Prisoner of the Crown

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “When I was brought to the Imperial Palace,” Petra ventured with some hesitation, continuing when I nodded at her in encouragement, “well, it was summer. So the lake showed blue as the sky, and the mountains reflected in it, their peaks blinding white.”

  I tried to imagine it. Couldn’t. The carriage paused, hails from the guards answered. I was ready this time, looking past the armored guard who opened the door, seeing what I could beyond him, drinking in the sight.

  “There are seven guard outposts on the bridge, as I recall,” Petra offered helpfully. “And one at the end. Then, if you ask, they might stop for us at the viewpoint, so you can look back on the Imperial Palace. It’s a stirring sight.”

  I didn’t care a bit about seeing the palace—well, it might be interesting, to get that perspective—but I’d take any opportunity to see outside that I could. So when the door opened the next time, I told the guard, in my best bored, imperial voice, to convey to King Rodolf that his queen requested we stop for the view of the Imperial Palace.

  We finished crossing the high bridge over the lake—I was able to catch a glimpse of it stretching behind us at the final guard outpost—and the carriage wheels changed cadence as we rolled onto a solid surface. The Dasnarian Empire’s famous granite roads, carefully cleared of snow for our passage. Ada had regaled us with that aspect of her journey, speaking of the workers who labored to scrape the snow away and pile it to the sides in towering walls.

  After a while, we stopped. A longer stop, by the muffled sounds from outside, men calling orders and the jingling of harness. The door opened and Rodolf stood there, clad in furs, his sickeningly polite smile pinned to his fleshy mouth.

  “My queen.” He gestured to the waiting chair and offered a hand. “Of course you must take in the view of your imperial home.”

  I had no choice but to touch him—worth it to see a little more—levering myself across the gap and into the chair. Snow had fallen on the footrest, burning my bare feet, and Petra jumped into the snow with no thought for her own bare feet, wrapping mine in one of the white furs.

  “Petra—your feet,” I scolded her, and she gave me a look of such pleading that I immediately felt terrible for it.

  “My queen, may I please see the view also?”

  She had no chair, but I could hardly refuse her. “Of course. We’ll find a way to warm you again.”

  One of the guards strode over and picked Petra up like a bundle of flowers. I expected her to stiffen or cry out in fear, but she giggled and kissed his cheek. “Alf! My hero,” she sighed, and he gave her a look of great affection.

  Another reason, perhaps, that Petra had been eager to leave the seraglio, if she’d found a man she liked among Rodolf’s guard. It gave me a strange, queasy feeling to imagine it. Despite what I’d said to Inga and Helva, I couldn’t imagine happily accepting a man’s touch, even if he seemed kind. Appearances could be deceiving, and bedroom doors muffled all sorts of cries.

  Rodolf led the way as two guards carried my chair. Pausing, he swept an arm at the horizon, stepping out of my way as he did. We looked down on the Imperial Palace from a rise, trees towering around us. The air smelled like … like nothing I’d ever smelled before. Bright, clean, impossibly fresh. Below, the flat basin that must be the frozen lake surrounded the gray stone Imperial Palace. It looked like the toy castles the little boys played with, and I wanted to stretch out a hand to see if I could touch it—though I knew that had to be a trick of distance.

  Towers upon towers, surrounded with walls, the bridge we’d crossed a flat line over stone arches that rose out of the field of white, studded with the guardposts we’d passed through. I scanned all the rest, embedding as much of the sight as I could in my memory. The deep forest, the rise of mountains, the sounds of wind like the breathing of women in the seraglio. They were all there, somewhere under that frozen water and piles of stone, warm in their secure prison.

  No wonder Ada had been so fascinated and appalled. Feeling full of a tumble of emotions, I sent her a burst of good wishes, sorry now that I’d refused to talk with her further. It wasn’t her fault that I’d been a blind fool. I wiped the tears away, finding them turned to ice crystals on my fingertips.

  “A moving sight, indeed,” Rodolf said, noting my tears. “We’ll be sure to stop for you to take in a similar vista at Castle Arynherk. Not as inspiring as the Imperial Palace, of course—nothing can match this grandeur—but it will be your home for the rest of your life.” He smiled at me, wrapping his hand around my wrist just above the wedding bracelet, where the metal edges cut most deeply into my flesh when he had me strung up for his pleasure, and squeezed until I whimpered. “It’s good to be taking my prize home with me, my reward for enduring your father’s oppressive rule. I’m going to enjoy every moment of our marriage. As long as it lasts, that is. Say goodbye, precious Jenna.”

  With a last squeeze and a glitteringly cruel smile, he strode away, boots leaving holes in the pristine snow.

  ~ 14 ~

  Do. You. Need. To. Be. Rescued.

  The question components began to sound like a chant in my mind with the brisk clop of horse hooves and the rhythm of the carriage wheels on the road. After all, this would be my opportunity. I was out of the seraglio, with no locked doors between me and the outside. No series of guard outposts to check my identity. Once inside Castle Arynherk, I would be that much farther from the outside again. So, this journey was likely my one opportunity to escape.

  But to where? This wasn’t a time to entertain myself with pretty fantasies. I had no illusions that I wouldn’t be immediately recognized. My wedding portrait had been done months before and sent throughout the empire. I’d received any number of gifts with my image replicated in embroidery or painted on cunning little boxes. Besides, I wore Rodolf’s ring and wedding bracelets, locked on so I couldn’t remove them myself. Even if I somehow concealed them, I’d have to show them to someone if I wanted them cut off, and then I’d be discovered.

  And that was if I managed to make it to a city or town. Which I’d have to because I would be entirely helpless to feed myself. I wore a fortune in jewels, but I couldn’t translate that to food and shelter without revealing my very obvious identity.

  Backing up from that, even if I managed to evade the small army of Rodolf’s entourage of armed guard, I’d be barefoot in deep snow, wearing only a silk klút. I supposed I could wrap myself in the furs, but I’d have to find a way to fasten them on and still I suspected that would last me only so long in the bitter temperatures. Even within the insulated carriage, the chill crept in. A servant had brought us a brazier of coals, which Petra tended with delight, as it helped a great deal to warm us.

  I eyed her as she stirred the coals, letting air in to circulate and brighten them to orange-red again. Would she betray me if I tried to fashion foot coverings from the furs mounded around us? Though I had no sewing supplies. I suspected, too, that the fur would only collect snow and weigh me down. I imagined myself, slogging through the knee-deep snow, struggling to lift my feet, clutching furs around me as Rodolf’s guards thundered behind.

  Terrifying thought. And still not so terrifying as my husband’s likely revenge for disobedience. He didn’t tolerate the least resistance from me. An actual escape attempt would be beyond the pale. I supposed I could hope he’d kill me outright in that eventuality. Though that would be improbable. He’d be more inclined to keep me chained up and kill me slowly at his leisure once we reached Castle Arynherk, using the tools and implements he’d described to me in excruciating detail.

  No, any escape attempt must be either completely successful or end in my immediate death. Any other outcome was unthinkable.

  But how? I had no idea how to do it. And that was supposing I’d develop the spine for it.

  Because I was aware, with every turn of those wheels, with every clopped-out repetition of what had become an accusation in my mi
nd—Do. You. Need. Rescue.—that from the moment Ada had asked me that question, I’d failed utterly to have any sort of courage or strength of will. Even before that. All those years my mother taught me to obey with unquestioning alacrity, cringing away from even the threat of punishment, I’d simply gone along.

  Maybe those vows Inga and Helva spoke to me had made it clear. They had a resolve I lacked. They’d promised to make things better and I thought they would. Meanwhile I sat meekly, aching from my husband’s cruel attentions, going along as I’d been told to do.

  I loathed myself for it.

  And I had no idea how to change any of it.

  * * * *

  We stopped at a castle that night, and the lord greeted us with excessive excitement, beyond thrilled to host the Imperial Princess, and King Rodolf, too. I recalled the lord vaguely from my debut party, but not much more than that. I disembarked from the carriage already inside the outer walls, though I eyed them as if I could scale them as I’d once climbed the date palms, clambering over and flying away.

  If I’d had more backbone, I wouldn’t have let my mother forbid me from such hoydenish games after Hestar and Kral left us. Perhaps if I’d kept up those skills, climbing the walls wouldn’t be so daunting. Though what would I do after? The chain of obstacles remained the same.

  “Your Imperial Highness, Queen of Arynherk,” the lord crooned as he bowed deeply before my carry chair after Rodolf presented me. “You honor us greatly. Our seraglio will be a poor comfort to you, I’m sure, after your imperial home, but my first wife has prepared her own apartments for you. The least thing you desire, make it known and we’ll supply it.”

  I gazed at the bald spot on his head, pink with cold, and the feathery crown of snowflakes sticking to the sparse gray hairs around it, and nearly asked if he’d offer me asylum from my husband. Of course he wouldn’t, and then Rodolf would be angry with me. Still, the temptation to say the words made my heart flutter with a hope I’d thought had died.

  “And Your Imperial Highness Prince Harlan!” the lord exclaimed. “You honor us also. So good of you to accompany your beloved sister, the pearl of our empire, to her new home.”

  I managed not to reveal my shock, plastering on a serene smile and glancing over. Harlan, indeed, in full uniform and sparkling with the Konyngrr fist. He accepted the greeting, saying something in return that I couldn’t process over the roar in my ears. He looked over at me and I hastily lowered my gaze, but not before I caught the grim resolve in his gray eyes.

  What under Sól’s all-seeing gaze could Harlan be thinking? Panic shot through me, seizing my breath and making my heart thunder.

  “…all right, Your Imperial Highness?”

  “Just … chilled,” I managed to say. “And weary from the journey.”

  That set off a flurry of activity, which fortunately diverted attention from me and my reaction to Harlan’s injudicious presence. I had to send him back. My own death I could face with some measure of resolve, but not my baby brother’s. They carried me into the warm interior, threatening to carry me further, but I insisted that standing would help, as I’d been sitting for hours.

  It did me good, at least, to witness the effect of my commands. No one wished to displease the emperor’s daughter, even to the point of ignoring Rodolf to fawn over me. My husband maintained his pleasant mien, but I caught his glittering gaze on me now and again, and I had no doubt he’d make me pay for outshining him. Even the fact that I retained my honorific of Imperial Highness over his lesser one had to rankle. As a woman, I could not elevate his rank, beyond the cachet of being married to me, but neither could the alliance lower mine.

  Could I use that? I didn’t know. I only knew the power of secrets, whispers, and subtle poisons. I studied Petra as she helped settle me at the table for women at the welcoming feast, ordering the servants about with borrowed precedence, ensuring that the Imperial Princess had everything she needed. Sipping the warm tea, covertly spiked with mjed as Petra arranged, I responded politely to the ladies’ pretty compliments and niceties. Petra was to supply me with opos to smoke, and she’d served my mother for years—would she be able to access poisons for me? More important, was she still my mother’s creature, gifted to spy upon my good behavior and report back in some way?

  I wouldn’t put that past my mother at all.

  Harlan sat at the table with the men, naturally, in a place of precedence equal to Rodolf’s. He looked so young in that company. A head shorter than most, with the promise of breadth to his shoulders but nowhere near as filled out, he seemed skinny in comparison. He had all of Helva’s impetuous eagerness, and her affectionate heart, that much was clear. But gentleness and enthusiasm would get him killed. Dasnarian history was replete with “accidental” deaths of inconvenient princes. I had no doubt Rodolf could arrange for such a fate to befall my baby brother if he caused any trouble. I’d seen the man beneath the political mask—and he was a ruthless beast.

  I set the mjed-spiked tea aside, instead drinking a warm brew billed as a specialty of the province by the lord’s first wife. My mind worked over the options, sharper than I’d felt in days. Of course, this was also the longest I’d gone without smoking opos since my wedding night. I almost welcomed the pain and stiffness in my body, because it meant I was awake and alive.

  I had no opportunity to speak with Harlan that evening, not without making too much of a point of it. And, though the castle seraglio lay behind only three sets of locked doors—and had windows that looked outside!—it was heavily guarded and presented no opportunities for escape. However, my hostess explained that at their castle, women attended meals with the men—though separated by appropriate distance—as they had no good facilities within the seraglio to feed everyone. So breakfast would be another group affair in the dining hall.

  She hoped I wasn’t offended by the mingling and I told her I wasn’t, adding that I understood not all seraglios could be as elaborate and self-sufficient as the one at the Imperial Palace. She agreed with relief, offering me a morning tour of the castle before we dined and departed. I decided to test Petra’s relative loyalty by asking her to relay a message to Harlan to join us, as I believed he’d be interested in a tour also.

  I slept surprisingly well, for my first night away from the seraglio in my entire life. Though high in a tower, rather than underground, the castle seraglio smelled and sounded much like my home. Also, two nights in a row of reprieve from attending Rodolf made me languid with relief. When I did wake from dreams of wading through snow the color of blood, parts of my body falling off to be eaten by the howling hounds that tracked me, I went to the window and looked out.

  They’d cunningly filled the stone arch with small panes of glass, some colored, but others clear, so I could put my eye to them and see the wintery landscape below. The overhanging clouds had cleared away, and the moon hung in a black sky, like a torque necklace of ivory trimmed in hammered silver. It looked both exactly as in paintings, and magnitudes greater. The sheer luminosity of it spilled all over the landscape, making the snow glow white and iridescent blue. The forest absorbed some of the light, but in between, several villages, little piles of orange flickerings, gathered cozily.

  Everybody slept. Here in the seraglio, out there in those little towns. What sort of people lived in them? I don’t know why, but it gave me a sense of peace to try to imagine their lives. It made me think of Ada, and how she’d complained about not having her husband—who she called by an affectionate nickname—in her bed and how lonely she’d been for him.

  And how I so outranked my husband in every way but gender, and yet couldn’t free myself of him except on these few nights.

  * * * *

  In the morning, I declined the offer of using the collective bath the ladies gathered in, making my refusal coldly imperious. I wouldn’t have them see what Rodolf had done to my body. Only flesh. And yet it seemed that every vivid br
uise and scabbed over wound where the lash had cut me was a testament to my lack of spine. It seemed I retained some scraps of pride and I wasn’t yet willing to give them up.

  Petra knew, of course, as had the women of my home seraglio, but they had been family. So Petra brought me a basin of water and helped me sponge bathe, rubbing in the numbing cream painstakingly scented with jasmine to match my usual perfume. I donned yet another concealing klút, augmented with scarves and a pearl-embroidered overcloak, using the excuse that I wasn’t accustomed to the cold outside the imperial seraglio.

  My hostess—chagrined and wishing to make up for the faults she perceived in her own home—had servants pacing us with warming beverages on the tour of the castle. Harlan joined us, offering his arm to me and making charming conversation with our hostess.

  The castle provided startling delights to my untutored eye. The back side of the structure held a room with large windows, filled with clear glass in larger diamonds, and overlooking a long garden with an unfrozen pond, all within the high outer walls. Birds flew in to land upon it, inscribing ripples across its dark surface.

  “It’s fed by natural hot springs below,” our hostess explained with some pride, “so many birds overwinter here, taking advantage. We put out seed to help them along, as well.”

  I marveled at them, so many birds I’d never seen, even in paintings and tapestries. “Have you elephants?” I asked.

  One of the secondary wives tittered before she hastily suppressed it, and my hostess regarded me with wide, astonished eyes. “Why… no, Your Imperial Highness. There are none in all of the Dasnarian Empire. You’d have to travel to Halabahna to see those.”

  Oh. My mother’s training kept me from showing embarrassment at my ignorance, but I fought a well of disappointment in my heart. A silly thing to be sorry about given my other, much greater concerns. Just then the ivory mist shifted and the light brightened.

  “Ah,” my hostess enthused, happy to have something to offer in lieu of elephants, I supposed. “The sun is burning through. You’ll have a fine day for travel.”