Nana was bone-tired. Vilkit had been working them all at a furious pace for the last moon, ever since the public announcement of the wedding. These final days he had placed her as supervisor of the china closet, instructing the footmen and maids as to which plate and glassware to lay for which meal, and checking that each dish came back from the scullery spotless and unmarred. She’d been at it for the last two days since dawn. With luck she could snatch a few hours of break now to put her feet up, because the pre-wedding supper table had been set, though later tonight she would have to see the dishes returned in proper order and every piece of silver counted twice.
All in all, she thought that Vilkit had managed everything quite well. The staff worked with a will, though whether out of fear of the Lord Regent, or affection for Lordling Marcot, she couldn’t tell. It could be that the palace workers shared the anticipation of the city folk; all Cascada flapped about in an excited hubbub about the gentry’s luxurious gowns and the rare feasts and the fireworks. Nana reflected that someday the inhabitants would rue the taxes levied to pay for these festivities.
But just now a sheepish under-footman came to tell her some long-winded tale about how he’d been rude to a late-arriving guest and Vilkit had put her in the Princella’s Bedchamber, and he hoped Nana would not be wroth but would help placate this country lass by attending to her as only Nana could.
Nana was not happy to hear her domain had been invaded in this manner. The Princella’s Bedchamber should never be used for guests; it should be kept inviolate. Furthermore, by lodging someone there Vilkit had also ensured that Nana would have to wait upon this guest day and night and she’d get no free time. And Nana’s feet hurt and her eyes felt gritty.
She knocked sharply on the door of the Princella’s Bedchamber.
“Enter!” called a female voice.
Nana opened the door, walked in, and closed it quietly. Standing in the middle of the room, gazing out the window toward Nargis Mountain, stood Queen Cressa. Nana automatically made her curtsey, asking, “How may I serve Yer Majesty?”
The queen started and turned in her direction. Only—it wasn’t—it couldn’t—be the queen. Her darling, her Cressa, had been dead these ten years, leaving Nana with a hole in her heart.
This was the country girl Vilkit wanted her to care for. Her brown hair was fixed in a foreign-looking plait, and she was wearing rough breeches splashed with ink.
“Oh, beg pardon! My eyes are playing tricks on me and I’m an addled old fool,” Nana said.
The girl stood frozen, perhaps in awe of her surroundings or in shock at Nana’s odd slipup.
Why did I think this stranger was the queen? There’s something about the way she stands, the shape of her face—everything is the same, but different too.
Oh Nargis!
“Chickadee!” Nana whispered, sinking to her knees. “At last! I’ve been waiting so long! Where have you been?”
“Nana! Could it be?” The young woman stood transfixed for another moment; then she rushed over to her and got down on her own knees to embrace her. “I’d hardly dared hope that you would still be in the palace! And in my chamber!”
“And where else, pray tell, would I be?” Nana replied with asperity. “I told you that I’d be waiting right here. Well, here I be, practically in the exact same spot, on my knees in yer room.”
“Oh, Nana! I’ve missed you so! I’ve felt so forsaken, down to my toes.”
“Tush! You’ve never been forsaken, not for one instant.” Nana patted her cheeks. “Nargis has always been watching over you. Didn’t you know that, girl? And I’ve been waiting for you. Took yer time, didn’t you, getting back here!
“Come now; let’s get up. Hurts my knees, and it won’t do for a Nargis Queen to crawl about on the floor!”
The young woman helped Nana to her feet. Nana took her by the arm and tugged her into the light from the window. With her soft, wrinkled fingers she traced her former charge’s features: her velvet eyebrows (so well remembered), her cheekbones and jawline (which exactly repeated her mother’s), her chin (which used to jut so stubbornly), and her lips (which used to be so saucy). Her eyes were brown whereas Cressa’s had been stormy gray, and her lashes showed recent weeping. Her hair was a surprise, but it took more than hair color to fool her nursemaid.
Then the princella smiled her very own dazzling, joyous smile—the smile that used to cajole Nana out of being cross at her, the smile that was broader than her mother’s and had a touch of her father’s sunny confidence. She patted Nana’s shoulders, and Nana felt years of fearful waiting lift, like a mist rising off a wet flagstone, warmed dry by a daybreak long awaited.
“Are you well, Nana? No one has hurt you?”
“I’ve grown ancient, girl, and I’m tired. It’s been hard to bide my time, and I’ve had so many duties. I’ve been trying to get ready for yer return.”
Nana’s searching fingers found the burn scars on her neck. She stroked them tenderly. “My little one. What kind of trials have you gone through? And to return and be treated rudely by a footman! I’ll have his scalp. That man is gonna be gutted and boiled alive!”
“You leave him alone now, Nana, so he’s not suspicious.”
The princella captured Nana’s hands and squeezed both of them within her own. The roughness of the girl’s skin and the ridges of scars and calluses—speaking of a life of toil and want—scandalized her former nursemaid. But rather than scold any more, she bit her tongue.
Cerúlia kissed Nana on the brow, making tears spring into her eyes.
“Where have you been?” Nana asked.
“I grew up in Androvale, but for three years I’ve been traveling. Oh, it’s a long, long story—much too long to recount today.”
“Well then, girl, as to the present—how do we get you safely Dedicated and sitting on top of that throne?” Nana asked. “Matwyck would clap you in a dungeon if he knew you was here.”
“Aye, I’ve got to find a way into the Throne Room.”
“The usurper keeps it locked up tight and patrolled day and night,” Nana warned. “And once you’re inside, even if you claim yer name and yer own Nargis Ice from the Fountain, what’s to keep him from arresting you or something worse?”
The young woman waved away these warnings as if they were a minor inconvenience.
“Nana, revealing my identity and claiming the throne is only the beginning. All these years, I’ve had a lot of time to think. To think about how Matwyck got so strong in the first place and why the people didn’t rise up to defend my mother. Why our gentry live so rich and the rural folk so poor. Why Oromondo hates us so. How am I going to bring Matwyck and his confederates to justice without a civil war? My task is much larger than just getting my backside on the throne.”
The princella collapsed down on the divan, as if the mere thought of the challenges ahead exhausted her.
“Nana, I’ve not been trained to be a queen, and all these years I’ve longed to know loads of things—oh, like how laws get enacted. But lately I’ve wondered: What if our veneration for the queens has hidden their faults? I was just looking at their portraits. What if Clesindra ‘the Kind’ was also Clesindra ‘the Stupid’? What if Cenika ‘the Protector’ was also Cenika ‘the Vain’? I know Catorie swam the Bay of Cinda, but was she good at managing the treasury?”
“Queens are women, girl. Though Nargis blesses them with Talents for their times, they have their faults and they make all kinds of errors. Queen Catreena, yer grandmother, wise as she was, had a cold heart—that I remember well.”
“I need to talk to Tutor Ryton and Chronicler Sewel. But right now, Nana, you must tell me.” She looked in Nana’s eyes as if this was the most pressing issue at this perilous moment. “Was my mother a good ruler?”
The nursemaid took the liberty of sitting down on the divan next to her former charge and patting her hand. “I might be the wrong one to ask, being as I raised her. I know she tried every day to do right. And she loved you with all her heart.” She paused a moment, considering. “But the whole country and the palace factions … Mayhap it was all too big for her, if you catch my drift.”
The princella sighed. “Yes, I understand. And what I wonder is … if I’m up to these challenges, not just getting Dedicated, but ruling.”
Nana didn’t know what to say that would give the princella confidence. In all her planning for the return of the Nargis heir, she had just assumed that once Cerúlia took the throne, all the realm’s problems would melt away.
“Well, yer certainly not up to the task looking like that!” Nana said, rousing herself. “Is that ink?”
“I think so,” said the princella, tugging at her spattered trousers. “Don’t scold. Ruining these clothes is the least of it. Nana, I’ve not eaten today; I crave a bath; and I must have a dress to wear tonight to the dinner and to the wedding.”
Nana noted with mingled approval and disappointment that despite her trials the girl sounded exactly as if she had been giving orders all her life. “I will start the tap for the bath, then send for a tray.”
When she came out of the bathing room after turning on the faucet she saw that Cerúlia had taken off her boots and begun to unlace her bodice. “Nana, did you know that Percia of Wyndton is my sister, my foster sister? Do you remember the day I met her, in West Park?”
“You know Lordling Marcot’s intended? Oh, aye, that muckwit of a footman said that yer her sister.”
“How did it happen that I arrived the day before her wedding?”
Nana lifted her hands in a helpless gesture at the coincidence, though privately she suspected Nargis’s intervention. “Spirits save us, Chickadee, even if we don’t know why.
“As for garments, yer dear mother’s wardrobe lies through the passageway. I’ve been watching over it for years—turning the gowns so they don’t set wrinkles, airing them out, keeping the moths away. I imagine I can find something to suit.”
She took a measuring look at Cerúlia. “Though girl! Yer father gave you a bit of his height! Yer taller than Queen Cressa was. If I hadn’t shrunk over the years you’d be as tall as me. I’ll have to find one of her longest skirts.”
“Who is this?” said the princella, bending to stroke the orange cat that had just slipped in through the Passageway of Lost Babes. He arched his back and held his tail straight as he vigorously rubbed against her leg.
“Don’t you recognize Plump-pot? He was one of yer kittens when you left. He’s an old man, now, but he seems to know you. The last thing you asked me was to watch out for yer pets, and I did.”
“Ahhh. I knew you would. I’ve worried about many things over the years, but I never worried about that.”
“Humph,” Nana grunted, feeling both taken for granted and gratified, as she strode to the doorway to send under-maids a-scurrying.