“It all sounds crazy,” I retorted, then added hastily, “I mean if you know Kwenz. Oh, I know it sounds so nice and caring.”
Rel said, “What sounds crazy is someone your age claiming she’s got to defend a kingdom.”
I fumed. And resorted to sarcasm. “Why don’t you write a letter to the four queens in Bermund, right in the north of you here. If you can write, and not just bully people around. And ask them if they know me, and they’ll tell you they do, because I helped break the enchantment over them. Well, that is, part of it, anyway—the awful part is still going on, and poor Autumn is—” I dared a look at Rel’s impassive face and yelled, “You don’t believe me!”
“It sounds like you made it all up,” he said, so unheated that I heard it as utter conviction. “You know as well as I do that Raneseh is not about to write any letters to the monarchy in another kingdom to ask questions about the wild claims of a loud-mouth ten-year-old from the Mearsiean colony.”
The idea that I would lie about my experiences was so unfair, so cruelly horrible after everything I’d been through, I let out a bellow of sheer rage and took off again, as fast as I could, straight for those purple mountains.
The difference between six feet and not-quite-five resulted in a hand crunching down on the scruff of my neck and hauling me mumchance round, then marching me a little ways away, into a sheltered little spot beside the stream that meandered through the floor of the meadow.
Rel dropped me with a thump. At once I scrambled away, making it plain I had no intention of being put, like an old shoe. I flopped on the grass next to a tree stump, my back squarely to The Enemy.
And jumped when a hiss and metal snicked! wood inches from my elbow.
I jerked round, saw a dart in the tree stump, which had circles carved into it. I jerked round the other way, vibrating with affront.
“You would move right in front of the target,” Rel said, and threw another dart. “But I won’t hit you.”
It smacked the wood directly below the first one. That one was even closer to my elbow.
I scooted back, then flushed with anger that I’d done so. I could see at once that he had perfect aim—and I wished I’d pretended nothing was happening. I turned my back again boiling with rage. Boys! Wasn’t that typical of the slobs! And talk about showing off!
... I couldn’t find a word low enough.
Smack! Smack! Smack! Rel went right on with his practice, until the sounds changed to the hum of wood, and the crunching of gravel. Intensely curious, I leaned forward, absorbed in picking bits of grass and rock from between my bare toes. Then I snuck a peek through the covering curtain of my hair, to see Rel a little ways away, working with a big walking stick. No, I realized, it was a homemade quarterstaff. I then realized that I was sitting in a kind of one-person target practice area.
So that’s why we were here—he hadn’t wanted to offer me a friendly escape from durance vile, even for a few hours. I was just an excuse to get away from whatever duties he was supposed to be doing so he could flub around with this fighting junk. Just like a typical obnoxious, more brawn-than-brains teen-age boy.
The idea of it steamed me so much I couldn’t think at all, except of wildly improbable ways to get revenge. But hard as I wished, a giant bird would not fly by and attack him—or even bomb him—and the Chwahir would not pop up like mushrooms here in this valley, pounce on him and muscle him off to their deepest dungeon. Nor would some helpful local highwaymen or pirates or lurking bad guys of whatever type happen along and kidnap Rel and put him to work washing dishes for a few thousand years, Just So He’d Learn.
When I finally calmed down enough to start thinking instead of dreaming, I realized Rel had gone silent. What was he doing now? The idea that he was just sitting there glaring at me was so creepy I edged down to the stream, got a welcome drink, then looked back—to see him lying full length on the grass, absorbed in reading.
I tipped my head, caught a gleam from the golden lettering: something about travels, but his hand holding the book obscured the rest.
Plan. He was reading (so Stupid Rockhead could read—unless he was pretending in order to impress me, huh!) soooo ... I edged a bit farther downstream. Stuck my legs out, splashing my feet gently in the water. Dum-dee-dum, hoom-de-hoom, lookit me being a good little kiddie, just lolling about in the sunshine. Or, don’t lookit me, because I’m just a boring ten-year-old brat who doesn’t know anything, yessireebob ...
Felt a look from Rel. I just kept splashing, enjoying the warmth of the mellow sunlight on my head. Sniffed the sweet fragrances of wildflowers drifting on the breeze. Ho hum, nothing to do in the world ... I scooted downstream a bit more. And again, and again, until the tree stump blocked Rel from view.
Then I wriggled away in the grasses (not looking up or I’d have seen the tops thrashing wildly about) and when I judged I’d gotten far enough, I got to my feet and took off.
This time when the Fingers of Doom crunched down on the back of my collar, I lost the last shreds of temper and started kicking, scratching, biting, and yelling with every quivering vestige of my strength.
The red rage abated when I discovered I couldn’t scratch or bite—Rel had untied his sash and wound it around me so my hands were down at my sides. Even kicking was harder when I couldn’t quite keep my balance, or see, because my hair hung in my eyes.
“Raneseh,” he said, “wanted me to try to make friends with you, but I don’t think it worth the effort.”
“Neither do I,” I fired back grittily.
Rel grabbed up his satchel, threw the things in it, and marched us back to the trail and ignominiously back down the road. I fumed, hoping someone would see my plight and offer to come to the rescue, but the few people who spared a glance past Raneseh’s scruffy ward to the short, even scruffier brat tottering along at his side probably thought (judging from their waves and absent smiles) we were playing some sort of game.
At the house, Rel left me just inside, where Pralineh almost immediately found me. He went off to snitch to Raneseh.
Pralineh gaped at me in surprise as I wiggled my fingers, blew at my hair, and said, “Would you untie this disgusting, cootie-ized sash?”
Pralineh’s cheeks flushed scarlet as I tried not to laugh, but she bent to the task.
The sash fell to the carpet and I promptly stomped on it, then brushed my hands thoroughly over my arms to remove its touch, scraped my palms to eject from my skin any lingering Villain Cooties, then I stamped again on those. When I began Pralineh gave in to a crow of laughter, and all during the operation (which took a while, I was so mad) she rocked silently back and forth.
“It’s not funny,” I said, though by then my own sense of humor tweaked, now that I was disinfected. “That baggie has boy-cooties, and I don’t want ’em on me!”
“Baggie? C-cooties?” Pralineh laughed again.
“Sure! Baggies are this Earth thing, it’s just that it sounds so silly, it’s so perfect for villains. Who could be scared of a baggie? As for cooties, they’re germs. Worse than germs.”
“I do not know what germs are.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter, except that all enemies have them.” I wiggled my fingers, like something with a lot of legs. “You wipe them off and stomp them—villains just hate that!” I added, grinning in triumph.
“Wh-where did this idea come from?” she asked, wiping her eyes at last.
“I dunno. Another world. We always wiped off boy cooties, when I was little.” I scowled. “Rel’s are worse than anybody’s.”
“Why?” Pralineh asked, picking up the sash, folding it with quick, automatic movements, and laying it aside. “My father thinks very highly of him, you know.”
That’s supposed to be a recommendation? I thought, but managed not to spout it out. “What’s his story anyway? Is he a servant or not?” I asked.
“No, not at all.” She put her head to one side. “It is time for luncheon. Are you hungry?” She asked, and then at whate
ver she saw at my expression she smiled, and, rang the bell. “We—that is, he and I, and the others here, except for Raneseh—do not know anything about Rel’s family. There was one single time, when one of my friends’ brothers challenged Rel, and there was a scuffle. It resulted in some of the sort of talk little children do, after which my father exclaimed that Rel’s family’s rank is as good as anyone’s. Then he wouldn’t say any more than that.”
“A mystery!” I said And thought angrily, Bet they don’t want him because he’s a clod. Which isn’t a mystery at all. But I didn’t say it.
“Perhaps. I do think my father wishes that we when we grow up we might marry, and Rel would be my helpmeet when I am Holder, but—” She shrugged. “The big girls talk about how handsome he will be one day, and I think I can see it, but I don’t know, he’s like my brother. And,” she added, with rare irony, which made her look more like her father, “he regards me as a sister. Even if I might one day want that, I don’t think he does. Being a Holder-helpmeet, I mean, not marriage. He works very hard because he feels it his duty to Raneseh, not because he loves the place. Not like Raneseh and I do.”
I looked skeptical. “He’s too poker-faced to have any feelings.”
“Poker? Do you mean a fire poker? What an odd image!” Pralineh smiled as Maraneh brought in a late luncheon—at first enough for one, but we split the food, and Maraneh was soon back with plenty more.
I dove in with ferocious appetite. Pralineh took a dainty bite or two then said, “Well, it’s true he speaks very little. But when he goes to visit, which is almost never any more, every time I look for him he’s in the garden, if they have one, or staring out the windows.”
“I’m surprised he gets invited. He’s a poopdeck and a splattoon.”
“He’s very popular,” Pralineh said.
“What?” I scoffed, waving my fork—almost launched a bite into orbit, and hastily popped the bite into my mouth.
“Yes. He gets along with everyone. And when I say that, I do not mean just my friends’ brothers and cousins, but their servants, the stable hands, the traders who come through, even the tutors. He pays no attention to rank.”
“Gets along with everyone? Hah!” I snorted, thinking, What am I, a hoptoad?
“It wasn’t always so,” Pralineh admitted, her brow puckering faintly. “When I was very little, and of course he wasn’t much older, Hollan, the new stable boy, was terribly cruel to him. I don’t know why—I just remember the day Rel got into a fight with him. Everyone was yelling at them to stop but they didn’t until there was this awful sound, and then Hollan was shrieking. Oh, I will never forget! I ran and hid in the hayloft—the only time I ever climbed up there—but the sound chased me there. It turned out Rel had shattered his arm at the shoulder, the healer said.”
I thought narrowly, That sounds just like a bully to me!
“Rel was more grieved than anyone. I don’t remember who said what, because I was only five or six, I just remember that Rel insisted on doing Hollan’s chores as well as his own, even though Raneseh said he would hire another boy until Hollan was healed. And so he did, until Hollan could use his arm again. Anyway, my point is, somewhere in there, they became good friends, and stayed that way. So that even when there are Honors here visiting—and heirs—Rel always helps Hollan, then goes straight out and joins the boys in their games. But he won’t play if they get angry, or uncivil. Nor does he get into fights. He just shrugs off unkindness or incivility. When Fleseneh, Mirlah’s brother, returned from Colend and was ... discourteous. Rel simply stopped going to the parties where Fleseneh might be.”
“So what’s all that about his being the shepherd’s son?”
“Well, it became a nickname. When we were little. My mother was not long dead, you see, and Raneseh still had visitors, and Rel would be minding us, and the boys never gave him any trouble. He was our shepherd, someone said—he being so much bigger, and us little folk trotting along behind. I don’t know how that became ‘shepherd’s son’—oh, I remember Raneseh one day said that Rel’s father would have liked that very much, and so it stuck.”
“But he doesn’t tell him anything else about his father?”
“No. He says the information is not his to give. All will be made plain one day, but until then, he is Raneseh’s ward. Rel and I talked about it once, oh, a year or two back. We think that they were friends, Raneseh and his father. Mirlah would have it he’s a king’s son, and for a while that rumor went around—but Selah’s horrid sister pointed out that everyone knows all the relations of the royal families, even the ones under enchantment from Nightland, and none of them have any missing ‘shepherd’s sons’. She was so unkind about it, as if we’d made up the rumor to make ourselves seem grand! But it caused me to ask Raneseh, and he said that of course Rel is not a prince in disguise, or he would have had a far different upbringing. And so I told the others.” She sighed. “So people just accept him as he is. Even though he won’t dress like a young man of rank, or take part in the social rounds except when there are games and the like.”
“It helps to be a hulk,” I muttered.
Pralineh’s brow puckered again. “You seem to be determined against him.”
“That’s because he called me a liar when I was telling you the truth!”
“He did?” Her eyes rounded.
I thought back. “Not outright, but he as good as did.” I fumed, remembering that crack about writing letters to monarchs. “When I told him I know the queens in Bermund, and I said write a letter to check, he fired back a stinker about how Raneseh wouldn’t do that, and I knew it. Everything I said about being in other countries—anyone I happened to have met—just made him stick his nose up in the air. Ugh!”
Pralineh’s surprise made it clear that she found it difficult to believe, but her round-eyed expression changed to concern when she said slowly, “He is usually so even-tempered. I wonder if it could have been that talk of travel that provoked him so?” But she didn’t explain, just added, “It’s true that Raneseh is not likely to write to any king or queen, and Rel knows that. But you did explain your experiences, didn’t you?”
Her rueful smile deepened when she looked at my face—which was hotter and probably redder than ten fires by then. I mumbled, “No. Didn’t want him snickering and snarkling at me, like I was making it up.”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened? I would so love to hear it!”
I shrugged, feeling stupid again. “Isn’t much to tell. See, we got splatted to this continent, never mind how, and were trying to travel home. And we fumbled into Arthla, which is Bermund’s capital city ...” And while we drank hot chocolate, I told the story about the Four Queens and the statues. “So anyway, they were unfrozen, and took up their lives again. Except for Autumn, who took on the task of finding her cousins, who got cursed by that old mage.”
Pralineh shook her head. “I do not know what to say!”
“Nothing to say.” I shrugged, made uncomfortable by her expression of ... oh, call it admiration, or even awe. “So they do know me in Bermund, and don’t I wish I could see them now.”
Pralineh’s smile faded at the sight of my discomfort. “Oh, Princess Cherene, you are not happy here—I feel that I am failing you somehow.”
My fork clattered to my plate, and I shot to my feet. “No! That’s not it at all!”
Pralineh just looked unhappy until I joked and jollied her out of it by asking a lot of questions about her friends and their parties, and that tapestry, and so forth. After we finished lunch I offered to help sew, behaving like a good little kiddie with determined concentration.
But the next morning, when Pralineh mentioned casually, in the course of conversation, that Raneseh had written his letter to request a meeting with the Wise One, I went cold and hot. No use in pointing fingers of blame any more: that time was over.
I had to escape.
SEVEN
All day I kept up my good little kiddie act. Twice I glimpsed Rel
. First walking next to Pralineh, carrying a long, heavy-looking basket into which she put snipped flowery stalks to be put in the household vases. The next time I saw him was when I stepped out into the garden—after peering at the walkways as best I could. And sure enough there he was, book in hand. Keeping a distance. But there.
For the first time I studied the house from the perspective of the garden. How could I not have noticed that the Raneseh’s side had windows overlooking the garden? Because I’d had no interest in his and Rel’s disgusting lair, of course, once I’d discovered that their sitting room library was boring. But I knew better—you had to learn about The Enemy, even if just to avoid them.
With my luck, those windows there at that first jut that overlooked most of the garden in my direction were Rel’s. So of course he could see all the way to the door of my room without even moving from his chair.
I have to get him out of his room, or away from the windows, I thought. But there was no way to do that without making him suspicious. Whatever I did would have to fit into the way things had gone already. What had Captain Heraford said once, about planning raids and escapes? That you learn The Enemy’s patterns, then use their pattern when under their eye. That makes you almost invisible, because they don’t have to pay attention to you. You’re doing what they expect. Then you use another pattern when out of their eye, and you disappear because you aren’t where they expect you to be.
Rel thought I was a dumb ten-year-old brat instead of a twelve-year-old ... um, adventurer, princess of a fine country and left-hand to the queen. My pattern had been running for the garden wall and sulk, run and sulk, and finally throw a tantrum then sulk for a long time, after a series of flubbed tries at escape.
All right, time to try their patterns instead.
I prowled around after Pralineh, who went about her morning chores, inspecting the pickings from the garden and discussing meals with the cook, talking to the housekeeper about some furnishing stuff. Bored, I let my attention wander. As the housekeeper complained about the stable boys who were so hard on their clothes that after only a single season the fabric was scarce good enough for the rag bag, I spotted two of the boys out at the other side of the vegetable garden, furbishing up the open carriage Pralineh used for visiting when the weather was nice.
Mearsies Heili Bounces Back Page 20