And so, because I did not lead the talk, the others gabbled determinedly about interests of the second-highest title, Honor Mirlah. Horses, clothes, horses, clothes, all trying to be interesting to the visitor.
When Pralineh finally gave the signal for them to adjourn to eat, I edged toward the door, a fixed smile on my face that (when I passed by a pretty framed mirror) made me look as if someone was sticking my chitlins with a knife. I snorted a laugh—and in trying not to let it get past my lips, burned the insides of my nose. Then I oozed out, and leaned against the door to think over my next step.
Behind me the voices made it clear that the guests had relaxed, some probably feeling relieved, others disappointed. The first comments were from people disgusted at how boring the ‘princess’ was. “She’s just a little girl,” proclaimed one languid voice—I later learned that thirteen-year-old was named Selah. Porcelain and silver clinked musically as she and the girls delicately helped themselves to fruit and tiny cakes. As they adjourned to Pralineh’s sitting room, their voices faded; the last one I heard was Selah’s drawl, “Has nothing to say for herself!”
Then came the stampede of feet as the boys snatched up food and made for the outside.
I sped down the hall, stopped in my room to kick the slippers off, and slipped out through the garden. I’d done my best for Pralineh’s sake—now, while everyone was eating, I could snake through the garden and make tracks, right?
Wrong.
I slithered through the thickest part of the garden, on the watch for Rel. When the trees cleared away, there were most of the boys, half of them just gulping down the last of their cakes. Two or three were already running around, starting an elaborate tag game that involved chase, catch, a kind of duel with hand-fighting (amid much laughter) and then the loser became the new hunter. The rest swiftly joined.
I watched, peering around for Rel.
The day was hot, the sun bright. After a time a few boys stopped running and moved in a clump toward the wall, talking back and forth. I drifted over in their direction with the idea of losing myself among them. Then slip over the wall, and—
“Hi, Princess Cherene,” a boy of about ten called, catching sight of me.
I ambled his way, glad to be surrounded in a crowd.
“How’d you come to be sent to Holder Khavnan?” the boy asked.
An older boy said, “He’s got connections all over, m’father says. We didn’t know he had diplomatic ones. Thought they were all trade. Scholarship.”
“M’mother says he hasn’t any ambition,” murmured another boy with pale, wispy hair. He peered under his hand back toward the house.
“I don’t know,” I said, ambling toward the wall. They all followed. “Wasn’t my choice to be here.”
The older boy and the young one swung interested looks my way.
“Holder Khavnan made you come?” the older one asked.
“Wasn’t him. Somebody else.”
The blond boy said in disbelief, “You’re a prisoner?”
The youngest one snickered. “Of Holder Khavnan, whose nose is always in a book? Try another one.”
I hitched up onto the wall, shrugging. “Suit yourself. As for Holder Khavnan, he’s a nice ol’ geez, but he got snowed by someone who isn’t.”
A couple of the boys snickered at the word ‘geez’—I swung one leg over the wall. I glanced back—just as Rel stepped out onto the walkway from the garden.
“Have you ever tried to run away?” the youngest one asked.
“Couple times.” Shrug, scowl. “Just got foiled now,” I added under my breath.
They heard, though, and all three turned to stare. The blond said, “That’s just Rel, the shepherd’s son. He’s very good at games,” he added.
“Well, how about getting him into a game?” I asked, waving toward the other side of the garden.
“Why?” the oldest one asked. “He always wins.”
To keep him busy, of course, I thought. “How about hide and go seek?” I asked. “Bet nobody is better than I am—we play it all the time at home. See, we have a whole forest to play it in.”
They stared at me, one in doubt, one surprised, one frowning.
I sighed. “Don’t tell me girls here don’t play.”
The youngest one said, “Well, none do that I know. But it’s not like they can’t.”
“My sister hates anything that musses her dresses.” The blond one shrugged. “Show us your game.”
So I did. I set the boundaries at the wall and the house, including the entire garden. A couple of the boys ran off to get Rel to join in the game. Soon the boys were whooping and hollering and running about—except when hiding. I kept a weather-eye out for Rel, making sure I was always on the opposite side of the garden from him. And I yelled and ran and whooped and never took the slightest peek in the direction of the wall, noooo, not me!
After a time a couple of the girls emerged, one small one watching a round, then insisting on joining in. Before any of the boys could tell her she was too little, I yelled, “Come on! The more the merrier!”
Then it was Rel’s turn to hide his eyes and count.
I buzzed straight for the wall—put my hands on it, ready to leap up—and there was Rel, cruising around the side of the garden, having made the wall his first searching sweep, the rotter. And he strolled along, peering between the trees and the grass along the entire length of the wall.
I thought, it’s never going to get any easier—and I measured the distance from the road to the river, and from the house to the wall.
Rel started in my direction, first a saunter, but slowly speeding up.
I turned away with a groan, and bucketed back into the garden to the game. It was my turn to count and find next, and to my utter disgust I located every one of ’em except Rel. Not that I wanted to find the slob—except, of course, to gloat at the rottenness of his hiding place.
We played a couple more rounds as the shadows slanted more and more. Then the guests were rounded up by servants or tutors, and carried off, chattering, some waving farewell to one another or to Pralineh at the gate, smiling as she saw them all off.
I was still out in the garden, hoping in the noise of departure I might get my chance, when Rel appeared unexpectedly. I jumped, then scowled at my own reaction—I wasn’t even doing anything wrong!
He addressed me for the first time. “Raneseh wants to talk to you.”
“Goody for him,” I snapped. “Let him talk.”
Rel hooked a thumb sideways, toward the house. He didn’t move, just stood there, but his very size made me feel loomed at.
I knew a contest would end up with my losing, and so I jerked round, sniffing in disgust, and stalked inside.
Back to Raneseh’s room, where he looked at me in a sort of helpless exasperation. “A prisoner? Why did you tell them that?”
“Because I am one,” I retorted, crossing my arms with a thump against my middle.
Raneseh looked skyward. “I regard your being here as a guardianship—and I took the charge to prevent your becoming a prisoner. I was specifically told by ... my contact that you would have been much worse off had I not accepted. Possibly even dead,” he added reluctantly.
I jumped up. “You can threaten me all you want, but I have to get home. You and I both know I’m a prisoner.”
“But I don’t want to lock you up,” Raneseh said, thoroughly disgruntled. “I really believed that my daughter’s influence would show you the rewards of good behavior.”
I gritted my teeth, struggling valiantly against airing my opinion about girls whose only goal was marriage and housekeeping. I’d already fought that battle once, and it had been Seshe who’d pointed out that a whole lot of people in the world liked that life—and there wasn’t anything wrong with choosing it. It wasn’t the life I ought to be deriding, or I’d be just as bad as those grownups when I was a little kid on Earth ranting on about how our only choices for our futures were “women’s work”—which
was otherwise defined as being a household servant. It was the lack of choice that we kids resisted. It was obvious Raneseh would have let Pralineh do pretty much anything she wanted. What she wanted was what I saw her doing every day.
So I wouldn’t say anything against Pralineh. But as for Raneseh, and his contacts and his ‘Wise One,’ I was about to let him have it when he said, “If you give me your word you will cease trying to run off, you will have as much freedom as you like.”
“I can’t,” I snapped. “And I don’t know why you keep seeing that as me being a brat.”
Raneseh said unexpectedly, “No, I quite see that you have courage. And at a sense of honor, or you would have accepted, then paid no heed to your word. Perhaps there are aspects to the troubles in your homeland that are not as easily explained as they were first presented. I do want to look into this matter. But you are safe here. Does that not mean anything?”
“Not while my friends are unsafe,” I shot back. “Not to mention the homeland you just mentioned—” I scowled, realizing I’d gotten tangled up somehow in all those ‘mentions.’ “Anyway. I can’t be the only one stuck like this.”
Raneseh sighed. “Perhaps there can be a meeting arranged, in a safe place, with trusted counselors present, between you and the Wise One who claims to be your guardian. In the meantime—” He paused, then indicated the silent Rel. “Pralineh is going to a friend’s for a visit tomorrow, and I have a long-standing appointment in town. Rel said he’s going to visit the wilderness. You may accompany him if you like.”
I would not ‘like’ to spend five seconds with Rel, but this was a chance for escape. “Okay.”
One thing was certain. I had to get away before this impossible, well-meaning man brought Kwenz back, and he learned the hard way there was no ‘reasonable’ talk with the Chwahir rulers.
SIX
Pralineh assured me that I would have a wonderful time out in the open as I liked it so much. She added that her friend Selah had extended an invitation to me to accompany Pralineh on her visit, but I begged off hastily. I remembered Selah and her drawly voice, and suspected she didn’t care if I came, she just wanted to be blabbing afterward that she had invited a princess. As for me, I had no intention of letting myself in for a boring afternoon of being grilled about ‘how things were done in the colony’—to Mearsies Heili’s detriment.
No, what I had to plan now was my escape.
So I’d be under the eye of Rel, but what did that mean? So far, he seemed like ye typical clod teen-age boy: in my opinion, except for one or two exceptions (Puddlenose being one, and Id another) boys were all size, no brains.
Let’s see, I thought as I wandered back to my room, and stared out into the night garden. He dresses like a slob—which is good, at least in anyone but an enemy. Enemies are disgusting and annoying whatever they do, or they wouldn’t be enemies, right?
That aside, what did I know? He was Raneseh’s ward. That means like an adopted son. He was called ‘the shepherd’s son’ by the other boys—which might have something to do with his dressing like a slob, but that wasn’t the same as dressing like a servant. Raneseh’s and Pralineh’s servants all dressed neatly in the pale green outfits, that much I’d seen.
He hadn’t attended the party until he joined the hide and seek game—but Raneseh had not attended at all. The boys had said Rel usually won all the games, which meant he must have attended parties in the past.
Last: he had good taste in songs, if Pralineh was right about his favorite, and why would she make that up?
So far, he seemed to think it a game to foil my escape attempts. Or maybe it was a challenge. Then let’s hope he gets so bored with me he pays no attention, I thought as I crawled into bed.
o0o
Next morning I was up before dawn.
Of course Pralineh wasn’t up yet. I was going to make my way to the kitchens, but caught sight of Rel through the window as he came from the other side of the house.
“You’re up early,” he said when we met.
I shrugged. “Nothing else to do.”
He hefted a satchel, which was slung over his shoulder. “Just left the kitchen. Do you want breakfast first, or shall we go?”
“Go,” I said, not wanting to eat with him sitting there looming at me.
And so we went. For the first time I got past the wall. The road wound away uphill, and I could see the entire estate. The house was built on the gentle slope of a hill tucked into the slow bend of a river. On the other side of the hill from the house, out of view, was an extensive vegetable and cooking-herb garden. The people who tended it did not dress in the light green livery, but in ordinary clothes, a lot more like what Rel wore, making me wonder again about his status. He dressed like the outdoor servants—but Pralineh had mentioned dining ‘in the family’ once, and I had since seen the dining room, which was in the group of three rooms opposite mine. Maybe Rel and Raneseh ate there since Pralineh continued to have meals with me.
Oh, who cares, I thought, shoving away the question, and walking a little bit faster so that Rel wasn’t in my view.
Behind the estate, running along the river, farmland stretched away in patch-work quilt squares as far as I could see.
The road turned, blocking Raneseh’s Holding from view as we rounded the hill. Then the road branched, the main part going over a bridge across the river, and a smaller road angling off round another hill that lay behind the estate’s hill.
Rel now began to walk fast. I skipped once in a while in order to keep up, but keep up I did. I was used to moving fast—and wanted to get wherever we were going as quickly as possible.
My reward was to crest a last hill overlooking a pocket valley below, filled with tall green grass and wildflowers in every color of the rainbow. I drew in a happy breath, and bounced on my tiptoes. A quick, uncertain scowl Rel’s way. He flicked a hand out and I needed no further encouragement but took off, running as hard and fast as I could.
So hard and so fast I got tired long before I’d reached the middle, so I slowed down, surrounded by waist-high, sweet-smelling grasses, flowers, wild herbs, with lazy bees bumbling from one to another, and the bright, furtive flit of a butterfly here and there.
I sauntered alongside a bubbling stream, and splashed across as I looked northward. Farmland rose gradually until it got gobbled up in the dark green line of a woodland. Beyond that mountains jutted, hazy and purple. The sight of them smacked me with longing, as if home called from beyond: Come back, come back. We need you.
“Hungry?”
I jumped.
Rel had caught up a lot faster than I’d thought he would.
“No,” I said, though I was. It was the idea of his company that soured my mood. How to get rid of him?
He said unexpectedly as he unslung the satchel, “This is the same food Raneseh and his daughter eat.”
“What?” Then I realized his meaning and gasped. “I am not a snob! I just wish you’d get lost.” I snorted. “I’d wish you lost even if you were king of the universe.”
Rel studied me, his expression impossible to interpret. I hated that.
“I can’t tell the difference,” he said, “between a snob and an uncivilized brat. Is there one?”
He didn’t sound angry, he sounded calm, which made the insult far worse.
“I am not either of those things,” I began, then gritted my teeth, trying to get a rein on my temper. “No one believes me when I say that Kwenz is evil, and I can’t bear thinking about my home in danger.”
“So you say.” He sat down on the grass, and began unwrapping a sandwich. “Assuming any of that is true. What use could you possibly be to anyone? You don’t seem to have any more skills than you do manners.”
I clamped my teeth closed. I was within a heartbeat of letting fly with the longest pocalube of my life. Yet there was just a tiny, teensy doubt—not about my own importance to those at home, but about how everything must look.
So I tried to be reasonab
le. “I do have some. Skills, I mean. My main one is magic. Not that I’m as good as Clair. But someone warded my magic, so I can’t use it.”
I paused, readying an insult for the inevitable scoff.
But he didn’t scoff. Just ate the sandwich as he eyed me. When I didn’t speak, he waved the sandwich. “Go on.”
“Well, I’m not about to brag on myself—then I will sound like a snob. But I’ve gotten into some messes. Like with the Chwahir. When they try nasty things against us. And gotten out of ’em.”
Rel considered. “Chwahir?”
“Kwenz is brother to Shnit of the Chwahir! The rotten, horrible king of the enemy!” I exclaimed.
“And you say you’ve met this king?”
“Worse than that,” I snarled. “I wish it was just met—though that would be bad enough. You don’t just ‘meet’ Shnit, you are his target. If you’re a Mearsiean.” I glared at Rel, who continued to eat his sandwich as if I’d been nattering about the weather. “Blargh! It just snackles my chitlins that Raneseh thinks Kwenz is some kind of good guy. I mean, a Chwahir! They always attack first and ask questions later!”
“You keep coming back to that. From what I heard, there wasn’t any mention of Chwahir,” Rel said. “Much less your being on name-without-title basis with any of their kings.” He considered. “But then if you really are a princess, that puts a different light on things.”
I gasped. “If Kwenz said he’s one of us, well, he lied!”
Rel shrugged a little. “Raneseh seemed to think he sounded convincing. And his contact was specific about keeping you safe, from what I understand.”
“Who is this mysterious ‘contact’?”
“I don’t know. Raneseh has contacts all over. Some family connections, like with his wife’s relations, and others are trade. He has one from whom he orders his books. A few are people he met when young. He told me this particular contact asked Raneseh specifically to take you in because Raneseh lives quietly, and has a daughter who would be a good influence for someone who’s had a bad upbringing. All that sounds benevolent.”