Crown of Three

by J. D. Rinehart

  She picked up a length of shimmering turquoise silk and draped it around her neck. “What do you think? Is it too green?”

  “I think we’ve been out here long enough,” said Sylva, grabbing the silk and replacing it on the stall. The stallholder—a hungry-looking man with eager eyes—watched them closely. “My father wanted us back before midday.”

  “I’m not leaving until I have my silk. Go home if you don’t like shopping. I don’t need a chaperone.”

  Sylva sighed in frustration. Despite her irritation, Elodie couldn’t help sympathizing. Sylva no more wanted to be her protector than Elodie wanted to be protected. She liked Sylva and wished their relationship could be simpler.

  I wish you really were my sister, she thought.

  Elodie made her way along the row of stalls. As usual, Sylva shadowed her, matching her step for step. When Elodie went left, Sylva went left. When one stopped, they both stopped.

  It was infuriating.

  Elodie picked up her skirts and began to run, darting through the maze of stalls. She passed barrows laden with fresh produce harvested from the great fields of Ritherlee: potatoes and carrots and succulent greens. A large cart creaked under the weight of countless barrels filled with beer or molasses or both. Down one alley, sides of meat swung like great pendulums.

  “Elodie!” came Sylva’s cry. “Wait for me!”

  Turning a corner, Elodie saw Lord Vicerin’s daughter hurrying clumsily toward her on her fine shoes, her face red and anxious.

  “Catch me if you can!” She laughed and dodged behind a stall piled high with pewter bowls and goblets.

  The longer the pursuit went on, the more Elodie found it amusing . . . and ridiculous. Although Elodie’s identity was a secret to all but the immediate Vicerin family, the truth was she was the daughter of King Brutan and thus destined, one day, to rule over all Toronia. Why else would Lord Vicerin be fighting the crown but for the right to put his adopted daughter on the throne? Did Sylva really think Elodie would run away from a destiny like that?

  If only they would let me go, then they’d realize I want to stay.

  A flash of color stopped Elodie in her tracks. It was yet another silk stall, stacked high with bolts of fabric finer than any she’d seen. Running her fingers over the cloth, she dismissed one roll after another. This one was too coarse, this one too pale, this one too dark. . . .

  “Is this all you have?” Elodie called to the old woman who ran the stall. She was busy serving a tall man in an elegant court outfit and ignored her. Affronted, Elodie put a hand on her hip. “I said—”

  “Stop it!” said a voice in her ear. “Stop being such a greedy little brat!”

  Whirling around, Elodie found herself staring straight into the flushed face of Sylva.

  “How dare you speak like that to your future queen!” she snapped. She wanted to shake Sylva, or slap her. What had possessed Sylva to say such a thing? Why would she even think it?

  And why had the words stung so badly?

  “Hush, Elodie,” said Sylva. “Mind what you say. Nobody can know who you truly are.”

  “Mind my tongue? Is that it? Well, perhaps you should mind yours before calling me a brat!”

  “Brat?” said Sylva, looking confused. “Who called you a brat?”

  “You did. You said—”

  “Elodie, I didn’t say anything. I just came up and you snapped at me. Who were you talking to?”

  Just for a second, the hubbub of the market died away, leaving Elodie alone in a bubble of silence. Her ears throbbed. She stared at Sylva’s pink, earnest face and saw only simple concern. Then the bubble burst, and the world rushed in again.

  “I thought I heard someone,” Elodie muttered.

  They made their way back through the stalls toward the south end of the market, where they’d first begun. Elodie was suddenly tired of shopping. Maybe the silk there hadn’t been too bad, after all.

  As they walked, she cast surreptitious glances into the shadows between the stalls. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard a strange voice. Once, she’d been sitting in the grand Vicerin banqueting hall and an old man had whispered in her ear. But there had been no old man there. Another time, she’d heard laughter in the rose garden below her private chambers. At night, voices called to her from behind the dresses in her closet.

  If Sylva worried about people learning that her adopted sister was a princess, Elodie had a far greater fear: that Lord Vicerin would find out she heard voices and decide she was mad. As soon as he knew the truth, he would send her away.

  Isn’t that what you do with people who are insane?

  Might that not be what her real mother had done, all those years ago, when she’d discovered there was something wrong with her daughter?

  Soon they found themselves back in front of the very first stall they’d looked at. Elodie pointed out the closest roll of blue. “This one,” she said dully to the stallholder. All her excitement about finding the correct shade had melted away with the mysterious voice.

  While Elodie was searching in her purse for the right coins, a red-haired girl appeared from behind a nearby tent. She was tall and looked just a few years older than Elodie—perhaps the same age as Sylva. Her long skirt rippled in the breeze, and the high sun flashed off something hidden beneath: a short metal sword in an open scabbard strapped to her thigh. Staring straight at Elodie, the girl walked toward them.

  Elodie put her purse away.

  “What’s the matter?” said Sylva.

  “Something’s wrong,” said Elodie. Heart racing, she grabbed Sylva’s hand. “Come on.” Her other hand went instinctively to the emerald dangling on its gold chain around her neck, fingers clasping the green gem as they always did when she was nervous.

  “Aren’t you going to buy the silk?” said Sylva.

  The approaching girl pulled her hair away from her face. Her eyes flicked sideways. Following her gaze, Elodie spotted a young man in a green tunic lurking beside a nearby ale tent. As the girl tossed her hair, he gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  Without warning, the fabric stall tipped forward, spilling rolls of material across the ground. Elodie’s silk unfurled in a billow of bright blue. A food stall went over, and suddenly people were shouting. Someone picked up a cabbage and lobbed it into the crowd. A wooden bowl flew like a discus. Scuffles broke out.

  Sylva’s grip tightened on Elodie’s hand . . . then was suddenly snatched away. At the same instant, a fat man appeared from nowhere and barged into Elodie, nearly knocking her off her feet. By the time she recovered her balance, she was adrift in an ocean of bodies, her companion nowhere to be seen.

  “Sylva!” she shouted, suddenly frightened.

  Elodie tried to force her way through the throng. Where had they all come from? Then she heard a sound that chilled her blood: the unmistakable sschink of a sword being drawn.

  Had Sylva been right after all? Was the king’s army even now storming the gates of Castle Vicerin?

  “Elodie!”

  Sylva’s face appeared, wide-eyed with fear. An instant later she had vanished, swallowed by the crowd. Elodie pushed against the press of people, ducking as missiles flew over her head. But Sylva was gone.

  A man’s hand gripped her wrist. She screamed but nobody listened. She tugged but the fingers were locked tight. The man started to haul her through the crowd. All she could see of him was a broad back clad all in green. Was it the same man she’d seen lurking by the tent? She tried to struggle, but he was too strong.

  Kidnap-and-rescue, Elodie thought, remembering the favorite game she’d played years earlier as a child, when Sylva’s older brother Cedric had dragged them both through the nursery and into a pirate’s den made of bedsheets and boxes. She wanted desperately to believe this was all just make-believe, that the man before her would spin around to reveal Cedric’s broad smile and laughing eyes.

  But Cedric had gone to war, and she was no longer a child.

  And this was no
game.

  They reached the edge of the market square, where a coach was waiting. The coach looked shabby, with mud-splattered wheels and long scratches in the wooden panels, but the four white horses standing in the traces looked fit and fresh and ready to race the length of the kingdom.

  Seeing the coach filled Elodie with fresh terror. So kidnap it was. But as for rescue . . .

  “Let me go!” she shouted, struggling anew to free herself. “Don’t you know who I am? If you so much as dirty my dress, Lord Vicerin will have you hanged from the lynchtower!”

  Ignoring her outburst, the man opened the door to the coach and tried to push her up the steps and inside. Elodie planted her feet wide and put all her strength into resisting him. Just as she thought she was winning, a second pair of hands in the small of her back shoved her unceremoniously into the coach. The door slammed shut, leaving her staring through a tiny slot of a window at the girl with the red hair. Elodie tried to turn the handle, but it refused to move. The door was locked. She was trapped.

  A whip cracked and the coach lurched forward. Elodie pressed her face to the little window and screamed.

  “Call out the guard! I’m being abducted! Help me! Somebody help!”

  Blank faces went past in a blur. Elodie screamed again, not using words this time but simply howling her despair.

  Nobody heard.

  The coach slowed as it turned the corner leading to the main castle gate . . . and suddenly Sylva was there. She’d thrown off her heels and was sprinting barefoot after the coach, running so fast she was actually gaining on it. She no longer looked scared but angry and determined.

  “Sylva!” Elodie yelled. “Help me!”

  For a moment, she thought Sylva was going to catch up. Then the whip cracked again and Elodie was thrown against the hard wooden bench at the back of the coach. Her head hit the bulkhead and, briefly, her vision flashed white.

  By the time she got back to the window, Sylva was gone. Even the castle was gone. The coach was on the high road, speeding down the long, steady slope toward the wide plains of East Ritherlee. Out in the fields, farmhands toiled, unaware of her plight.

  Each time she saw someone, Elodie banged on the door of the coach and shouted through the tiny window. But they were either too far away or lost in their toil. Her frustration turned to anguish as the crop-filled fields gave way to meadows dotted with cattle and sheep. Their dumb lack of concern was somehow worse than the inattentiveness of the farmhands, and the tears that had been building inside Elodie since leaving the castle finally burst from her.

  Elodie wept until she could weep no more. Exhausted, she threw herself onto the hard bench. The sound of the road tracked the coach’s every turn as it swayed this way and that. Soon it would meet the Great Way, which ran all the way north to the Isur Bridge and into the forest lands beyond, stopping only when it reached Idilliam and the castle of King Brutan.

  That she’d been captured by the king’s forces she had no doubt. Somehow, Brutan had learned of her identity and ordered her to be brought in. What would he do with his daughter now that he had her in his power? Elodie had no idea. Lord Vicerin had always told her that King Brutan was a tyrant, jealous and cruel, who would do anything to maintain his iron grip on the throne of Toronia.

  Even if it means killing the rightful heir.

  The coach sped on through the Ritherlee fields. Every league she traveled, and every tear she shed, carried Elodie farther from Castle Vicerin, her home.

  Farther from her dreams of becoming queen.

  CHAPTER 5

  What do you see?” Prince Nynus called up. He was crouched in the corner of the cell with his arms wrapped around his knees, rocking slowly backward and forward.

  “Nothing,” Gulph hissed back. “It’s night. And we should keep our voices down.”

  Actually, with his head pressed into the slot in the roof, Gulph could see quite a lot: the long, faint shadows cast by the crescent moon over the city rooftops; the flicker of fires behind a thousand tiny windows; the stars like sparks in the night sky.

  Idilliam looks so beautiful.

  Gulph crammed his head through the slot. It was so tight that, for a horrible moment, he thought he was stuck. What a sight he’d be for the jailer in the morning: a reckless boy hanging from the rafters by his head, arms and legs dangling like limp rope. He wriggled and pushed and, finally, forced his head through. He took a deep breath, expecting cool, fresh air . . . but he’d forgotten how close he was to the sewer pipe. The stench was indescribable.

  Nynus called again from the cell, but now his voice was muffled. Gulph drew his head back inside, popping it out of the tiny aperture like a cork from a wine bottle.

  “Do you need more light?” said Nynus. He’d moved to stand beside the desk and was waving the oil lamp from side to side. The moving light cast strange shadows on his pale face.

  “Just hold it as high as you can. And hold it still.” Gulph didn’t have the heart to tell the prince it was making no difference whatsoever. “Is he still snoring?”

  Both boys fell silent, listening. For a moment, Gulph heard nothing. Then, very faint, there came a sound like a distant sawmill, rising and falling in regular rhythm.

  “Like a baby,” said the prince.

  “That doesn’t sound like any baby I ever met. If we can hear it all the way up here, imagine what’s it’s like in the room with him.”

  “Perhaps he’ll wake himself up!” Nynus’s face pinched with alarm. Dropping the lamp on the table, he scurried back to the corner.

  “Never mind. If Blist is asleep, he’s not interested in what we’re up to. This is our chance, Nynus. Are you ready?” There was no reply. “Are you ready, Nynus?”

  The boy looked up with a fresh and dreadful clarity in his eyes. “I’ve been ready for ten years, Gulph.”

  Turning his attention back to the roof, Gulph thrust his free hand through the slot. He was using his other hand—and his bare feet—to cling onto the cell wall, just as he had earlier.

  Once his hand was outside, and with his arm fully extended, he gave the odd little shrug that he knew would dislocate his shoulder. The bone jumped out of its socket with practiced ease, allowing him to angle his neck unnaturally close to his collarbone. Thus contorted, he was able to feel around on the roof.

  His finger touched cold slates, still damp from the afternoon rain. The edges were soft, and crumbled to the touch. Perfect.

  Gulph drew his arm back inside.

  “How are you doing that?” said Nynus. His bloodless face, upturned and lit by the flickering lamplight, looked paler than the moon.

  “Good news,” said Gulph, ignoring the question. “Soon you won’t be a prisoner anymore. Throw me one of those dishes.”

  Smiling, Nynus obeyed. Gulph freed a foot and caught the spinning bowl in his toes, causing the prince’s grin to broaden even further. Contracting his stomach muscles, Gulph curled his body to bring the foot up past his head. He used his toes to jam the bowl through the slot, ready to be received by his waiting hand.

  Having secured his grip on the cell wall again, Gulph used the bowl’s sharp metal edge to chisel away at the soft slates surrounding the hole. As the slot widened, moonlight cascaded down to flood across Nynus’s face. White worry had replaced the prince’s smile.

  “You will come back for me, won’t you?” he said. He sounded as plaintive as he must have done as a little boy on the day he’d been locked away.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” said Gulph.

  “I’ve been on my own for so long. I don’t want to be alone ever again.”

  “We’re friends now, you and me.” How long was it since anyone had said such a thing to this wretched boy? “I’ll come back. I promise.”

  Once he’d finished widening the hole, Gulph let the bowl fall down onto the bed, popped his shoulder back into place, and slithered easily out onto the roof. Poised on all fours, he scanned his surroundings. Braided iron watchtowers rose from the sloping roof
at regular intervals. Gulph saw no movement in the lamplit nests that topped them, but he couldn’t take any chances. He would have to be quick.

  Scuttling like a spider, he hurried to the edge of the roof and peered down. Below the guttering, the woven wall of the Vault of Heaven plunged down into deep shadow.

  Gulph’s night vision was good, and it didn’t take him long to find a bar narrow enough to grip. Swinging his legs over the edge of the roof, he lowered himself hand over hand until he’d reached the level of the cells. A little more searching located a gap between the bars that was big enough for him to slide through . . . just as he’d thought.

  Landing softly on his bare feet, Gulph stopped, suddenly conscious of the madness he’d undertaken.

  He’d been locked up, by order of the queen, with an undesirable prince of the realms.

  He’d promptly escaped.

  And where had he escaped to?

  Another cell, this one packed to bursting point with the snoring, snuffling scum of the city. If any one of them woke up, Gulph was dead.

  Slowly, silently, Gulph picked his way across the cell. In the darkness, the sleeping forms of the prisoners slumped like sacks in a cellar. Several times, his naked toes brushed an outstretched hand or a lolling face. The slightest contact set his pulse racing, and he had to bite his lip so as not to cry out.

  At last he reached the other side of the cell. Just as he was about to slip through the bars and out into the corridor, a guard ambled past. Gulph froze, limbs tensed, mouth clamped shut over his breath. It was too late to retreat.

  Don’t move a muscle!

  The guard passed by, turned a corner, and vanished from sight.

  Gulph let out a long, slow breath, and eased his slender body through the bars and into the wide space between the cells. The brazier loomed over him like a giant’s plaything. Round lids had been dropped over most of the ventilation holes, damping down the fire for the night; those that were still open revealed a sullen interior where red coals pulsed with heavy light.