If anyone had been watching—and no one was—all they would have seen was a young woman, informal in trousers and a black bodice; her manservant, wearing a uniform with white fringe epaulets and holding a case; and a large brown dog with one floppy ear stride forward off a wooden dock and onto the soil of Cascada.
Nothing happened. No bells tolled, and no one marked her. The people bustling about the harbor area went on about their business and paid her no never mind. Cerúlia looked around, hoping that something about the layout of the port would say “home” to her, but all she saw was another harbor—less well-managed than some, considering the chaos of noise and crowds.
Well, she thought, at least I have returned unobtrusively.
Today, despite Ciellō’s protestations, she wore her donkey boy garb. Really, due to his care, she had no choice, because as she had regained weight and muscle her stylish Wyeland outfits had grown too tight.
“Damselle, will not you let me into your confidence still?” After they passed the rocky Cormorant Isles and the coast of Weirandale had become visible, her advisor had grown avid to know her plans.
“No, Ciellō,” she said. “I cannot. I hired you to escort me here, and you have done so, most assiduously. I have profited from your care, but per our contract your duties now are at an end. What I have to do in Cascada, you cannot help me with. Besides”—she tapped the purse at her waist—“as you know well, we’re nearly out of money.”
“I do not wish to be discharged,” Ciellō insisted stiffly. “I will wait for you to finish your business so mysterious and to realize that I am invaluable.”
Cerúlia regarded him. Often these moons she had thought that he would be relieved to complete his commission and regain his freedom, and sometimes she suspected that the multiple ties between them had grown too complicated to be easily severed.
“I already know you are invaluable. If you insist on staying in Cascada, I cannot stop you. Actually, for the next few days, it would be a boon if I were not burdened with my case or with Whaki. Could you keep him for me?”
A narrowing of Ciellō’s eyes showed that he was offended.
“You think I am not capable of a thing so simple?”
“I should have said, ‘Would you do me that service?’”
“Of course.” Ciellō tapped a sailor on the shoulder. “Excuse my interruption, could you tell me of the decent inn?”
“Right in town?” asked the sailor. “Most everything is full, what with the wedding and all. But the Sea Hawk has a big hall of bunk beds. It’s a safe bet.”
Ciellō turned to Cerúlia. “That is where a dog and I will be. When you finish your private affairs and you want me again.” He took the rope they had affixed to Whaki’s neck. Whaki pulled back toward Cerúlia with pleading eyes.
One wants to stay with thee.
No. Go with Ciellō and obey him until I send for you. Go on. Don’t give me that look.
She could not afford to be distracted by either Whaki or Ciellō today. She walked off the quay, past the fishmongers and the sailors’ taverns, into the city itself. Above her she saw the chunk of Nargis Ice held aloft by the spray of Nargis Fountain—it mesmerized her. She thirsted for Nargis Water.
Glancing around for a horse-drawn carriage, she spotted many engaged, but none free, waiting to pick up passengers. The streets were thronged; but at least Cerúlia took slight comfort in the sight of horses rather than gamels, and in familiar fashions rather than the dust-coats, craftans, or pinafores of foreign lands. She chose a side alley, instead of the major boulevard. Within a few moments of walking, she found her path impeded by two women chatting to each other, blocking the passage between two stone buildings.
“Just the grandest occasion ever!” exclaimed one.
“Excuse me,” said Cerúlia, trying to bypass their gowns stretched wide by petticoats. They stared at her and shifted their feet a fraction.
She had almost succeeded in squeezing by when she realized what they were talking about. Cerúlia halted, whirled, and addressed them.
“Ladies, pray excuse me. I just arrived by ship. Is something going on, such as a fête or a wedding?”
The older woman looked askance at her informal and salt-stained clothing. The younger was more polite. “Oh, yes, it’s so exciting. The son of the Lord Regent is getting married tomorrow. There is going to be such an enormous celebration! All the gentry have gathered, and Lord Matwyck will be throwing such a party for them, and a feast for the townsfolk and even fireworks. Lucky for you you’ve arrived in time.”
“Indeed,” Cerúlia dryly remarked.
“And it is such a romantic love match!” continued the woman, barely pausing to catch her breath. “You’re a stranger? You don’t know the story? You must be the only soul in Weirandale who doesn’t. You see, Lordling Marcot was traveling in Androvale, and he met this just beautiful young woman, and even though she’s only a commoner and he’s a lordling, he was adamant that he was going to marry her—”
“Come along,” said her companion, pulling at the arm of her garrulous friend and starting to move away.
A shiver of premonition ran down Cerúlia’s spine. She importuned them again: “You didn’t say—who is the bride?”
“Really, Ifany, we’ve been inconvenienced enough by this person.” The older woman pretended she couldn’t see or hear Cerúlia.
“Tell me!” said the princella, grabbing on to the younger woman’s trailing hat ribbon.
“Her name is Percia of Wyndton,” said the chatty one. “Fancy that!”
The older woman pulled the ribbon out of Cerúlia’s hand, which had gone slack. “Ifany! Stop encouraging the riffraff.” She scowled at Cerúlia. “You! Leave us alone now, or we’ll call the city watch.” The two proceeded on their way.
“Fancy that!” echoed Cerúlia faintly, and she stood struck dumb in the crowded alleyway, oblivious to the people trying to pass around her.
Recovering her wits, Cerúlia ascended the hill to the Nargis Fountain.
The Courtyard of the Star buzzed with guards, tourists, and vendors, but Cerúlia’s gaze focused only on the Fountain. She feasted on the Water’s graceful high arcs. She cupped her hands, dipped them in the pool, and drank of the icy water—her overheatedness, fatigue, and anxiety dropped away. The cold liquid she splashed on her cheeks tingled. She sat inside the rainbows of mist; they watered her—roots, stem, and branch. She listened to the Water’s splash, a song half remembered and sorely missed.
Since Femturan she had harbored a secret dream that once she got home, Nargis Water would erase her burns and heal her shoulder. Sitting on the Fountain’s quartz ledge, however, she could perceive no change to her body—the Water refused to work its Magic on her. She felt refreshed, but not renewed or remade.
Cerúlia refused to indulge any sense of disappointment.
All right then. I earned these scars and the memories that go with them. If Nargis had to heal only one of us, I’m glad the Spirit chose Percie’s leg.
A blue tanager preened itself in the spray. It swooped down to the Fountain edge in front of her.
He cocked his little head this way and that. Your Majesty, high time thou returneth.
So animals keep telling me! But you! You can’t be the same tanager I knew as a child.
One has never met thee. But one has been waiting for thee just the same.
Well, here I am. At last. But I have no plan to regain the throne.
All through the moons at sea she had puzzled over the task ahead. She was no Strategist. She had no way to make people believe in her identity. She had no means to force Matwyck to give up power. All she had was a fixed destination—the Throne Room—and her Talent.
And now out of the blue she was presented with this wild complication of Percia’s marriage. Didn’t this mean that the Wyndton family was close by? Would this help or hinder her?
The scents emanating from the vendors’ carts reminded Cerúlia that she was hungry. She had a few foreign coins in her purse. She bought apple fritters from a countrywoman, hot and greasy, redolent of home. The fritters tasted so wonderful that she went back for two more.
The worn-looking woman smiled at her. “Hit the spot, did they? This time let me slide this bit of cheese between them, summat to fill the belly.”
Cerúlia accepted the food gratefully. She stood next to the woman as she ate the second helping more slowly. “I’ve been traveling. How is Cascada?”
“Where are you from, if you don’t mind my asking?” said the vendor.
“Here,” she replied. “But I left many years ago. It seems … different … now.”
The woman glanced at her sideways. “The harvest came full last fall. What we get to keep. The Lord Regent’s men are heavy-fingered and heavy-handed.” She seemed to make up her mind to trust the traveler. She hissed, “My neighbors’ son protested the tithe.… He’s been missing four moons now.”
“‘Missing’ kilt, or ‘missing’ imprisoned?”
“No one knows. You can ask at the jailhouses, but you don’t get answers. Lots of folk go missing; anyone who raises his voice about the way the country is run. It’s kind of safe by Nargis’s Fountain. My, it runs fierce today. Don’t run afoul of Matwyck’s Marauders.”
“I am grateful for the food and the warning,” Cerúlia replied.
The vendor gave her a friendly wink and turned to another customer.
Cerúlia set out again up the hill and headed toward the palace, whose white towers she could now see at the top of the hill. But since she’d already walked up from the harbor, she wasn’t eager for the tramp. If there were no carriage cabs to be hired, could she find other means of conveyance?
Alert for an opportunity, she scanned the streets for several minutes. Eventually she saw a wagon train of four carts, each heavily loaded with supplies. Roughly dressed haulers dangled their feet off the open backs. The first cart was just starting to move. The driver’s seat of the third cart sat empty—the driver probably answering a call of nature. Relying on her experience from the carters’ yard in Slagos, she climbed aboard the cart as if she belonged, nodded to the haulers in back, picked up the reins, and clucked the horses to pull out into the street.
She kept in line following the cart ahead. These streets and buildings offered the scenes of her childhood, but she could not gawk at the sights. (Like that bell tower to the right, which looks so familiar—I think it is part of the abbey. Or the Church of the Headwaters—I know it lies down that street!) Despite the need to concentrate on steering the cart away from collisions, she realized that Salubriton’s streets had been cleaner, and in Slagos store owners took more pride in their decor and flowers.
She felt a stab of fear when the carts turned off the main thoroughfare to the palace. Then she grasped that the lead driver was just avoiding the most crowded byways and bringing his load in a circle around by the Kitchen Gate.
Indeed, the carts clattered up to a squad of soldiers who blocked the roadway, demanding to see the papers of the head driver. Once inside the cobbled yard, Cerúlia watched the other cart men to ascertain if they stayed with the horses or helped unload. They stayed with their teams; a couple lit pipes. One of the other drivers kept glancing at her with puzzlement written on his brow; obviously she wasn’t the person he expected.
More carts jostled in noisily, bringing in more goods. A footman yelled at the haulers to work faster, get their pig-fuckin’ wagons unloaded and out of the way, didn’t they know this was a busy day?
Cerúlia spoke to the cart horses. I’m getting off here. Follow your fellows out of the grounds. She jumped down from her seat, grabbed a random cask up onto her shoulder, and carried it to the loading area, which was filling up with wooden boxes and racks of hanging geese. Kitchen workers armed with checklists marked off items as they arrived.
She tried to saunter through the porch way into the kitchen itself.
“Hey, you! Where do you think you’re going?” A beefy palace guard blocked the door.
“I was just going to get a drink. Thirsty work, this,” she answered in an aggrieved tone.
“Get along with you,” ordered the guard, unsympathetic and suspicious. “There’s a pump in the yard. Or are you blind as well as lazy?”
Cerúlia jumped on the empty cart bed of another wagon that was just leaving. The other haulers looked at her in surprise.
“Say, wench, where’d you spring from?” said one with bad teeth.
“Missed the cart I came in on,” she replied shortly.
“Kind of scrawny for a hauler,” said another man, eyeing her body with a leer and poking her waist with a dirty finger.
“You’ll leave me alone if you know what’s good for you,” Cerúlia replied in a firm tone, placing her hand on her dagger’s hilt.
“Temper! Temper!” retorted the man. “Don’t flatter yourself. You ain’t no prize pigeon.”
A few streets outside the palace, when the cart paused in heavy traffic, Cerúlia leapt off. She scurried down a narrow and shadowed alleyway, fearful that someone would be following her. She pressed herself into a doorway, scanning both directions.
She had tried her acting skills, and this time they hadn’t been sufficient.
How am I going to get into the palace? It’s guarded so tightly.
Deep in her memories, Cerúlia recalled a play park and a gate that squirrels could open. It had been called … West Gate, so it must be on the west side of the palace. Cerúlia oriented herself and began striding in that direction.
The neighborhood of wealthy mansions near the royal grounds sat quieter than the middle of the city. Cerúlia walked purposely, pretending in her mind that she worked as a stable lad, and that her master had sent her on an important errand. The blue tanager flew over her shoulder and perched for a moment on the stone in front of her.
Where didst thou go? he asked.
I tried to get into the palace, but the way was blocked. Do you know a small gate on the west wall?
Course one does.
He led her to a small iron gate in the tall stone wall. The day had run on: light had begun to wane. Cerúlia tried the gate, only to discover that it was locked and double-barred from the inside. At her request, squirrels attempted to free the door, but they did not have the strength to lift the iron bars.
Tanager, is there any other way for me to get in the grounds?
The squirrels and the bird conferred; then the tanager led her to a stately tree that had a long bough stretching over the stone wall. Cerúlia regarded it with a scowl. This tree would be difficult for Ciellō; how could she, with her compromised shoulder, manage it? She studied the handholds and footholds carefully in the gathering gloom. After looking around to make sure she was unobserved, she took a running start to jump up a pace high, grabbing a lower branch and wedging her feet into rough spaces in the bark. She clung for a moment, then reached for another handhold. The bark under her left foot gave way, and she slid, scraping against the trunk, all the way down.
Thinner trousers would have ripped. Even with her thick material her legs felt chafed inside the fabric and her hands and forearms sustained deep scratches. Cerúlia rubbed her hurts a moment while studying the tree more carefully, trying to recall the way she had climbed the cliffside into Oromondo. She tried again. This time her foothold broke only after she had grabbed the treasured upper bough with her right hand. She hung there perilously. With great effort she got her left arm around the branch too, but even both arms lacked the muscle to pull her up and astride. She swung her legs a little, then a little more, making her feet hit flat against the stone wall; then she walked her feet horizontally up the wall so she could cross them over the branch, leaving her hanging upside down like an opossum. She wiggled her body forward along the branch and over the wall until the palace grounds appeared below her, then dropped her feet and hung by her weary arms. She let go and tried to absorb the fall in her knees. The twinge in her ankle was insignificant; she could walk off the sprain.
The tanager had flown over the wall easily and now perched a pace in front of her. All right. I’m inside the palace grounds. Now what? she asked the bird.
The palace lieth a long way in this direction.
Her legs were tired, but the princella set out at a steady pace, grateful for all her training aboard Misty Traveler. Soon the tanager, a daytime bird, took his leave. The moons came out, both just slivers in the inky sky. She passed amongst trees and shrubs that might remember her from her childhood, but which loomed about her as unfamiliar shadows. Had she ridden this path on Smoke? She tripped on a root in the darkness and just barely caught herself before she tumbled.
Finally, after more than an hour, when she could see lights from the palace, she paused to consider her next step. Could she climb a roof? Find an open window? Sneak inside the palace?
Then her eyes fell upon the base of the building, and she noted the ring of guards stationed at intervals of fifty paces around the circumference. The palace walls stretched low around the entire grounds, and as she had just proven, they were hardly impregnable. Matwyck’s Marauders—their sashes bloodred instead of the white of the ordinary guard—encircled the palace itself, providing another layer of protection. Cerúlia watched these men for a while. They had been marshaled out in force, and from their posture and stance she judged that they were vigilant. She had little chance of sneaking by.
So. With guards everywhere she turned, she couldn’t steal into the palace. She would need to be invited.