by Jane Yolen
Aspen took a closer at the guard’s face and a wide grin jumped to his lips. “Why, Gann! Do you not recognize me?”
Gann peered down at Aspen, who waited patiently until the spark of knowledge lit Gann’s face.
“By the ancient trees, Bran! Is that you?”
“Yes, brother, it is,” Aspen answered. Then he was engulfed in the older boy’s arms and he hugged him back. Both their shoulders were wet from tears, but their eyes were dry when they released the hug, both holding on until they had gotten their emotions under control. The other guards glanced away and made no comment.
“Mother will be overjoyed.” Gann held Aspen by the arms and looked at him. Frowning, he said, “You look hard-used by your travels. Did those Unseelie blackguards not send a proper escort when they released you? And when did they release you? I had not heard word.”
Aspen shook his head vigorously. “They did not release me, brother. I escaped. With war starting, I was to be executed.”
“War?” Gann scoffed. “There has been no hint of war.”
The guards behind him suddenly leaned into the conversation.
“But, I was told . . .”
“You were told wrong.” Gann’s voice was oddly cold.
The guards’ expressions suddenly changed as if they were suddenly on high alert. Their hands on the hafts of their spikes turned white at the knuckles.
Aspen couldn’t fathom it. Jack Daw had told him . . .
Jack Daw had lied.
The enormity of what the old drow had done hit Aspen like a troll’s fist and his knees buckled. It was Snail who grabbed his arm to steady him, and for once he did not shake her off.
“I . . . I . . .” he said, but couldn’t think of what to say further.
“We need to speak to Father.” Gann’s face gave nothing away. But his voice was no longer that of a brother’s. He sounded like a distant stranger. An enemy.
Aspen nodded mutely and, guided by Snail’s hand, trudged into the palace he had been ready to skip into just moments before.
* * *
THEY WALKED DOWN the long, polished halls and Aspen did not try to look around, remembering, but rather stared ahead as if to be certain he did not trip and fall. He wanted to be princely, stately, brave, for whatever lay ahead.
I will not think about it, he thought, though he could not help thinking, worrying, gnawing at the worry like a dog on an old bone, looking for meat where there was none.
When at last they entered the throne room, they were marching at a morose and slow pace, like a tiny funereal procession, just the five of them in order: Gann, Aspen, Snail, and the two guards from the gates. Aspen thought Gann had given the guards some kind of signal, for they had spread out a little, grasping their weapons in a way to be a little more ready.
As if I am a prisoner, not a returning son. Which, he supposed, he might be.
Unlike Gann, the queen recognized her youngest child at once.
“Bran!” she shouted. “Oh, my dearest Ailenbran!” She leapt off her throne and started toward him.
“Halt!” shouted the king. “What is the meaning of this?”
But his mother did not halt. Instead, she ran to his side and drew him to her with her left hand, the heart hand, to signal their connection, though not quite embracing him because they were, in fact, in the company of others.
His mother. She who had been so tall when he left was now shorter than he by several inches, though otherwise exactly as he remembered. Her thin features, softened by her kind nature, were still beautiful though centuries old. She had long red hair piled on her head in complex braids, and green eyes that had been written about in ballads because they were so unusual.
On the other hand, his father was sitting on the throne with his shoulders hunched, leaning forward and scowling—which was not what Aspen remembered of him. The king was extraordinarily fleshless for so powerful a man, and short for an elf, as if the crown weighed him down, stunting his growth. It looked especially heavy on him now as he frowned at Aspen, lips thin and bloodless beneath the white moustache.
Gann seemed about to speak, but Aspen stepped in front of him.
“I have returned, Father,” he said.
“Yes, I see that.” The king stood and looked about to step down from the dais, but quickly stopped himself. He shuddered slightly.
A mountain trembling, Aspen thought.
“But why, boy?”
Aspen slipped the leash of his mother’s grip and moved a step closer to the throne. “I was told that war was upon us.”
“You were told . . . ?” The king sat back down heavily. “Oh, Son, would that I had warned you of politics. But you were so young, and I thought they would not—could not—involve you.” He ran a hand through his thinning hair. Aspen was surprised to see how pink his father’s scalp showed beneath the white hair.
His father went on. “Still, Obs is not clever enough for this . . .”
“Jack Daw.” Aspen spit out the name as if it soured his mouth.
The king nodded. “Oh yes, Old Jack Daw. Peace always sits uneasily on that one’s shoulders. He is not so different from the rest of his drow clan. They eat their nest mates, you know. He has often come here to court to report on your condition and to try and foment rebellion against me. Only his status as Obs’s envoy has kept him safe from my assassins. This is his kind of game exactly.”
“Obs’s envoy?” Jack had never told me any of that. “I thought he was my friend.”
“You had no friends in that place. Would that I had warned you of that.”
“You may have, and I forgot,” Aspen said, wanting his father to have no guilt about what had happened, yet in a deeper part of his mind, wishing to make him feel guiltier.
“You were too young to understand. I said nothing.”
“So then, Father, what does this mean? I only came here because I wished to avoid execution.” Aspen tried to keep his voice even, but he knew it was on the verge of breaking. As was he.
He tried to meet his father’s eyes, but the king looked away. So too did his mother, for she was busy giving the king a look that was half fury, half pleading.
“Do you not see, Son?” the king said, more to the wall than to Aspen. “You have brought the very thing you wanted to avoid upon yourself. And you may have doomed us all as well.”
For the first time, Aspen thought of something other than his own fate. Had he, indeed, a prince of the Seelie folk, brought disaster to his own realm? He could not believe it was true. He could not live should it be true.
Not being privy to Aspen’s inner thoughts, the king now spoke to Gann not as his son but as the captain of the guards. “Ailenbran is your prisoner. He has brought war to a land woefully unprepared for it and has traitorously broken his word to his monarch. And as that injured monarch, I must do as the law prescribes.”
Looking aghast, Gann just nodded. The two guards stepped to either side of Aspen and grabbed his arms roughly.
“Father?” Aspen said, not trusting his voice to say anything more.
“I do remember telling you this one thing long ago, Son,” the king said, almost too softly to hear. “Perhaps you have forgotten. War does not call, it commands.”
“Even kings and queens must do as it demands,” Aspen finished for him.
His father finally met his gaze and Aspen dared him to look away. “And now it demands my life?”
The king did not move or speak for a short few moments, then finally nodded. “It is the only thing that may stop the war. A war we cannot win.”
“Is that certain, sir?” Aspen managed to keep the terror out of his voice, and that surprised him.
“The armies are not ready. The mages are not ready. The people are not ready.”
And I am not ready, Aspen thought, but kept that to himself. Ins
tead he asked, “But the Unseelie are?” He already knew the answer.
“You can wager that Jack Daw would not have made this move otherwise.”
Aspen thought desperately. “But what of your Unseelie hostage, Prince Nobo?”
The king shook his head. “You have killed him as well if Obs marches to war.”
Aspen nodded. He looked around the throne room. It looked much smaller than he remembered. But then again, he had been much smaller the last time he had been here. “My life has never been my own, has it?”
“That is the curse of rule, Ailenbran,” the king said. “We serve the people even more than they serve us.” He spoke over Aspen’s head to Gann. “Take him to the dungeon. And his companion as well. She will hang with him.”
“What?” With a great heave, Aspen shook off the arms that held him. He stopped short of drawing his sword. “No, sire! If it is the curse of rule, then I shall do what I must for the good of the kingdom and the people.” He looked at Snail, who, he was overjoyed to see, was glaring at the king for having the gall to condemn her. “But she rules nothing.”
The king shrugged. Aspen thought it a very unkingly gesture. “What of it? She traveled with a traitor, she must die with one.”
“Father, grant me this boon. She knew nothing of this. She may have been helping a traitor. But she did not know that. She thought she was helping a friend.”
Snail shot him a look as he said that. For once her glance was soft, not glaring. He wondered if he dared call her a friend. He had never had one before. He wondered if a prince could befriend . . . It was too hard to think about.
Turning back to his father, he said, “Grant me this boon, sire, and I will go to my fate knowing that I did one thing right in my short time in this land.”
The king stared at Aspen as if seeing him for the first time. Then he stood and bowed deep and low. “You are truly noble, young sir, and I am proud to call you my son.” To the guards he said, “Take him away. The girl goes to the kitchens for employment.”
“I am a midwife, Majesty,” Snail protested.
He waved her away. “You are not a midwife in this land.”
SNAIL’S TIME OUT
It took only one guard to show Snail the kitchen, but he was enough. His very presence, the sharpened pike, the sword at his side, the dagger in his sock, the fact that she didn’t know her way around the palace’s twisty halls, all ensured that she did not try to escape.
He spoke little to her except to bark out instructions like Right! Left! Down those stairs! And all done in quick-march time.
She said nothing in return, but followed everything he told her to do. She feared what would happen if she didn’t. Along the way, she stumbled twice, and each time he grabbed her roughly by the shoulder and righted her. She could still feel his fingerprints burning her shame and fear into her skin.
As they walked—trotted, actually—she marveled at how much the Seelie castle did—and did not—remind her of the castle at the Unseelie Court. There, of course, she knew every level, from the basement dungeons to the turrets. She knew the turning of every walkway. Had known them from childhood up.
Well, not every bit of it, she reminded herself. She’d never been in the royal chambers or the council chambers. Or the constable’s lodgings. But she knew the girls who cleaned all of those, and she certainly knew where the places were and how to get there. And she had had a peek into the guards’ quarters once, before escaping from an overamorous and slightly drunk young guard, who, the very next day, she saw in manacles being paraded around the yard. For being drunk on duty, not for trying to snatch a kiss from an accident-prone apprentice midwife, of that she was sure.
This castle had dungeons, in one of which Prince Aspen was currently residing. Though residing is a strange way of putting it. And a throne room. And hallways and stairways and airways—those narrow arrow slits in the walls. Exactly like King Obs’s palace. But this one was also, somehow, lighter, fancier, less military, less . . . she struggled to think of the word, then had it. Less overpowering.
In fact, it seemed an inviting place.
Or it had seemed an inviting place until the king had thrown his own son in the dungeon because Aspen had tried to escape being executed by the king’s own enemy, which—to Snail—made no sense. But when did the toffs make sense? They just made gold, made merry, and made war. And the ones who suffered were the underfolk.
All right, so it had seemed inviting until I was sent to the kitchen, she thought sourly. But that’s still better than being in the dungeon.
* * *
THE KITCHEN WAS on the lowest level and built, the guard explained, into the hillside. So there were windows on one side, overlooking a sheer drop down to a deep, black lake. The other side of the kitchen was a simple wall. Simply stone and simply several feet thick throughout.
The guard pointed toward the lake. “Dragons,” he said. He had a voice that seemed filtered through his rather large and rather bulbous nose.
Being Unseelie and used to hearing about awful things the Seelie folk had, Snail believed him.
“Very fast, very mean, very hungry dragons.”
She believed that, too.
“So don’t try to escape, girl. There’s only the road. We guard the road.”
“I thought I wasn’t a prisoner,” she said, “just kitchen help.”
He grunted, which wasn’t an answer. Or perhaps it was. She couldn’t be sure.
The head cook came over to see who she was.
“King wants her here,” said the guard. And then he turned and left. It seemed all the instruction he’d been given and—having passed it on—he was done with his duty.
The head cook looked like a pale dumpling, his face and body in doughy folds. His eyes were black raisins, his mouth strangely red, like a berry plumped into that doughy white face. “What do you know about kitchens?” he asked. It was like hearing an uncooked dumpling speak.
“I know how to eat,” she said.
“Hmmmmmmfff!”
“I am an apprentice midwife,” she added.
“No use for a midwife in the kitchen.” The berry mouth turned sour.
“I’ll be sure to mention that to the king when next I see him,” Snail said.
“King wants you here, here you stay,” he told her, unaware that she had tried to make a joke. “Just keep out of my way, and out of the way of my cook boys, pot boys, and serving boys.”
She looked around and noticed the bustle of pot boys toiling at the stone sinks. The cook boys, too, were hard at work within the ample jaws of the two arched fireplaces, where—she was sure—whole trees could have been burned for cooking meat. It was too early in the day for many serving boys to be about. But except for her own presence, there were no other females in the kitchen, not at all like the kitchen in the Unseelie Court where half the servers and some of the cooks were women and girls.
Before she could wonder further, the head cook said, “Remember, stay out of my way or I’ll stick an apple in your mouth and serve you for supper!”
She believed him, too.
* * *
TWICE DURING THE afternoon she’d tried to head for an open door and both times was stopped roughly. The first time was by a pot boy who—alerted by a server—tripped her, and she fell, bruising her shoulder.
The other time happened when she noticed that no one was watching her. She strolled slowly and casually in a large circle around the central carving table as if just stretching her legs. She’d almost reached the door when a pot was hurled—she never saw who threw it. The pot hit her in the back of the head and felled her as if she was a pin in a game of tall pins.
She didn’t try to escape a third time. After that, she just sat on the perch she was given and tried to stay awake.
Now, all Snail’s life she’d been busy, whether she did a
job well or poorly. She had never been left on her own. But here she’d nothing to do except worry about getting in the doughy cook’s way, worry about being served for supper, and worry about Prince Aspen. All that worrying almost drove her crazy. So, she did the only thing she could—she fell asleep.
When all the kitchen work was done, the boys all off to bed and the tapers and lanterns and torches snuffed out, the doughy cook, with the last taper in hand, noticed her, dozing in the corner.
“Girl!” he said, poking her with a wooden spoon as if he’d sully himself if he touched her with a finger.
She opened her eyes.
“You sleep here. I will lock you in.”
“But . . .” she began. At home she had a bed, a place to bathe, covers.
At home she had a candle by her bedside and a cup of water.
At home . . .
And then she remembered that if she were at home, she would be in prison awaiting execution. Or she might have already been executed and awaiting burial. Or already buried and awaiting worms.
She shuddered and said nothing more, simply watched as he went out, and then breathed a sigh when she heard the three clicks of his keys.
For a minute she thought she would be crushed by the dark in this unfamiliar place. But then she saw that through the narrow windows she could see the stars.
And the moon.
They were a comfort of sorts.
She found the stub of a candle and managed to light it with an ember from the remains of the fire in the left-hand hearth.
* * *
THREE TIMES SNAIL went around the room, seeing what she could in the candlelight, worried that the candle would burn out before her tour of the place was done. But then she found four more candle stubs and lit them one after another from the first.
The room was too solidly built, the windows too narrow to slip through. And even if she could get through, she was too high over the lake and would be killed in the fall. And even if the fall didn’t kill her, and even if she could swim across the lake, there were those pesky dragons.
So, she thought, escape is off the menu. Though, she feared, she might still be on.