Then everyone seemed to answer at once. “Yeah,” said Bettin, “you’re our goose girl.”
“You’re the yellow girl,” said Conrad, turning to grin at the boy next to him.
“You’re Isi,” said Razo.
Enna touched her sleeve. “You’re Ani.”
Ani smiled and looked down, her eyes wet.
“Yeah, what do we call you now?” said Razo.
Ani shrugged. “Whatever you want, Razo.”
Someone whispered, “Well, I’m not calling her Isi or Ani. She’s a princess now.”
Enna realized that they had been walking since dawn, and soon the three travelers sat to some warmed stew and nearly fresh bread. Ideca served them herself. Ani noticed that her bowl held more stew than usual. She was nervous, both to ask the workers for help and to face the Kildenreans again, but she bade her stomach be still and tried to eat quickly.
While they ate, several workers approached Finn. Some recognized him from marketweek, and they asked where he was from and what he sold. Finn answered their questions and surprised Ani by seeming pleased at the attention, particularly from Enna. He was more interested in what she had to say than in his food and did not flinch when she touched his shoulder in passing.
Before Ani had finished her bowl, she noticed that many of the workers were fetching crooks and staffs and putting on hats, while others patted their backs and spoke low things in their ears.
“What’s going on?” said Ani.
“We’re going with you, Isi, er, my lady.” Razo pushed out his chest and held his staff in front of him with both hands. “We’re your working guard, in the peace-keeper tradition, unpaid and unasked but ready with a quarterstaff, or a crook, at least.”
Ani stood. “We came back here to beg your help, and before I even ask you’re waiting for me at the door.”
"Don’t look so surprised,” said Enna. “You should know by now that the Forest grows ‘em loyal. Does a pine kick a bird out of its limbs or the moss off its bark?”
“Am I the moss on your bark, then?” said Ani.
Enna grabbed her around her waist and shook her affectionately. “You’re the mossiest girl I know.”
“Thank you, thank you for being willing. But before you come, I need you to know the danger. The group of Kildenreans and the false princess massacred over twenty of their countrymen. This isn’t a game.”
“Well, we’re still going to play it,” said Beier.
“Clearly we’re going with you,” said Enna. “What kind of Forest folk would we be?”
“But—" said Ani.
Enna held up her hands in defense. “Isi, I know you’re worried someone’ll get hurt and it’ll be your fault. Don’t. We know there’s danger. We may be Forest folk, but we’re still Bayern, and we won’t back down from a fight.”
A few workers stomped their staffs on the floor, and someone shouted, “For Bayern!”
Ani laughed, stuttered, and finally said, “Thank you.”
Talone nodded and stepped forward. “Good, then. Listen here.” The attention turned to him, and some boys straightened up and stuck out their chests as though they were regular soldiers at attention. “The impostor’s guards will want to slay us before we can enter the palace. Your duty is to guard the princess. Do not fight unless they attack you, and do not leave her side. Our goal is to reach the king. It is good that we are many. With just three of us, they might have tried to pull us aside and slit our throats before the king hears our story.”
“The storytelling’ll be my job,” said Ani. “If the king doesn’t believe me, you are to come back here, and don’t make a scene. I’d like you to live through this.”
Enna turned to her. “I’m not going to leave you alone. I said I wouldn’t.”
“I’m serious, Enna. If he doesn’t believe me, it’ll do no good.”
“We’ll see,” she said.
Ani opened her mouth to argue, but Talone touched her elbow. “Princess,” he said.
She nodded. “For those of you willing, it’s time to go.”
Ani led the procession. Going before the crook- and staff-bearing mob in her leaf green clothes and leaf green headscarf, she felt more the harbinger of spring than commander or princess. The small army of skinny beast-keepers in unpolished boots gripped their crooks and looked about with anxious pride. Talone carried his sword, his eyes the color of steel, his hair flecked with gray, his figure stolid as though he had emerged from the city’s stone walls. He strode beside Ani and watched the streets as cautiously as he had ever attended the east gate of the White Stone Palace. No one spoke. She felt the weight of their lives like the pressure of a wind at her back. She was neither queen nor general, but they followed her.
A wall ringed the palace, its tops fanged with iron spikes, its stones charred by ancient battles. The palace gates were open; it seemed the king did not fear invasion while his army invaded. Ten guards stood at attention when Ani’s group approached, eyeing the staffs that they carried like weapons and their number, thirty youths and a man who despite his worn clothing had the gait and mien of a warrior.
“We’re here to see the king,” said Ani.
The guard in front shook his head. “Can’t.”
“This is about the war. We’ve discovered information that’s essential before the invasion of Kildenree. We insist you let us pass, or at least send word directly to the king.”
“Can’t do it,” said the guard. “Not the first, not the other. You’re going to have to leave.”
She wished, not for the first time, that she had been born with the gift of people-speaking. Ani was sure that Selia could have gotten past those guards with a few seductive words. Ani saw Talone grip the hilt of his sword. There had to be a way to get to the king without drawing weapons. She would not kill palace guards or allow the workers to risk themselves in a vain brawl.
“Please,” she said, addressing all the guards that blocked the gateway. “Any of you. Just send him a message. We have to speak to the king.”
“Can’t be done,” said the guard.
A breeze tickled Ani’s ear, suggesting a way through. She shook her head. A wind like the one that had formed on the goose pasture against Ungolad might blow down a few guards, but there would be more to take their place. After a display like that, she would find herself trapped in a cell below the palace, listening to the winds trickle through the bars to bring news of death in Kildenree.
“Then at least tell me this—”
“Can’t tell you anything, either,” said the guard.
“Who’s that with the Forest accent and all the can’ts?” A worker stepped forward from the middle of the mob. He was Offo, one of the older sheep boys, and had never spoken a word to Ani. She had wondered why he accompanied her now and assumed his Bayern restlessness was lured by the idea of a fight. With a mild dread, she waited to hear what Offo would say.
“Is that Ratger? Look at that, Beier, it’s Ratger, our pig boy of late.”
Beier nodded his shaggy head and kept his expressions smooth and disinterested. “I heard his brother married a city girl and the pig boy moved in with them, got civilized and given a javelin and shield at wintermoon near three years ago. All grown up and guarding the gate now. Too high for us.”
“Oh, shut it, Beier,” said the guard Ratger, “I got to do my job. If some merchant-faced velvet-wearer comes down to your field and says, ‘Give me a pig, please,’ you’d tell him to shove coal in his mouth and swallow hard.”
“And if he’s an old friend and asks me real nice to give a message to the pig, I’d do it with a smile.” Offo’s lips curled up in an exaggerated smile, revealing teeth large and square like a mule’s. Ratger rolled his eyes and stomped his feet twice in irritation. He no longer seemed the stoic guard.
“Play along here, Ratger,” said Razo. He stepped up with a straight spine and extended neck, pleading every inch out of his short frame. “You know, this’s the goose girl what defended her flock
from five muscle thieves—alone. You ever do anything like that? The king wanted to honor her, you know, and he won’t be real pleased to hear you’ve stopped her at his gate as though she were the thief and you full of airs.”
Ratger glanced back at Offo’s mock smile and sighed. “Quit your grinning, Offo. I can’t take you to the king. And I can’t deliver a message. He isn’t even here. They’re all gone, marched with the army, off to marry the prince somewhere.”
“Where?” said Ani.
“I don’t know.” Ratger spoke with sarcasm thick as maple sap. “Somehow the prince forgot to invite me to his wedding.”
“Tatto!" Enna pointed to the far side of the palace courtyard, where the young page was ambling in the afternoon shade, swinging an empty errand basket.
“Tatto!" shouted Ani through the shoulders of the guards. He turned to see the workers’ mob all staring at him through the gate of bodies and loped to them with a smile.
“Come to see me?” he said.
“To see the king, you nit,” said Enna. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know, but not because I’m just an apprentice page, but because no one really knows, except it’s probably at some country house grand enough for a wedding and on the way to war. I guess they don’t want a lot of uninvited guests showing up.” He eyed them sharply, letting them know that they were uninvited as well.
“I need your help,” said Ani, “so stay put for a minute.”
He folded his arms and looked up at her. “Are you really what they all"—he waved a hand at the jam of workers—"say you are?”
“I am,” said Ani.
“I thought so. I told my da, ‘She wouldn’t see the king. She’s hiding something, that goose girl with her broken staff and her hat and her goose talk and her pretty hands.’" Tatto blushed suddenly and looked down.
“Ratger, are you under orders not to tell me anything?” said Ani.
Ratger glanced briefly at Offo and then back at Ani. “No, I guess not.”
“Then can you tell me the name of the prime minister?”
“Thiaddag,” said Ratger.
“Right. But there was one I met about six years ago when he traveled to Kildenree. Is he still alive?”
“That would be Odaccar,” said one of the guards. “He’s retired, got old suddenly, sick or something.”
“That’s right,” said Ratger. “He’s in the severance quarters, over the carriage houses.”
“Ah,” said Ani, beginning to feel some relief. “Tatto, I need you to be quick. Go to Odaccar. Tell him who I am, tell him I’m waiting here at the gate for permission to pass and see him.” She turned to Ratger. “And if he calls for me, it’s all right that I pass?” The guard nodded his assent, and Tatto ran off.
When he returned, the guards let Ani, Talone, Finn, and Enna through the gate. The others they insisted remain behind, to display their power as guards, Ani thought, and to get answers. She had gone only a few steps into the courtyard when she heard Ratger say, “Now, Offo, who is she?”
Tatto led the four to the inner courtyard by following the outer wall, insisting that taking them through the palace would mess up the floor polish, and then up the stairs of the carriage houses. The long white corridor was lined with unadorned pine doors, most of them opened, revealing small, clean bedrooms. In each room’s one chair sat dim-faced hall-servants, hall-mistresses, and chamber-lords, retired servants of high degree, staring out the single window at the inactive courtyard. Their hair was white as mourning clothes and eyes often expressionless, watching for death. One woman turned as they passed her door, and Ani nodded. The woman turned back to her window.
Near the end of the corridor they found the former prime minister’s apartment. He, too, sat in his chair and stared at his windowpane, but when he turned to the noise at his door, thoughtfulness announced itself in the lines on his brow, and his eyes were full of curiosity. She remembered first hearing the Bayern accent from his mouth, how his words had seemed stitched together, one following the other in seamless succession. She had loved the sound. She checked herself now, making sure she addressed him in her Kildenrean accent.
“Sir, I met you once when I was a girl and you had come to my mother’s kingdom.”
He nodded, but his brows creased together. “You’re not the one I met with the prince.” He shook his hand as though gestuting at everything at once. “We arranged a marriage, I remember that. But a different girl’s marrying him.” He shrugged. “You both look near the same to me.”
Ani, waiting for his permission, sat on the edge of his bed and told the story of the designs and murders and war. The old man listened carefully, interjecting questions and receiving the answers with a deepening of wrinkles on his forehead.
“It is true, sir,” said Talone. “I am the last witness of the massacre.”
“And I saw the false princess’s guards twice try to kill this yellow lady,” said Enna.
The prime minister made a tsk, tsk sound. “War. That’s what killed the old king and his other sons some years ago. That’s what that lovely queen and I were trying to avoid, and look at it all come down on us like so many hunting falcons. Can’t stand war. Gets in the way of order and process and all the good things. Thiaddag, now, he loves the stuff. Can’t get enough of it. Eats it up like blackberry pudding. And you know what I think about Thiaddag.” He squinted and stuck out his tongue.
“They have gone north,” said Ani, “toward the mountain pass to invade Kildenree, and in three days the prince and Selia will wed. Do you know where they might be?”
“Oh, yes. North. Wedding. They would’ve gone to the estate on Lake Meginhard. The king was married there himself. I was present. It’ll become a tradition, I shouldn’t wonder.” His eyes livened with memory, and his thin lips took shape with a smile.
Ani breathed out a sigh. “Lake Meginhard. Good. At least we know where.” She twisted to look at Enna. “Can we get there in three days?”
Enna shrugged. The only place she knew outside the Forest was the city. Ani could see Talone’s jaw tighten in frustration that he did not know this terrain well enough to supply the answers.
“Three days...” Odaccar shut his eyes tight, as though trying to see a map in his mind. “On foot you might make it in three days, maybe four.”
“That is not good enough.” Ani leaned forward and put her hand atop Odaccar’s. “Sir, we need horses. We must get there in time to stop the wedding and the war. If we don’t, people like Thiaddag get their way.” Odaccar winced at that. “You once held a great deal of power in this kingdom, sir. Do you have friends in the stables? Can you get us horses?”
“Me? No, they think I’m old and useless.”
“Please,” said Ani, refusing to give up. “We don’t have enough coin to buy horses. If we had the time and skill, I would try to steal them. I must get to Lake Meginhard in less than three days, and the only way I see to do that is to get horses today, with your help. Can you think of a way to help?”
Odaccar rubbed his forehead and frowned. “Maybe.” Then he smiled, and his wrinkles stretched into long, pleasant curves. “Maybe if they don’t know it’s I.” He stood up by his small desk and rummaged for parchment, sending Enna to water his inkpot. The four stood by, twisting their hands with anxiety while he scrawled on the paper with the thick, scratchy strokes of a worn goose quill. He produced a stamp with a silver handle from a small drawer and shook it in the air. “Bet they don’t know I kept one of these!" He inked it and stamped the bottom of the letter.
“There now, that’s your passport to horses. I don’t think even that tight-fingered stable-master’ll think to ask which prime minister signed this letter.”
Ani took his hands and thanked him.
“You have done a noble thing, sir,” said Talone.
Odaccar laughed out loud and slapped his belly. “It’s good to be needed, I think.” The wrinkles around his lips and nose gathered together as though they existed solely to bear up h
is smile.
Ani sent Enna and Finn, the parchment drying in Enna’s hand, to find the stable-master. She begged Tatto to escort her and Talone to Selia’s quarters.
“This is good, Talone. If we can get to Lake Meginhard in time, this’ll be better than meeting the king today in my goose girl clothes. I just need one of my old dresses from Selia’s wardrobe, and then I think we can play Princess Napralina-Victery and her escort guard convincingly enough to get us through the doors.”
“Wait, wait, Isi,” said Tatto. “Do you know how wrong it’d be to break into the princess’s room, and me an oath-sworn page and due to receive my shield and javelin in two years?”
“I have to get a proper dress, Tatto, or they’ll never believe I’m the princess’s sister come to see the wedding. Anyway, it’s actually my apartment, isn’t it? Is it against your oath to lead the princess to her own room?”
“And if we get caught and they don’t believe you’re the princess—”
“Just tell them I bewitched you,” said Ani. Her eyes opened wider, her closed lips turned upward teasingly, and though the room was still, Ani caught at a slight breeze and her hem and sleeves and the loose end of her headscarf rustled in the invisible current. “That shouldn’t be too hard to believe.”
Tatto swallowed visibly and nodded. Talone stared, and she became self-conscious and released the wind.
“I told you,” she said to Talone.
“I suppose I thought you were being metaphorical.” He grinned and shook his head. “If your mother saw you . . .”
No one questioned their errand through the palace, though the pageboy wiped his sweating palms on his tunic and tensed at every sentry’s station, expecting to be pounced on and flung into a dungeon. At last he gestured to a set of doors, enjoined them to behave, and retreated down the corridor.
The doors were a double set of heavy, dark walnut, their borders engraved with climbing vines and half-opened blossoms. The brass knobs turned without stop, and they entered.
A long window breathed out over the courtyard and filled the room with light. Dark wood couches with thin velvet cushions, lamps that sparkled with dangling crystals, rugs so deep they kept the impression of her boot after she stepped away, walls painted deep orange and mahogany, tapestries of forest animals with starry eyes and horns in gold thread, curtains of curious weaving in all the natural colors that could be seen from the window, the odor of pure beeswax and rosewater. Ani felt doused by luxury, held underwater without breath. Her eyes sought out simplicity—she found a mirror and her own face.