The lesson, my son, is that we alone, no matter how skilled or how smart or how rich, are but spokes, and cannot move the wheel alone; only together can we do that.
CHAPTER TEN
Shadow
BY MID-MORNING TOMORROW I’M SUPPOSED to be officially on my way to Violla Ruza in a carriage provided by the queen. Supposed to be.
I have my own plans for transportation, my own destination—the prison transport to Deersia. If only I were a boy, then maybe I’d have a better chance of carrying it out. Or if I could just get my hands on an official work order from the palace . . . If I think about the obstacles ahead, what seemed so promising at first will begin to feel close to impossible.
Missus Kingstone visits with two of the completed gowns for a final fitting, a regular day dress and one for my first evening at the palace. She’s had her whole team of apprentice seamstresses working around the clock this entire week. The rest, she tells me, will be delivered to the palace ahead of my arrival.
One of the gowns is pale pink and frothy, full of frills and lace and bunches of fabric, with round puffy short sleeves. “Stunning!” Missus Kingstone claps her hands with delight when I model it for her and my aunts.
I turn to the full-length looking glass she brought for the fitting. I look absurd. Like a feral cat forced into a wedding gown.
My aunts don’t look convinced either, but they play along. “Yes, stunning. Quite a sight indeed,” Aunt Mesha says, holding her hand to the side of her face. Aunt Moriah has a similar reaction: “I agree—can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like it.”
The other dress isn’t much better, but at least it doesn’t make me look like a bowl of strawberry mousse. I like the color, which is a pale, almost silvery, blue, and the long draping sleeves make it sleeker—and a little less reminiscent of a noblewoman’s overly manicured poodle.
Regardless, I don’t intend to wear any of these gowns if I can help it. But I’m quickly running out of time, and no matter which way I look at it, I still don’t know how I’m going to make my plan work.
When the seamstress finally says goodbye late in the afternoon, my aunts begin saying things like, “You know, we will still see you, and you can write, and if there’s any problem . . .” All the assurances seem to be more for them than me, though. They can’t complete a single sentence without getting teary-eyed, though they try to conceal it. I’m pleased to see that they don’t want me to go. That they’re nervous about it.
After a light dinner (none of us have much of an appetite), they begin testing my knowledge of palace etiquette while we wash up the soup bowls and put them away. I’m subjected to an endless stream of pointless questions with even more pointless answers. “When does a formal meal end?” and so on. (Answer: when the queen is finished eating—whether the rest of the dinner guests are finished or not.)
We’ve gone over palace etiquette this way every night, such as who is obligated to bow to whom and which of your dinner neighbors you should turn and speak to first, or when you shouldn’t speak to anyone at all. I’d learned of many of these confusing rules before, in training manuscripts from my aunts’ library (three small shelves in the sitting room, and another of my own in the attic), so I am already familiar with much of it, though judging by how many I answer incorrectly, a refresher is sorely needed. Even if it is a waste of time. I should be learning something useful—combat, magical energy management—anything other than which fork is for seafood and which is for salad.
“I don’t want to spend tonight being torture—er, tutored,” I tell them. Though I don’t say “my last night here,” the words hang in the air.
Aunt Mesha places her apron over the back of a chair. “I have an idea,” she says.
A few minutes later we’re all crowded onto my bed, the way we used to when I was a little girl and had trouble getting to sleep on my own. Aunt Moriah and Aunt Mesha take turns voicing characters from my favorite childhood storybook, a collection of legends from all the different lands of Avantine. Most are said to date from the Deian era, before the kingdoms fractured. Instead of tales about great kings and battles and enemies, they are about people, even animals, and how they sometimes do good things and sometimes do bad things, but in the end they always do the right thing.
My aunts read the entire book, cover to cover. By the time they’re done with “The Adventures of Landy,” about a girl who pretends to be a boy and sails a great ship across the sea to save the prince, I’m half asleep. I feel each of them kiss me on the forehead before slipping out the door and down the stairs.
I close my eyes for a few minutes but sleep won’t come. This is it. I have no time left.
I can’t stop thinking about what’s coming, so I climb out of bed.
My new gowns are hanging from hooks on the attic wall. They look strange and out of place in my simple room. The same way they look on me, I think.
Beneath the dresses is a small trunk that holds matching pairs of satin slippers for each outfit and a variety of underthings designed to squeeze my body into an unnatural shape. A for-all-intents-and-purposes immobile, unnatural shape. One can hardly sit in these clothes, let alone run or kick or, well, breathe. I suppose that’s the privilege of the rich.
There’s a box in the trunk as well, but I didn’t have an opportunity to look at its contents until now. I retrieve it and sit cross-legged on the wood floor, placing it in front of me. Inside I find a smaller, hinged rectangular box, nearly flat, lined in velvet. It contains a set of gold and diamond jewelry I’m to wear when I go tomorrow: a pair of diamond stud earrings, each gem the size of a large pearl, and a glittering multi-strand collar necklace to match, as well as a wide diamond bracelet to wear over my arm-length white gloves, and two diamond rings—one designed in the shape of a flower, with emeralds as petals, and the other set with a huge square Argonian emerald, the rarest sort, surrounded by more flawless round diamonds.
I try the necklace on in front of the mirror. The weight of it chokes me. How will I wear this? It feels like it’s clinging to my throat. I unclasp it quickly and place it back in the velvet box.
The only other thing in the small box, aside from the jewelry case, is a black leather pouch filled with gold coins. Presumably this is mine to spend as I wish, since there are no instructions included.
I spill the coins out on the floor. I hold a bunch in my hand, just to feel the weight of them. All are fresh-minted, shiny. Generic profiles of the late king and his widow are etched on one side; the royal seal—a Renovian rose surrounded by three circles to symbolize eternity—is on the other.
The idea arrives as swiftly as a bolt of lightning.
Heart pounding, I bring one of the coins to my desk and take out a stick of sealing wax. I warm it over the fire and when it melts enough, I drip some on a torn bit of paper. Then I smash the coin onto the wax, carefully lifting it out with my fingernails. It leaves a perfect mark.