the same but a little worse.

  Every time he opened his eyes now, the Gloom Room looked a little more depressing. The wallpaper seemed more faded and curling; the armchairs, tattier; Amna’s smile, a little thinner. She kept touching the emptiness at the end of her plaits. Lord Xin had cut all the charms from her hair. With them had gone her magic.

  At Pieter’s feet, Bloodbath whimpered and whined. The poor poodle’s ransom was still too high for the Duke of Madri to pay, and so the Czar had tossed him into the Gloom Room along with them.

  Most miserable-looking of all was Alexander. Though he was far too big to fit in the Gloom Room, Pieter still saw him every day. Each morn at six, the whole palace would tremor from enormous stomping footsteps, and the prince would appear in the courtyard and gaze in through the window at them. Pieter would pull back the curtains and stare back at the enormous green eyes outside to prove that he was still the Czar’s hostage. Alexander would dip his head each time, and mewl louder and sadder than the wind moaning down the chimney.

  “There’s still hope,” Amna whispered in his ear. “There’s still my Patra.”

  That was true. Teresa had somehow not been caught and imprisoned along with them. Where could she be? Where had she gone? Pieter didn’t know the answer. Not because there wasn’t one, but because there were too many. For rumors are like sunrises, or tides upon the shore: no sooner do you count them all, there comes along one more.

  This is what the guards whispered to themselves outside:

  She was somewhere in Petrossia, she was a hundred miles away. Lord Xin was after her—no, she was after him. She had escaped a prison in Port Xanderberg, she was alive and well in Albion. She wore a white priest’s gown, she had dyed her hair brown. She was coming to free the serfs, she was sailing west forever. She could turn into a cat. Grow enormous. Change the weather.

  An alchemist? That wasn’t true. She was a hero. Villain too. She was Petrossia’s doom. Its savior. She had a friend, but he betrayed her. She’s harder to catch than Sir Klaus! She’s tougher than Ugor by far! Could it even be that she is mightier than the Czar?

  On the rumors went. On and on.

  Pieter had never quite believed in infinity. A number that can’t be counted? It didn’t add up. Still, there were several things that even mathemagicians quietly refused to keep an exact tally of and used vague terms for, like “masses,” “oodles,” and “umpteen.”

  The stars in the sky, or water in the ocean, or leaves in the forests.

  To this list, Pieter found himself adding: rumors about Teresa Gust. And no matter how many he heard the guards whisper to one another outside the Gloom Room door, Pieter could never have enough. He strained his ears now, as the soldiers stationed by the door muttered.

  “I heard she’s in Albion, turning seagulls into soldiers with that alchemy of hers.”

  “That’s all tittle-tat. The Warmaster chased her out onto the Waste, where the winds froze her solid.”

  Pieter shivered, and beside him Amna put a hand on his knee. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “That’s not true. I know that girl. Endless pockets, and ever another idea.”

  “She’s the best player of hide-and-seek I know,” said Pieter. As always, thinking of Teresa helped ward off the despair. “That has to help, doesn’t it?”

  “That it must. She knows how to stay hidden. Been doing it since the day she was born.”

  A thought occurred to Pieter. He still had not given up thinking, it seemed.

  “You know where Teresa’s from,” he said.

  Amna hesitated. “Don’t.”

  “You do. ‘Been doing it since the day she wa
s born,’ you said.”

  “Didn’t.”

  “Liar. Tell me the truth.”

  “She’s a lunar baby.”

  “I’ve heard that one.”

  “She’s a bald monkey, and there was a coconut that she hatched from.”

  Pieter shook his head. “You’re not even telling that one right. She’s a bald monkey born at the top of a palm tree, and a big gale blew her down the chimney. . . .”

  He trailed off.

  A big gale . . .

  “When we first met, you said you’d had three names, and three lives,” Pieter said. “Before Amnabushka, you were Baba Gale, and before Baba Gale, you were a girl from Albion called . . .”

  Amnabushka opened her mouth, then drew her lips tight like a drawstring purse.

  “Abigail!” Pieter sat up, gasping. “A-big-gail blew her down the chimney! The story was a clue! You’re her mother!”

  Amna whacked him again, but only lightly. “Charmer. Count my wrinkles, Tallymaster. I’m old enough to be her great-grandbaba.”

  Pieter scrutinized her closely. “Are you?”

  “No!”

  He sank back into his armchair. For a moment he felt like he’d almost solved the mystery of Teresa’s origins. He supposed it would be pretty strange if Amna called her granddaughter her “Patra.” He’d looked up the word, way back in Welkin—it came from Eglyph, and it meant “She Who Is Chosen.”

  “I’m going back to sleep, then,” he sighed. “There’s nothing worth staying up for—”

  “No!” Amna’s cry didn’t even startle Bloodbath, who had evidently given up on being awake too. “If you go to sleep, you won’t wake up, will you? You’ll surrender completely, and the Pale Traveler will come to take your soul! I know it!”

  Pieter said nothing. He listened to her think.

  “If I tell you the truth, will you stay awake to listen?”

  Pieter fluttered his eyes open a little, so she would know he would.

  “Promise?” She shook him by the shoulders. “Swear?”

  He mustered a nod.

  “All right, then,” Amna said quietly. Her eyes flicked over to the door. No one was listening. Not even Bloodbath.

  “Teresa’s not one of the wildfolk,” she began. “She was born here.”

  That made him turn his head toward her. That made his eyelids raise a little higher. “In Petrossia?” he croaked.

  “In the Winter Palace,” she said, and he could hear how pleased she was that her story was helping him stand firm and fight the defeat seeping into him.

  Pieter let out a huff and turned away on his side. “You’re lying again,” he said. “No one’s born here.”

  “Alexander was,” said Amna.

  “Yeah,” Pieter said with a snort, “but he’s royalty. . . .”

  Suddenly he was awake. Suddenly he was sitting up. Suddenly he was staring. Amnabushka looked back at him with wide, unblinking eyes.

  “Yes, Alexander is royalty,” she said. “He’s also Teresa’s brother.”

  * * *

  20. If you are wondering what defeat smells like, you could spend a day trying to race a cheetah, wrestle a bear, and outstare a goldfish. By midday, you’ll know what defeat smells like: you.

  4

  The Tale of Teresa Gust

  In all the Hall of Faces, there was not one picture of a queen. Not one single czarina. All down the wide wall, in every gilded picture frame, the Iron Crown of Petrossia sat on a king’s head. It had passed from father to first-born son for a thousand years.

  This explains why the Empire was such a dreadful place.

  It also explains why, when Princess Teresa Augusta Fabergé the First (to give Teresa her full name) was ten minutes old, she was already being lowered down the chimney.

  “You better be a boy,” the Czar told the bump.

  The Czarina looked down at her belly. “Why must she?”

  “He, my love,” corrected the Czar. “Why must he. Because girls are weak, and boys are strong. I must have a son to wear my crown.”

  The Czarina laughed at her husband’s nonsense. How could girls be weak, when she herself was the greatest warrior in Petrossia? Had she not been the one who had come across the Boreal Sea from Albion, and surprised the Czar during the Yuletide feast, and—with nothing but her smile—conquered the hidden kingdom of his heart?

  “Perhaps my love is right,” said the Czar, glancing nervously around at his War Council behind him. He was a younger king back in those days, not yet turned cruel by his crown and conquests. “What does it matter if he comes out, and he has decided to be a she?”

  But his War Council all frowned, and the Warmaster yanked his knotted beard to show his anger.

  “Czars have sons,” said Ugor. “Not puny daughters.”

  “It is a tradition not even alchemy can change,” said Alchemaster Blüstav. “It will be hard for you to keep your crown unless you have a son for an heir.”

  “Do not worry, Sire,” said Lord Xin with sickly sweetness. “When the baby comes to be born, I am sure Her Majesty the Czarina will take care of everything.” He smiled his dark smile. “Or we will have to.”

  Now the Czarina was no longer laughing. It was not the Czar she was afraid of. She knew her husband’s temper long before she had decided to make him marry her. He was like a spring storm—all bluster and howls, but with her, his raging never lasted. Soon he would be all soppy again, his fragile smile appearing from beneath his mustache like the Bloom sun from behind a cloud.

  These men, though, were different. Their hearts were ugly swamps she would not want to conquer even if she could, and they were as cold and cruel as this country’s winter.

  The Czarina did not know what they might do to her daughter, for it was a daughter she carried and not a son. Her handmaid Amnabushka had told her so. It was Amna who had read the freckles on the back of the Czarina’s hand, and sang them the magic song until they moved across the skin and made the shape of the hieroglyph for girl-child.

  “Amnabushka,” she said, summoning her handmaid once the War Council had left her chambers. “What can I do?”

  Amna touched the wooden key tied into her hair, as if it might unlock the answer. Then suddenly, she spoke: “There is a way, my Patra. Not an easy one. A hard path, both for you and the child.”

  The Czarina gripped Amna’s hand tight. “Tell me.”

  That night, Amnabushka put on her peekaboo, left the Royal Chamber, and headed down to the kitchens. There amongst the shelves, she searched the crates until she found the vials of food dyes. They glinted on the rack, arranged from blood-red to deep-sea blue, and every shade of color in between, like a rainbow divided up and bottled.

  Amna picked a blue the color of starlight, and a shade of moon white. Then she stole away a saucepan from a hook above the stoves, and hurried back upstairs to the Czarina.

  A week later the bump stirred, and decided to be born.

  Whilst the Czar paced anxiously back and forth outside the Royal Chambers, waiting to meet his son, the Czarina said good-bye to the daughter she cradled in her arms. She kissed her baby’s little forehead. Teresa snuffled in her sleep.

  “My Patra,” her handmaid whispered. “We must hurry.”

  The Czarina bent her head, and her tears rolled down her chin and dropped on the cheeks of her daughter. Teresa woke from her first sleep, blinking those wide green eyes—the eyes of her father.

  “My Patra,” said Amna again. “It has to be now. If the men come in and see her . . .”

  She did not have to say it. The Czarina knew that she must break her own heart so that Teresa’s might have a chance to keep on beating. And so she let her handmaid lift the baby away, and take Teresa to the ashen fireplace, where the grapple lay winched to a saucepan.

  Before Amna put the lid on, she unscrewed the bottle of colorings and raised up the pipette. One drop, two drops squeezed and fell like tears. Teresa scrunched up her face and started to wail. Her eyes were gre
en no longer—now they were the color of starlight. The crown of her head was lathered in the moon white, until Teresa’s hair was the same as Amna’s. Now the princess had become a wildfolk slave.

  Amnabushka murmured the saying, said to all Baba Sisters: “Many miles may you live.” Then, quickly, before the men heard the crying, Amna put the saucepan lid on. Taking up the rope, she lowered Petrossia’s true heir down into the kitchens.

  “She will be safe, my Patra,” Amna said. “I will see to it. Dry those eyes. Despair not. A day will come when she will rise out of the kitchens, and come seeking her mama true.”

  The Czarina did not reply. She sat looking down at her arms, where Teresa had lain in all her lightness.

  “Prepare the room,” she said at last. “Inform the Czar of the tragedy.”

  Amna moved to draw the curtains, and dim the room. Out from the wardrobe, she took the black mourning dresses.

  By the banks of the Ossia, they buried a casket full of stones. It was said amongst the Petrossia folk that the Czarina’s joy had died along with her child, and it was true that her smile—the greatest weapon in all the land—was after that time like a sword set in stone that no one could draw out.

  She could no longer bring herself to love the Czar. To her, he was not the strongest of men, but the weakest. If he were truly mighty, he would not care for old and foolish traditions. He would not have lost a daughter for want of a son. He would not have broken his wife’s heart for want of an heir.

  The Czarina, in her sadness and anger, began to rule the kingdom of the Czar’s heart with careless neglect, not caring if she was queen there or not, and so she did not notice the darker, crueler love creeping in to replace her: the love of conquering.

  She even began to encourage the Czar to march off with his armies on one of his wars, longing for the times he was away battling in far-off lands. For when that happened, the Czarina was alone in the Royal Chamber. Then, she could throw a grapple down the flue and winch Teresa up from the kitchens.