by Joel Ross
If commoners set foot in the mausoleum—much less messed with the lotus vines—they’d be hanged for desecration. Things were different for nobles, though. They’d get punished, but not too badly. That was why Brace needed Nosey and Pickle to help him: the three of them together could brave the crypts.
“Yeah, but the twins want to explore the tunnels,” Ji told Brace, crouching for the fallen toys. “Maybe they’ll help for once.”
“They pretend they want to explore, but even they’re scared,” Brace said, his voice trembling. “And we’re not allowed. I—I wouldn’t want to upset the baroness.”
“Not even if it means getting trained in the city?”
Brace bit his lower lip. “I can’t. I can’t.”
Ji grabbed the last toy soldier from the floor. He knew what he had to do, but he kept thinking about lightless tunnels and goblin eyes. About rotting corpses and bottomless pits. He set the toy on the bureau, then rubbed his neck, mostly to keep his hands from shaking.
“I’ll go,” he said.
“You will?”
Ji nodded, unable to speak.
“You mean . . .” Brace looked scared and hopeful at the same time. “You’ll sneak through the crypts and kill the flower?”
Ji took a steadying breath. “Yeah.”
“I—I can’t go with you!” Brace blurted, then looked down for a second. “I mean, not because I’m afraid. Only I promised the baroness that I wouldn’t misbehave, and I can’t break my word. It’s different for you. You’re a commoner.”
“That’s okay.” Ji didn’t actually want Brace to come along, panicking at every shadow. He could do that all by himself. “I’ll bring Sally.”
“That frizzy-headed stable girl?”
“Yeah.”
Brace fiddled with a toy soldier. “But why? Why risk it?”
“Because you and I are . . .” Ji shrugged. “We’re sort of friends, aren’t we?”
“Sort of, yeah.”
“And because then Proctor will take you to the city. And when he does, I want you to bring me and Sally along.”
Brace chewed his lower lip. “But there are goblins in the crypts.”
“They’re tame.” At least, Ji hoped they were. “Probably.”
“No. No, this is nuts. They’ll hang you!”
“Only if they catch me.”
“You’re totally forbidden to go in there.”
“Are you going to tell on me?”
“And miss my only chance to get trained? To leave Primstone Manor? No way.” Brace chewed his lower lip. “You really think you’re brave enough?”
“No,” Ji admitted. “But Sally’s brave enough for both of us.”
“And in return,” Brace said, “I’ll bring you to the city?”
“Yeah.”
“If you don’t get eaten by goblins first,” Brace said. “Or hanged.”
Ji gulped. “So do we have a deal?”
“We do,” Brace said, and stuck his hand out.
After his chores the next evening, Ji headed for the library, a horseshoe-shaped room packed with bookcases. Leather couches scattered the floor, flanked by low tables with ornate glass lanterns. Servants weren’t allowed to enter, unless they were, well, serving: bringing drinks, dusting books, polishing shelves. Which was why Ji’s heart hammered in fear every time he snuck in.
Still, he needed to snag a book for Roz. She loved books, for some reason. Maybe they were more fun if you knew how to read.
Ji slunk inside and eyed the shelves. He couldn’t read the titles, so he ran his fingers across the spines. When he saw a book that looked good, he pulled it from the stacks. Roz had once told him, You can’t judge a book by its cover, which just proved that even smart people said stupid things. Judging a book was what covers were for.
The first book smelled like pickled goat, so he shoved it back onto the shelf. The second was full of sketches of noses. Big noses, small noses, hairy noses, warty noses. Ji flipped through, looking for his own nose. He found Butler’s instead, a bony spigot with thin nostrils.
Ji started tucking the book into his bag, but stopped when he noticed that a few pages were torn. Forget that; Roz went berserk when people abused books.
He replaced the nose book, grabbed one with a leopard on the cover . . . and spotted a thick tome splayed open on an end table. Drawings covered the open pages—in color, which was amazing. Though the pictures themselves were horrible.
At the top of the page, a woman and a man stood beneath a leafless tree. A little lower, the woman hunched painfully and the man’s face turned bright red. In the next picture, skinny arms burst from the woman’s stomach, and fangs sprouted from the man’s mouth. Below that, the drawings showed the couple turning into monsters: she looked like a half goblin and he looked like a half ogre. And at the bottom of the page, they slumped across the tree’s roots, malformed and dead.
“Gross,” Ji muttered.
What kind of freaky guest was reading this stuff? He turned away—and heard murmuring from the hallway.
His stomach twisted. Someone was coming!
He jammed the leopard book into his bag and ran to the library door. He didn’t see anyone, but the chattering sounded louder. He trotted into the hallway—and a bunch of noble kids stampeded down the grand stairway.
Ji scuttled against the wall and bowed his head. The noise tumbled closer and Ji peeked toward the stairs and saw a gangly noble boy tossing a fluffy white doll over the head of a little girl.
“Give her back!” the girl sobbed.
An older girl caught the doll. “If you want her, come get her,” she said, tossing the doll back to the boy.
The doll peeped, Pwoh!
It wasn’t a doll. It was a fuzzy white kitten. They were throwing a kitten around. Anger pounded in Ji’s temples. The ache in his shoulders faded, and he lifted his head. He shouldn’t get involved—he couldn’t get involved—but he also couldn’t let them hurt a kitten.
He wanted to say something. He wanted to punch the stupid gangly boy in his stupid gangly face. Instead, he unsnapped his bag. Once he dumped dirty boots on the floor, the noble boneheads would focus on beating him and leave the kitten alone.
But before he opened the flap, a new girl’s voice said, “Stop teasing her.”
The noble kids looked higher on the stairs, watching Nosey and Pickle descend from the landing, as petite and graceful as their mother. Three tendrils of gold-painted hair glinted among Nosey’s ebony waves, and the dragon embroidered on her silken pants matched the one on Pickle’s shirt.
Pickle extended his hand to the gangly boy. The boy gulped and handed the white fuzzball over.
“Shall we get her a saucer of cream?” Nosey asked, taking the crying girl’s hand.
The girl whispered, “Yes, please, Lady Posey.”
Nosey and Pickle led the girl away . . . and Ji got even angrier. Nosey and Pickle were horrible. They were always horrible. Cruel, selfish, and proud. They had no right to suddenly start acting kind, saving a kitten and helping a little girl. They should be horrible all the way through, so Ji could enjoy hating them.
He glowered at the floor. For once he didn’t feel sore and tired. All he felt was bitter.
After the noble kids wandered away, Ji exhaled. Forget Nosey and Pickle. He still needed to learn about this Deedledum Rite, just in case it mattered. He still needed to talk to Roz about the goblin pen, and learn how to sneak into the mausoleum. And he still needed to survive the bone crypts without getting eaten or hanged.
He crept toward the servants’ door, rubbing his neck. Some days he felt like a tiny kitten in the hands of deranged giants. You never knew if they’d toss you downstairs or bring you a saucer of cream.
6
IN THE NURSERY on the top floor, Ji wove between rocking horses and toy chests. He tucked away his bitterness and headed for the door to the governess’s room.
Governesses weren’t quite servants, because they always came from we
llborn families. But they weren’t quite guests, because they came from wellborn poor families. Which meant they didn’t fit in anywhere. They were the loneliest people Ji had ever seen.
And Roz wasn’t even a governess. She was only a little older than Ji, the younger sister of the previous governess, who’d left for a new position when Nosey and Pickle had outgrown the nursery. Roz had wanted to go with her sister, but the new employer said no, so she’d had to stay at Primstone Manor.
“The baron and baroness are extremely kind to let me stay,” she’d once told Ji, with a brittle smile.
“I thought you hated when they . . .” He’d trailed off.
“Trot me out during fancy dinners,” Roz asked, “and tell their guests that I’m a charity case? To make themselves feel generous?”
“Yeah, that.”
“I do,” Roz admitted. “But it’s true. I am a charity case.”
“You look after the little cousins when they visit,” he’d said. “And anyway, what else are they going to do? Throw you out on the street?”
“Exactly,” Roz had said, with a flash of fear in her eyes.
In some ways, the life of a girl like Roz was just as hard as Ji and Sally’s. Sure, she didn’t have to work that hard, but what would happen if they did throw her onto the street? She’d probably starve.
Ji stepped past a toy model of the Royal Menagerie—which was a fancy word for “zoo”—and tapped at the door.
“One moment!” Roz called from inside. “I’m just setting down a cup of hibiscus tea! Who is it, please?”
“It’s Ji,” he said. “And I’m just wondering why you told me what kind of tea you’re drinking!”
Roz opened the door and smiled at him, and he felt himself smile back. Roz was pretty and kind and big for her age. The chambermaids called her “husky,” and Pickle and Nosey called her “fat.” She wasn’t skinny like Nosey, but she was ten times cleverer and a hundred times sweeter and a thousand times better, and anyway, what was so good about being skinny? Everyone except nobles knew that being skinny just meant you didn’t eat enough.
Stupid nobles.
“An evening visit!” Roz declared, stepping aside to let Ji enter. “Is this house party running you ragged? What brings you visiting so late?”
“What do you think?” Ji asked. “Boots, the same as every night.”
“I don’t own any boots.”
“You don’t own boots yet.” Ji slouched into her brightly lit sitting room. “Maybe I’ll sell you some.”
“You’re a scoundrel,” she said, closing the door. “And a reprobate, but even you aren’t going to sell me boots that you snaffled from downstairs.”
“What’s a reprobate?” Ji asked. At least he knew that “snaffled” meant “stole.”
“A troublemaker.”
“I never make trouble.”
Roz lowered her voice. “Sally mentioned that you’re fixing boots.”
“Well, that’s part of my job! I also untangle laces and daydream about drowning Butler in a vat of shoe polish.”
“By ‘fixing,’ I mean stealing bangles and baubles.” Roz made a snipping motion with two fingers. “Cutting off ribbons? Replacing pearls with pebbles?”
Ji felt a twinge of worry at Roz’s reaction to his thieving. “Oh, er . . .”
“And you’re planning to sell your ill-gotten gains in the city?”
“Well,” Ji said, rubbing a twinge in his forearm. “Yeah?”
“That is very wrong of you,” Roz said primly. “What are you thinking? Aren’t you afraid? What if they catch you? . . . I’m so very glad you’re doing it.”
He blinked. “Wait, what?”
“You can’t simply leave Chibo with the tapestry weavers,” Roz told him, sitting at her tea table. “He won’t survive long in those conditions. You’re a good friend to him, Ji. And to Sally, too.”
“Nah,” he said. “I just need to do something, you know?”
“I do know.” Roz patted the chair beside her. “But of all the possible somethings, you chose one that helps your friends. You think that buying Chibo’s freedom is worth the risk.”
Ji plopped onto the chair. “I know Chibo’s a pest and all, but sure . . . freedom’s worth anything.”
“Even getting hanged?”
Ji felt his cheeks heating. “What else am I supposed to do?”
“You could do nothing,” she said. “Like everyone else.”
“Sounds boring. Like hibiscus tea.”
“Hibiscus tea is delicious! And you’re a good friend to me, too. You . . . retrieved another book, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did!” he said, relieved by the change of topic. “I just snaffled it a few minutes ago, like a proper reprobate.”
He’d started bringing Roz books three months earlier. Before that, she’d been allowed into the library; then the baron realized that she knew more than Nosey and Pickle, and banned her, because “A governess’s sister knowing more than my own children makes my skin crawl.”
“You shouldn’t sneak into the library,” Roz told Ji, with mock severity. “What if someone sees you? What if you knock over a vase? What if there’s a guest napping on a couch? What if you knock a vase onto a guest napping on a couch?”
“How else am I supposed to get books?”
“That’s easy for you to say! What happens if they whip you? Imagine how bad I’d feel!” Her lips curved into a mischievous smile. “Especially if you bled on a book. Do you ever think of all the tears I’d cry if you ruined a page? It would ruin my whole entire day.”
He snorted a laugh. “Not your whole entire day!”
“Possibly a full week! I really should get my own books, though.” She smoothed her dress over her lap. “Except I’m not particularly well suited for sneaking.”
“You just need a good pair of sneaking boots.”
“I don’t think my problem is footwear,” she said.
“All my problems are footwear,” he told her. “I like your slippers, though.”
She wiggled her feet at him. She was wearing pointy-toed slippers with ribbons that looped around her ankles. “My sister sent them.”
“You miss her, huh?”
“I do,” Roz admitted.
A thought occurred to Ji. “You’re kind of trapped here too, aren’t you?”
“Perhaps. Still, if this is a trap, at least it’s a comfortable one.”
Ji wasn’t sure how much that mattered, but he just looked at her slippers and said, “I like the stitch work.”
“They’re too small for me.” Roz sighed. “Everything is too small for me.”
“Is not,” he muttered, and shoved the leopard book at her. “Here.”
“Ha!” She beamed at the cover. “Now this fits me perfectly!”
Her smile reminded him of the sun coming out from behind clouds. Roz loved reading. Half the time, when he came to her door, she was curled in the chair beside a lantern, lost in the pages. She’d read him the story, or recite poems or recipes or riddles. And even though his life usually felt cramped and small, listening to Roz made it feel big and roomy and free.
“What’s a Deedledum Rite?” he asked.
“The opposite of a deedledum left.” She opened the book. “Or a tweedledum wrong?”
“I’m serious, Roz!”
She giggled. “Sorry. Where’d you hear it?”
“That visiting Proctor said—” Ji stopped at the look on Roz’s face. “What?”
“Proctor’s scary,” she said with a shiver. “His eyes are like black ice.”
“He’s not that bad,” Ji said. “His boots are made by An-Hank Cordwainer.”
“You can’t judge a man by his boots.”
Ji snorted. “You and your rules about judging. Anyway, I heard him talking to the baroness about training Brace.”
“A proctor for Brace? That doesn’t make sense. Unless . . .” Roz gazed at her bookshelf. “What kind of rite, did you say?”
�
��Deedledum.”
“Diadem!” she said. “The Diadem Rite!”
“That’s what I said!”
“Die-uh-dem,” she repeated, more slowly.
“What’s that?”
“A crown that looks like a metal headband.”
“Weird. Crowns are supposed to be big and golden with jewels and stuff.”
Roz tapped the book with a fingertip. “What do you know about the Summer Queen?”
“The same as everyone,” Ji told her. “She’s been around forever. She’s the only thing that keeps the ogres and trolls and goblins from attacking.”
“She hasn’t been around forever. Her reign started less than two hundred years ago.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“I mean, there were other kings and queens before her. Royals live for hundreds of years, so she’s not the first, and she won’t be the last. The Diadem Rite is how the crown finds an heir.”
Ji frowned. “So this rite chooses the next queen?”
“Or king, yes.”
“Wait,” Ji said. “Brace could become king? He can’t even keep the twins from locking him on the roof.”
“Well, the rite tests many candidates, so he probably won’t be chosen.” Roz frowned faintly. “This is unsettling news, Ji. A queen only calls a rite when she feels her power ebbing.”
“What do you mean, ‘ebbing’?”
“I mean, toward the end of her life. She summons noble children to the Diadem Rite every year until an heir is chosen. Then she trains her heir until . . .”
“Until she dies?”
Roz nodded. “At which point the heir takes the throne, wields the royal magic, and lives for hundreds of years.”
“A servant’s lucky to reach sixty,” Ji said. “So the Summer Queen’s reign is ending? That’s kind of scary.”
“We won’t notice any changes. The new king or queen will take the crown and everything will stay exactly the same.”
“Oh, that’s good. I guess.” He rubbed his neck. “Well, I hope Brace is chosen, but all I really care about is getting to the city.”
“To sell your baubles to a ‘fence’?” Roz said. “A loot merchant? A receiver of stolen goods?”