by Holly Webb
“The snow globe…” Rose felt Freddie’s power waver.
“Rose, I gave it to Mr. Fountain!”
“Aloysius!” Gus moaned in anguish. “I couldn’t find him! Aloysius, what have they done to you?” He leaped onto Rose’s shoulder and stood staring down at Lord Venn and the ice magician, and Rose sobbed as she felt the power in her suddenly grow and grow, until she ached with it.
“She’s still here!” the envoy gasped, his eyes rolling in agony, torn between Rose and the ice-eyed man. But it was the last thing he said. His master wrapped his arms around him and closed his ice-blue eyes. Lord Venn went white but not with pain—he was covered in a sudden coating of enchanted frost, glazing him all over. He cast a last beseeching glance at Rose before the ice covered his face, there was a strange splintering, crackling noise, and the pair of them disappeared, leaving a few silvery snowflakes floating gently down.
Most of the guests screamed, and Rose and the others stared down at the empty space where the two men had been. Rose staggered slightly, the anger and strength she’d drawn from the sparrow’s unwilling sacrifice flooding away. Freddie caught her as she slumped onto the tablecloth, a small, bloodied heap amongst the silverware.
Fifteen
Rose woke up in Princess Jane’s bed, wearing her nightgown, and with Princess Charlotte curled up next to her. She blinked wearily. Had the glamour somehow come back? Did everyone think she was Jane again?
“Look, she moved!” Bella’s face suddenly appeared in front of her, looking worried. “Rose, can you see me? Are you there?”
“Of course I am…” Rose murmured. It seemed such a silly question. Where else would she be?
“We thought you were dead,” Freddie muttered. Rose peered down and saw him sitting hunched at the end of the bed. “You fell down, after Lord Venn and the other one disappeared, and we couldn’t wake you. You didn’t even move. I got Raph to carry you up here, and Bella undressed you. Gus told me a spell to help your arm heal, and we all put the last of our strength into it, but you just lay there, and we couldn’t even see you breathing.”
“I shouldn’t be here…” Rose batted feebly at Jane’s bedclothes.
“We didn’t know where else to take you,” Freddie told her miserably. “The whole palace is running around whispering about where Jane is and who you really are and whether it’s all a huge conspiracy—”
“It is,” Rose pointed out. “The king’s conspiracy.” She gave a grim little smile. “But I wouldn’t put it past him to throw the blame on us if he can’t make it all work out. I suppose he’s doing it for the good of the country, but he lied to everyone at the banquet last night. Actually, he started lying as soon as he let us use the glamour if you think about it.”
Freddie looked uncomfortable but nodded. “He was doing it for good reasons,” he protested.
“I don’t know how much longer it will be safe to stay here,” Gus said quietly. He was sitting on the windowsill, staring down into the gardens. “There are a great many people gathering at the gates. I don’t think the king’s assurance last night that Jane is safe was quite convincing enough. Not after the little show that Venn and his master put on.”
Freddie scrambled off the bed and went to look too.
“It’s a riot,” he said fearfully. “What do they want?”
“Jane.” Gus looked round at Rose. “The real one.” He closed his eyes and listened. “They’re shouting that she has been stolen, and the king has lied. They want to see her.”
“How would they know she was the real one, anyway?” Rose asked. “Haven’t we just stopped people believing anyone is who they say they are?”
Freddie looked doubtful. “Well, if you stood next to her…What does it matter, though? We don’t know where she is!”
“Lord Venn said she’d never left the palace,” Rose reminded him.
“Venn! He was deranged!” Freddie spat.
Rose shook her head. “I’m sure he was telling the truth. He didn’t want to say it, I could tell. That’s why the ice-eyed man took him away—he was telling us too much.” She blinked thoughtfully. “He said that we were all plotting with Mr. Fountain,” she remembered, the pictures of last night trickling slowly back into her mind. “He knew him, or knew of him, anyway. Where is your father, Bella?”
“Searching for the princess, of course,” Bella snapped too quickly.
“We don’t know,” Freddie told her in a low voice. “No one knows…I gave him the snow globe, Rose, like he asked. We’ve all called him, but he hasn’t come. I wish he’d hurry.”
Gus’s tail twitched frantically over by the window, and Rose saw that none of them could bear to say it—that maybe Mr. Fountain wouldn’t come. That he couldn’t.
Rose sat up painfully. “I can’t just lie here,” she told them. “I have to get up. We have to find out what’s going on. It isn’t safe just hiding up here.”
A sudden scratching at the door made them all jump, and Freddie’s foolish cousin, Raph, peered around the edge, his beautiful white-and-gold uniform torn and grubby. “Oh good, you’re here. Freddie, I think you should take your friends back to your father’s house. You’ll be safer there.” He looked back at the door behind him anxiously. “No one knows what’s going on. It was all some strange Talish plot, but the rest of the envoy’s staff swear that the emperor didn’t send him to do this, and Venn and that strange deputy of his had them all bewitched. The king has had Venn’s rooms searched, and they’ve found plans to invade. The ice on the river, it was just the beginning. He wanted to freeze the sea, can you imagine? All the way to the capital, Sevina, so the emperor’s army could just march here across the ice to take the city. It’s all melting out there already, you know.
“One of the Talish admitted that Venn stole the princess to distract everyone from what was really happening and throw suspicion on the magicians who were the only ones who might be able to stop him.”
“It would be hard to fight a war with no more alchemical gold,” Freddie muttered.
“Better get them away, Freddie,” Raph said, staring out of the window. “Soon. Venn’s gone, but his plan’s still working. Everyone’s terrified.”
“No! You mustn’t go!” Charlotte had woken up without them realizing, and now she threw her arms around Rose and held her tight. She cried furiously, hitting at Rose with her hands and then clinging to her again. “Don’t go, don’t go!”
“I won’t, I promise. Charlotte, stop hitting. It hurts.” Rose put her good arm around the child’s heaving shoulders.
“Rose, we have to!” Freddie hissed.
“I can’t leave her! No one else seems to have thought about her—where are all the ladies-in-waiting?” Rose demanded.
“Spreading rumors,” Raph put in. “Telling everyone they always suspected you. Making sure no one can blame them for any of this mess.”
Gus chuckled at this, and Rose looked at Raph sharply. He didn’t seem nearly as stupid as she’d been told.
“They probably thought she was still asleep,” Freddie said thoughtfully, looking at Charlotte. “She came looking for you a couple hours ago, and she wouldn’t go back to her own room. It’s not even six now.”
“I don’t care!” Charlotte stuck out her lower lip. “I want to get up, and I want Rose to play with me. She plays better than Jane does anyway.”
Rose slid carefully out of the bed, and let Bella help her put on Jane’s dressing gown. “You two should go,” she told Freddie and Bella. “I don’t think anyone will let me slip out of here, will they? After last night?”
Freddie sighed. “No, probably not. Well, I’m staying then. Come on. What are we playing?”
“The dollhouse!” Charlotte squealed, and she ran into the drawing room, leaving the others to trail after her. Raph muttered something about having to stay and guard the princess, and followed them.
Freddie and Gus sat on the window seat, still watching the growing crowd and muttering anxiously together while Bella and Rose and Charlotte played—or Charlotte did, and Bella and Rose tried not to wonder what the running footsteps in the corridors outside meant.
Charlotte was organizing a grand party, putting all the dolls into the ballroom and making them dance.
“Oh, Rose, look! She can’t go to the party. She’s got her nightgown on. How funny, she’ll have to be sick in bed.” And Charlotte plucked the fair-haired doll out of the dancing and stood up to reach to the bedroom floors.
Rose blinked. There hadn’t been a doll in a nightgown before. She was sure there hadn’t. “Charlotte, can I see her?” she asked urgently, but the little girl clutched the doll close and pouted. Rose forced herself to smile. “I want to see if she’s got spots!” she whispered, and Charlotte giggled and sat down next to her, holding out the doll.
“Oh, dear, dear me,” Rose murmured, hardly listening to herself as she stared at the china doll. “Mumps. And measles, and the whooping cough…”
“What else?” Charlotte demanded, snuggling up against her.
“Ummm, the smallpox and a broken leg…Bella, look…”
Bella peered at the doll and sighed. “Influenza. You shouldn’t humor her like this, Rose. She’ll go on wanting this game for ages, and I can’t think of any others.”
“No, look.” Rose stroked the light-colored hair. “She wasn’t there before, Bella. I haven’t played with the house for the last two days—except—yes. Of course. This is the doll that was lying on the floor. The one Gus told me off for tidying up just after we made the glamour.”
“What?” Gus leaped lightly off the window seat and came to sniff the doll.
“All her legs broken!” Charlotte begged, but they weren’t listening. “Ro-ose!”
Rose held the doll out to her. “Charlotte, have you seen this one before? Don’t you think she looks like Jane?”
Charlotte sniffed crossly and pulled up the sleeve of the doll’s nightgown. “Yes, because look, she’s got that funny mark. Now tell me what else she’s sick with!”
It was true. The china arm was marred with an odd brown blotch.
“Jane had a birthmark?” Freddie asked. “It’s a good thing no one checked that on you, Rose.”
Rose nodded. “All those times Lady Alice saw me in my petticoats,” she murmured. “No one ever looked when they were dressing me. Why a doll, do you think? Just because he could?”
“To tease?” Freddie suggested. “So everyone’s searching for her, and she’s here all the time? Venn seemed mad enough for that.”
“You interrupted them,” Gus said, sniffing the china hair carefully. “This wasn’t what they intended.”
“How do we get her back?” Bella asked, staring doubtfully at the doll.
Everyone looked at the Jane doll lying limply in Rose’s lap. She did not look as though she had ever really been human. Now Rose examined her closely, it was obvious that she was much more finely painted than the other dolls. Even dolls that belonged to a princess did not have that sort of coloring, hair painted with so many tiny brush strokes. Jane made a pretty doll though—that rather lifeless face, so used to looking polite and well behaved that it hardly ever moved. And now it couldn’t.
“What would happen if we broke it?” Freddie asked, frowning down at her.
“No!” Charlotte squeaked, snatching Jane up and hugging her. Rose wasn’t sure if she realized that this was actually her sister or if she was merely horrified at the idea of breaking a doll.
“But it might set her free!” Freddie explained. “Breaking the spell, you see.”
“Or it might mean no one could ever bring her back,” Bella snapped. “We don’t know!”
“Do you think she’s actually in there? Inside, I mean? A tiny version of her?” Rose asked. “I don’t really understand how this works. Is it like you being that little gold charm cat, Gus?”
Gus sniffed the doll, waving his tail around Charlotte’s nose and making her giggle reluctantly. “It depends on the spell that was used to do it. I changed myself, making me into something different. She was forced.” He licked the china cheek with his pink tongue, very delicately. “This only looks like china. It tastes like child. She’s there.” He shivered. “She’s held with ice magic, I think. Frozen into shape. No, we mustn’t break her. I think we ought to melt her.”
Rose looked at the fire and shuddered. “If it was the ice-eyed man who did it—and the winter was his too—ice would make sense. Freddie, do you think my fiery monster would melt magic ice?”
Freddie nodded slowly. “I wish Mr. Fountain were here,” he murmured. “I don’t think we have time to wait for him,” he added, glancing over at the window as a particularly loud shout echoed from the palace grounds. “You could try.”
Charlotte would not let go of the doll, so Rose took the little girl on her lap and held Jane with her. “Everyone think about her—like you did for the glamour,” she said, staring into the heart of the drawing-room fire. She could feel the warmth on her face, and she closed her eyes, remembering the yellow-white glow where the fire was hottest, and crumbling red shards of coal, turning them into something else. Not a frightening monster like the one she’d planned to use against the kidnappers but a soft creature—a fire cat, as Jane’s father had said she liked cats. Its silky flame-fur wrapped lovingly around the doll, yellow eyes beseeching her to come out and play. It twitched its tail across her face as Gus had done to Charlotte only moments before and curled warmly into her lap.
Rose opened her eyes slowly, not sure whether it had worked. No one had said anything, which probably meant it hadn’t. But Charlotte wasn’t on her lap anymore, she realized, shaking her head wearily. She was sitting in the midst of the circle of staring children, leaning against Princess Jane, and together they were stroking a cat, a strange ash-gray cat, who seemed to be shrinking and fading as Rose’s thoughts cleared.
“Oh, bring him back,” Jane said sadly, as he disappeared at last. “He found me and brought me home. Where is he going, Rose?”
“He wasn’t real, Your Highness,” Gus purred, staring into her eyes. “Rose made him from firelight to rescue you. You could stroke me instead,” he added hopefully, and the princess gave a little gasp of a laugh at this strange talking cat and patted him cautiously.
***
“You had better wear one of my dresses,” the princess told Rose critically. “You can’t appear to the populace in that.”
Rose looked at her green wool frock. It seemed perfectly good to her, but she supposed her standards were different. “Your dresses wouldn’t fit me, Your Highness,” she pointed out.
Jane frowned. “So you can rescue me from an evil magician, but you can’t stretch a dress?” she asked rather disgustedly.
“She hasn’t time to change anyway, Your Highness,” Gus pointed out. “I’ll glamour her.” And before Rose could protest, Gus was in her arms, and she was dressed in a gray silk dress, with a little jacket trimmed in white fur. “Now you match me very nicely,” the white cat told her smugly. “Don’t put me down, or it will all disappear.”
“Like Cinderella!” Princess Jane murmured, and Rose sighed.
As soon as the princess had returned, Raphael had raced off to find the king, and the princesses’ rooms had been filled with people. King Albert had swept his daughter up in his arms, holding her as though he didn’t dare let her go, but at last one of his advisers had gently pointed out that the crowd was still screaming outside. The only way to quiet them was to show them the princess. Both princesses—Jane and Rose.
Which was why they were waiting in this drafty gallery, half listening to a long speech that was going on outside, and Rose was now wearing a dress fit for a princess.
“Listen.” Gus nudged Rose’s chin. “You’ll be on in a min
ute.”
“My dearest daughter, Princess Jane, and the dear child who bravely agreed to protect her from a Talish assassin.”
Lady Alice hustled them out to stand next to the king and queen as Gus muttered, “No mention for me?” and Rose stared blankly at a sea of people spread out below her, silently staring.
“They’re not sure what to believe,” Freddie murmured from his place behind Rose.
“They will believe in me,” Jane said with a regal certainty, and she took Rose’s hand and led her forward to the very front of the balcony. Then she placed one hand on each side of her face and very seriously kissed her cheek, before turning her to face the crowd, her arm around her.
In a clear, loud voice, Jane called down to the muttering crowd. “This girl is a magician who risked her life to save mine. There was a magical plot to abduct me, and she and her companions foiled it and saved our country from a madman. Believe me, dear friends, when I ask you to trust in her and all her kind.”
It was very much what the king had been saying, but on Jane’s lips it carried far more power for the crowd, and there was only a moment of measuring silence before they roared their approval. It was that same magic that the king had borne for Freddie and herself, Rose saw, a strange kind of charm, half the child, and half the history behind her, adding up to a potent and binding spell.
Jane bowed and waved graciously several times, nudging Rose to do the same, before she withdrew back into the gallery, and Rose collapsed limply onto a velvet bench.
“You did well,” someone said behind her, and Rose gasped. “Where have you been? I’m sorry, sir, I mean…” Mr. Fountain was standing at the door to the balcony, looking pale and weary, with Isabella in his arms.
“The snow globe,” he explained. “I had it in my hand, Rose, when Venn revealed himself at the banquet. I was so close to finding the secret of the winter spell, or so I thought, that I stayed in my rooms, leaving you and Gus and Freddie and Bella to work the glamour. I’m still not sure where it took me. It was so cold my mind seemed to stop.” He shivered.