Finn looked down at his boots, his face hidden by his hair.
“We know it’s all just daydreaming. In all likelihood, no one in this forest’ll ever get a javelin, and I’ll never see my mother’s kingdom again, let alone be hailed by crowds as the jewel of Kildenree. Maybe it’s vain to wish for it. But sometimes, it’d be nice just to hold something real in your hands that felt like a measure of your worth. Right, Finn?”
Finn looked up through his hair, and she saw that he smiled.
Ani was forced to stay and heal in Gilsa’s house. She troubled about every passing hour and looked to the weather, wondering if the pass snows were melting, if the army had moved yet, if the prince had yet wed his false bride. She told Gilsa, “I’ve got to get back soon, to tell the other workers and enlist their help and go march on the palace and demand an audience and convince the king—”
“Patience,” said Gilsa, and escorted her from the window back to bed.
The cut was deep, and she had lost much blood and healing time moving through the woods. She lay on her belly day and night, fretting when she was not sleeping. After two days, Gilsa allowed her to rise awhile and follow her around the yard, though she was not to lift so much as a chicken’s egg. When Ani shadowed Gilsa into the coop anyway, Gilsa slapped her hands away from the task and then asked her what the chickens were saying.
’"People are here to take the eggs’ and so on. Chickens aren’t the best conversationalists.”
“I’m glad,” said Gilsa. “Makes me feel better about eating them.”
That afternoon they were visited by Gilsa’s nearest neighbor, a round woman named Frigart who frequented the cottage in good weather. She sat by the hearth and complained of her husband and son while Gilsa, half listening, knitted caps. Ani, tired of lying down, was at the table, leaning forward to keep her wound from touching the chair back. The light slanted into the room from the window, and when Frigart’s gesticulating hand passed through the light, it sparkled.
“That ring,” said Ani. She stood and took her hand. It was a ruby in gold setting, as familiar to her as the face of its owner. Her face burned.
“Where’d you get this?”
Frigart pulled her hand away. “That’s none of your affair.”
“It was on a man who was murdered in these woods,” said Ani. “Did you take it from his body? Did you bury him?”
“No such thing.” Frigart spat with the words in agitation. “What a thing to say! It was given in payment.”
“What is it, Ani?” said Gilsa.
“This was my ring.” She remembered Talone that last night in the Forest, his fist at his heart swearing loyalty. “I gave it to a friend who was killed.”
“Well, you can’t have it back if it ever was yours,” said Frigart. “I don’t know how my lodger got ahold of it, but I fed him for two months before he could get out of bed to lift a finger and earn his board, so it’s rightfully mine. And I’m still helping him, I’ll have you know, letting him stay on and work with my husband. Says he needs to earn money to take a long journey.” She frowned, and her cheeks pushed up like a little child’s. “Besides, I’ve never had a pretty thing in all my life.”
Gilsa protested enough to do any mother proud, but Ani insisted, and when Frigart left, Ani accompanied her home. Finn accompanied Ani, his arm through hers. They walked nearly an hour at a pace slow enough not to tear open the cut again and easy enough that neither Frigart nor Ani lost her breath. Ani could feel her heart beating in her back from pain and in her throat from excitement as they rounded a bend and saw the cottage. A man was chopping wood in the yard. His hair had always been dark for a Kildenrean, though now it was speckled with more gray than she remembered and grew unchecked past his shoulders.
“Talone,” she said.
Talone looked up and dropped the ax. He ran forward and she tensed, afraid he would embrace her and her wound, but he stopped before her, took her hand, and fell to one knee.
“Princess,” he said. He cried over her hand, his back shaking with sobs.
Frigart, with new and awkward gestures of respect, invited "Princess" indoors, where she set them up in chairs around her hearth and, with regretful looks, left them to talk alone. Finn stayed, quiet on his stool by the window.
Ani insisted that Talone tell his tale first. It was short, and she suspected that he left out many of the details of hardship. All had been slain, nearly he as well. His hand touched his side, and Ani thought it must have been a deep and mortal wound that cut him down. Talone had fainted from blood loss and awoke to the sounds of midnight grave digging. He pulled himself away unobserved and wandered through the woods, finally finding Frigart’s home, where from necessity he had remained ever since.
“I knew Ungolad and his friends would be in Bayern, so my plan was to return to the queen. I . . . took . . . some time to heal, and then the winter months trapped me, and having no money or horse hindered me more.” He shook his head, and his eyes lined with anger. “I thought you, too, were slain. I thought the only chance of redemption would be to stay alive and find a way back to your mother or they might never have learned of the treachery. If I had known, Princess, I would have searched for you, in the Forest, in the city. You have been unprotected all this time. I have failed unpardonably.”
“Not at all, Captain. We were betrayed and outnumbered. I, like you, decided that for the time there was no remedy but perseverance. And we’ve both survived.”
Talone smiled at her. “Your mother would be proud if she saw you now. Though she might not recognize you with your hair hid and speaking in that smart accent.”
Ani covered her lips with her hand, embarrassed that she now spoke in the Bayern fashion unawares. The movement of her arm pulled the skin of her side, and she dropped it again with a shudder. He gestured to her middle and inquired.
“Ungolad,” she said.
He looked mournful, an expression she guessed he had worn for many months.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Please don’t be,” she said. “He was greedy and overconfident. If he’d grabbed me instead of hazarding a swipe of his dagger, I’d be much less alive.”
Ani told her story to Talone, and this time it seemed more real, so much so that when she spoke of Falada’s head on the wall, she had to pause with a hand over her mouth to stop a sob. Talone’s eyes never left her face, his expression betraying grim wonderment. Finn leaned forward, his chin in his hands. When she forgot the detail of Conrad’s chasing his hat on the wind, Finn prompted her and chuckled at the relation.
“I suppose when Conrad was invited into the presence of the king to tell of the goose thieves, he also told of me or spoke to the guards, because they found me that night. He did. Ungolad. And I ran.” Ani closed her eyes briefly at the memory, but the terror was starker in darkness. She looked back at Talone and smiled. “Dear Talone, can you even know what comfort it is to find you?”
Talone breathed deeply and broke his gaze from her face to the window. The shutters were closed, and no light broke through the slits. A breeze tapped the branch of a tree on the wood in a timid knock. He seemed to study the noise and the evening as a general would look over his battlefield.
“There is a war, then,” he said. “Ungolad is a clever man.”
“And Selia,” said Ani. “I think she’s been overlooked too often. I remember years ago my aunt saying that Selia had the gift of people-speaking. She’s used that gift well.”
Talone nodded distractedly. He did not seem interested in the dangers of Selia or the gifts of language, only in the war.
“How long until you can safely walk back to the city?” Talone asked.
“Now,” said Ani.
Talone looked at Finn.
“Mother says in a week.”
“Mother’s boy,” said Ani with play spite.
It was decided in four days they would return. And if she could not make it by then, “I’ll carry you,” said Talone, “though you’r
e a mite bigger than you were when I found you sleeping by the swan pond.”
Ani and Finn slept at Frigart’s house that night and returned the next day, Ani leaning on both Finn and Talone as she walked. After the excursion, she slept for a day and a night, and Gilsa assured her that she had been warned.
Talone walked to Gilsa’s house daily, dragging any fallen logs he found, which he chopped into fire-size blocks with Finn’s ax. After that ritual chore, he sat with Ani by the hearth or on a stool in the garden, and they planned, or talked and talked over all that happened in that Forest and all they knew of their enemies. Both agreed that returning now to Kildenree was hopeless. The Forest Road would take them months.
“There is the mountain pass,” said Talone. “With war parties gathering, it would be difficult to slip through it unseen, but it may be our best option.”
Ani shook her head. “Even if we succeeded, all we could do is warn the queen to ready her armies. There’d still be war. No, I think our best hope’s to return to the city. I’ve friends there who might accompany us to act as witnesses against our murder, and with you supporting my testimony, we’ve more of a chance of convincing the king.”
The days passed too slowly for Ani. Everything around her spoke of action—the pale blossom buds on the apple tree about to unfold, the bent green necks that poked up in Gilsa’s garden ready to straighten and reveal their leafy heads, the birds that scavenged the ground for seeds and sang tunes about now, now, now. Whenever Gilsa discovered Ani pacing or leaning on the fence and looking through the trees as though looking ahead, she guided her to a chair or cot and made her sit.
“Rest while you can. Even a princess has skin that heals with time.”
Gilsa was hardly impressed to learn that her refugee was royalty. She tossed around titles with a playful spirit, never really believing them. She gave Ani a simple skirt and tunic dyed beech leaf green. The first time Ani put it on, she discovered that the four thin gold coins, her savings for a way home, had been rescued from the pocket of her blue skirt and slipped into the new one.
“They’re for you,” said Ani. They were as light on her palm as birch leaves.
“No such thing,” said Gilsa. Her tone held the tight self-awareness that a joke was imminent. “You can pay me back when you’re queen.”
The night before departure, Talone stayed at Gilsa’s. There was much debate over who should sleep in the shed. Gilsa thought the travelers needed bed rest more than she, Ani insisted that neither Gilsa nor Finn should be ousted from their own beds, Talone thought he and Finn would fare best in the shed, and Finn nodded to whatever plan was stated at the moment.
“Get back in my cot, girl,” said Gilsa. “You’re sickly.”
“No, I’m not,” said Ani.
“Oh, no? Well, maybe stubbornness is a sickness, did you ever think of that?”
In the end, they set up makeshift bedrolls on the floor before the hearth and slept side by side like little children sharing one bed.
They rose early and breakfasted slowly, holding too hot tea to warm their hands and staring at the morning fire. Finn was going with them, on his insistence. Gilsa was thinking of last minute cautions for her son and occasionally reminding him that she would be alone and in ignorance until he sent word. Talone cleaned his sword thoughtfully, a gift from Frigart’s husband when he learned the real value of the red ring. Ani watched their faces painted an early orange from the hearth light.
Ani was stilled by the remembrance of the first time she took her leave of that place six months previous and the girl she had been then. Smiling, she thought of her blunder, thoughtlessly taking Gilsa’s own bed as though she were still a princess in a palace and pleased to be waited on. And of wandering into a foreign city with a feigned accent and the naive notion of simply finding the king and telling what had happened, a plan that was easily frightened out of her by the sight of Selia wearing her dress. She had run three times since then. She would not run again. All would be set to right, or let Ungolad’s dagger find its mark.
Chapter 18
Gilsa gave them each the good-luck kiss of a widow, and they took to the path. The air was clear and smelled of new, growing things. Ani listened to the breezes and all their news of spring and chose to feel confident. The men would not let her shoulder a pack, so she walked easily, if more slowly than before.
They spent two nights under the Forest canopy before they reached the thinning trees of the near-city. There Ani and Talone waited while Finn, his mind full of careful descriptions, crept ahead to scout the gate and main way for any sign of Ungolad’s men. He returned some time later convinced of safety. Ani felt the city winds confirm this, their image-speech vacant of pale-haired men, and they moved on.
It was not a marketday week, and the traffic through the gate was sparse. She felt exposed entering the gate past the giant stone posts, two great sentinels on either side gazing down at her with their stony suspicion. No one hindered their course.
The wide avenue was bedecked in celebration of the impending wedding. The trunks of the tall oaks that lined the avenue were wrapped in paper—yellow, blue, orange, and white, like thick-bodied women dressed for spring. Above them, long ribbons bridged the open sky, converting the oak tops into arches. The party walked long beneath them, the straight shadows enveloping them and dismissing them again and again, a repetition steady as the beating of a sorcerer’s drum. In market-square, there were more papered ornaments than people. The entire city was quiet and brilliantly colored. Ani thought it eerie and sad, like a resplendent bird that had lost its song. Everything trembled with tension and expectancy.
Ani led them through narrow streets, avoiding main ways. They reached the west city wall and followed it a distance to the workers’ settlements. The low buildings crouched against the wall like a street cat hunting in the shadow. The sun was still high in the west, and the sky was full blue; the workers would still be in the pastures and stalls, gleaning the last bits of sunlight, letting their charges recover from winter and relish the green, sprouting things that were erupting from the fields. Grass burst between the cobblestones under her feet. Spring was breaking, even in the city.
When they arrived at Ideca’s yellow house, Talone insisted on entering first. He paused on the threshold and said, “Princess, the room is full.”
Ani stepped up beside him and saw all the workers at the benches or on the stones by the hearth.
“Isi.” Enna jumped from her seat and ran to the door. Ani motioned to Talone that it was all right, and he stepped aside, sheathing his sword. Others followed Enna’s lead, and soon half the hall was embracing her and congratulating her on being alive. Some touched her with a reverence and uncertainty that made Ani turn to Enna with a quizzical look.
“I told them,” said Enna. “I’m sorry. It seemed right at the time. I’m just so relieved that you escaped. I saw you running away that night, and I was so scared. Your geese woke half the settlement, and we went after you. I had to tell them why you were running and who was chasing. But you both disappeared into the woods, and Isi, you don’t know how crazy we’ve been all these days with no idea what happened.”
“The geese that were in my room that night...”
“They’re fine,” said Enna. “I think that braided man kicked the gander, but he’s a hardy one.”
“He is,” said Ani.
“So, goose girl,” said Razo, shouldering past others to stand by Enna, “you’re really a princess?”
“The genuine yellow girl,” she said.
He smiled at her and lightly punched her arm. The rest stayed back, watching her as though she were a strange bird with large, unpredictable wings.
She introduced Talone and Finn to the workers, and they all tried to introduce themselves back at once, shouting their names over one another. Ani cut through the commotion, asking why they were all in the hall when the weather was good.
“It’s holiday week, for the prince’s wedding,” said Sifr
id.
“When?” said Ani.
“Two days,” said Ideca, speaking for the first time. She squinted at Ani. “You’re that yellow girl after all? Then you’d best hurry, goose girl, because you’ve got until three tomorrows. Humph, imagine marrying a murderess. She’ll cut his throat in their marriage bed.”
“Or murder enough of Kildenree to cover up what she’s done,” said Enna.
“The army’s marched,” said Sifrid. “They left last week by the main gate. There was a celebration. The war’s not a secret anymore.”
Enna’s expression brightened with a thought. “After you left, we had Tatto slip messages under the king’s door. Anonymous. Saying that the princess was a fraud and so were the tales of Kildenrean war plans. I don’t know if they got to him, or if he believed them, but we tried.”
Those who had not heard of the letters to the king began to ask questions, and for a moment the hall blazed with talk. Ani looked around and saw Conrad seated in the corner, his hands in his hair. She crossed to him, loosed a strand of hair from under her scarf, and plucked it.
“Conrad, I’m sorry.” He shrugged, and she sat beside him. “You were right about who I was, and I lied because I was scared.”
She handed him the long, pale hair, and he took it and rubbed it between his fingers.
“I told those foreign guards where you were.” He looked up, and she saw that his chin was trembling. “I wanted them to find you. But I didn’t know they would try to kill you. I swear I didn’t know.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “That part’s over now.”
Conrad glanced down at the hair and came close to a smile. “I really wanted to yank one of these from your head, but you got witchy on me. And now you’re a princess. Who’d’ve thought?”
Ani stood and turned to the workers, who stood by in silence. “I don’t understand something. I lied to you all before. Why do you believe me now, when I say I’m the princess?”
Enna gave a frank smile. “Because we know you.”