Misfit Princess

by Nadia Jacques

  Looking at her dripping reflection in the smooth water of the cow pond, she realized it would take ages to detangle. Pulling her knife out of her pack, she bundled her hair together to cut it off.

  “Stop that!” Sophie’s voice came from the direction of the compost heap, easily identified by the smell even from a hundred feet away. “You can comb that out.” She walked over, an empty bucket of food scraps propped on her hip.

  Grace tugged a stick out of her hair. “It’ll take time,” she protested.

  “My daughter used to say that.” Sophie’s voice took on a wistful tone. “I didn’t let her get away with it, either. Meet me inside the house, and we’ll get you sorted out.”

  She walked off at a brisk pace before Grace could argue.

  Grimacing, Grace ducked her head under the water again before stripping off her clothes and setting to the work of pounding the mud out of them.

  The borrowed clothes itched and had a faint odor of mothballs about them.

  “How old is your daughter?” asked Grace as Sophie shepherded her into a chair in front of the fire and tucked a quilt around her lap.

  “Almost thirty,” said Sophie. She settled into a seat behind Grace and began to work through the cold wet hair gently, starting from the tips and working up. “When she was little, I’d have to fix her hair all the time. It didn’t matter what she did-- she’d come back with thistles and twigs everywhere.”

  Grace started to nod.

  Sophie put her hand on the back of Grace’s head to hold it still.

  Hastily, Grace changed tacks. “So what is she up to?”

  “She has a family of her own. About a year ago she and her husband and their two boys went west to see what they could grow in the fertile mountain soil.” Her voice trailed off a bit, and then she added: “I haven’t heard from her in some time.”

  Grace had a nasty feeling about that. There hadn’t been any evidence, and she’d come from that way. No one crossed the mountains, though, not when there were simpler, less life-threatening paths between the countries. It wouldn’t be helpful to say anything about her dark suspicions. She kept her mouth shut and her head still until Sophie had finished.

  She had to admit she felt like a new person, warmed in front of the fire with her hair mostly clean and drawn back in a neat ponytail.

  “Do you still want to help?” Sophie asked.

  “Please,” said Grace, stretching in front of the fire. She folded the quilt neatly in half and draped it over the back of the chair.

  “You can help me do the dishes, then.” Sophie led the way to the kitchen, where there was a sink full of hot soapy water.

  “Is there a place where I can send a message home?” Grace asked as she basked in the warm. She could feel her fingers starting to scald.

  “There are data lines in town. It’s half a day’s journey away on foot, heading south.” Sophie put a kettle on over the roaring fire. She sent Grace a conspiratorial smile. “Do you have a young man waiting for you?”

  She thought of Alex, and realized that a dreamy smile had crept over her face. “Something like that.”

  “Ah, to be young again,” said Sophie, who had apparently taken that as agreement.

  The two women lapsed into silence, putting the kitchen to rights. Once the soup pot had been scoured and oiled and the dishes dried and put away, Sophie poured a steaming mug of tea. “Thank you,” she said.

  Grace pulled a thread out of the sleeve of her tunic. “I should be saying that.”

  “I’ve enjoyed the company. Sometimes I get a little lonely, out here by myself.” Sophie smiled, but the corners of her eyes did not move. “Let me show you where you can sleep.”

  Carrying the mug of tea, Grace followed Sophie up the stairs to a trio of bedrooms with heavily slanted ceilings. Sophie opened a door. “This was my daughter’s room.”

  The room was small with a narrow bed covered in a quilt that had less refined stitching and patterns than the display pieces Grace had seen downstairs. A rough wooden bookshelf held a small collection of sparkly rocks, a well-loved doll, and a handful of dog-eared children’s books. The shelves were tidy, and they showed no trace of dust.

  Opening a different door, Sophie turned into a larger bedroom that held a larger bed. “I’m an early riser. Don’t worry about waking up when I do. You look like you need the rest.”

  Grateful, Grace crawled under the quilt, leaving the untouched mug of tea on the nightstand. Comfortable and exhausted, she dropped into the best sleep she’d had in months.

  As predicted, Sophie had already gone for the day by the time Grace awoke the next morning. Grace found that she’d left an apple and two boiled eggs for her by way of breakfast. As she peeled the eggs, dropping the shells into the compost bucket, she saw a note that wished her luck. She turned it over to write “thank you” on the verso.

  They had not talked about payment, but Grace left a respectable sum under the heavy ceramic utensil holder before donning her clean clothes and setting out to find the data lines.

  She emerged into the sunlight feeling deeply hopeful. She was clean, fed, and happy.

  The lightly-worn footpath from Sophie’s farm towards town was easy to follow. Freed from the chore of navigation, she let her steps fell into a natural rhythm and let her mind roam.

  She couldn’t simply send a message laying out what she’d found: the clerks at the data lines would ask questions Grace didn’t want to answer. A ciphered message would draw the same kind of unwanted attention. Grace needed a reason to hide the contents of her message, and it couldn’t be the real one.

  Tugging on her sleeve, she tried to think of an excuse. She’d nearly unraveled the hem before an idea began to hatch.

  Sophie’s comment about having someone waiting for her must have burrowed its way into her head. She did have a young man. Though she wasn’t romantically involved with Harold, no one in Geneana knew that. He’d recognize a simple cipher and could decrypt it without the key Grace couldn’t send. A fictitious romance would provide a perfect cover for it.

  She didn’t have a better plan, and stalling wasn’t an option.

  As she passed another farm, a loud mooing distracted her from the road. She nearly tripped over a set of wagon wheel tracks. Catching her balance on a handful of stumble steps, she saw that the road had grown. She must be getting closer to the town.

  The rumblings of hunger were beginning to stir again as she saw the first wooden signs at the side of the road. Now she knew that the town was called Emelle, and didn’t bother to read the rest of the text. She had a job to do, and her hunger and curiosity could both wait.

  Ignoring the desire to eat became easier when she passed a tannery. The pungent odor made her stomach lurch. She passed a handful of young people, dressed brightly in the fashions popular in Coura the previous summer. They drew dirty looks from older Geneanans.

  No one she passed seemed perturbed by the stench of the tannery. Increasing her stride length, she breathed carefully through her mouth and passed as quickly as she could.

  The path had grown broad and smooth under her feet. Shops began to appear more frequently until they lined either side of the street. Grace had to remember to pay attention in order to avoid bumping into people.

  Shingles with colorful pictures of the wares sold inside hung over the heads of the passersby. A stand selling roasted meat kabobs tempted her to stop sent spicy aromas into the air. Resolute, she continued on until she found the building that had a sign connecting two scrolls of paper with a stylized line.

  Inside, Grace found a long counter with scraps of paper and pencils arrayed on it. She chose a corner and put down the salient information on one scrap of paper before translating it on another. With effort, she forced herself to keep her head down instead of looking over her shoulder like a hunted rabbit. When she finished, she crumpled up the plaintext message and tucked it into her pocket with relief.

  Thinking of Alex in an attempt to raise a natural
blush, she made her way over to the counter with the plaintext message. Remembering something Petra had once done, Grace pressed a kiss against the message.

  “Special message?” asked the man working the counter.

  Grace nodded. “Very,” she said. “I’m hoping for a quick reply.”

  “My sweetheart never replies quickly,” said the man. He took the message and began inputting it. “But you’re welcome to check back. There’s a board for messages if you don’t have a box.”

  “Thank you,” said Grace, passing over the fee. “I’ll check back.”

  He smiled at her and turned to the next customer in line as she walked out the door.

  Very deliberately, she walked to the other end of town and found a pub where she could sit and eat a meal. It would be too tempting to go straight back to the board. Hovering for hours waiting would draw more attention than she wanted to.

  She lingered over her meat kabob and, once she’d finished, ordered a second glass of wine. It was so much better than anything she had eaten in Arrosa.

  When she could linger no longer, she paid and constrained her pace to moderation as she crossed the town again.

  There was no response posted on the board.

  “Bad luck,” said the clerk into the empty store. “He might be busy.”

  That was what Grace was afraid of. She thanked him distantly. Her mind was wondering what he could be doing, what would have delayed his response. She hoped her parents hadn’t intervened.

  She had no idea what to do if she couldn’t find help. Maybe Harold was just busy. If she found a place to spend the night, she could wait a day for a response. It would give her time to formulate a plan. She went off to find a lodging house.

  Room secured, Grace emerged into the afternoon sunlight. She had no more ideas, and she needed something to do. Maybe there was a library. If nothing else, the walk might keep her from unraveling the fraying sleeves of her tunic.

  She walked through the streets, deliberately studying signs. Many of the storefronts had already shuttered their windows for the evening. Groups of chattering children stood in the lee of the buildings. A bright spring wind had sprung up and begun to sap the heat of the sun.

  The crowds parted as a figure on horseback trotted down the street. Moving out of the way automatically when she caught the movement out of the corner of her eye, Grace froze when she realized who sat on the horse.

  “So what’s this I hear about you sending love notes to strange men?” the rider called.

  Warmth rose from Grace’s core. “Alex,” she said, rising on her tiptoes to meet a kiss. “Harold isn’t that strange.”

  Alex swung down off the saddle. Leading the horse down the road toward the lodging house that Grace had located, she said, “I don’t know. He puts up with me. That’s pretty strange.”

  “You’re all right once people get to know you.”

  “And yet so few people try.” Alex gave Grace a treacherous smile, and then smoothed her face into more presentable lines as they approached the stable. She turned over her horse to a handler and waited until they were out of earshot before turning back to Grace. “We should find somewhere private.”

  “I have a room,” Grace began, and then realized how that sounded.

  The way Alex’s eyebrows winged up wouldn’t convince bystanders of anything else. “Well then,” she said, lacing her fingers through Grace’s. “Shall we?”

  Grace could feel her cheeks flame. It was a good thing, she scolded herself fiercely, because a pair of reunited lovers were much more normal than a pair of women trying to prevent a war. She just hoped that the clerk wouldn’t happen by.

  Once they’d closed the door behind them, the lascivious look dropped off Alex’s face like butter sliding off a skillet. She dropped her bag and pulled out maps.

  Torn between profound gratitude and an odd sense of disappointment, Grace focused on the maps in front of her. “How much did Harold tell you?” she asked.

  “Not much. That you’d found something scary.”

  Grace laid it out from the top. The weapons, the link to the Smithson mining company. “But we don’t have enough people to do anything about it.”

  “There’s the people who were taken,” said Alex, peering at the spots Grace had indicated on the map. “If they’re around, maybe we stand a chance.”

  Grace had been trying not to think too much about what had happened to those people. She hadn’t seen any indication of life. She didn’t want to say it though: saying it might make it real.

  Her face must have told stories, because Alex said: “It doesn’t make sense for them to be dead.”

  “Why not?” said Grace.

  “If the goal was to kill them,” Alex said, “they would have already killed them. If they’ve got an enormous mining operation that they’re trying to hide, though, I imagine they need a great deal of cheap labor.”

  Grace turned it over in her head. “Where would they be keeping them, then? I didn’t see anything like prisoners.”

  “In the mines?” suggested Alex. “No reason to let them see anything interesting.”

  An image of a tour guide guiding her back onto the assigned path appeared behind her eyelids. Grace traced her finger over the map. “I have some idea where the active mines are, and I know where one goes all the way through the mountains.” She made a mark based on where she’d gone in and another where she’d emerged. “Any chance of help from home?”

  Alex bent over the map to study the marks. “Harold says that your family is kind of freaking out.”

  Grace sucked a breath in. “I did disappear. Immediately after they’d sent guards to escort me home.”

  Still not meeting Grace’s eyes, Alex said, “You’ve got this, though. Even without help from home.”

  Nodding, Grace looked at the map. “That’s probably a few weeks of travel. The foraging is pretty sparse, so it would be good to pick up supplies.”

  “Mmmmm, and dinner?” asked Alex, tilting Grace’s chin up with two fingers on the side of her jaw. It didn’t sound like she was interested in food.

  Grace’s stomach grumbled. “Sorry,” she said. “The past few weeks were a little lean.”

  “Come with me, then. I know the best place in town.” Alex beckoned, and Grace followed.

  They got back to the room laden with an awkward array of shopping bags. Spreading the contents over the bed, Grace began to pack. It kept her hands busy.

  When she had stowed nearly everything that would fit, she asked, “How long do I have with you?” She directed the question at her pack. Her face would betray her if she looked up.

  “I took some time,” said Alex, walking over to stand behind Grace. Strong hands gripped her hips. “I don’t have anything scheduled.”

  “You’ll come with me, then?” Grace leaned back into the touch.

  “That was my plan.” Alex nuzzled the top of Grace’s head. “It’s getting late. Time to go to bed?”

  Her hands began creeping up towards Grace’s rib cage. It evoked pleasant thoughts.

  “We need sleep,” said Grace firmly, and with no small amount of regret. “This will be the best rest we’ll have and we need to make the most of it.”

  Alex’s hands released her and she felt the loss keenly.

  She did up the straps of her pack in the sudden quiet. Looking up at last, she realized Alex had gone back to put the last touches on her own pack.

  She shucked her clothes and laid them over the back of the chair, reveling in the feeling of an actual bed underneath her.

  Alex pressed long and warm and equally naked against her. Comfort swept over her, raw and animal. She let Alex curl around her, the warmth chasing away icy spikes of dread over the task they had to do. She had a brief moment of regret that comfort was all they could share before sleep eclipsed it.

  Chapter 14

  The next day they rose as the sun hit the pillow beside them. Alex scooped up their bags as Grace settled their bill.


  “Horses?” asked Alex, and Grace took a moment to consider.

  “They won’t handle the mountains,” she replied, after a moment of thought.

  It was a shame, because the days-long trek back out to the mountain would be so much quicker and easier with a horse. But the climb through the mountain would be better on foot. The undergrowth was hard enough to navigate without also trying to wrangle a few dozen stone of annoyed horse. It would also be quieter to go on foot and the plan-- such that it was-- relied on them going undetected at least until they could find the lost people.

  If they even existed, thought Grace nervously to herself. They were gambling. She didn’t have a better plan, but her stomach still clenched if she thought about it.

  Resigned to the hike, she and Alex left the village. They’d plotted out a faster route, one that wouldn’t bring them too close to the weapons testing range.

  With a companion, Grace found she could enjoy the scenery. Alex pointed out the milestones she could identify and introduced Grace to half a dozen plants Grace couldn’t identify. “I grew up in Geneana,” Alex said, simply, when Grace asked.

  It was easy, Grace thought, as she tumbled bone-deep weary into her sleep sack by the fire they’d very carefully built. They’d walked longer than perhaps they should have, but neither of them wanted to waste time, and the pace meant they had been able to make came against the lee of the mountain itself.

  The following morning, they started the grueling trek up the mountain. “My legs ache,” said Alex. “How do you do it?”

  Grace’s legs had felt better, but it had worn into a pleasant feeling, the feeling that she was pushing and doing. “I’ve spent the better part of the last six months hiking,” she said, wry, and then did some mental arithmetic and found out that this wasn’t far from the truth.

  Having a torch for the walk through the mine was both comforting and nerve-wracking.

  “What if someone sees?” hissed Grace, as they followed the tracks where iron had been laid through the mountains.