You're Not an Outsider
No one responded to William’s pounding on his cell door. He tried again and again over the next few hours, as the sun rose and was hidden by clouds, drizzle, and then driving rain.
Poor Reggie!
William worried that his time with the harp was running out. Brynhildr had only given him two days and a night. At first, he’d thought she meant, a day and a night, a second day and a second night and another night. That didn’t add up.
Last night, lying on his bed in the dark, he’d figured out that he only had two days with one night between them. Two days and a night sounded like a way to trick people who stole magical objects into thinking they had extra time.
Brynhildr wouldn’t trick William on purpose, but magical things always had tricks built into them, especially if they were fairy-built.
“Hey!” William yelled through the door for the fifteenth time. “Can somebody open this? I have to tell Prince Vlad something very important.”
Finally, the door to William’s cell rattled, and he sprang up off the bed, ready to get out of the dungeon, and to congratulate Vlad on getting the job done.
But when the door opened, Ace Reporter Bridget stood there, notebook in hand. “I’m here to interview the top suspect for the Giant-Killer Case for the Proclamation. How does it feel to be in the dungeon?”
“No comment,” William said, pushing the cell door shut. Bridget was the absolutely last person he wanted to see. She’d caused his family enough trouble. If it had been anyone else, he would have asked them to check—
“Wait!” William tried to pull the door open again with his fingertips, but the key was already turning. “Come back!”
Nothing.
For hours, he’d pounded his knuckles raw, then thrown away his chance in three seconds. Letting Bridget turn him inside out with her questions would have been torture, but he could have stood it, for Reggie’s sake.
The lock refused to move. Was the guard still there?
“Hello?” William called.
No answer.
His knuckles refused to knock any more. He backed up as far as he could go and ran towards the door, stomping on it with his feet. He fell onto the stone floor and his tailbone, elbows, and head screamed that they were much more important than any silly knuckles. Lying there, he heard the key turn in the lock and closed his eyes.
“Change your mind?” Bridget asked. “You might as well talk to me”—she stepped into William’s cell—“You don’t have anything else to do.”
The guard slammed the door on them both. A moment later, the key turned in the lock.
“I need a favor,” William said.
Bridget’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of favor? Is it legal?”
“Of course it is, what do you think I am?” William bit back his annoyance. She thought he was a giant-killer. He was wrong—this interview was going to kill him. But he had to think of Reggie.
Bridget sat down in the only chair. “You give me an exclusive interview for the Proclamation and I might do you a favor.”
William nodded and leaned against the cold stone wall. The faster she got her interview, the quicker she could check Reggie’s toes. William wasn’t in a position to negotiate.
“I’d ask why you didn’t tell me it was your comic strip right away,” Bridget said, “but I don’t expect you to tell the truth.”
William folded his arms and indicated the door with a tilt of his head. “Don’t let me keep you.”
“I thought we were working together,” Bridget reproached him.
William blinked. “That’s funny, I thought you were publishing lies about my family.”
“What about you, Prince Total Silence? You weren’t doing anything, because you already knew who was guilty. You.”
“I still don’t know who’s guilty,” William bit off the words. If this was an interview, he’d hate to see an argument. “It’s a little hard to find answers in the dungeon. Actually, I was hoping a certain reporter would uncover the facts. The fact is we have someone who has lived in the Seven Kingdoms a long time, but nobody can give him the right medicine, or even a bed that’s the right size.”
And nobody is checking his toes to find out if he’s going to die.
William clenched his fists, willing Vlad to come down and get him out of here.
“Are you sure you want me to uncover more facts?” Bridget asked, clearly assuming he was guilty.
She’s asking for it. William closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, hoping she would vanish. After a moment, he heard the door and his eyes flew open, but it wasn’t Vlad. Bridget met his glare and slammed the door shut again. The lock turned. She’d only pretended to leave.
Dirty trick.
She wanted a duel. William let her have it, steel on steel. “You think you did your job because you found out I’m the comic strip artist known as ‘Jack’? Or because I made the soup and the chapati for Mr. G? Sorry, Ace Reporter, you got the wrong story.”
Her pen moved quickly across her notebook. She needed something else to write down.
“There are two questions,” he said, using all his strength to control his voice. “Who put the magic beans in Mr. G’s bean bucket? And why?”
Bridget wrote them down and waited.
Smart.
Because William’s arms and legs were shaking with emotion. He understood now why the king used the royal pages as a cooling-off strategy. “And one more thing. Somebody has to check Mr. G’s toes to find out if magic beans only make him sleep for a hundred years—” His voice broke. He took a breath and forced out the rest. “Or if they kill him.”
Bridget wrote that down, keeping her eyes on her notebook, almost like she was giving him privacy.
“I think. He still has his boots on,” William choked out. Somehow that indignity was worse than the rest. He didn’t tell Bridget about the harp. The only one who could get William out of here to use it was Vlad.
Bridget closed her notebook. “Thank you,” she said. He didn’t know her voice ever got soft, and he looked to make sure she’d spoken. Her eyes looked shiny and wet.
“I’ll check on Reggie and let you know.”
William suddenly remembered that Bridget was a friend of Reggie’s. William felt like a complete jerk.
“Wait—” He found his message about “Jack’s toe” and handed it to her. “You’ll need this.”
She took it and blinked fast a couple times, then her eyes moved back and forth, taking in the message at Ace Reporter speed. “Second toe. Got it, thanks.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, handing it back to him. “I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.”
That was unexpected.
She gave him a half-curtsy and he bowed, instinctively. She raised her fist to knock on the door, and William blurted out, “You never got my questionnaire?”
He knew she hadn’t. Vlad had given him all the undelivered messages. But he wasn’t ready for her to leave. They almost understood each other. If she left, they’d have to start all over again.
“No?”
“The questions are wrong now anyway,” he said, dismissing the questionnaire right after bringing it up. He shouldn’t keep her from checking Reggie’s toes.
Her eyes traveled over the questionnaire, then she looked up. “You really were trying to find out what made him sick? Even if it turned out to be your fault?”
He blushed. Is that so surprising?
Anyone who knew Reggie would have done it. She obviously knew him, but now William wanted to know what their connection was.
“Does your family get veggies from Reggie too?” he asked.
“No.” Bridget’s mouth twisted. “By the time the royal families have theirs, there isn’t much left for ordinary people,” she said.
Ouch. Are we hogging the vegetables?
“We are running a restaurant,” William explained, ignoring his growling stomach, while the back of his mind wondered where Vlad was. “Of course we buy a lot of vegetables. You still didn’t say where you know Mr. Giant from. He’s not even in your kingdom—”
“There we go again,” Bridget said. “For you royals, it’s all about your kingdoms—”
William opened his mouth to say it was unfair to blame people for doing their jobs, but Bridget said, “I know him from the VVL.”
“VVL?” William couldn’t place the letters.
“Vintner’s Ventriloquism League—it’s a club for practicing public speaking. It gives everyone a voice, even outsiders like me.” Bridget’s head came up and she sat even straighter in the dungeon chair.
“You’re not an outsider,” William objected. “You were born in the Seven Kingdoms.”
“Of course, you’re not an outsider,” Bridget mocked. “You’re a royal. Royals are insiders, by definition.”
“Is that why you figured the Marigolds were a fair target for the Proclamation? Because we’re royal?”
Bridget dropped her eyes.
“Believe me,” William said, gesturing at the locked door. “I’m an outsider now. And when we moved here two years ago, I was an outsider then. Like my whole family.”
It took a lot of chapati to change that.
His stomach rumbled again, but Bridget was writing in her notebook, and hopefully hadn’t noticed. William thought of one more thing he wanted the Seven Kingdoms to know.
“That’s why I have to know what happened with Mr. G,” he said in a low voice. “The Seven Kingdoms has to be safe, for everyone.”
Looking up from her notebook, Bridget gave him a single nod.
“Truce?” he asked.
“One more thing—”
William leaned back against the cold wall and waited.
Vlad, where are you? Do you ever feed people in the Magenta dungeon?
Bridget asked, “When the giants attacked your castle—”
“They didn’t.”
“They had huge battering rams.”
“Picket signs,” he corrected, ignoring the misunderstanding between Psyche and the giants. “The tree trunks were handles.”
Bridget gazed up at the dungeon ceiling as if she were remembering the scene.
“Okay,” she said. “But why did you tell the giants to attack Cochem and Magenta—”
“No!” He leapt off the wall, pointing his finger at her like a dagger. “They were going to get library books and checking on a friend in the hospital. The archers attacked the giants. That’s the whole problem—”
Grabbing the other undelivered messages from his bed, he showered them onto her open notebook. “Read these if you don’t believe me.”