by Sam Austin
"Yeah. But see, he feels deeper than everyone else. Or maybe he just can't hide it as good." He strokes a palm over his head, making his hair stick up in messy black tufts despite its shortness. "I see him trying so hard to keep steady when he's around you. He wants you to be proud of him. But that's not right, because if you're going to be proud of him, you need to be proud of the real him. You need to let him be sad about the people he's lost. You need to like him for him, else I'm not sure who he's going to turn into."
"Alright. I'll talk to him." And say what, she doesn't know. But the thought of him turning into some cold distant stranger frightens her as much as it seems to do to Ness.
He narrows his eyes at her. "If you upset him-"
"You want him to show feelings. You don't want him to show feelings. Which is it?" She gives him a small smile which he doesn't return.
"I want him to be happy." The quiet seriousness behind the words takes her by surprise. He says it softly but earnestly, like it's a truth he's carried around for a long time.
A pang of guilt hits her in the chest. She hadn't realised how deep the friendship between the two boys was, and now it's strained because of her. "He put a lot of effort making sure you got the best care possible. He'll come around, even if it's only to be friends with you, not me."
Ness laughs and there's something self depreciating in it. "Yeah, well, he didn't have to go to such lengths. I mean, the head druid? And it was only a flesh wound. It's barely a scratch now."
Her heart stops. That was no flesh wound. "Is this your idea of a joke? Passing off that thing as scratch after that whole talk about Neven being allowed to show feelings?"
He looks like he's about to make an offhand comment when he catches a good look of her face. "You're serious?"
She nods. Never has she been more serious, because if Ness isn't playing then - she lets the thought trail off, not wanting to finish it.
He seems to struggle internally a moment, then wordlessly pulls his shirt up.
Underneath without even a bandage to cover it is a small pink scratch. Nothing like the open wound she'd seen that day. Not even the best medicine in the world could cause it to heal so rapidly. At least - not without magic.
Chapter 27
It's evening by the time she's finished her duties and downed a broth of some description. By all accounts it's a bad day. Another search with Gelert had shown no sign of barbarians, she's still no further into finding where Neven is, and Sir Julius knocked her down six times during practice.
But she's been turning questions around in her head all day, and she thinks she might know where to find some answers.
The feasting hall is empty. A few of the torches along the wall spring into life as she enters. Enough light to see by.
The highest pictures are hung at the height of a tall adult. With the help of a chair she examines them all. Several minutes later she growls with frustration.
How could she think this would give her any clues? Most of the pictures are of people long dead. There are hundreds of them, wrapping around half of the giant domed room.
No. She has to be sensible about this. What would Neven do?
She scans through the pictures again. There has to be some kind of order.
At last she sees it, and it's so head slappingly obvious. The first picture is of a woman bearing some resemblance to King Robin. The lines are less well trained than the later pieces, but there's a light-hearted warmth to it that the others don't reach.
She's one of the very few women up here, and Boone can't help but wonder who she was. His mother? There's not much said about King Robin's mother. History assumes she's not important. The careful brush strokes that build up the beautiful unsmiling woman disagree.
The first picture sits on the top row of the start of the paintings. She's about to skip to the other end of the room to see if her guess of the order is correct, when she sees it. Directly below the woman is another picture, this one of a group of young girls.
None are older than ten, and each looks happy and well loved. They're positioned in a peculiar way. It's only when she leans close on the very edge of the chair that she recognises it. They're playing. Rough housing like boys.
Only, that's not all that's unusual about the picture. One of the girls is missing, her form covered over in white paint.
She frowns, then hops off the chair, dragging it to the end of the mass of pictures. Here and there the paintings hold erased figures, struck from this museum of living memory. Shelves stick out from between pictures, holding trinkets. This entire room is a family cabinet, she realises. The kind of cabinet it takes a thousand years to build.
The very last picture is of the head druid, six page boys gathered around him like chicks to a hen. She recognises the dead boy as one of the younger ones, and the very youngest as the one who had helped the druid in the throne room, but the older faces are unfamiliar.
Above is a picture of the same druid with a different set of boys. Three pictures above that, the same thing. Only - no. Not the same thing. Another of those erased figures stands tall beside the head druid. The white paint slashes angrily over his face and chest, stopping short of the children lined up in front of him.
He's not tall, but his defined muscles suggest adult. Something makes her eyes flick up, looking for the previous painting in this sequence. There the painted out man is again, this time little more than a boy. This young his arms are almost as weedy as Neven's, and his chest just as narrow.
Another picture back and he's standing in the row of children, easily the smallest of the lot of them. None are robust children, she notices with a start. As far back as she can see, all the many children painted with the eternally old head druid seem delicate in some way. A few have deformities. A club foot here, a child with no eyes there.
Where did they go? She looks through picture after picture of knights, but finds none who resemble the boys. Then she sees it.
A dragon's head, as big as a man's body. And beside it a kneeling knight, cloak a stark red against his light coloured armour. He's a different man than the one standing in the head druid's paintings. Taller, broader, with fairer skin.
His face is painted out, but she recognises him from the sword hanging at his hip. Her father's sword.
The soft murmur of voices drags her attention away from the painting. She's not sure how long she's been standing here, balanced on the chair, staring at it. In truth, she might still be staring at it, voices or not. Except for one thing.
One of the voices is Neven's.
The other she's not sure of. A woman's voice, but rough and strained with age. Then a child's voice, high and indeterminate of gender.
Boone jumps softly off the chair, running to peer out the gold etched doors. She's in time to catch a glimpse of Neven at the top of the stairs before he disappears from sight.
Cursing inwardly, she charges after him. The staircase is giant, winding all the way up from the first floor to the sixth where the King's chambers are. Too many stairs for someone like her who hasn't used them in years.
Worst of all, every one is marble. She's lucky she managed to find a solid pair of leather shoes. If she still had her cloth pair she'd be slipping and sliding everywhere.
She clambers up the wide steps, glad the feasting hall is on the second floor. That makes a total of four flights of stairs they could climb. Three really, since it's unlikely they're going to the King's chambers.
Glancing up, she sees them exit the top of the spiral staircase, on the fourth floor. Neven, and in front of him a glimpse of robes. The head druid? The child's voice must be one of his aides, and the woman's a maid of some sort.
They turn toward the right wing.
She continues up, faster now she doesn't need to check what direction they're heading. Something inside her asks herself why she hasn't called out. There's no guarantee she'd be heard. The palace is less kind to echoes than it looks like it should be given the expanse of white marble.
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That's not the real reason. The truth is, she wants to know what Neven is doing with the head druid. She wants to know why neither she nor Ness have heard from him in so long.
She rounds a corner messily, not used to her new shoes. She's never had boots before. Only stupid dainty things she'd abandoned for bare feet, and practical but flimsy cloth pairs or thin leather. She'll love them. She can tell, but only after she's done colliding with walls.
There's no sign of them. She walks cautiously down the long corridor, glancing dubiously at the doors. Something off the corridor catches her eye. A shadowed archway with a tightly spiralled wooden staircase behind it. It leads up to the fifth floor where the bedrooms are, but she’s never seen this staircase. Tucked so out of the way, she’s not sure she’s supposed to.
Taking a deep breath, she peers up into the shadows above. Nothing. Yet something tells her this is the way they went. A tension in the air that tastes of lightning storms and ice cold winters. Her father had told her to use her brain, but never ignore her instincts. The brain part she’s not that good at. Neven is her brain, but she hears the instincts loud and clear.
She starts up the stairs, wincing at the way her new boots clomp on the wood. It’s a small sound, but to her it sounds like an entire band of musicians signalling her arrival. At the top, two marble hallways lead off, one in front of her, and the other to her right.
The hallway in front is cleaner, the torches brighter, with a vase of flowers placed carefully on a small table that matches the marble floor and walls. She hesitates, then moves to the right hallway. The nearest torch flares up as she gets close, as bright as the ones lining the other hallway.
She backtracks, walking quickly down the cleaner corridor. The torches barely flicker. They’ve already been activated by the ones who walked this path before her.
A single door to her left, just after the vase of dead flowers. And beyond that - nothing. A black wall marks the end of the corridor, starkly different from the white marble surrounding it.
She sighs. A dead end. She’d been so sure this was the right way. Unless…
“Boone?”
She starts at the voice, and turns.
Alice leans out of the doorway, a thick gown huddled around her shoulders. Her dainty nose wrinkles in puzzlement. "What are you doing outside my room?"
***
A boy loitering outside a princess's bedroom. Heat burns her cheeks. "Uh. You don't happen to have Neven and the head druid hiding in your room?"
Alice shakes her head, black ringlets bobbing. "You can come in and look if you like."
"I better not-"
"Come on." Alice grabs her arm, and with surprising strength pulls her through the doorway.
Boone stumbles, knocking the vase. It teeters but doesn't fall. There's a sharp snapping sound as one of the withered flowers breaks apart. Alice doesn't seem to notice, which is good. She knows how fond the princess is of her plants.
Though, being a boy she should be able to rip apart every last plant in the circle without Alice protesting. Being a boy, she also shouldn't expect to be manhandled by a girl.
The room is almost an exact copy of the tower. Every surface is covered in plants. They hang from the wardrobe, sit like pets around her bed, even sit among her shelves full of toys. Plant next to exquisite china doll, as if they were an equal source of entertainment.
The tingling that spreads over her body is the same too. She huffs in annoyance as her skin takes on a scrubbed raw feeling. Her teeth turn as smooth as glass in her mouth, and her hair transforms into something silky and smooth. At least it doesn't curl.
"It's not so bad, is it?" Alice asks, closing the door. "Being clean?"
She's not sure how to explain it. The warm smell of dirt and dragon. The small nicks her clothing gathers throughout the days, like a story of all the things she's done.
All those against the painful memories of her mother's cold face and stiff hands, as she'd scrubbed her wayward child back into something more acceptable. There's no contest.
"It is when I don't have a choice," she says simply. She distracts herself by taking a closer look at the room. Still no Neven. He must have gone down the other corridor. It'll be too late to catch him now.
The plants near the door are dead.
Alice sees her looking. "My father likes plants. He says they're beautiful, and fragile. If you don't protect them, take care of them, they die so easily."
Boone glances at her. There's something in her tone that tells her she's not just talking about plants.
There's a red mark on the girl's cheek. The shadowed hallway must have covered it, but here in the brightly lit bedroom the puffed edges stand out against her smooth white skin.
Boone utters a word that shouldn't be said in front of princesses. Grasping the girl's chin, she tilts her head for a better look. A hand caused this. An open hand, not a closed fist. It's a small consolation that they're smacking her instead of punching her. They shouldn't be doing either.
"I misspoke," Alice says in that calm, detached tone. It's a world of difference away from the excitable girl she's met at the tower. "I forgot my place. I'm always doing that. Back home - with the dragon - I didn't have a place. And then with you and Neven, I was a friend. I was excited to come back and be a woman, but now. I want to be me. I don't know why everyone thinks that's bad."
Boone steps away. "It's not."
"That's why I was so happy when Father told me we were to marry. Because you're different. So you'll let me be different. I mean, I don't want to be a knight. I like being a girl, but we could talk once in a while, couldn't we? Like friends, instead of a man and a woman?"
Boone blinks. "Alice," she says carefully. "Do you know what I am?"
"I know what Ness said," Alice says, looking more hesitant now. "About how you used to be a girl. But you chose to be a boy. So I can do some of those things, can't I? I can speak my mind, and make my own decisions. Right?"
She looks so hopeful that Boone finds herself nodding, ignoring the crawling terror of someone knowing her secret. "Yes. You can."
Alice gives her a watery smile. "That's why I'm glad you said yes. I know I'm not strong like you, but the idea of a life with you helped me realise I could be stronger than I am. Even if we don't wed, that means everything."
Boone shifts uncomfortably. "But you won't say anything - about me?"
"Never. You're my friend." Alice smiles, a mischievous glint in her green eyes. "Not even if they order me to."
Cautious relief washes over her. Neven would trust Alice to keep her word, so she thinks she can too.
Alice tugs at her sleeve, guiding her to the foot of the bed where a large dollhouse sits on the marble floor. "Do you play?"
It's a question Boone doesn't know the answer to. Anything with swords, and she'd answer yes. Part of her hopes Ness will come around to the idea of her being a boy, so she can try the rough and tumble games he liked so much. But girl's games? She hadn't played them right even when she was a girl. Her own dollhouse had been taken away after she'd burned one of the dolls for treason.
Alice lowers herself to the ground, sighing as she slips off her flimsy slippers. "Come see. You'll like it."
Boone crouches warily, and gestures at Alice's feet. "Are you hurt all over?"
The girl's feet are swollen, the soles raw wounds. Boone isn't sure how she can stand on them, let alone walk.
Alice shrugs. "It's from our journey here. The scrubbing isn't helping them heal, but it made the infection go away at least. Here. Look. Do you recognise it?"
Boone looks, finding it difficult to tear her eyes away from that raw flesh. She'd known Alice was having a tough time walking, but she didn't think she'd hurt herself that badly. She hadn't complained once.
She blinks. Then blinks again to make sure she's not seeing things. "It's the palace."
"Yes," Alice says brightly, pulling the front of the palace open. "Every bit of it." She tugs the two halves
, and they split apart again. Inside is a cross section of rooms. Each one tiny to show as much detail as possible. Here and there dolls as small as fingernails are positioned around the carefully detailed furniture.
Boone leans in close. The doll in the feasting hall wears a little crown. It seems to be looking at the pictures on the wall, too tiny for her to make out.
"Did my father send those men who fought with your father?"
Boone startles at the question. She turns her head to look at Alice with wide eyes. "Yes." The words come out as barely a whisper.
Alice shuffles her hands over the roof, coming away with a thick piece of glass set in a metal ring. She hands it to her. "I'm sorry."
Boone pretends to analyse the object long after she identifies it as a magnifying glass. She holds it up to look at the little doll King's handsome features.
"What Gelert did. Why don't you hate him for that?"
Boone continues to take in the tiny details of the room. She doesn't look around. "He's family. The only one I have left from back then. You can't help but love family, even when you want to hate them."
"That's true," Alice says quietly.
The magnifying glass catches one of the pictures on the wall. From what she can tell it's exactly the same as from the room. Only...she could have sworn that one had been painted out.
An idea blooms inside her, white hot and brilliant. "Alice. When was this made?"
"Before I was born. My father had it made for my mother."
Boone swings the magnifying glass back to the beginning. The figure of the woman is there. Her face obscured with white the same as in the actual room. Some are still painted out, but maybe not all of them.
She moves the glass to the other end of the pictures. The last dozen or so paintings are missing. They hadn't been painted yet. Disappointment crashes through her when she can't find the painting of her father. Either he was still among the barbarians outside the circle, or he hadn't won the King's favour yet.
There's still one thing she wants to check.