Palace of Lies

  Ella had had to dig her way out from a dungeon, starting from the . . . well, hadn’t she called it a “crap hole”? Was it possible that chamber pots weren’t available in dungeons? Shouldn’t I be glad that I would just have to climb down a roof, not through bodily waste?

  I wedged my fingertips against the bottom of the window and began trying to raise it.

  It didn’t budge.

  Belatedly I noticed the matching padlocks on either side of the window. Both of the empty keyholes stared tauntingly back at me.

  Of course there were padlocks. Of course the keys were missing. Of course Madame Bisset and whomever she was working with would want to keep me locked in my cage—and they could easily pretend that they were just trying to keep me safe.

  Locks can be picked, I reminded myself.

  This was actually something I was good at—I’d learned in the palace. All I needed was a hairpin, and . . .

  I patted my head. I didn’t have any hairpins. My dark hair flowed down my back long and loose and unencumbered, because I’d been put to bed, treated like an invalid.

  This, too, could be easily justified. Hadn’t Madame Bisset said I needed time to grieve and recover before making myself presentable and going out in public? Hadn’t I myself asked for time alone to mourn?

  It wouldn’t make sense for me to ask to have my hair done in the midst of grieving.

  A creaking noise sounded outside my room, beyond the door Madame Bisset had left through. I pictured her sitting in a chair right outside the door, and shifting her weight ever so slightly just to remind me, I’m out here. I’m listening.

  I pulled my hands back from the window. If Madame Bisset came in, I could say, I’m just looking at my former palace. I’m trying to see if there’s anything left, any memento of my sister-princesses I could ask to have retrieved and preserved. . . .

  Would Madame Bisset instantly understand what I was really doing?

  No second creak sounded. The door didn’t swing open.

  I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

  I could fall to my knees and sweep my hands across the floor and hope that some woman who’d stood in this room before me had lost a hairpin that had gotten stuck in the floorboards. Then, assuming there was a hairpin, I could only hope these padlocks were similar enough to palace padlocks that I could open them, and do it quickly enough to flee before Madame Bisset returned.

  All of that seemed entirely too painstaking and time-consuming. There wasn’t a blazing fire roaring toward me or great clouds of choking smoke spinning in my direction—as far as I knew—but I felt just as much urgency as I had the night before, when my palace was burning before my eyes. I had to know what had happened to the others. If any of them were still alive, I had to find them.

  I cast my gaze about the room once more—bed, chair, table, pitcher, bowl. Dashing across the room, heedless of splinters or creaking, I snatched up the porcelain pitcher.

  It was heavier than it looked. There was no question that this pitcher could shatter a window.

  But—how loudly? I wondered.

  I reached back and pulled the sheet from the bed, then wrapped the sheet around the pitcher. There. That would muffle the sound. But would it muffle it enough?

  I wished I could somehow test my plan ahead of time before swinging the pitcher at the window full strength, with all my might. I liked practice and preparation and planning things out. But once the window shattered, there’d be no turning back.

  I went back to the window and raised the sheet-wrapped pitcher high over my head. As I swung the pitcher forward, I thought of another way to hide the noise: I began wailing, “Oh, my sisters. Oh, I miss my sisters . . .”

  It was entirely too easy to start myself wailing and weeping. Breaking the window wasn’t as successful: The pitcher bounced back. I’d been too afraid of noise to hit hard enough.

  So I did get a test case, I thought.

  But I wasn’t cautious. I didn’t quickly put the pitcher back in place and scramble back into bed and wait to see if Madame Bisset opened the door. Instead, I raised the pitcher again and moaned even louder, “My sisters . . .”

  This time I swung the pitcher as hard as I could. Spiderwebs of cracks began spreading across the window, and I held the trailing edge of the sheet up against the window casing to catch the shards of glass as they fell.

  “My sisters, my sisters . . .” I sobbed, and to my own ears the sobbing sounded as loud as a roaring fire, as overwhelming as a shattering window.

  But I hadn’t been thinking straight: Of course the broken glass fell forward, rather than crumbling illogically backward so I could catch it silently with the sheet. The shards of glass slid down the roof, making a sound like cracking ice; even if Madame Bisset didn’t hear the noise over my sobbing, how long would it take for someone to notice the broken glass starting to pool on the ground below?

  You were an imbecile for doing this in bright sunlight, I told myself. You were an imbecile for thinking this could work at all. . . .

  I stepped out onto the roof and added a third criticism:

  You were an imbecile for doing this barefoot . . .

  But I was on shingles now, and there was no turning back. I sat down with the sheet folded beneath me and edged forward, hoping the sheet would work like a sled over ice.

  Cecilia wouldn’t necessarily have done this any better, but she would have had Harper helping her out, suggesting improvements in the plan, I thought. They would have figured out together how to do this without getting covered in blood and broken glass. . . .

  I reached the bottom edge of the roof a little too quickly. I had to scramble to find something to hold on to—a gutter? An eaves trough? I barely got my hands around something stone and solid.

  Oh, a gargoyle, I thought, looking at the gruesome beast as I slid past.

  But my grip was tight around the gargoyle’s neck, and though my arms jerked painfully in their sockets, I kept holding on. I came to a stop, my body dangling down from the gargoyle.

  For a moment I was filled with love for that gargoyle. His ugly scrunched-together face seemed like the loveliest sight I’d ever seen.

  Then I realized that, in my white nightgown in the bright sun, I might as well be a flag or a beacon. Granted, the few people out and about in the courtyard all seemed to be gazing toward the still-smoking ruins of the palace. But it would take only one quickly turned head, one glance toward me, and there’d be screams and shouts and a growing crowd.

  So should I use that? I wondered. Should I cry, “Help! Help!” and get the people’s attention and tell them everything?

  There was a follow-up to that thought: What if they don’t believe me? What if they think I’m just some crazy girl in a nightgown?

  My subjects had seen me only high above their heads, standing on a lofty balcony with a veil over my face. The only people who would recognize me were either possibly dead—like my sister-princesses—or possible enemies.

  Like everyone else from the palace, I told myself. And Madame Bisset.

  If Madame Bisset had heard anything of the breaking window or the falling glass, surely she’d already burst into my room; surely she’d already discovered me missing; surely she was right this minute rushing down the stairs of the house to see where I’d fallen.

  I looked down.

  I was only six or eight feet off the ground, close enough that, if I’d had shoes on—solid ones, anyway—I would have dared to just let go and drop to the cobblestones below. But my feet were still bare, and I could already see blood on them. And if I dropped straight down from the gargoyle, I’d land directly on shards of glass.

  If I jump down into that, I’ll drive glass into my feet and legs so forcefully that, that . . .

  That I could die.

  I gulped. My hands began to sweat, holding on to the gargoyle’s neck. I swayed slightly, and then began swinging back and forth, as I frantically tried to keep a grip on the gargoyle.
My big toe scraped against a pillar at the front of the house.

  Had I already lost so much blood that my mind wasn’t working properly anymore? I kept thinking, Pillar, pillar, pillar . . .

  Oh. I could wrap my legs around that pillar and slide down it slowly and safely. Or, at least, more slowly and safely than jumping into a pile of glass.

  From above my head, I heard a faint voice call out, “Desmia?”

  Is Madame Bisset just calling to me from outside the room? I wondered. Or has she gone back into the room and found me missing? If she looks out the broken window, can she see my hands on the gargoyle?

  How long did I have before Madame Bisset came racing out the front door of the house and discovered me dangling from the gargoyle in my nightgown?

  Quickly, I swung my body forward, toward the pillar. On the first pass, I did nothing but scrape my heel on the pillar, leaving behind a smear of blood.

  This time you have to swing harder—and let go! I told myself.

  I took one hand off the gargoyle and hitched up my nightgown to free my legs. It was shameful and horrifying, but this time when I swung forward I got both legs around the pillar, and locked my ankles together on the other side.

  The gargoyle felt less stable in my hand. I threw my arms forward instead, wrapping them around the top of the pillar just as the gargoyle separated from the roof and went crashing down into the pile of glass below.

  Even if Madame Bisset hadn’t heard anything amiss before, she had to have heard that.

  Probably even some of the people gazing into the palace ruins had heard that, and were right now whirling around to see what the latest catastrophe was. But I didn’t have time to worry about them. I just focused on scrambling down the pillar, hand over hand, bare legs scraping against the stone. I left streaks of blood everywhere, but I didn’t care about that, either.

  Finally I was on the ground, in a space that had been protected from the glass by the overhang of the roof. I crouched down and slipped into a space between the house I’d just left and the one next to it.

  I did it! screamed through my mind. I escaped!

  And then arms wrapped around me, pulling me down to the ground.

  “I got her!” a voice cried, right in my ear.

  8

  I struggled blindly to get away. I jerked against the arms clasped around my shoulders.

  “No, no, we’re here to save you!”

  This time it was a voice in my other ear.

  I didn’t stop struggling, but I twisted around, trying to see who was holding me.

  Two pairs of grubby hands, bony wrists sticking out of ragged sleeves . . .

  I turned my head. On my left was the scrawniest little beggar boy I’d ever seen.

  On my right was . . . I blinked. It looked like the same boy, with the same tousled brownish hair and green eyes that gleamed in a dirty face. But right-side boy was bigger. And maybe his shirt had more patches on it, in more variety of colors.

  “Look, you try to run away with those bloody feet, anybody could follow your trail,” right-side boy argued. “We’ll get you to safety.” He grinned, his white teeth a surprising break in the filth covering his face. “Princess.”

  He knows who I am? I thought anxiously. Princesses could be captured and held for ransom. Whereas girls who were crazy and running around outdoors in their nightgowns but were otherwise unremarkable . . .

  I didn’t know much about it, but I guessed that they wouldn’t exactly be safe either.

  And then the younger boy leaned in closer, and I had trouble remembering what I’d been thinking.

  “Here, give me some of that blood, and we’ll make it look like you just ran to the house next door,” the younger boy said.

  He didn’t wait for me to agree. He just ran his grubby hand along the bottom of my foot. This made me realize that there were perhaps several small pieces of glass still in the foot, that his touch drove even deeper, bringing out more streams of blood.

  “Ow—” I only started to scream; I was already choking it back when right-side boy clapped his hand over her mouth.

  “See?” the younger boy said, lightly pressing his hand down onto the packed dirt beside my feet.

  He left a smear of blood on the ground, then a second and a third slash of blood leading back out of the alleyway. He disappeared around the corner of the neighboring house. In no time at all, he appeared at the opposite end of the alley, clearly having circled the neighbor’s house.

  I was still sitting there stunned. I realized I’d just missed my opportunity to run away when there was only one boy holding on to me.

  But . . . he was right about the blood, I thought dazedly. Maybe I was a little dizzy because I’d lost so much of it. How could I avoid leaving a trail?

  How was I going to avoid it now? Even with the fake trail of blood leading the wrong way, it wasn’t like I was safe and hidden right now.

  “No one saw me,” the younger beggar boy bragged to the older one. “And no one’s come out of the prison house yet.”

  Prison house? I thought.

  “Then we’ll try the rug, not hide her in the rain barrel,” the older boy said.

  He turned and pulled down a curling sheet of . . . well, it was some sort of cloth, wasn’t it? Or, it once might have been cloth, before it got so threadbare and filthy that now it could really only be categorized as garbage.

  “Climb in,” the younger boy said. “Quick!”

  I didn’t move. Did they mean me? Did they mean I should have anything to do with that filthy, rotten, stinking shred of garbage? Was I supposed to touch it? Be wrapped in it?

  It was bad enough just sitting three feet away from it. Even at that distance I could catch its reek of rotted fish or pus-filled sores or maybe just the world’s stinkiest feet.

  “Desmia?” I heard Madame Bisset call from around the other side of the house.

  Hands shoved me toward the rotting rug, and I didn’t resist, not even when the two boys curved the two sides of it around me.

  “You’ve got to lie down flat!” the older boy hissed, and I heard the urgency in his voice, the fear.

  They’re probably risking their lives, hiding me, I thought, and that made it easier for me to straighten out my legs and let the boys press the filthy, stinking rug tighter against my face.

  And then they hoisted me in the air. I could guess from the tilt of the rug that each of them had one end balanced on his shoulder—the bigger boy at the front, the smaller one behind.

  “Maybe we’ll make it safely away,” the older boy murmured.

  Just then a voice cried behind them: “Stop!”

  It was Madame Bisset.

  9

  I froze. I held my breath, which had the bonus effect of keeping the reek of the filthy rug out of my nostrils. But it made it so that my hearing seemed to go in and out. It was already muffled enough by the layers of rug wrapped around me.

  “Yes, mistress?”

  Wasn’t that the older boy’s voice? But it carried such a tone of innocence that it made him sound much younger.

  By the motion of the rug, I could tell that both boys were swinging around to face Madame Bisset.

  “Where have you come from? Did you see a girl in a nightgown running past?” Madame Bisset asked.

  “In a nightgown, mistress?” the younger boy asked. And somehow he sounded even more innocent. He made even me wonder if it was possible for girls in nightgowns to go wandering about at mid day—and I’d just done that myself.

  I also noticed that he didn’t answer Madame Bisset’s first question.

  The older boy did instead.

  “We’uns are taking this rug from a house over by Downtree to another house in Cordelstaff. The owners couldn’t make payments on it, mistress,” the older boy said. “Begging your pardon, mistress, for mentioning such places as Downtree and Cordelstaff to the likes of you.”

  The front part of the rug shifted, and I could imagine the older boy making
an apologetic bow, the kind of motion that would accompany the doff of a cap, if the boy actually had a cap.

  Madame Bisset sniffed loudly enough that I could hear her through three layers of filthy rug.

  “The likes of you should not be in this area of the city,” she said haughtily.

  “Yes, mistress. We know, mistress,” the older boy said, backing away slightly. I recognized this motion too: It was what servants did in the palace, bowing and scraping to proclaim with their every movement, I am less than you. I am not worthy to be in your presence. I am not qualified to breathe the same air as you.

  Cecilia had practically laughed her head off the first time she’d seen one of these little pantomimes at the palace.

  “Seriously?” she’d cried. She’d put her hand on the servant’s shoulder and burst out, “Aren’t you kind of laughing inside every time you do that? The lower you bow—isn’t that secretly a sign that you’re mocking us that much harder?”

  I had never thought of such a possibility. Did servants ever secretly laugh at royalty and courtiers? How could they get away with it? How was it that Cecilia had noticed it immediately, while I’d been totally ignorant my entire fourteen years in the palace? Was Cecilia just smarter than me? Did that mean that she and Harper had managed to escape from the fire?

  Stop thinking about Cecilia, I told myself, because now there was a lump in my throat that threatened to make me gulp noisily. Maybe it was threatening to make me cry.

  And I was missing the older boy’s long, convoluted explanation about how his little brother had wanted to see the palace, and so they’d swung through the royal courtyard, “and how sad is it for my little brother that the day he finally gets to see the palace, it’s nothing but a pile of smoking stones down on the ground?”

  “You better not have been searching through the rubble for items to steal!” Madame Bisset snapped.

  “No, mistress. Of course not, mistress,” the older boy said. “Once we saw the palace was gone, we didn’t even go near.”

  “We didn’t want our rug to catch on fire!” the younger boy added.