The Scarecrow King: A Romantic Retelling of the King Thrushbeard Fairy Tale (18 page)

I nodded, blushing. It felt strange to discuss so openly, but Aleksandr grinned as if pleased to uncover a new aspect of my secrets.

“I’ll need a moment alone with them,” he told me, sizing up the street we stood on. No one came down this far in the street – there were men congregating at the inn at the far end of the narrow road, but nothing here in the relative safety of the lamplight. “Stay here, and scream if anyone approaches you. Understand?”

I swallowed hard. “You’re going to leave me out here?”

He looked torn by the thought, then brushed his thumb across my cheek. “Don’t pull down your hood to show anyone who you are. Stay in the shadows. I promise it won’t take me longer than a moment or two to come out. I promise.”

I nodded, though I didn’t like this one bit.

Alek unbuckled his sword and proceeded to buckle it around my waist. “Pull this on anyone who so much as breathes on you, understand?” At my nod, he hesitated a moment longer, then gave me a half-hearted smile. “Remember, stay in the shadows.”

I pulled the cloak hood deeper over my head and stepped backward.

He nodded at me one more time, then moved to the door. Instead of knocking on it, he pulled it open and stepped inside.

Almost immediately, I heard a shrill cry of surprise from inside the house – the woman. Frightened, I drew Alek's sword and clutched it close. What if they hurt him?

The man’s voice shouted a word, and then Alek's voice rumbled in like the tide – soothing and rolling. I strained to make out their words, but could hear nothing but the sounds of voices talking. The woman sounded surprised, then excited, and the man’s voice was so low I could barely hear it. A few more moments of conversation passed, and Alek's voice took on an urgent cast to it. Again, the couple murmured something I couldn’t make out.

The door opened, and Aleksandr stepped into the light. I immediately moved forward, re-sheathing the sword. He saw my motion and his mouth quirked slightly, as if impressed by my actions. “Are you ready, Rinda?”

“Ready,” I breathed, and slipped my hand into his without asking. He smiled at me, as if surprised by my touch, but pleased.

We entered the house and I looked at my surroundings. The house was tiny – as small as Joanne’s farmhouse. Though the house was clean, it was run-down. Planks in the floor were warped and the stone fireplace was missing several bricks. A very young woman stood near the fire, wiping her hands on her apron and giving Aleksandr and myself a wide-eyed look that seemed almost frightened. A man stood across from her, burly and muscled, but young. A dark beard clung to his jaw, thick and bushy despite his young age. He leaned heavily on a cane, supporting an injured leg, and wore a uniform similar to the ones the Lioncourt retinue had worn. One of Alek's soldier friends, then.

Both of them stared at me so hard that it made me uncomfortable.

“Talis, Annja,” Alek announced with pride in his voice. “This is my wife, the Princess Marinda of Balinore.”

The woman choked and gave her husband a stiff look, then dropped to her knee in a sweeping bow. The man fumbled with his cane, clearly trying to repeat the gesture.

“Oh no,” I said, releasing Alek's hand and rushing forward to stop them. “Please don’t do that. I’m here as your guest, no more.”

The woman would not meet my gaze. “We are not used to serving royalty, Your Highness. I apologize for my humble house.”

“Please,” I repeated, feeling uncomfortable at her clear distress. “I am not royal here – I’m just the wife of a minstrel.” The woman’s gaze shot up to mine, quizzical and puzzled, and I gave her the warmest smile I could. “I cannot thank you enough for taking us in off the street. The thought of sleeping in a bed tonight is the most exciting thing that has happened since I got married.”

The woman blushed, the man coughed in surprise, and Alek laughed, his arm moving around my shoulders. “Rinda is known for her forthright tongue in her homeland.”

“That’s a kind way of putting it,” I murmured to Alek, but smiled. “You’ll have to forgive me. I have bad manners for a princess.”

That seemed to break the ice between us. The girl gave me a shy smile and gestured for me to sit at one of the carved stools near the fire. “Won’t you both sit down? I’ve just finished cooking supper and we have hot tea to drink.”

I sat down in the chair offered, and she pushed a large earthenware mug into my hands. I sipped at the tea as they pulled another stool forward for Alek, but he indicated that Annja should sit. With a blushing smile, she straightened her skirts and sat next to me.

I tried not to stare at how very poor their home was. “So I take it you are not minstrels like Alek?”

Annja and Talis stared at me. The woman’s mouth worked wordlessly for a moment, as if she could not formulate words. “M-m-minstrels?”

Alek grinned at the two of them. “Not minstrels, no. I knew Talis from when we were both young soldiers. We lost touch after he got wounded and was discharged from the army.”

There seemed to be an undercurrent I was missing – the three of them continued to exchange glances and I sipped my tea politely.

After a long, uncomfortable silence, Alek cleared his throat. “Tell me what news of the city?”

“News?” Annja said nervously. Talis gave her a quick shake of his head, almost imperceptible. Alek, facing Annja and I, missed it.

I corrected that right away. “Alek and I came across the king’s party when we were traveling in Balinore. The soldiers and king had all been captured. We don’t know what happened to them or their party.”

Aleksandr's gaze rested on me, and he turned to Talis. “What news of the king?”

Talis ran a hand down his face. “No, no news of the king. He has not been seen since he left for Balinore.”

I swallowed hard. Oh dear.

The wounded soldier looked exhausted as he delivered the bad news. “There are rumors everywhere in the city – people worry that the king is dead. Lord Xavien has taken over the palace and declared himself the king. The stories say that everyone is too frightened to oppose him.”

“Not everyone,” Aleksandr said with a faint smile.

Chapter Fifteen

“You can sleep here tonight,” Talis said. “Take our bed. Tomorrow, we’ll see about getting you installed in the old house. Annja’s parents owned it and we lived there before moving to this house.”

“This one has more room to start a family,” Annja said shyly.

“Oh?” I said in my politest voice, but cringed on the inside. Talis and Annja’s house was no more than a two room hovel, with the bedroom scarcely larger than my bathing chamber back in Castle Balinore. But all I said was “How lovely.”

Annja blushed and touched her stomach lightly, and I realized suddenly what she meant. They had switched houses because they
were
starting a family.

“We can sleep on the floor,” I said to Annja with a firm smile.

“Oh no,” she protested, shaking her head vigorously. Talis looked uncomfortable at the prospect as well, glancing at his wife.

I may have been spoiled, but I was not going to deprive a pregnant woman of her bed. I remained firm, linking my arm in Alek's and pinching the inside of his elbow to keep him silent of any protestations. Not that I needed to – he seemed content to let me handle the situation. “I assure you, the floor will be just fine,” I replied. “For the past week, I have slept on the ground while it rained on me and in a tunnel filled with spiders. Your floor will be a luxury compared to that.”

Annja blushed and looked uncertainly at Talis.

“If you’re sure,” he said slowly, his gaze locked on Aleksandr.

“We’re fine,” Alek said. “It’s enough that you’ve taken us in for the evening.”

“At least let me fix you a warm bath so you can wash,” Annja said to me.

Now that I was not going to pass up. “That sounds lovely,” I agreed brightly. My hair felt filthy with spider gunk and travel dust, and I wanted nothing more than to wash it clean.

Annja set to work, rolling a large wooden tub out of the corner of the room and moving it in front of the fireplace. I eyed it with a bit of concern – was there no place private to bathe, then? Annja set water on the kettle and handed Talis and Alek buckets. The men retrieved several buckets of water and when the tub was full and I was nearly itching in my clothing, Talis kissed his wife on the cheek and dragged Alek from the house.

“They’ll go down to the tavern and share a beer,” she said with a half smile. “It’ll give you time to wash.”

As soon as they left, I stripped my filthy clothing from my body and hopped into the tub, sighing blissfully as the water touched my skin. Annja handed me a cake of rough soap and a scrap of cloth, and I began to scrub at my skin fiercely. As I scrubbed, she worked on my tangled, filthy hair and we chatted. I learned she had been married to Talis for a little over a year, and that his leg hurt him terribly when it rained. I learned that her parents had died last year from sickness, and Talis’s family lived in the distant foothills, so it was just them. Because of Talis’s hurt leg, he couldn’t farm (like his father) and so he’d taken a job assisting the local butcher after he’d been discharged from the army, but it was very hard on them.

After I’d finished scrubbing my body and the water I sat in was gray with grime, I stood and she rinsed my hair with buckets of cold water until it was clean. I wrapped up in a towel as she picked up my filthy clothes, and then frowned at the floor, stooping to swipe a towel along the edge. “That tub leaks more than anything I’ve ever seen. We should get a new one, but we don’t have any money until the beginning of the month.”

“Hand me my clothes, please?” I said, and took my needle out of the clothing when she handed it to me. I pricked my finger and rubbed a speck of blood against the wood of the tub as she watched. The magic tickled against my fingertips. “That should make it hold for a while longer, for you.”

Her eyes widened hugely. “What did you do?”

I swallowed hard, thinking of Alek's tales of how the wizards had been driven out from Balinore. “Nothing?”

She examined the lip of the tub, and then ran her hand along the bottom where the leak had been. “It’s stopped!” Her gaze swung back to me and she whispered. “Was what I felt…they say the Balinorans have magic. Was that magic?”

“Just a little,” I added hastily, trying to downplay it.

“That’s amazing!” Her eyes widened with delight. “What else can you do?”

“It only works on inanimate objects,” I protested, surprised at the level of her reaction. “I just make them a little bit lucky.”

She pointed at a particularly warped plank of wood on the floor. “I’m always snagging my skirts on this one and I’ve ripped two this week. Can you fix the board?”

I obediently pricked my finger and moved over to the floorboard, feeling awkward crouching over it in swathed in towels. I dabbed the drop of blood on the underside of the board, hidden from view. “It won’t fix the board,” I felt obligated to say to her as I stood. “It just adds a bit of luck.”

Ignoring my protests, she brushed past it, repeatedly, trailing her skirts, and then broke into a delighted smile when they failed to snag three times in a row. “That’s amazing! You could set up a booth in the marketplace. Think of the money you could make!”

“Money?” It perplexed me. I’d never thought of my talent as particularly useful. “Do you think people would pay me to luck their things?”

“Of course they would,” she began, but there came a knock at the door. “Not yet! A moment more!” she called, and we both leapt up to find something to dress me in. The conversation ended there as we scrambled to pull a borrowed chemise over my head and lace one of Annja’s dresses over my body. When we were satisfied that all my princess parts were covered, Annja went and opened the door.

A smiling Talis and a very, very wet Aleksandr entered, his short hair plastered to his head. Annja rushed forward with towels for both Alek and I. I noticed that Alek's hair seemed much, much darker when it was wet, that in-between murky shade gone. His jaw was clean-shaven again, and he grinned in my direction when he caught me staring.

The conversation turned to idle things as the men disposed of the water in the tub and Annja cleaned the floors. I toweled my hair and used her wooden comb to dry my hair by the fire. Soon enough, Annja took out her spare blankets and made a pallet for Alek and I on the floor, and the married couple disappeared into their tiny bedroom with the candle, leaving nothing but myself and Aleksandr by the banked fire.

I glanced at the pile of blankets, and then at Alek. When we had been traveling in the caves, sleeping curled up next to each other was a necessity. But now, sharing the same blankets made us…well, it made us married. Would Alek offer me another present now that we were out of the caves and into his home city? Would it be another flower?

But he only reached over and snatched one of the light blankets, leaving the rest of the bedding for me. “You can take the bed,” he said in a low voice, so as not to disturb the others. “Sleep well.”

And I watched as he curled up next to the fireplace with the thin blanket and put his back to me. I hesitated, then crept under the blankets on the floor. The wood was hard but clean, and the blankets were warm. Yet I couldn’t sleep. I kept glancing over to see if Alek would awaken, but when his breathing became regular and even, I realized that he wasn’t going to join me.

A bewildering hurt throbbed in my chest. Did Alek not want to be married any longer? Was that why he hadn’t given me a present this night? I thought back to the last time he’d given me a gift. It was the first night of the caves. He’d joked then that he knew I wouldn’t accept it. Was he not even trying now?

I went to sleep and dreamed about flowers, and kissing my husband.

~~ * ~~

The next morning, Annja awoke us early. As she made breakfast, she braided my hair for me – a talent I had never learned with a bevy of maids at my beck and call. And as we readied to leave the small house, she filled my arms with extra items she had. A set of blankets that she swore she didn’t need, an extra cooking pot and kettle. A fresh-baked loaf of bread from yesterday, and some spices. “You’ll need everything for your house,” she told me with a happy smile.