Royal Outlaw: (Royal Outlaw, Book 1) (13 page)

Mariel had brought a candle from the kitchen and used its light to look through papers. A candle was already in the office, but she knew that High Priestess might notice if her candle was not as tall as it had been the day before. The information was not very interesting, but Mariel stored some of it in her mind, just like everything else she had learned that day.

When she finished, she replaced the papers just as she had found them and blew out the candle. With the tapestry and the stolen candle in her hand Mariel relocked the door and proceeded to search the nearby rooms. Eventually, she found what she wanted.

The room was plain with a small bed and no decoration. High Priestess’s loud snores concealed any noise Mariel made as she unrolled the tapestry and draped it over the chair.

Cara was still asleep when Mariel entered the room. Mariel unfastened her knives and hid them and her lock picks next to Aracklin, beneath the petticoat. Lying on her bed, a smile touched her lips as she stared up at the ceiling before sleep stole over her.

* * *

“Aaaaahhhhh!”

Mariel and Cara bolted upright in bed.

“Aaaaaahhhhhh!”

“What’s that?” Mariel asked in feigned confusion.

Cara did not answer, as she stared at the door with wide eyes.

Someone screamed again.

Mariel jumped up and pulled Cara out of bed. The meek girl trailed behind as Mariel opened the door. A cluster of girls were gathered in the hallway blocking Mariel’s view of the screaming girl.

Priestess Maren arrived. Her purple robes were askew as though she had quickly thrown them on. “What is all this commotion? You are young ladies, not roosters!” More priestesses and a few novices arrived as she waded through the throng of girls, but stopped short. “In the name of benevolent Narel, what happened to you?”

The girl did not answer, but continued to scream hysterically.

“We shall go see High Priestess.”

Priestess Maren emerged from the group of young noblewomen pulling a tall girl who had her face buried in her hands as she sobbed. Her black hair was cut unevenly to her shoulders.

Cara shrieked in astonishment and covered her mouth with her hand. Mariel forced her lips to remain turned down as she resisted the urge to smile.

“Priestess Maren, I found this hanging above the stairs,” said one of the priestesses as she held up the long black braid.

Isabel lunged and grabbed the braid. She held the hair to her chest and began rocking back and forth as she sobbed. “My hair! My beautiful hair!”

Mariel felt ill watching the scene unfold. She did not regret cutting off the bully’s braid, but she was disgusted by Isabel’s love for her own hair when she showed such menace and disrespect to her fellow human beings. Yet, there she stood, clinging to her hair as though it was a dead child, while real mothers held the bodies of children who had been killed through starvation.

“Would someone explain to me what is going on here?” High Priestess had arrived on the scene, clutching the tapestry Mariel had placed in her locked room.

“My hair! My hair!” Isabel wailed. She looked around with puffy eyes.

“You!” Isabel shrieked when she saw Mariel. “It was you!” She lunged, dropping her precious hair.

Mariel grabbed Cara and stepped out of Isabel’s way. The angry girl fell flat and lay sprawled on the floor of the room that had been hers only the day before. She picked herself up, her shorn hair framing her face. Isabel pounced again. Mariel slid out of the way with ease.

“Cease this horrifying behavior this instant!” High Priestess commanded.

Isabel stopped and turned toward the powerful woman. “She has to leave! She can’t stay. Not after what she did to me and my poor hair!”

Say yes,
Mariel thought.
Say yes, and throw me out!

High Priestess looked wary, as though she was caught between two difficult situations.

“High Priestess!” Isabel shrieked when she realized the woman was not answering her. “She’s a nobody! No one will get offended if you force her to leave, but my family will certainly hear about it if she stays!”

Still High Priestess hesitated, looking from one girl to the next. Fury was aflame in her eyes, but she controlled her temper and continued to stand in the hallway, surrounded by women and girls.

It was in that moment that Mariel understood she was not going to be thrown out of the finishing school. High Priestess was probably getting well paid to train her and the reputation of the convent was at stake if she failed to produce a properly trained, well behaved princess.

“There is no proof that Miss Mariel is the one behind this cruel prank,” said High Priestess, even though she knew that Mariel had done it. “I will not risk the chance of convicting an innocent girl. That is not Narel’s way.”

“But I know it’s her! She’s the only one who would dare do it!”

“
However
,” High Priestess continued, “I have no intention of letting whoever did this go unpunished. Breakfast privileges are hereby stripped from every student except Miss Isabel. We will spend breakfast time today and every morning free-period for the next two weeks in prayer to Narel.”

The girls groaned and pleaded innocence, but High Priestess was determined. “Silence ladies! We will begin now, follow me to the temple.” She shot a long, hard look at Mariel before turning and heading down the stairs.

Isabel clenched her fists as she stood in the hallway fuming and glaring at Mariel. The other girls filed past her, but Mariel noted that very few looked at Isabel with sympathy. In fact, she saw a few small smiles, including one on Cara’s face.

“You. Cut. My. Hair.” Isabel screamed through gritted teeth. She lunged again and Mariel moved. “I am going to rip your hair out!”

This time Mariel did not move out of the bully’s way. She caught the girl and threw her over her hip. Isabel landed hard on the floor and lay dazed.

Mariel bent over her. “You can try,” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking with anger. “But if you want to know the truth, you are the least of my worries.”

Yes
, the seething girl thought as she left Isabel stunned on the floor.
My more important concerns involve the king and queen of Natric and the possibility that someone is trying to assassinate me.

She remembered the planned attack of the ogres and once again wondered who was behind it. She could not bear to think about her grandparents, so she let her mind drift back to the bully. She knew Isabel was not beaten, Mariel had probably just awakened a lion, but she grinned at the challenge the bully presented. 

* * *

The days slipped away until they transformed into weeks. At first, Mariel reveled in her fight against the convent and Isabel who attacked her with a fury. She purposely fumbled around and stepped on other girls’ feet during dancing lessons. Her stitches for needlepoint were sloppy and she wiggled and stretched during studies of royal genealogy. When she recited catechisms or verses she added incorrect words, which were sometimes profane. During singing lessons she sang loudly and off-key, despite her normally beautiful voice. The priestesses gawked in horror at her poor penmanship, which she created by writing with her left hand instead of her right. During lessons in Dremien, Mariel either spoke only in Natrician or added nonsense or Zreshlan words to whatever Priestess Penelope asked her to say. She lost a meal at least once a day, but when she was allowed to eat she smacked her lips loudly and chewed with her mouth open.

Mariel never experienced a free-period because they were always taken away from her in punishment, but she spent the times locked in the cold temple plotting what to do next. High Priestess received a few frogs in her bed, honey in her hair, itching powder in her robes, missing important documents, and almost any trick Mariel could think up without actually hurting anyone. Yet, regardless of Mariel’s efforts, High Priestess only stacked more punishments on her and did not dare throw her out of the finishing school.

Isabel was a malicious girl who preyed on anyone weaker than her. She forced the younger girls to do chores for her, like massaging her feet and clipping her toenails. She pulled girls’ hair and managed to find ways to get them in trouble in class. Her most dangerous weapon was her cruel words. One of her favorite targets was Cara who was too scared to stand up to the bully and her followers. Isabel wanted to get revenge on Mariel, but nothing she did deterred the girl.  

The war Mariel waged against Isabel was no less fierce than the one against High Priestess, and Isabel often woke screaming with bugs in her bed. Mariel once covered herself in flour and spread pig’s blood on one of her knives. She knocked over a chair with her foot, and Isabel promptly awoke to find Mariel standing over her with a knife. Her piercing screams had caused others to come quickly, but she had not recognized Mariel coated in flour and the girl fled through the window and crept along the wall until she reached her room. Cara had vacated the room to see what was going on and Mariel entered it, cleaned and hid her knife, quickly brushed flour from her body, and went to play Miss Innocent again.

Although she was an aristocrat, Mariel began to like Cara, despite her efforts not to. Cara was afraid to stand up for herself, but she was kind, and Mariel wondered what the girl would be like if she had not suffered from abuse and oppression her whole life, first from her father, Lord Stonewell, and then from Isabel. Mariel considered teaching Cara some self defense, but quickly banished the thought because she had no intention of ever befriending someone of noble blood.

Mariel had no such aversion to her maidservant Betti, except that she did not like her. With some cajoling and a few flattering remarks, Mariel convinced the prideful young woman to allow her to bathe on her own in the morning. Mariel learned a trick from her unicorn friend—who had followed her to the convent—to puff out her belly like a horse being cinched, so her corset would not be so tight.

At night, Mariel crept around the convent, ruffling through papers and journals. She stole food from the kitchen to fill in for whatever meal she missed, and used her light fingers to steal from the students. Mariel did not prey on anyone in particular in this respect, since this part of her scheme was not one of revenge. She even sold off the collection of jewels the king and queen had sent with her. She did not steal every night, but the nights she did she would stash the goods, and when she woke early she would dress and head to the nearby town where she exchanged the stolen items for coins to be distributed among the poor.

Most days she woke before dawn, quietly dressed in the male clothing she had stolen from one of the smaller menservants, and pulled out her weapons from their hiding spot, attaching her knives to her ankles and wrists, where she hid them for the entire day. She climbed down the tree outside of the window and headed to the edge of the convent’s property. Iyela would emerge from the forest and greet her warmly. Some days Mariel would ride her. Other days she hid her sword in a bush and ran down a deer-path in the forest, relishing in the pounding of her feet on the dirt and the burning of her muscles. After the ride or run Mariel stretched and fell into a fighting pattern with Aracklin to keep her skills sharp.

When Mariel slipped into bed each night after her sneak through the convent, she lay awake wondering about her papa. Would he be proud of her knowing that she had turned this prestigious finishing school upside down? Or would he forever be angry at her for picking the path of nobility? She wondered if he had gone to Reckive and how he was doing with King Bartholomew without her to flirt the way smooth for him. Would she ever see Darren again?

The thoughts of her papa grew too painful and she shifted to thinking about where her life would lead her. The priestesses were making no progress turning Mariel into a proper young noblewoman, but despite all her tricks and bad behavior she was not making any headway in being disowned. Mariel read every letter that came to the convent, but the king and queen always responded to High Priestess’s detailed letters about Mariel’s atrocious behavior in the same way:
Keep working on her, even if it takes years.

The prospect of remaining at the convent for years did not sit well with Mariel, but the thought of being a proper princess repulsed her even more. Perhaps she should send a letter to her grandparents: she would behave somewhat better, if only they released her from the prison of this convent.

The evening that marked the third week since her arrival, Mariel stole into High Priestess’s office and penned the letter. She signed her name, but sealed it with the convent’s mark. The next day, she took stolen items down to the town and paid someone to carry the letter to the palace. She hoped that some freedom might be granted in the response.

“Miss Mariel, how many times do I have to tell you? Only peasants dip bread into soup. It is unladylike behavior for someone of your family’s standing.”

“At least one more time, Priestess Penelope.” Mariel looked up through her long eyelashes, as though ashamed. “I’m afraid old habits die hard, especially one that is so delicious.”

Priestess Penelope sniffed in disgust and glanced at High Priestess in her seat at the head of the table. The High Priestess looked down her sharp nose at her unruly pupil; her gaze was no longer arrogant, but tired instead. Mariel smiled innocently at High Priestess, who continued to gaze sadly at her. Mariel felt a twinge of sympathy toward the woman who had failed in a job she tried so hard to accomplish, but then she remembered that the job was turning her into a proper princess, and all pity vanished.

Mariel returned to slurping her soup loudly, causing several of the priestesses to cringe and a few of the students to cover up smiles by pretending to dab their mouths with napkins. High Priestess had dubbed Mariel a lost cause, but still appeared determined not to throw her out of finishing school.

The week before, High Priestess had stopped stripping Mariel of meal privileges. It had been discovered by the angry cook that food was missing from the storeroom. A lock had been placed on the door, but that had not kept out the practiced thief and her hungry belly. High Priestess had known it was Mariel and, since her punishment was not working, she permitted the most difficult student she had ever taught to join everyone at the table for meals.

Mariel was not sure she did not prefer stealing the food, as meals were an etiquette lesson: learning the countless different utensils and dishes, the correct way to hold a fork, the proper way to shake out a napkin before placing it in her lap—the lessons were endless. She longed to be out in the cool evening air, inhaling the scent of the flowers in full bloom and the sweetness of the trees, but instead she was stuck inside a stuffy room listening to the priestesses drone on about protocol with her consciously making an effort to eat improperly. The game was getting old, even for Mariel.

When the meal was over, the girls retired to a sitting room to work on needlepoint. While her fingers made haphazard stitches, Mariel allowed her mind to wander to the history of the Lenging War between Natric’s current estranged neighbor Salf and Crek, a kingdom which Natric had devoured before turning its insatiable war-hunger on Drema.

“Why do you do that?”  

She shifted her attention to the plump girl who had taken the seat beside her, the one not occupied by Cara.

“Do what?”

“That,” Hallie pointed to Mariel’s mess of thread and fabric. “Why don’t you at least try?”

“Because I don’t want to learn needlepoint. I don’t want to become a proper noblewoman.”

Hallie’s hazel eyes shimmered with respect. “I wish I were as brave as you,” she whispered, “I hate all of this lady stuff, but I would be afraid my family would disown me if I refused to learn.”

Mariel snorted, being disowned was exactly what she wanted.

“Mariel,” Cara whispered, “If you hate all this so much, why don’t you leave?”

Cara had the habit of getting straight to the point. It was one of the traits Mariel liked most—and least—about her roommate. Cara had become Mariel’s shadow over the last few weeks, but Mariel still refused to allow her or any of the other girls to claim her as a friend.

“Don’t worry,” Isabel leaned over from her seat when Priestess Maren, the needlepoint instructor, was busy helping a small girl across the room. “Miss Mudmouth,” she flicked her eyes toward Mariel, “can’t stay here much longer. She probably comes from a minor noble family that is just barely hanging on to a bit of wealth.”

Mariel noticed Cara focus intently on her needle and thread. From her mission at Lord Stonewell’s manor, Mariel had learned that he was desperate for money and trying to secure a wealthy husband for his sixteen-year-old daughter. Cara did not know Mariel knew this, and Mariel intended to keep it that way, even as her sympathy went out to the meek girl.

“But she is still here,” Hallie pointed out. “And High Priestess has stopped giving her punishments.”

Red blotches colored Isabel’s cheeks. “High Priestess probably owes a favor to her family. Though I cannot possibly imagine what that would be.”

Mariel was still amazed that after being at the convent of Narel for over a month, none of the girls had discovered she was the long lost princess.

Isabel primped her pinned up silky black hair. “Miss Mudmouth will probably be forced to marry some fat old man who farts constantly, while I catch the most handsome man from my post as lady’s maid for the princess.”

“
What?
” Mariel said so loudly Priestess Maren shot her a severe glance.

Isabel smiled maliciously, having gotten a rise out of her enemy. “Well, it’s not certain yet, but the queen told my aunt who told my mother who wrote me that Queen Meredith is considering me as one of the princess’s lady’s maids.”

“Not if I can help it,” Mariel muttered under her breath.

Living with Isabel at school was bad enough, let alone having to look forward to spending almost every waking hour with her at the palace. She intended to write a letter to her grandmother using backwards psychology to say how much she loved Isabel and how they were becoming the best of friends. Of course, the queen still had not responded to Mariel’s last letter about coming to a truce and letting her leave finishing school in return for better behavior.

Almost on cue, the door to the sitting room opened and the girls and Priestess Maren looked up in surprise. High Priestess stepped into the room, her white robe fluttering around her legs. A tall man boasting a massive auburn mustache stepped into the room, his blue eyes roved expectantly, a sealed letter clutched in his hand.

“I apologize for the interruption, Priestess Maren,” High Priestess said. “But Master Ralf insisted on personally delivering the letter.”

“It’s from the queen,” he announced, barely able to contain his excitement. “It’s for Princess Mariel de Sharec.”

A moment of silence descended on the room, followed by an outburst of responses.

“Impossible,” Hallie murmured.

Cara glanced over at Mariel with wide eyes. She was the only one who made the connection.

Isabel shook her head and gracefully rose out of her seat. She floated over to the messenger.

“Whoever sent you was playing a nasty trick. The princess is not here. I would surely know if she was. I am Lady Isabel, daughter of Fredrick de Veneir, Marquess of Coutre. Perhaps the letter is for me, I am expecting one from the queen.”

She held out her delicate hand to Ralf, but he clutched the letter tightly.

“Begging your pardon, Lady Isabel, but the letter is not for you. Queen Meredith herself handed me the letter and told me to travel to the finishing school at the Convent of Narel in Pribum. I am instructed to hand the letter over to no one except the queen’s granddaughter, Princess Mariel.”

Mariel eyed the sealed letter in Ralf’s hand, her heart hammering in her chest. Was she about to gain some of the freedom she had lost? Would she be permitted to leave this torturous finishing school? There was only one way to find out. The desire for freedom overpowered her common sense, and she forgot no one knew who she was.

Mariel stood abruptly. “It’s for me,” she said, quickly crossing the room, her purple skirts swished as she moved with more grace than she had allowed anyone to witness at the convent. “I am Mariel.”

The girls gasped in astonishment and Ralf’s eyes lit up with delight. He bowed and handed her the letter sealed in green wax with the royal crest: a large snake wrapped around a sword and a crown hanging from the tip of the serpent’s tail.

“Thank you,” she said and exited the room without waiting for permission from High Priestess.

She broke the seal and mounted the stairs as she quickly scanned the short letter.

Dear Mariel,

You offer a compromise that I am disinclined to accept. There are to be no requests on your part until you have proved yourself fit for polite company. Therefore, until High Priestess Sonja declares you to be a proper young noblewoman ready to take up your duties as princess and heir apparent to the kingdom, you are to remain at the Convent of Narel in Pribum.

Sincerely,

Queen Meredith

Mariel stared at the delicately written words that held such a cruel meaning. She scanned them again just to make sure she had not misread them. But there was no mistake. The queen would not relent, she refused to compromise. She did not care that Mariel was misbehaving. The queen thought that eventually her granddaughter would break. Mariel remembered the words written in the same hand, but addressed to High Priestess:
Keep working on her, even if it takes years.

It was in that moment that Mariel understood that the queen had not been exaggerating. King Vincent was in his mid-fifties and would live for many more years unless his heart failed from eating too much rich food or a very skilled assassin managed to kill him. Mariel would not actually inherit the throne of Natric for a long time, so it did not matter to her grandparents how badly she acted trapped at a convent days away from the capital. That was why they had sent her here when every princess before had always been taught by a governess at the palace in Fintel. They had expected her to behave poorly and had planned for it. She truly was a prisoner.

Mariel burst into the room she and Cara shared as she read the last few words once more. “No!” she cried and tore the letter in half.

“I was wondering if this place was going to make you go crazy, and apparently it has.”

Mariel looked up in surprise and gaped in astonishment at the young man standing next to her bed.

“James!”

That familiar smile tugged at his lips and she felt a pull of joy at seeing him . . . or was he here to spy on her? After all, she was the princess.

“That’s not a very friendly welcome to an old friend you haven’t seen in months. No fear, I’ll show you how it’s done.”

Before Mariel could stop him, James swept her into his arms and pressed his lips against hers. The kiss was fiercer and more desperate than when he had kissed her in her zreshlan room. She stiffened and tried to pull away, but his powerful muscles prevented her escape. When he did not stop, Mariel lifted her heavy skirts to provide a petticoat-free pathway for her foot to James’s shin.

He grunted in pain and released her. She backed away and drew one of her knives from its sheath strapped to her forearm. She held it out in front of her.

“Don’t try that again,” she growled.

A huge smile lit up James’s face. “Glad to see you haven’t changed, even if you are wearing a fancy dress.” His eyes roved appreciatively over her body, but he kept his distance. “I still like your zreshlan dress better, although I approve of the corset.”

Mariel was in no mood to blush.

“Still,” James continued, his eyes meeting Mariel’s, “I wonder how you have been surviving being forced to act like a young noblewoman. It must be killing you! How did you manage it? Who did you say you were related to, to be admitted to this finishing school? I think you could have pretended to be a servant and probably enjoyed the mission better, but who am I to say what you should do?”

James’s words threw Mariel off-guard. She stared at him in astonishment and dropped her knife to her side.

“You don’t know?” she asked in amazement. “But you are the clever serpentramel-spy who gathers information almost as fast as your viper poison can still a man’s heart. I expected you to find out before I did.”

The smile disappeared from James’s face. “What are you talking about?”

Mariel stared at him with wide eyes. How could James not know? And how was he going to react when she told him she was a de Sharec, part of the very family he had been working to tear down for years? Would he hate her like her papa now did? She still did not know exactly how to define her relationship with James, but she certainly did not want to add hatred into the mix.

The sound of people climbing the stairs and indistinct talk met Mariel’s ears, causing her to focus on a different problem. After her revelation downstairs, she knew the girls would be coming to interrogate her, and the last thing she needed right now was for them to find James in her room.

“Hide!” she hissed, sheathing her knife.

“What?”

“Hide!” She pushed James toward her armoire. The sound of the girls came closer and she shoved James between her hanging dresses. “Stay here, and, no matter what you hear, don’t make a sound.”  

She closed the door of the armoire, but James caught it just before it snapped shut. Mariel spotted the torn letter on the floor and tossed it beneath her bed as the door burst open and a flood of girls poured in.

“This is another one of your horrible pranks, isn’t it?” Isabel demanded, livid with anger. She tore her hair out of its pins and pointed to where it stopped at her shoulders. “Like this?”

Mariel forced down the horror she felt and the anger at her grandmother and the stray thought that remembered James hiding in the armoire. Instead, she wore a mask with a calm expression. “Don’t you think that if it had been a trick, High Priestess would have told you and punished me?”