Palace of Stone

  “They’re used to people saying no. If you haven’t eaten in a day or two, hunger makes you desperate. And there are far too many poor and desperate in these streets.”

  “Poor? But this is Asland.”

  “There are poor in Asland, Miri. Didn’t you know? There are poor everywhere.”

  Katar had said the shoeless often went hungry, but until seeing the children Miri had not quite believed it.

  Then Miri recalled the thin girl from the town on their journey. The way the girl had watched Miri eat. How she had gnawed that stick. Her bony legs, her bare feet. Miri’s throat felt tight. She wished she could go back to that moment, say hello to the girl, share the meal.

  “No, I didn’t know. I’m sorry,” she said, both to Timon and to the girl in her memory. “On Mount Eskel, almost all our food came from the lowlands—I mean, from Asland and the rest of Danland. I guess I thought there were endless mounds of food here.”

  “Plenty of people in the lowlands do just fine,” Timon said. “But too often the children of farmers starve while the noble landowners grow fat. When the changes come—”

  Timon stopped. He looked around, as if to see if anyone else had heard him.

  “I shouldn’t have said … I didn’t mean—excuse me.” He started to go.

  Changes? Did she dare ask? She started after him, but fear pushed against her, and it seemed to take an hour just to catch him on the bow of the bridge.

  “Timon, wait. Yesterday at the palace something happened.”

  He turned back. “You mean the attempt on the king’s life?”

  Miri stepped closer and whispered, “If there are changes coming, I’d like to know more. I’d like to help.”

  Timon’s eyes brightened. “Truly? But—”

  “I’m staying at the palace, but I’m not one of them. I hope you will trust me.”

  She’d promised Katar. And now the memory of that thin girl goaded her on.

  “I can’t speak freely,” he said, “but … I’ll talk to you as soon as I can. There is much happening.”

  His icy blue eyes flashed, and he smiled at her. Miri found herself smiling back. A tickle in her stomach slid up to her heart. Timon knew things, Miri was certain, and for the first time she wondered if perhaps the unknown changes to come might be wonderful.

  Chapter Five

  A quint, my lord, a quint for some grain

  A quint for the rent, a roof from the rain

  A sip of hot soup to fill empty space

  An old wool scarf to warm my face

  So what did you do today?” Miri asked, entering the girls’ chamber. She posed in the doorway, in case they wanted a good look at her scholar robes. No one glanced up.

  “We sewed,” said Bena. She was wearing her brown hair unbraided as well. It hung long to her waist and made her look even taller. “Ladies of the princess help in the wedding preparations, which apparently means sewing.”

  “And spinning,” said Esa.

  “How much thread does a wedding need?” Gerti asked, incredulous.

  “I miss the quarry,” said Frid with a sigh. She was holding her hands out while Esa wrapped them with yarn. “I miss hitting things.”

  Liana lay on her side, accentuating the curve of her hip. “The servants bring us food. We don’t even wash our plates. Being a princess’s lady actually means something. We have rank.”

  “I’m surprised Britta couldn’t get more girls into your special academy,” said Bena. “She is the betrothed princess.”

  Miri removed her robes and looked around for Katar, eager to tell her about the conversation with Timon. Katar was gone, but Inga, their gray-haired chaperone, gave her a smile full of wrinkles. Inga sat on the sofa, neither sewing nor spinning. Just watching. Her king-appointed task was to keep an eye on the girls, and it seemed that was all she meant to do.

  “I’m sure Esa would like to attend the Queen’s Castle,” said Bena. “And I wouldn’t mind, if you would know. Instead of sewing in this room all day—”

  “And spinning,” said Esa.

  “And eating food the servants bring us as ladies of rank,” said Liana.

  “I thought something smelled rank,” Miri mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, Liana.” Miri sat on the floor and tossed a pillow in the air. “I learned some stuff today I didn’t know before. If I tell you about it, then it’s almost as if you attend the Queen’s Castle too.”

  “I want to hear,” Esa said, turning so she could see Miri and still use Frid’s hands as a spool. Esa’s left arm, injured in a quarry accident years before, hung limp at her side.

  Miri recounted Master Filippus’s introduction of the different subjects. But when she got to Ethics and a painting versus a prisoner, the girls began to argue so passionately two palace guards stormed in.

  “We’re fine, really,” Miri told the bewildered guards. “Which is more than I can say for that murderous prisoner if Frid gets her hands on him.”

  “He killed a child.” Frid was on her feet, gesturing with yarn-wrapped hands. “And you’re talking about freeing him!”

  Esa touched her arm. “It’s just a made-up story.”

  Frid’s face was wide open—all eyes, mouth, and flexed nostrils. “Why? If I were going to make up a story, it wouldn’t be about someone killing children. It’d be about cutting blocks of linder and being so strong I could lift them over my head. And it would be funny. All stories should be funny.”

  One of the guards scratched his beard. “So you girls are all right?”

  “You may go,” Liana said with a wave of her hand.

  Supper came, and Miri asked Inga if she could go eat with Britta. Inga nodded as if she did not care one way or the other.

  In Britta’s chamber, there were several wardrobes painted as brightly as the river houses, and an enormous bed stuffed with feathers and dripping with blankets, but no Britta. Miri sat on the floor and had begun to eat her fish and potato cakes when the door opened.

  “Miri!” Britta caught Miri around her shoulders and knocked her back onto the carpet in a running embrace. “I almost forgot you were here and when I saw you, I had that happy jolt all over again. Isn’t that wonderful? How was your first day?”

  “Amazing! And a little daunting.” She told Britta about the grand castle, old Master Filippus, Timon of Asland. “He has hair so pale it’s almost white. He’s only a little older than we are, but he talks like a master scholar sometimes, I guess because he’s read so many books. Oh, do you think you could get Esa into the Queen’s Castle? And maybe Bena too? I hate to ask for Bena—she can be such a pain sometimes—but she seems interested.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t. I wish I could.”

  “That’s all right.” Miri thought of what Bena had said. Shouldn’t a princess be able to do such a thing? Miri smiled weakly at Britta and wished she could make the smile stronger. “Um … How’s Steffan?”

  “He’s well. I think he is, anyway. I only get to see him at meals, with his mother and father sitting there watching us, and the occasional chaperoned walk in the gardens, and … and …”

  Britta pressed her hand against her mouth and took a sharp hiccup of a breath.

  “Britta!” Miri put an arm around her. “Don’t be sad. What did I do?”

  “I’m sorry, nothing, I’m fine.” Britta pushed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “It’s just all so much. The duties and the worries and the way the king and queen look at me, and my father is at court too, looking at me, everyone looking at me. Except Steffan. I’d never been in Asland with Steffan before. Perhaps he is always so distant around his parents. Or perhaps … he does not feel for me what I feel for him.”

  “I don’t believe it. He adores you. That was very clear when he came to Mount Eskel.”

  “I thought so too. Maybe he changed his mind. And I don’t know what to make of the attempt on the king’s life and all the whispers and frowns and … never mind. I just want to be g
lad you’re here.”

  “Well, I’m glad I’m here, even if I’m not sure where here is. Asland is overwhelming.”

  “I don’t worry about you a bit. You know, you would be a better princess. The king and queen would have approved.”

  “Yes, indeed,” Miri said, pursing her lips dramatically. “Their most Royal Highnesses long for a girl who knows a billy goat from a nanny and the business end of a soup ladle.”

  “I mean it.”

  Miri shook her head. “Britta, you’re being silly. Steffan chose you and that’s that.”

  Besides, I have Peder, she thought. Don’t I?

  Miri went to bed that night surrounded by the slow breathing of the other girls, her curtain pulled so she could read by candlelight without being seen. It was the first day in a long time that Miri had not seen Peder. And it was the first day she had known Timon.

  Autumn Week Six

  Dear Marda,

  I have been in Asland nearly a week. There are still at least five months until traders will carry my letters to you along with the barrels of salt pork and bags of onions. But I want to talk to you now. I wish I could quarry-speak all the way from Asland.

  Each day a palace carriage drives me to the Queen’s Castle, where I take my studies. I am glad of the carriage. I dare not edge a single toe onto a busy Aslandian street. Are you surprised that I am such a trembling baby?

  There are so many things to learn at the Queen’s Castle my head hurts. And even more things I am supposed to learn, and those scare me some. I feel like a tiny bug, and the world is a hungry bird looking down at me.

  I have not seen Peder in five days as he is only free at week’s end. Britta says Gus’s stone-carving workshop is close enough to walk to, but then I would have to enter the streets of Asland. The ones that terrify me to trembling. Are you laughing at me yet? I hope so.

  I do not see Britta much. She is very busy preparing to be a princess. I do not see the other girls much as I am in my studies all day. How can anyone be lonely in a city seething with people? If you were here, you would poke me and tell me I am doing a fine impersonation of a grumpy old billy goat.

  I miss you. I miss Pa. I wonder if I was wrong to come. Perhaps when it is time to send this letter, I will feel much, much better. That is hard to imagine. It is easier to imagine that you are here. It is easier to imagine rain is honey and stones are bread.

  If you have not guessed yet, this is from your trembling baby of a sister,

  Miri

  Chapter Six

  ‘Tis I, my sweet, your rough-and-ready man

  Well hid by night to beg your fine white hand

  Though king of bandits, draped in chains of gold

  I’m poor in love and suffer grief untold

  In Asland, most people did not wake at dawn. Even the poor were rich in candles and fuel. They could afford to light a house after sundown and stay up late in the evening, window after window golden and flickering. Miri was in awe of the homemade sunshine of candles and kerosene lamps and hearths fat with wood and flame. Such a luxury to be awake while the sun slept, and then to ignore dawn and sleep while the world lightened.

  I’m an Aslandian now, Miri thought. I’m richer than morning.

  The girls woke slowly, stretching in their beds like cats in a patch of sunlight. It was week’s end, and Miri did not have to rush into a carriage.

  Their chaperone, Inga, shuffled in. “Wake up, girls. His Majesty the king invites you to the royal breakfast.”

  Katar sat up. “The king? When?”

  “Now,” Inga said.

  There were several gasps, and then the room was all squealing girls scrambling for dresses and stockings and shoes, rubbing water from pitchers on their faces and underarms, and elbowing for space at the mirror.

  Inga hastened them down several corridors to the threshold of the king’s wing, where guards asked the password. Inga gave it and motioned the girls forward, but no one moved. The walls, floor, and even the ceiling were made of polished linder, rich as cream. Miri could feel the stone surrounding her, a kind of silent hum, a subtle vibration that lifted the hairs on her arms.

  Gummonth, the chief official, approached, telling them to hurry along. But the girls just stared, mesmerized. Never had any of them been completely surrounded by linder, and Miri was tempted to see if quarry-speech worked differently here.

  The people of Mount Eskel used quarry-speech to communicate in the quarry, where clay earplugs and deafening mallet blows made it impossible to hear instructions or shouts of warning. Miri had discovered that quarry-speech moved through linder and communicated with memories, not words—the speaker’s memory nudging the same or similar memory in others.

  “It’s as if we’re inside Mount Eskel,” Esa was saying.

  “I miss home,” said Gerti. “I even miss sleeping beside the goats.”

  Miri quarry-spoke of the academy tutor running terrified through the village, chased by a particularly saucy nanny goat, an event Miri knew the other girls had witnessed. It was more like singing in her mind than thinking, the way she silently poured the memory into the linder. Usually only a quiver in her vision accompanied quarry-speech, but this time the memory burst into Miri’s mind so full of color and motion that for a moment she seemed to live it again.

  The girls inhaled sharply, apparently experiencing the heightened quarry-speech as well, and then they laughed. Gummonth looked around in vain for the cause of the hilarity. That made the girls laugh harder. Only people of Mount Eskel were able to use quarry-speech, though by the end of her year on the mountain, Britta had seemed to recognize faint sensations.

  Gummonth looked over them with a dead-eyed expression. “Bumpkins and peasants. I am made to bow to the children of goats.”

  The girls frowned, straightening dresses and smoothing hair. Miri had thought Gummonth a handsome, striking man, but now she noticed his sour mouth, his pinched voice. As the girls followed after him, Miri sniffed her braid just to make sure she did not smell goaty.

  They entered the royal breakfast room, where King Bjorn and Queen Sabet perched on high-backed chairs before a dining table.

  “Your Royal Majesties,” said Gummonth, “the ladies of the princess.”

  “Hm?” The king was spooning cream and raisins onto a dish of rye bread. “Yes, all right.”

  The queen barely glanced up from her tea. She had dark hair and skin as pale as parchment.

  The academy girls sat at a table opposite Britta, Steffan, and other members of the court. Britta waved at Miri and then quickly resumed a ladylike posture.

  There seemed to be enough food for a village. Miri devoured a pecan-encrusted fish, and oat porridge with several globs of honey. The king and queen did not look at the girls. They did not look at each other. No one spoke.

  Then Miri noticed the mantelpiece over the hearth.

  “Oh! Mount Eskel’s gift!” she said. “Peder, the boy who did the carving, will be so happy to hear you had it installed. Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  Katar kicked Miri under the table. Should she not have spoken? But it would have seemed rude not to acknowledge the kindness.

  Though perhaps not as rude as kicking someone, Miri thought, rubbing her ankle and glaring at Katar.

  The king frowned, his beard bristling around his lips, and he waved a spoon at Gummonth. The official stooped and whispered to Miri, “You are not to address His Royal Majesty. Ever.”

  Miri felt the heat of shame burn her face. She watched the king dribble fish broth in his beard and wondered for the first time if Danland actually needed a king.

  After breakfast, the academy girls accompanied the king and queen to the chapel for services and then to the palace theater. On a stage, a troupe of actors in extravagantly colored costumes enacted a play about forbidden lovers: a noble girl and a bandit king. Miri knew her mouth hung open, and she did not care. It was the most enchanting thing she had ever seen.

  I hate bandits, she reminded hersel
f.

  But she could not help cheering the bandit in the story, with his expressive eyes and lavish words. She squeezed her arms, anxious for the lovers to triumph over evil.

  When at last the noble and her reformed bandit wed, Miri had to stifle a happy sob. She spied the royal couple in the first row. The queen stared at some point above the stage. The king snored.

  Britta came to find Miri at the end of the play.

  “I’m sorry this has been so formal and dull—”

  “Dull? That play was … was …” She exhaled grandly, lacking better words.

  A tall boy with dark hair and a square chin came up beside Britta, his arms behind his back, his face impassive.

  “Speaking of formal and dull …” Miri shook her head. “Now, Steffan, don’t tell me you’re working on your imitation of a stone column again.”

  “It’s good to see you, Miri,” he said, his mouth finding a smile. “I hope you’ve been keeping out of mischief. For once.”

  “None to be had in Asland,” she said, playing at a haughty tone. “This place is just so boring.”

  He knocked her with his shoulder, and she knocked him back.

  “Let’s get into mischief together, shall we?” Britta said, hooking arms with Miri and Esa. “I’ve been dying for the week’s end so we could finally—”

  “Lady Britta?” An official in a green dress approached. “If your ladies are available, then we should begin fitting you for your trousseau.”

  “That is mischief I’m not fit to tackle,” said Steffan, nodding farewell as he departed.

  “Trousseau?” Miri whispered.

  The official started to walk and clearly expected the girls to follow. “Lady Britta will need a ball gown, a chapel gown, and a marriage gown, as well as receiving gowns …”

  In Britta’s chamber, the seamstress unrolled fabrics and went over the styles of sleeves and trains and skirts and bodices. The Mount Eskel girls stared. How could there be fourteen different kinds of skirts?

  “Traditionally, the ladies of the princess do the lace-work on the marriage gown,” said the official.