[Brat 01] - Princess Brat

by Sharon Green

  “So tell us how things have gone,” Wyole urged after she’d taken the first two sips of the tea. “The High King’s fighters are all over the city, but what about the palace? Is Prince Waysten still resisting?”

  “Prince Waysten wasn’t given the chance to resist,” Elissia said, feeling some small amount of satisfaction. “When I left they were still working to clear away the rest of his guardsmen there, but the High King was safely back among his own and Waysten was their prisoner. I seriously doubt if that will change.”

  “Then our lot could very well change,” Torban said with restrained excitement. “If the High King is as fair a man as I’ve heard Prince Waysten won’t find him fair or understanding, but maybe the rest of us will.”

  “Have someone bring a message to Prince Gardal tomorrow,” Elissia advised. “If anyone can get your problem put in front of the High King, he’s the one. And since the prince does owe you a debt, you have every right to ask. It may turn out that none of your people need to relocate after all.”

  “But what about you?” Wyole asked as Torban sat back with an eager nod. “What are you doing here instead of still being back at the palace with everyone else? You said you needed to meet with us tonight, but for what reason?”

  “I still need to get out of the city without anyone knowing about it,” Elissia said as she studied her tea.

  “If necessary I’ll go over the wall the way the fighters did on their way in, but I’d rather find some easier way. Have you had any luck with that?”

  “It so happens we did, but I still don’t understand,” Torban said after exchanging a glance with Wyole.

  “Why should you need to sneak away after everything you did? Why aren’t you staying around to collect the reward you’re certainly due?”

  “For me there won’t be any reward,” Elissia told him slowly, reaching to her cap to take it off. “You may or may not have known I was a woman, but you ought to know that women aren’t rewarded because women are useless. All they’re ever allowed to do is marry someone, and even if that someone is important, so what? They still don’t allow their wives to do anything, and I can’t face a life like that. For me it would be worse than being declared a criminal.”

  The two men exchanged a second glance, pained compassion clear in each gaze. She’d put her situation in terms that they were able to relate to personally, and they certainly couldn’t argue about how useless women were. Their own ranks contained not a single woman, probably for the double reason that no woman had anything Waysten had wanted, and women weren’t fit to be put in his army. The men sat silent for a moment, and then Torban reached over to pat her hand.

  “Anyone who considers you useless certainly doesn’t deserve your company,” he said, a comment Wyole seemed to agree with. “We owe you quite a lot, and it would be boorish of us not to repay the debt. Wyole and I will show you a private way out of the city, but it can’t be done until just before first light. You’ll need a horse to leave the area quickly, and riding in the dark is dangerous once you reach the forests. If you get there at daybreak, your chances will improve tremendously.”

  “Thank you,” Elissia said, then moved her gaze to Wyole. “Thank you both. I’ll remember your kindness for the rest of my life.”

  They both assured her in different words that there was no need for her to thank them, and then Torban suggested she use one of the tavern’s upper rooms to get some sleep. She agreed and followed the man to the stairs, saying nothing about how long – or short – her memory of their kindness was likely to be.

  “She couldn’t have gotten out of the palace, it just isn’t possible!” Listan raged as he paced back and forth in front of Derand. “She must be hiding somewhere, and that’s why the men haven’t been able to find her. It will take time to go through every room in this place thoroughly, but once we do – ”

  “Once you do, you still won’t find her,” Gardal interrupted to say. “If you know anyone foolish enough to want to lose some gold or silver, I’m even willing to bet on the point. I know my sister better than you do, and I’m not surprised at all that she managed to get out of this place no matter how many guards you have. In case you hadn’t noticed, she’s rather good at things like that.”

  Listan found nothing to say to that, and Derand couldn’t blame him. He’d obviously forgotten for the moment that it was Seea who had gotten him into the palace along with herself and a weapon, but his nose had just been rubbed in the memory. It was hard for many men to think of a woman as being a better tactician than they were, especially when it was their guard lines she’d gotten through.

  “All right, we have to accept the fact that she’s gotten out of the palace,” Derand said wearily from the comfortable chair he sat in. They’d found clothes for him and then they’d insisted on his moving to a nearby apartment, and he couldn’t deny that he needed the comfort. He still felt quite a bit of pain, and what he really needed was some sleep. “Now we have to figure out where she’s gone. Is she likely to have gone back to that inn you all told me about?”

  “Hardly,” Renni said with a sound of ridicule from the chair she sat in. “She’d expect the inn to be one of the first places you look, so she won’t go anywhere near it.”

  Gardal and Listan grunted agreement with that, and Derand agreed as well. Someone else might decide that she’d go there because she knew she’d never be expected to do it, but Derand didn’t believe she would. She’d had a definite destination in mind when she’d left, and by now she’d probably reached it.

  “By the way, thank you for letting me send word to my husband about where I am,” Renni said. “I can’t walk away without knowing that Elissia is all right, but if my husband hadn’t heard from me he would have worried.”

  Yes, husbands did worry about wives they cared for, Derand thought as he gestured to show that Renni’s thanks were unnecessary. Just as he now worried about his own wife

  “I think it’s time we helped the High King to bed,” Gardal suddenly announced to Listan. “If he were standing he’d be dead on his feet, and his passing out won’t do our efforts any good at all. No, Derand, don’t try to argue. We can make lame guesses about where Elissia is without you, and you know you need the sleep. After you get some, you may even be able to make a few guesses that aren’t lame.”

  Derand knew that Gardal was right, but he still made an effort to argue. He tried to explain that going to sleep felt too much like giving up, but neither of the two men wanted to listen. They “helped” him out of the chair and into one of the apartment’s bedchambers, and once he was lying flat his eyes refused to stay open.

  But once they did open again, Derand became aware of voices speaking softly just outside the bedchamber door. Through the windows he could see it was only just getting light out, which meant he’d been asleep for a number of hours. And those hours would have to do him, as he wasn’t about to waste any more in the same way.

  He sat up slowly and carefully, knowing from experience that that was the only way to keep the dizziness away. His wounds felt stiff and painful and they protested loudly when he began to move around, but ignoring that sort of thing was something else he had experience with. Once he was on his feet he took a slow, deep breath and then let it out, glad for once that he’d slept in his clothes. He was ready to go without having to struggle his way into coverings, something he wasn’t quite up to at the moment.

  When he opened the door and walked out into the apartment’s sitting room, Gardal and Listan turned to him with surprise. It was their voices he’d heard while still in bed, and they seemed to have been arguing about something. Also, neither one looked as if he’d had any sleep, which was to be expected. When people rush you into bed, chances are they don’t intend to do the same with themselves.

  “There, now, you see?” Gardal said accusingly to Listan. “Your insistence on being stubborn woke him, and probably before he had all the sleep he needs.”

  “There are some things a man needs m
ore than sleep, Your Highness,” Listan returned in a way that suggested he’d said the same thing any number of times before. “The High King will want to talk to those men, whether or not they really do know anything about the queen. The very fact that they might is enough to – ”

  “What in the world are you men fighting about?” Renni asked from where she’d appeared in the doorway of another of the bedchambers. “If you don’t keep it down, you’ll wake – Too late, you’ve already done it.”

  “That’s all right, I want to be awake,” Derand assured all of them at once as he walked closer to the men. “Now tell me what’s going on.”

  “Two members of the group that helped free me have come to the palace with a message for me,” Gardal said with a sigh of resignation. “They meant to just leave the message, they said, thinking I would never be up this early, having no idea that I haven’t even been to bed yet. But I’d been down checking with the fighters at the front entrance, so they knew I was awake. Because of that they held the two men and sent for me, letting me take the message personally.”

  “Why were you checking with my fighters at the front entrance?” Derand asked, looking around to see cups and a pitcher on one of the tables that might mean tea was available. “And if that’s tea, is it fresh and hot?”

  “Yes to both,” Listan said at once. “If you’ll sit down, I’ll bring you a cup.”

  “I’m better off standing right now,” Derand said, one hand to his bandaged middle. “Gardal, why were you checking with my fighters at the front entrance?”

  “To find out whether or not Elissia went past them,” Gardal responded. “She had the choice of sneaking around and possibly getting caught, or walking out as if she had a right to. It finally came to me that she’d probably done it the easy way, but she’d actually done it even easier than that. She left with an escort of your fighters, and it was those fighters who got her past your door guards.”

  “I tracked down the fighters and got an apology,” Listan said sourly as he returned with Derand’s tea and handed it over. “The man gave me the gown the queen had left behind her when she separated herself from the escort, and then he apologized for not giving it to me sooner. He meant to, but he and the others involved had duties to see to, and returning a dress the queen didn’t need right now wasn’t terribly important. After all, he said, I knew well enough about the matter she was seeing to, since I was the one who had told her to take care of it. And he also didn’t know she was the queen.”

  “I’m beginning to believe she could become empress of the world if she ever decides to put her mind to it,” Derand muttered after filling his insides with some of the delightfully hot tea. “I can’t think of another woman who could do what she’s done, and there aren’t that many men on the list either. So what message did you get from those two men, Gardal?”

  “The message was a request that I intervene for them with you,” Gardal supplied without hesitation.

  “They know that Waysten won’t be running this kingdom any longer, and they’d like to stop being considered criminals and be allowed to go back to their old lives. It was resisting Waysten’s unfair new laws that got them condemned in the first place, and they’re hoping you’ll rescind those laws.”

  “So the question now becomes, how did they find out that Waysten will no longer be running things?” Derand said with a nod of understanding. “Most of the people in this city still have no idea that anything’s happened, but these men know all about it in detail. The only way they could have found out was by talking to Seea.”

  “Exactly,” Listan said, glancing at Gardal with a trace of vindicated satisfaction. “I told you the High King would see that right away, and that’s why he would want to speak to the men. They have to know where the queen is, and if we put the question to them properly they’ll tell us.”

  “There’s no guarantee of that,” Gardal protested, taking his turn at sounding as if he’d said the same thing more than once. “Telling us where she is would be betraying her, and I don’t think they’ll do that to her.”

  “At the very least we can ask,” Derand said, overriding Listan’s immediate response to that. “Let’s get them in here and see.”

  Listan bowed his agreement and went off to take care of the matter, and Gardal shrugged and went to get his own cup of tea. But the shrug looked odd to Derand, giving him the impression that Gardal wasn’t as eager to find his sister as he claimed to be. There could be only one reason for that, and Derand decided to bring it out into the open.

  “Gardal, I’m not going to hurt her again, I swear I won’t,” Derand said, speaking gently to his friend’s turned back. “I really do love her, and I need the chance to make her understand that. She and I can be really happy together in spite of the way this all stared, but it will never happen if I can’t find her.”

  “Yes, I believe you and understand that,” Gardal answered after a moment, his shoulders now rounded with weariness. Then he turned to look directly at Derand. “But she’s still my sister and doesn’t want to be married to you, and I may well owe her my life. I definitely owe her my freedom, so I don’t know what to do. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Derand, but she’s my sister ”

  Derand tried to find something else to say that would set Gardal’s mind at rest, but the words hid themselves until the door opened and Listan brought in two men. One was of middle years and seemed more scholarly than otherwise, and the second seemed nonviolent despite his greater size. Both looked extremely nervous, and after they’d bowed to him Derand hastened to reassure them.

  “Don’t be afraid that you’re in trouble, because you’re not,” he told them. “We simply need some information from you, information that’s very important to me. The woman who told you that Prince Waysten won’t be running this kingdom any longer Where is she?”

  The two men exchanged a glance, and the older one shook his head with a sigh.

  “I knew we should have waited longer to bring our request by,” he said, pausing to rub at his eyes.

  “Even though half the city’s people will be by with requests of their own once they find out what’s happened, we still should have waited. Getting lost in the crowd would have been a good deal better.”

  “It’s my fault we came by now, so I’ll take the responsibility,” the larger man said with his own sigh in a toneless voice. “I’m the only one who knows where the girl went, Your Majesty, but I’m not saying. You’d better send for your torturers.”

  “Don’t say that word,” Derand told him with a definite inward wince. “Even if I liked the idea of torture before this, last night would have changed my mind. I’m not going to hurt the woman, my friend, I just want to talk to her. You are aware of the fact that she saved my life? I don’t hurt people who do that, I reward them.”

  “She knows she’s not going to be rewarded,” the man replied with a sound of mild ridicule. “As she said, you don’t reward women, you marry them off. She doesn’t want to be married off, so why don’t you reward her by leaving her be?”

  “The request you put can be granted or refused right here and now,” Listan interrupted to say, his voice no-nonsense hard. “If you want it granted to keep yourselves and your friends out of a cell, you’ll tell the High King what he wants to know.”

  “No, that’s not going to happen,” Derand said at once, frowning at his friend and advisor. “Their request will be granted because it’s right to do it and because they’ve earned it. I’ll never fault a man for protecting someone he cares about, especially when I care for that person even more. And I do, my friends, I really do.”

  “Wyole, he does care,” Renni put in when the big man just stood stubbornly silent. “He loves her, and not just because she’s his wife. There’s been some kind of misunderstanding between them, and if he doesn’t find her they’ll never get it straightened out. Do you want her to continue being as miserable as she is now?”

  “No, which is why I’m not saying anyt
hing,” the big man returned, still unconvinced. “If she’s his wife, then he’s the one who turned her so much against marriage – and who made her believe she’s worthless because she’s a woman. How any man can do something like that – ”

  “Wyole, no,” Gardal said, finally coming forward to join the discussion. “The High King isn’t the one who made her feel like that, they haven’t been together long enough. I happen to know that for a fact, because the girl is my sister. And where did you get the idea she thinks she’s worthless because she’s a woman? I’ve never heard anything more ridiculous.”

  “He got the idea from the same place I did,” the older man contributed while the other stood silently frowning at Gardal. “The girl told us that herself, and the way she said it showed she really believed it. The question now is, do any of you believe it?”

  “Oh, certainly we believe it,” Derand said with a headshake and a sigh. “Her brother believes it because she was the one who freed him from capture. My advisor Listan there believes it, but went to her for help when I was taken just because he had nothing better to do with his time. And I definitely believe it, because she was almost solely responsible for saving my life. Are we all supposed to be blind and deaf, not to mention stupid?”

  “No, not really,” the older man said with his own sigh. “The only problem is she really was very unhappy at the thought of being caught. What if she doesn’t want to come back no matter what you say? If you bring her back anyway, then we’ll be responsible for her misery. I don’t think I can go happily back to my old life knowing that.”

  “All I can do is give you my solemn word that I won’t hold onto her against her will,” Derand said, looking from one to the other of the men. “If annulling our marriage is the only reward that has any meaning for her, then – that’s what I’ll – give her. I don’t want to, by the gods I don’t, but if I have to I – will.”

  The words had been very hard for Derand to say, but even so he meant them. If Seea refused to accept his apology he would free her – and spend the rest of his life hating himself for having thrown away the most marvelous gift he could ever have been given. The gift of her presence in his life, the gift of hoping that someday she would return his love