Darkwood (18 page)

Annie sat dumb as a stump. His words seemed like a net thrown over her and cinched tight, so anything she might have thought to say could not reach her lips.

“Have I imagined wrongly, Miss Trewitt?” said the king. “Do tell me so.”

“Your Highness,” Page said in a low voice. “Remember you are speaking to a child.”

The king looked from Page to Annie. For a long time he said nothing. Then he appeared to make a decision. He took off his crown and set it on the table next to his chair. His hair, so dense and shiny black that it appeared to have been lacquered, held the crown's imprint. Annie wondered if it looked like that even when he slept.

When he smiled again there was something like warmth in it.

“A jest, rather poorly executed.” He dipped his head in a bow. “Forgive me.”

Again Annie nodded, though she had no clear sense of what she had agreed to, or what was forgiven.

“Lady Trewitt requested this interview on your behalf, Miss Trewitt. What is it you wish to tell me?”

“Lady Trewitt?” asked Annie.

The king inclined his head toward Page. “She hasn't shared our news with you yet?”

Annie turned to her sister. “Page?”

“I thought at a later time,” Page murmured.

“Very well. Such news is best savored, perhaps. Now, Miss Trewitt, your information?”

But Annie's mouth had gone dry. She looked at Page's hands twisted together in her lap.

“Go on, Annie,” Page said quietly.

So she told them about the Drop, and the orphanage, and the children working at night. She told them what a runout was and what they did to them. She told them about seeing Gibbet in the wood, and the kinderstalk on its hind legs, and the rabbits; she told them about the pit with its hidden treasure and the tunnel to the river. She did not tell them that she could see in the dark, and, for some reason she didn't understand, she did not tell them about Beatrice and Serena.

For a long time, the only sounds in the room were Annie's voice and the occasional pop and hiss of logs in the fire. The king listened with his eyes half-closed, his steepled fingers pressed to his lips. Page stared intently at the fire, as though it were telling the story.

When she had finished speaking, the king surprised her by fixing her another cup of chocolate. The chocolate itself was scalding hot and very bitter; he added cream and three spoonfuls of sugar, then mixed it all together carefully. It tasted divine.

The king leaned back, steepling his fingers again as he regarded her. All of his postures, even the most casual, seemed studied.

“The ringstone that was recovered from among your
possessions was of exceptional quality. You believe it to have been mined at the Drop?”

“As I told you, the children mine the white stone. They can get into the narrow spaces between the rocks.” Page shot her a look. “Your Highness,” Annie added.

The king smiled coldly. “Pardon me for wishing to clarify some of the more important points in this narrative.”

“Of course, Your Highness.”

“When you observed Mr. Gibbet with the kinderstalk, are you certain they were speaking?”

“Yes.”

“And you believe Mr. Gibbet and his men are smuggling ringstone out of the country by way of the West River?”

“I do.”

The king turned to Page. “The foreign currency she found—that is Frigia's coin, and Brineland's, and Redonda's.”

“It is just as Sharta warned us,” Page said. “Gibbet is planning—”

“Quiet!” The king gestured toward Annie. “That is the business of the crown, and none of hers.”

“For heaven's sake, Terr! She's my sister!” Annie and the king both looked at Page, startled.

Terr
?

Page blushed. “Your Highness, she risked her life to come here and tell you what she knows. Her information corroborates what Sharta has told us. I see no reason not to be open.”

The king ignored her.

“Miss Trewitt, how is it that you knew the kinderstalk would attack the palace when they did?”

“I didn't know.”

“Your Highness,
she
was the target—” Page started to interrupt, but the king wagged a finger in the air and she fell silent. Annie struggled against a sudden wave of hatred for him.

“I'd arrived in Magnifica that day and had just learned about the engagement party,” Annie said. “I thought it would be my best chance to, well, to enter the grounds unnoticed, so I took it.” She trailed off, uncertain. Nobody spoke. “I could not think of another way to reach you, Your Highness, and Gregor … all the children at the Drop, it is bad for them there.”

When another minute passed without anyone saying anything, Annie stood up and walked over to the window. She didn't know if that was something you were allowed to do without permission from the king. She hoped it wasn't.

Outside, blooming dogwood trees grew along the perimeter of the courtyard, their black branches lacy with frost. The sun was shining and the paving stones had been swept clear of snow, and around the base of each tree white petals mixed with the white snow.

Behind her, the king and Page had begun a whispered conversation, their heads bent together. A lock of Page's hair touched the king's shoulder. Suddenly the king jerked upright and slammed his fist on the table so hard that the cups jumped in their saucers.

“I thought only
you
could speak to the beasts!” he roared at Page. “This changes everything!”

“How could I have known? I don't know where he learned! If you had let me speak to her when she first arrived, perhaps
Gibbet's plans would not have advanced so far!” Page paused, breathing hard. Both of them seemed to have forgotten Annie was in the room.

“It isn't too late to stop Gibbet,” Page went on. “You have Sharta. You have me. Let's try. Let's talk to them.” Page's voice sounded low and tense, and something else, something Annie didn't recognize from her sister. She was pleading with him.

Annie's heart hammered high in her chest, as though it would burst from between her collarbones.

“The beast is useless,” the king hissed. “
You
are useless!” He gestured contemptuously at Annie. “She cannot speak to them, can she? So how is it she knows so much? So much more than you? Have you been keeping secrets from me?”

Page shook her head. Tears cut tracks through the white powder on her face. “You are cruel.”

“Well?” the king persisted. “Well?” He leaned forward across the table, his face inches from hers. Page shrank back until it seemed the chair would swallow her.

“What's the matter, kinderstalk got your tongue?” he sneered.

“I will
never
marry you!” Page spat out. The king blanched, then raised his arm over his head, hand balled into a fist. What happened next was so strange that Annie could not be sure afterward what was real and what she had imagined.

Page cried out, but the sound was immediately swallowed by another sound—snarling. In an instant Annie was between the king and Page, her body rigid as a shield. The king tried to push
her aside, and then she was at his throat. The weight of her body striking his chest knocked the king backward. The edge of his throne caught him behind the knees, and the throne, several hundred pounds of oak, brocade, and ringstone, screeched across the tile floor and slammed into the bookcase behind it.

Annie came to her senses with her hands around the king's neck. She scrambled off his lap and backed away, eyeing him warily. Her palms felt damp, but when she moved to dry them on her dress she saw that they were wet with blood, not sweat. The blood was coming from the tips of her fingers.

Three red gashes ran from the corner of the king's right eye down his cheek and over his jaw. Blood dripped onto his gray silk vest. The king looked down at himself and when he raised his eyes, Annie could see that he was frightened. Annie was too—she knew she should go for help, but somehow all she could do was rub her hands, over and over, against the front of her dress.

Page stepped out of her petticoat and folded it into a square. She pressed the cloth against the wounds. Her fingers drifted through the damp hair stuck to the king's forehead. His eyes closed.

“Annie, you must find the doctor. If anyone asks you, tell them the king has retired for the day.”

Annie nodded dumbly and turned to go.

“Wait.” With her free hand, Page smoothed Annie's hair down behind her ears, rubbed a fleck of blood from her cheek. “Wipe your hands on my dress. It won't show on the red. Good. Now try to smile, and remember to curtsy if you pass
anyone of rank. And, Annie, don't tell anyone, not even the doctor, that you—don't explain.”

Once more, Annie turned to go. This time it was the king's voice that stopped her.

“I would never have hurt her.”

Annie left the room.

The bindweed outside her window had crept over the sill and wrapped itself around the window frame. Cone-shaped flowers, white with purple veins, crowded against the glass. Two weeks had passed since she attacked the king.

“He's fine,” Page told her. “Maybe a bit subdued.”

“Will you marry him?” Annie asked.

Page sighed. “I don't know. I said I would. That was the third condition, to get you out of the dungeon.”

“Do you … are you in love with him?”

“No. Sometimes. He's not always so—”

Arrogant? Bloodthirsty? Evil
?

“—imperious. And what he said, at the end. It's true. He would never hurt me.”

“He was going to hit you!”

Page met Annie's eyes. “He wasn't. He was reaching for the bell pull. To call the servant.”

Annie took a moment to digest this and found she couldn't.

“I know you didn't mean to hurt him. You were only trying to protect me.” She looked down at her gloved hands. “I have never seen you like that before.”

That wasn't me!
Annie wanted to cry, but she couldn't. Whatever part of her had attacked the king was as real as the part that knew how to wait quietly, to ask before taking.

She laced her bare fingers through her sister's satin-covered ones. “I'm sorry.”

Page looked up, her eyes bright. “I do love him. I love him and half the time I don't even like him.” She smiled, surprised, it seemed, to hear herself say the words. “In a way, I think he respects you because of this. Everyone here has to act as if he's the smartest, wittiest, most marvelous person they've ever met, so he never knows when he's being a bore. I'm not sure he even knows when he's being cruel. He admires people who are honest. And you, little one, can't help but be honest.”

Not always
, Annie thought.
You don't know everything
.

Page gave her hand a squeeze and unlaced their fingers. “He's furious, of course. His looks are practically ruined.”

Annie decided it was time to change the subject.

“Will the king put Gibbet in the dungeon for smuggling?”

“I think it's gone beyond that, Annie.”

“He won't let him get away with it!”

“Of course not.” She paused. “Have you considered what Gibbet's buying in exchange for all that stone?”

Annie thought back to the cove at Witch's Hand, the empty coffin-shaped boxes stacked by the boats.

“Muskets.”

“Not only those. Remember the foreign coins you found? Kings take an interest in what happens in their neighboring countries. I think Gibbet is paying them
not
to be interested. I think he's planning to seize the crown. And when he does, they'll let him.”

Page wanted to know everything that had happened to Annie since she left Uncle Jock's. Annie wanted to know when the king would rescue Gregor from the Drop.

“When?” Annie asked for the hundredth time that morning. Page leaned down to inspect a mat in Sharta's fur. Her hair swung forward to hide her face.

“Soon. He's meeting with his advisors every day.” She tugged at the mat with her own gold comb.

“What does he need advisors for? Doesn't he have an army? Couldn't he just send an army?”

Page rested her forehead on the kinderstalk's back. She closed her eyes. “Annie, from what you've told me … have you considered that Gregor may not be alive?”

“Of course! I don't know!” Annie shouted, and then, stubbornly, “When will the king send someone to the Drop?”

“I don't know. Soon.”

“You do know! He doesn't care!”

“He does care.”

“Then when?”

And round and round they went, Page alternately embarrassed, weary, awkward, and at last, angry.

“You're such a pest! Stop badgering me!”

Hurt, Annie turned away. “You've taken his side.”

“This isn't you and me against Uncle Jock anymore,” Page snapped, and strode out of the shelter.