The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) (17 page)

“Hey!” I shouted to the person
outside.

Nobody answered.

The plate sat there, heaped with
colorful fruits. I tried not to look at it but it was the only thing in the
room to look at besides the chamber pot. Of the two, the fruit was much more
appealing. I weighed my options. If I didn’t eat anything I’d grow too weak to
fight back anyways.

I picked up one of the berries and
sniffed it. Hunger won out over caution and I popped it into my mouth.

A flood of images inundated me. I
saw ancient Fay farmers tilling the land on a high plain. Within seconds of
eating the berry I knew everything ever recorded about the farmers’ primitive
culture and how it had led to a more advanced Fay civilization.

I stared at the plate in surprise.
It was no regular fruit. It came from the cathedral orchard. Was this what High
Priestess Grimmoix had meant by more rigorous training?

I bit into a shiny yellow pear. As
the juices hit my tongue, I absorbed all there was to know about construction techniques
in the early modern Fay era. I followed the pear with a lemon that contained
snippets of wisdom about Fay symbols.

Every other piece of fruit on the
plate contained similar dry, historical facts. There was nothing interesting
about magic or even anything remotely useful to someone in my situation. I
wondered if this was my punishment. They were going to make me eat like a bird
and bore me to death at the same time.

Another meal came several hours
later. By then my vision was much better. I could tell by the slanting light
coming from one skinny, high window that it was afternoon. I’d been locked up
for almost a whole day. That meant Chloe’s coronation was close—maybe less than
a day away. Surely she had missed me by now. I wondered if anyone was out
looking for me.

When the slot opened for the food
to pass through, I shouted, “Hey! Talk to me! Why am I in here?”

“Shut up,” said the same gruff
guard who had brought my food earlier.

“I demand to see Princess Chloe!” I
said. “She’ll be looking for me.”

“As far as she knows, you have
retreated to the cathedral to prepare for your induction,” said a more familiar
voice.

I wrinkled my nose. “Kesper? What’s
going on?”

He didn’t answer. I banged my fists
on the door and roared in exasperation. All I accomplished was bruising my
knuckles.

Night came. The moonlight that
spilled in through the window was no comfort. I had been alone in the cold and
the dark for so long that I started to doubt my own mind. I was afraid to
sleep. To sleep was to lose track of time completely. I racked my brains for an
escape plan. The only resource I had was my flute. It would do me no good. None
of the beasts could reach me in the tiny cell and I couldn’t destroy the cathedral,
not with so many innocents inside. It would be the same as an attack on Ivywild
and that was one thing I could never, ever do.

More fruit was shoved through the
door. I ate everything on the plate, absorbing lifetimes of mundane knowledge.
It was the only thing to break up the monotony. Old languages, silk weaving and
geography took my mind off my plight. I found that I was calmer after my meals.
I started to forget all the little injustices I’d suffered throughout the
years. Details of my human life before Faylinn grew hazy.

Sleep caught up to me despite my
resistance. I drifted off into a fitful slumber where all the things I’d
learned throughout the day swam round and round in my mind before settling into
the places where other memories had lodged for years.

I woke up with a start. It
was still night. At first I didn’t know where I was. Then I saw the chamber pot
in the corner and groaned. I thought of my room at the castle with longing. The
soft, cotton sheets would feel really nice right now—or were they satin? Oddly
enough, I couldn’t recall.

The slot on the door opened and a
fresh platter of fruit was shoved inside. I felt startled at first. Then I
relaxed, remembering that this was routine. The rumbling in my stomach told me
it was mealtime. I picked an apple off the tray and let its flavor fill me with
visions of a time past.

The next morning I slumped,
dull-minded and drowsy, against the cell wall. My stomach ached. When I heard
the scraping of the door, I pounced on the plate of fresh fruit. The strange
sustenance stifled my hunger at once. I was so intent on gobbling up every last
piece that I barely noticed the wrinkled old woman sweep into the cell,
followed by a fat man in a purple robe.

“Miss Wren?” said the woman in a
tone of mock sweetness.

I glanced up. “Mmm?” I asked, still
stuffing fruit into my mouth.

“Do you know who I am?” the old woman
asked.

I studied the unpleasant sharp nose
and the hard, dark little eyes. I felt as though I should know her. The name
was on the tip of my tongue, but it escaped me.

“I am High Priestess Grimmoix,” the
old woman said with an unbecoming smile.

“Oh, yes, that’s right,” I said,
wiping my mouth.

The fat man snorted. “Delphi, you
are a genius. I had no idea it would work so quickly.”

I stared back and forth between
them in confusion.

The malicious smile stayed on High Priestess
Grimmoix’s lips. “The fruit of a dying tree works well on our difficult pupils.
The knowledge is so saturated that it becomes a poison, driving out all else.
When it comes time to plant a new tree, we merely extract the knowledge back
out of our diligent little trainees.”

The fat man smirked at me. “Doesn’t
that make them a bit…empty?”

“Is that a bad thing?” High Priestess
Grimmoix asked.

They shared a laugh over their
little joke. I felt left out. I was a tad angry, but I didn’t know why. All I
could think about were the names of the five mountain ranges on the eastern
part of the continent and the economical theories of Hobgoblin commerce.

“Get up,” High Priestess Grimmoix
said.

“Are we going somewhere?” I asked.

“Why yes, we are,” the fat man
said. “A big party. A coronation, in fact. You wouldn’t want to miss that,
would you?”

I cross-referenced the term “coronation”
with my vast stores of knowledge. Every place it showed up, it evoked images of
celebration and splendor. It sounded rather nice.

“I wouldn’t want to miss it,” I
echoed.

“Good,” High Priestess Grimmoix
said. “I have a present for you. It’s something nice to wear to the
coronation.”

She held out her hand. In it lay a
necklace with a red crystal pendant.

Something inside me recoiled. The
feeling was out of place. I didn’t understand the source of my fear, so I
ignored it.

CHAPTER TEN

Chloe scowled at her reflection.
The dress she’d picked for the coronation was just a little too tight. Her tailors
were doing their best to let out some of the rich, purple fabric. One of the
bumbling young women accidentally poked her in the hip with a pin.

The princess frowned down at the
tailor.

“S-sorry!” the young woman
squeaked.

Chloe counted silently to ten. She
could see that the tailors were nervous. She was nervous, too. “Just be a
little more careful,” she said as nicely as she could manage.

The red-faced tailor went back to
her work. Chloe sucked in her breath and went back to glowering at herself in
the mirror.

This was not how she’d imagined her
coronation day. Ill-fitting dresses were the least of her worries. She hadn’t
seen Emma since the night of the funeral. Her best friend should be here with
her. She felt slighted. Of course Emma was broken up over what that dastardly Hugo
had done, but that hardly seemed a reason for her to throw herself into
training and ignore her friends.

King Hugo was a whole other issue—one
Chloe hadn’t acted on yet. Though she believed Emma’s fear for Ivywild was
real, she could not bring herself to dismiss the Slaugh boy as a traitor. She’d
never been as enamored of him as Emma, but she’d always admired his courage. He
had saved her from the manticore, after all, not to mention all he’d done in
Larlaith. Besides, any idiot could see that he adored Emma. Why he’d suddenly
owned up to being the Slaugh king and taken off was beyond her. It didn’t make
any sense, especially now, when every other damn thing was falling apart.

Red splotches sprang up on Chloe’s
neck and chest. “Make-up!” she shouted.

Pixie servants flew over with a
palette of powders. They dipped feathery puffs into the powder and went to work
straight away toning her complexion.

“Would Her Highness prefer the
moonstone shimmer or the powdered sapphire?” asked one of the Pixies.

“Moonstone shimmer,” Chloe said.

The Pixie brushed some white
iridescent powder along Chloe’s cheeks. Chloe studied the effect and decided
she liked it. In the mirror she caught the movement of someone new entering her
room. Her pulse sped up a fraction and she turned around to see who it was,
causing one of her tailors to rip some of the lace on her bodice.

Luckily for the tailor, Chloe
barely noticed. She was excited that Emma had finally come to see her. Then she
frowned. The newcomer wasn’t Emma. It was Violet.

“Sister,” Violet said with quiet
urgency. “Mother isn’t feeling well.”

The angry little beast that Chloe
had been trying so hard to contain the past few days reared its head,
threatening to come out. “What do you mean she isn’t feeling well? You are a
great Channeler, aren’t you? Fix her.”

Violet placed her hands on her hips
and cocked her head, letting her annoyingly cute blonde bob swing to one side.
“I can’t just
fix
her. She is under emotional stress.”

“I’m under emotional stress, too!”
Chloe roared, causing both tailors to drop their needles and run scurrying for
safety. “If mother is a no-show today I’ll…I’ll…” she struggled to think of
some creative punishment.

Violet waited, looking so pert and
cutesy that Chloe’s fingertips started to steam. Red splotches showed on her neck
despite the Pixies’ make-up job. She counted to ten again and simmered down.
Tantrums solved nothing. That’s what Daddy always said. She’d been working
really hard to follow his advice.

“Why is she stressed out?” Chloe
asked when she had regained control. “I’m the one being crowned.”

“It’s not that,” Violet said a bit
too hurriedly. “I mean—that’s part of it but, well, you know, she has her own
issues.”

The tailors crept quietly back to
their spots to resume re-fitting the dress. Chloe ignored them. Something was
up. She knew that Violet and Mother had been hiding things from her. Yes, she
was spoiled. Yes, she was hotheaded. One thing she certainly wasn’t was stupid.

“Leave us,” she said in her most
authoritative voice.

The tailors and servants left the
room, looking relieved. The last one out was Chloe’s Gnome butler. She waved a
sign for him to shut the door.

Chloe stepped down from the
pedestal in front of her three-sided mirror. She was still taller than her
little sister. If she hadn’t been, she would have stayed on the pedestal.

“What’s up?” Chloe asked.

Violet looked taken aback. “I told
you, Mother is—”

“No, what’s
really
up?”
Chloe said. “You two have been skirting around me like you’ve got something to
hide. I’m sick of it.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

Chloe silenced her with a sneer and
a well-timed toss of the chin.

“Oh fine,” Violet said, letting her
hands fall from her hips. “Before Daddy passed away, Mother put some things in
motion.”

“What things?” Chloe asked.

“Arrangements,” Violet said. “Some
fall-back plans to keep us all safe in a worse-case scenario.”

Rather than show her
incomprehension, Chloe tried to look angrier. “Go on.”

Violet sighed. “I don’t know much
about these plans of hers, but something appears to have gone wrong. I think
that’s why she’s in distress.”

Using a technique Daddy had taught
her, Chloe studied Violet closely to determine if she was lying. She decided
that she wasn’t. “You really don’t know what these plans were?” she asked, just
to be sure.

“No,” Violet said with wide-eyed
honesty, “but I
might
have a few theories.”

Chloe raised an eyebrow. It was all
that was needed.

“I think…I think Mother was working
on her own scheme to take down Robyn,” Violet confessed. “That’s what I’m
guessing, anyways. She started keeping things from me.”

“Doesn’t feel nice to be left out,
does it?” Chloe said.

Violet stared at her reproachfully.
Chloe didn’t like it one bit.

“I’m doing the best I can,” Violet
said. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

Chloe traded in her scowl for a
look of sisterly concern. “Is there anything else to this theory of yours? Like
maybe how Mother was planning on stopping the psycho, undead demon thingy?”

“Slaugh,” Violet said.

Chloe blinked. “What?”

“Slaugh,” Violet repeated. “I think
it had something to do with the surviving Slaugh…and Lev.”

Chloe tried to take in what Violet
had said and make sense of it, but it came back out in a tongue-tied mess.
“What…but…huh? I don’t—I mean—WHAT?”

“Maybe you should sit down,” Violet
said, looking worried.

“Can’t. I’d rip my seams,” Chloe
tugged on the purple dress that she was growing to dislike more and more every
second. “Just tell me more about Mother and these Slaugh.”

Violet glanced around warily. She
had the guilty look of somebody about to commit treason. “She’s had scouts out
looking for any Slaugh who lived through Marafae’s scourge.”