So they had help in getting to believe me, I thought. They had proof. They didn’t just trust me outright.
“Do you know what happened to the real princesses?” I asked. “The other twelve besides me?”
Catrice shook her head.
“Madame Bisset talks like they were still alive after the fire, but—”
“But even if they were dead, she’d lie so you’d think you were protecting them,” I finished in despair.
“Right,” Zuba said. She twisted up her face and whispered, “Sorry.”
Distantly, I heard the chiming of a clock: Dong . . . dong . . . dong . . . I counted.
“Is that eleven?” I asked. “Eleven o’clock already?”
The other girls exchanged glances once more.
“The prince is supposed to announce his decision at midnight,” Rose said.
And Tog and I told Janelia we’d meet her and Herk at midnight, I thought. We have one hour.
“We need a key to get me out of this prison cell,” I said. “Maybe the three of you could search around and find it, if you can do that secretly. But what if someone notices you’re missing from the ballroom? What would happen then?”
Catrice shrugged.
“We told the others we had to go and powder our noses,” she said. “Nobody would expect a princess to do that quickly.”
“And there are ten other fake princesses,” Zuba said. “It’s kind of hard for anyone to keep track of all of us.”
Like I was trying to do the night of the fire with the real princesses, I thought. I couldn’t.
But tonight I felt responsible once again for other girls: I would need to figure out a way to smuggle out thirteen fake princesses without anybody noticing. Having all thirteen girls disappear at once would be impossible to miss.
Maybe we could get impostors for the impostors? I wondered.
My mind started racing. I shook my head, trying to clear it.
“I changed my mind,” I announced. “We’re not going to have time for anyone to go look for a key to this door. We’ve got too many other things to take care of. Does anybody have a hairpin I could borrow instead?”
The three girls looked at me strangely. But Catrice said, “Sure. I’ve got about sixty of them holding up my hair right now. I don’t think anything’s going to change if I pull one out.”
I held my hand through the bars in the door. When Catrice handed me a hairpin, I reached for the lock on my door and jammed the pin inside.
It took a few moments, but the lock came undone with a click. I pushed the door open.
“I didn’t know princesses could do that,” Rose said, her eyes wide.
“There are a lot of things most people don’t know about being a princess,” I answered, stepping out of my prison cell.
“So, um, what’s next?” Zuba asked.
I thought about how much I’d wanted to find out who had been in this dungeon or some other palace dungeon an hour ago. But that would have to wait. I looked down at my filthy, ripped dress.
“Do you think the fake Princess Desmia would mind trading dresses with me?” I asked. “To save her life and her kingdom?”
43
I stepped back into the ballroom. I wasn’t alone. Rose—the fake Marindia—walked alongside me on the left, her dark hair bouncing against her mint-green dress with every step.
And on my right, clutching my arm, was a girl dressed as Princess Elzbethl. But it wasn’t Zuba, the actress who’d been playing Elzbethl all evening. It was a servant girl named Mary, who had been friends with Ella when Ella was living in the Fridesian castle. Mary, in fact, had been the one who’d helped Ella escape.
I was just relieved that I’d remembered Mary’s name. And that Zuba, Rose, and Catrice had been able to find her quickly.
“I’m way too ugly for this dress,” Mary whispered nervously. “We get out of the shadows, everybody’ll know I ain’t a princess.”
“You act pretty, people’ll think you are pretty,” Rose whispered, leaning past me. “Beauty’s just an illusion. Acting. And anyhow—you’ve got the greatest prop ever. That golden dress. A toad could look beautiful in that dress!”
I didn’t think this was helpful—who wanted to be compared to a toad? But Mary stood up straighter and beamed.
“You think so?” she asked. “Even I look beautiful now?”
I studied her face. Mary’s eyes and nose and mouth weren’t exactly symmetrical, and in general her features were all either too big or too small. But—I glanced to my other side, toward Rose—Rose’s features weren’t perfect either. And yet she had tricked me into considering her beautiful.
“You look perfect,” I told Mary. “And—you’re doing something good. That counts for more than beauty.”
“But what will I say?” Mary fretted.
“Both Fridesians and Sualans tend to prefer their princesses quiet and polite and well behaved,” I said. “So ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ will probably do it.”
And then, later on, none of us will be quiet and polite and well-behaved, I thought grimly. We’ll be running.
With Mary and Rose on either side of me, I stepped from the shadows to the back of a cluster of the other fake princesses. Rose immediately began whispering to the nearest girls, telling them to leave in twos and threes, and go out and find Zuba and Catrice and the fake Desmia. The three of them were finding servant girls to trade clothes with the fake princesses. And then the servant girls were leaving clothes to change back into in convenient places near the ballroom, for afterward.
Is this going to work? I wondered. Will any of us get out of here alive?
I looked toward the opposite wall, toward the secret door hiding the passageway where Tog and I had been together peeking out at the ballroom only an hour or so earlier. Just in case he was still standing there, I put my finger to my lips. I hoped he would understand that that meant, Don’t show yourself. Don’t think I need to be rescued right now. Just stay hidden! Stay safe!
“Might I have this dance?” a voice said in my ear. “I believe you’re the only princess I haven’t danced with yet.”
I turned.
It was the prince.
My first instinct was to drop my head, put on a coy act, maybe let him think me so exceedingly shy that I wouldn’t meet his eyes . . . anything so that he wouldn’t recognize me. But he was already looking me directly in the face, and his expression stayed blank and vaguely cordial.
He already doesn’t recognize me, I thought in amazement. All I had to do was change my dress and put up my hair and attach a few strings of pearls to my neck and arms and head. And now he has no idea who I am.
Were all men so dense?
I didn’t think it worked that way. As the prince led me out onto the dance floor, I took the precaution of bending my head, pretending I was overcome with the thrill of dancing with such a heart-throbbingly handsome man.
But we’ll be in the brightest part of the ballroom, I thought in a panic. Lord Throckmorton will see me. Madame Bisset will see me. Lord Twelling will see me. . . .
“As long as you’re dancing with me, nobody will dare to do a thing,” the prince said quietly, putting an arm around me and launching both of us into the first steps of a slow waltz.
My feet moved automatically into the proper steps, but I glanced at the prince in surprise. His expression stayed carefully bland, no different from a moment ago. Then, very quickly, he winked.
“You’re not as stupid as—” I almost said, as Ella told me you were. But then I caught myself. “I mean, not as stupid as you try to make people think.”
The prince sighed, the melancholy expression of mourning returning to his face for a moment before he hid it again.
“I think the better way to describe it is, I’m not as stupid as I used to be,” he said. “If Ella told you about me, probably whatever she said was true. Then. But now . . .” He shook his head, as if he regretted everything that had turned him into a deeper thinker.
“After we left the dungeon, I made Lord Twelling accompany me to the family crypt. You were right—I had the power all along to do that. I was just afraid. But seeing them just proved that my beloved wife and child are dead. Will I ever know what killed them? Who killed them? Will I ever know if God took them from me or if it was murder?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I waited a moment, letting the swirl of the dance steps turn me so I was facing only the opposite wall. So no one who was inclined to read lips could do so. “But . . . wouldn’t it help at least a little if you could vanquish the ones who are gleeful about Corimunde’s death? The ones who are plotting against us all—Lord Throckmorton and Madame Bisset. And maybe Lord Twelling, too?”
The prince spun to the right, then the left.
“Yes,” he finally said. “It would help. But . . . what are you playing at? What are you trying to do?”
Again, I waited until I was facing the opposite way.
“I want the plotters arrested and imprisoned where they can never trouble any of us again,” I said. I thought about how Lord Throckmorton had already escaped once. “Maybe somewhere remote, like in the old war zone, where no one would think to look for them. And with guards we know we can trust.”
I didn’t give the prince a chance to answer before I was finished.
“And I want to rescue my sister-princesses if they’re still alive,” I continued. “The real princesses, I mean. I want to find Ella and Jed, and make sure they’re all right too. I know there was somebody in a palace dungeon that you weren’t supposed to know about. What if it’s them? And . . . I want to save my kingdom. And that means signing the peace treaty with Fridesia.”
The prince seemed to be pondering all of this. Maybe he wasn’t stupid, but he was much too deliberate of a thinker for my taste.
Maybe he just wasn’t used to doing much of it on his own.
“You have the power to arrest whomever you want,” I reminded him. “Right now. You could take care of Lord Throckmorton and Madame Bisset. We could do everything else in safety.”
The prince frowned, adding to the lines of grief marring his handsome face. He and I turned, so now he faced away from the crowd.
“But I don’t know if Lord Twelling is one I should arrest alongside the others,” he said. “You leave one monster free, it doesn’t matter how many others you send away. You’re still in danger. No . . . We need to keep up our charade a while longer. To flush out any other plotters.”
That actually made sense, as much as I hated having to wait.
Maybe my sister-princesses and I should have adopted a similar strategy back in Suala? I wondered. Maybe we should have held off letting the truth out, until we were sure of our own power?
Somehow I didn’t think that would have worked either.
Maybe we just needed to go through this whole disaster for everything to work out right?
That could only be true if my sister-princesses had survived the fire.
I realized I was the one frowning now. But the prince was still talking.
“I’ll send guards out to look in all the dungeons, and to look elsewhere for Jed and Ella, and to try to get information about your other princesses,” he said. “I’ll do all that right now. I should have done that for Jed and Ella anyhow when I got word that their plans changed and they weren’t coming back to Charmeil.”
“That was what your advisers told you?” I asked. “That’s what you believed?”
The prince winced.
“I know—it sounds suspicious, doesn’t it?” he asked. “I was just too . . . bereft to do anything. To care about anything.”
Fridesia with its grieving prince and aged, out-of-touch king and queen, I thought. And Suala with its jumble of unexpected princesses. Of course we were both prime targets for scoundrels and rogues.
“And about the peace treaty—” I prompted.
The prince spun out, then whirled back to face me.
“Why don’t we just sign that tonight at midnight?” he asked. He grimaced. “So I have something big to announce when I don’t select a new bride?”
44
Dong . . .
I heard the first chime of midnight. The royal orchestra must have been timing things very closely, because they finished the last notes of the last waltz in exact harmony with the chiming clock.
Dancers bowed to each other, their faces flushed with exertion.
And maybe, in the case of twelve of the girls, they’re also flushed with fear of discovery? I wondered.
All the substitutions had been made. Twelve fake princesses had been replaced with even bigger fakes: palace servants dressed in royal clothing. To my eyes, they didn’t look all that different. And, to my surprise, I hadn’t seen any missteps or etiquette gaffes out on the dance floor.
Probably palace servants knew every bit as much about acting royal as the royalty and courtiers did.
But could it be that everyone in the ballroom has noticed the switch and is just too afraid to speak out? I asked myself. Or are the plotters just biding their time? Have Madame Bisset and Lord Throckmorton—and maybe Lord Twelling—already planned their retaliation?
I didn’t dare glance at any of them to find out.
“Hear ye, hear ye,” the royal herald cried, silencing the crowd of courtiers, royalty, and fake royalty. “The prince has come to a decision.”
Prince Charming stepped forward from his position beside me.
“It has been a pleasure this evening to meet so many lovely princesses representing Suala,” he said. “Had my ancestors but known the extent of female pulchritude in our neighboring land, I am certain they never would have started our long-simmering enmity.”
Oh, that was awkward, I thought. The prince doesn’t need anyone telling him what to think, but maybe a speechwriter . . . ?
The prince stopped, and for a moment I feared he’d lost track of what he intended to say. But he gritted his teeth, and I saw he was only gathering his strength for what came next.
“It is a delicate moment between our two kingdoms, as we balance between war and peace,” he said. “I do not wish to do anything to disrespect Suala, or disrespect our delicate peace. But I also do not want to disrespect the memory of my beloved, my late wife Corimunde.”
The ballroom was instantly pin-drop silent. I suspected that not a single person was even daring to breathe. Courtiers froze, as if the slightest movement or rustle of silk would be treasonous.
Then Lord Twelling stepped out from the crowd.
“Your Highness—” he began.
Prince Charming held up his hand.
“Let me finish,” he said.
Lord Twelling stood uncertainly, on the brink of insubordination.
Will he—? I wondered. Is he going to—?
Lord Twelling didn’t take another step.
“It is much too soon for me to marry again,” the prince continued. “It would be unfair to the memory of Corimunde. And—” He turned toward the cluster of doubly fake princesses. And then he took my hand in his own. “And it would be unfair to whomever I would marry next. For those reasons, I will not choose a bride tonight.”
Whispers broke out in the assembled crowd. Madame Bisset and Lord Throckmorton were too far back for me to see their reactions, but Lord Twelling’s face went instantly red with fury. He still didn’t step forward but seemed to be mouthing instructions at the prince: Take it back! Take it back this instant! Say you were only joking! That girl standing right beside you is pretty enough! She—
Lord Twelling froze, midsentence, his gaze on my face. No, not just on my face—burning into my eyes.
So he really didn’t notice who I was until now? I marveled.
It was amazing how much people could be blinded by a simple thing like a dress and a fancy hairstyle.
I nudged the prince, because if we were going to succeed at our plans tonight, we had no time to stall. The prince stayed silent, his lips pressed tightly together, hi
s chin trembling.
He’s fighting tears, I realized. He doesn’t think he can speak without crying.
I squeezed his hand.
“As one of the princesses of Suala,” I began, “I want to be clear: We are honored by the way Prince Charming honors his late wife.”
All right, then, I thought. Maybe I could do with a speechwriter myself?
I kept going anyway.
“And we are more concerned about the future well-being of our kingdom than the possibility of matrimony,” I said. That sounded better, didn’t it? “To that end, the prince and I have agreed that we shall move up the signing of the peace treaty. To tonight. Perhaps if the prince’s adviser would be so good as to—”
I looked straight back at Lord Twelling. I could feel the defiance in my expression, but it couldn’t be helped. Maybe it was necessary.
Lord Twelling gave a little jump of surprise, but then he whispered to someone standing beside him. It was evidently another of the prince’s underlings, because a moment later servants appeared carrying a heavy wooden table. A parchment, a quill pen, and a bottle of ink lay in the center of the table.
By now, the prince seemed to have recovered his composure enough to gesture chivalrously at me.
“Ladies first,” he said.
A servant uncapped the bottle of ink. I picked up the quill.
Just sign the treaty, I told myself. Get your signature and the prince’s signature down on paper, and then all the doubly fake princesses can run away, the prince can get his guards to arrest Lord Throckmorton, Madame Bisset—and maybe Lord Twelling—and then you can . . .
I could what?
I had not exactly allowed for how I myself was going to get away safely. If the prince decided he needed to keep up his charade in order to flush out Lord Twelling, then was I still in danger after the treaty signing?
Not if Tog comes back with Janelia and Herk, I thought. And he will. He will if it is humanly possible.
It was odd how much this thought filled me with confidence. I’d told Tog to think about the others’ safety. And I was fully aware of how many obstacles lay in Tog’s path. But I trusted him to do everything he could for me. And somehow that trust was worth as much as certainty about what was really going to happen.