Palace of Lies (21 page)

I glanced over my shoulder again. The line of torches were several yards back.

“They're going to let us get away!” I called to Tog and Herk and Janelia just as Tog stumbled over some unseen rock and almost toppled over. “You can slow down and be a little more careful!”

“Don't . . . want to . . . test that,” Tog muttered back. He was breathing so hard now, almost gasping for air. “Don't . . . want them to see . . . where we're going. . . .”

He kept running. So did Herk and Janelia.

“We can hide and wait nearby and then go back for—” I began. I looked over my shoulder once more. The torches were farther away, but somehow they seemed
brighter now, with two or three joined together.

Oh. They were burning my stretcher.

“Never mind,” I muttered. “I don't think they'll leave anything for us to go back to.”

Tog, Herk, and Janelia kept running, their breathing ragged, theirs steps uneven. I was ready to drop with exhaustion, and all I was doing was clinging to Tog. But the others kept going.

Then we crashed into woods that had seemed like only a dark smear on the horizon when we'd first left the cave. Branches swiped against my arms and legs. I ducked my head down behind Tog's back.

“I think . . . it's safe . . . to stop . . . ,” Janelia panted.

She and Herk collapsed to the ground. Tog took one last swerving step and almost fell over. I slid down off his back, twisting so I landed on my side, not my feet.

For a long moment all four of us did nothing but lie in the midst of leaves and twigs. I turned my head so I could see back toward the cave. Either there were too many tree trunks and branches blocking my view, or the men with torches had extinguished their flames and gone back to their own nasty village.

“We're . . . all . . . still . . . alive,” Janelia whispered. “We . . . survived.”

I had reigned over dozens of ceremonies commemorating war victories; I'd sat through hours of supposedly stirring military marches. But somehow this was the most victorious
sound I'd ever heard: Janelia whispering,
We're all still alive.

Even in the dim light, I could see Janelia reach to the right and hug Herk close to her side. Then she reached for Tog and me. And I let Janelia draw me near. I let Janelia hug me just as tightly as she was hugging Herk. I hugged her back.

“You saved us,” she whispered.

“You were . . . brilliant,” Tog mumbled in agreement. “Fearless.”

I basked in their praise. I hadn't been fearless. But it hadn't mattered.

“And you saved me,” I whispered back. “Thank you. Thank you for not running away and leaving me behind.”

“Never,” Janelia whispered back.

“Didn't even think of it,” Tog muttered.

“
I
would have come back for you, if they hadn't,” Herk added drowsily, almost as if he was talking in his sleep.

The four of us huddled together for a long while. But my triumphant feeling began to slip away. Later, long after Tog had gone off to take the first watch of the night and Janelia and Herk had slipped off into sleep, I lay staring up at the dark branches blocking the starry sky. I wondered,
How will we ever get to Fridesia now? How can we rescue my sister-princesses when it was all we could do to fight off poor, stupid villagers?

And I kept reliving the same moments over and over again: seeing Tog about to be strangled, throwing the pot of boiled rags at his attackers, clinging to Tog as he held on to me.

How was it that those moments that had made me feel so
terrified also made me feel . . . brave? And—safe?

What those moments really made me was stranded. We were in a woods in the middle of nowhere. I couldn't walk, the stretcher was gone, and there was no way Tog could carry me all the way to Fridesia.

What did finding courage matter now?

“Here.”

I woke to see Tog standing over me, handing me something I couldn't quite make out because of the contrast with the bright sunlight behind him.

I sat up woozily. He was holding out a pair of tied-together sticks.

No. Crutches,
I corrected myself, noticing how the branches angled and curved and twisted together at the top. He'd wrapped swaths of fabric along each branch top, as if trying to add padding. I recognized the fabric—it was the bottom half of his shirt. He'd apparently tried to tuck what remained back in to his breeches, but as soon as he held out the crutches the shirt came untucked and I could see the muscles beneath the shirt.

And last night he held on to my bare knees,
I remembered, blushing.

“I
think
these are the right length to fit under your
arms,” Tog said. “I tried to measure while you were still sleeping, but luckily we do still have the knife. So I could cut them down if you wanted.”

“Oh, um, thank you,” I said, blinking in a way that I was pretty sure looked stupid.

“Even if both your feet aren't healed yet, I remembered that the left one wasn't cut up so bad, and I thought you could support your weight on it, with a little help,” Tog explained. “I thought, with crutches, you'd be good to go. Watch out, Fridesia, here we come!”

He grinned, and for a moment I wondered if he was making fun of me.

Yeah, watch out, Fridesia. Here comes Suala's crippled princess,
I thought mockingly. I wished I'd been kinder to poor, clumsy Princess Elzbethl.

Tog kept grinning. He
wasn't
making fun of me.

I found I could alternate my stupid blinking with vapid staring. And stammering, “You . . . you still think we can go to Fridesia?”

“Sure,” Tog said, shrugging. “Isn't that the plan?”

“Desmia, is that still what you want?” Janelia asked quietly. I saw that she was sitting nearby. “It isn't going to be easy. And we might encounter more hostile villages. Especially once we get to Fridesia.”

I gulped.

“Tog and me, we think those villagers must have been doing something they weren't supposed to,” Herk
chimed in from beside Janelia. “Like selling weapons to the Fridesians during the war. Or smuggling food past the royal tax agents.”

I remembered Cecilia telling me that she had thought many times during her secret trip to the capital with Harper,
Oh, how can people treat me this way? When they find out who I really am, they're going to be sorry!

I understood that feeling completely. But I also thought,
How could we have allowed there to be a village in our kingdom that treats beggars—or anyone!—so badly? And if they really are smuggling weapons or food or breaking the law some other way . . . I want to have royal agents investigate and stop them! It isn't right! It isn't fair!

But how could I do that if I just limped back to my own capital city without my rescued sister-princesses beside me? Without them, how could I stand up to the cruel villagers or the plotters who'd set the fire at the palace—or anyone?

How could I accomplish anything without going to Fridesia?

“
I
want to keep going,” I said. “I just didn't think that the three of you . . .”

“We sure don't want to stay around here!” Herk said. His voice came out in a chirp, making him sound as carefree as a bird. I wondered if he was really that calm, or if he was play-acting again for my benefit.

“I'm not sure we would want to go back to the capital
right now, anyhow,” Janelia added. “Not if Terrence has been spreading rumors about us to your enemies.”

I glanced quickly at Tog, and he nodded.

“I've trapped you here,” I said, my voice anguished. I'd been the princess of Suala practically my entire life, but somehow I'd never felt so responsible before for any of my royal subjects' lives.

“No—we
chose
to go to Fridesia with you,” Tog corrected. “We all made our own decisions.”

I thought about how simple everything had seemed to me back at the beginning of the trip. I'd told Janelia, Tog, and Herk I wanted them to carry me to Fridesia as if I had the right to order them around, to get them to do anything I wanted. Royalty did have that right with commoners.

But that wasn't why they'd come. That wasn't why they were still by my side right now.

I used the crutches Tog had made for me to prop myself up—first onto my knees, then into a standing position. My left foot, the less injured one, sent back a stab of pain at temporarily bearing all my weight. My head was woozy, probably from not eating the night before. And the patch of open sky I could see through a clearing in the trees worried me.

What if I lose control of myself and simply start screaming again?
I wondered.
What if I can't walk even with Tog's crutches?

Annoyed with myself, I inched the crutches forward, leaned against them, and swung my right foot up and over a log that lay in my path.

There,
I told myself.
I took one step.

“Let's go,” I told the others. “I know I'll slow us down—we might as well get started.”

Herk clapped. Tog's grin grew even wider. Janelia put out her hands to steady me on the crutches.

“Actually,” Janelia said, “you can have breakfast first. Herk found some berries over in that clearing. The rest of us already ate.”

If I sat back down, would I have the gumption to get back up again?

“No,” I decided. “I can eat while I walk. Er—hobble. Let's go.”

And I took another leap forward.

That first day on the crutches was rough. Even with the remnants of Tog's shirt as padding, the skin under my arms was chafed raw by mid morning. Tog and Janelia took turns letting me lean on them for a while instead—Herk offered as well, but he was a foot shorter than me, and leaning down to hold on to his shoulder threw me off balance. By noon, when we all stopped to take a break and share the last of the berries, every muscle in my body ached.

“Seeing the sky doesn't bother you anymore?” Tog asked, handing me what I guessed might be more than my portion of berries.

“I've been so busy trying not to trip, I haven't even noticed the sky!” I admitted. “I only look at the ground.”

“Well, that's good, then,” Tog said, as if he was trying too hard to keep my spirits up.

My eyes met his, and both of us quickly looked away. I began to regret the fact that Herk and Janelia had gone to look for more food and left Tog alone with me as a guard against danger. What was I supposed to say to him? How was I supposed to act? To cover my embarrassment, I let myself fall back flat on the grass behind me. This time I did look straight at the sky. Ominous dark clouds hovered to the west. I had to struggle to keep my breathing normal and even.

“Now, see, that's a kind sky,” Tog said gently beside me. “See those clouds? That means we're going to get a refreshing rain this afternoon. That's going to cool us off after all this heat.”

How could two people look at the same sky and see such different things?

But Tog's words made it possible for me to keep staring at the sky without screaming.

A moment later, Herk and Janelia came back, Herk holding three dead animals by their tails. Were they more weasels? Squirrels?
Rats?
I really didn't know. I fought against gagging. But Herk was chanting, “We've got fo-oo-od! We've got fo-oo-od!”

And Janelia held up four gourds and proclaimed, “We've got something to carry more water again, as soon as we can dry them! And we found a river and I cut down
more reeds—we
will
be more careful about selling our baskets the next time. . . .”

“It's our lucky day!” Tog cried.

His eyes lingered on my face as he said this.

This time I didn't look away. I smiled back instead.

We'd been on the road
for two weeks when we reached the Fridesian border. I could walk on both feet now, but I'd discarded only one of the crutches. Tog had cut down the other one to make it into a cane for me to use in the afternoons when the last stubborn wound on my right foot began to ache. When I wasn't using the cane, Herk used it as a prop for an entire skit he'd made up, pretending to be an old man. He'd kept the rest of us laughing at his nonsense.

Or is that really how old men act?
I wondered.
Old men who aren't Lord Throckmorton or the other bitter, cruel palace advisers?

There was so much I hadn't known, living in the palace. I saw fields of grain and amused the others by asking, “What kind of trees are those?” I learned how to use the knife, first to cut the reeds for making baskets, and then—wincing—to skin the random animals that Herk kept bringing back for meals. I hadn't looked in a mirror since my last night in the palace, but I knew from glancing down at my arms and hands that the skin
of my face had probably turned as brown and tough-looking as Tog's, Herk's, and Janelia's.

I hadn't even known that would happen, being out in the sun all day.

For the last several miles before the Fridesian border, we traveled through a strange landscape where trees were broken off and dying, and the grasses were just green sprouts barely poking up through acres of scorched earth.

“Was there a fire?” I asked hesitantly as dead leaves crumbled like ash beneath my feet.

“It's the battlefield,” Tog said.

“This?” I asked. “This is what war looks like?”

“No,” Tog said curtly. “This is what the
land
looks like after a battle. The people . . . well, even if they don't have scars you can see, they're carrying this inside.”

I thought of the military officials I'd met at the castle, droning on about strategy and advantages and territory gained and lost. I'd only met generals and other commanders, I realized. The ones who sat in tents far from the battlefield and gave orders for other men to die.