TRANSFORMING HURT TOO much to tell if King Tove had run me through and I really was dying. I fell backward. The heat receded, but my side hurt.
After a moment, I propped myself up on my elbow.
King Tove dropped his dagger. Tremors caused him to fall. He writhed on the rocks, jerked, and was still.
Queen Mother bent over him. “He’s dead.”
I’d let him die. What did I feel?
Relieved? Yes. He’d have killed me. And now we Bamarre might be less oppressed.
But sad, too. I’d never again have a father who loved me—who relished me!—as he had before he stopped.
The side of my kirtle was stained with blood, not bad, just a cut. King Tove’s aim had gone wide.
“I’m fine.”
I’d grown taller than Queen Mother again. Her expression was always hard to read, but I saw new lines around her mouth. Her eyes met mine levelly. I knew what she’d lost, what we’d both lost, except I’d lost him long ago.
If she’d been a Bamarre, I’d have hugged her. Instead, I stood next to her and linked my arm in hers.
She patted my hand. “You have your hair again.”
I looked down. There was my shower of hair, without a single strand of gray. I glanced at Willem to see how he liked the change. He was smiling.
Sir Noll bowed deeply. “The Lakti salute Queen Klausine. May her rule be long. May courage and wisdom guide her. Victory for Queen Klausine!”
Queen Mother pulled her hand out of mine and stepped away from me. I saw her draw a long breath.
I hadn’t thought! I curtsied. We Bamarre would have a just ruler, finally.
Annet, Willem, Drualt, and Sir Lerrin curtsied or bowed.
After he rose, Sir Noll pivoted and bowed again, this time to me. “And victory for Crown Princess Peregrine.”
It took a moment for my mind to catch up. Sir Noll had learned I was a Bamarre, and yet he’d called me princess. Already he was proving his loyalty to Queen Mother by offering her the choice of letting me return as a Lakti or a Bamarre, in either case as crown princess or not.
Annet curtsied and Willem bowed to me. Drualt half bowed, half doubled up with laughter.
Sir Noll added, “Willem, I’m certain you can hear me.” His voice broke. “Son, don’t hold yourself apart from me.”
Willem ran to him. Awkwardly, they shook hands, smiling and smiling.
Queen Mother unpinned my tassel.
I let her do it, seeing ahead to our return across the pass. To Annet and Drualt I said, “Beg pardon, I’m not deserting you.”
Annet said, “I believe you.”
Drualt laughed.
Queen Mother said, “Noll, I hope you’ll agree that Tove was killed by a monster after Grandmother Nadira won their match.”
Sir Noll nodded. “Tove disappointed me.”
Queen Mother addressed Annet. “I’ll lift the Beneficences. Perry, I’ll live up to the terms of the match.”
I nodded at her. For now I should help her rule. “Let us climb. Monsters may come again.”
Sir Noll and Willem carried King Tove’s body between them. I took the rear, holding my unsheathed sword, the protective princess. If monsters returned, I’d be first to fight them.
Luckily, none came.
On the other side of the pass, Sir Noll and Willem set down King Tove’s body, to the dismay of the soldiers.
Mama and Poppi were there, too. They’d made the climb to rescue Drualt, but, fortunately, the soldiers hadn’t let them cross. Mama held him and she and Poppi took a while to satisfy themselves that he was unhurt. Next, they embraced Annet, and finally saw me.
I backed away, hoping they’d understand. Mama, quick-witted as ever, curtsied to me.
“We have a new queen,” I said. “Queen Klausine.”
“Long may she rule!” Apparently, Willem had decided he didn’t have to feign deafness any longer.
The soldiers bowed and curtsied. Mama and Poppi did, too, though both of them looked worried.
Willem added, “And Crown Princess Peregrine!”
Drualt said, “Mama, Poppi, you should have seen the ogres! I can’t wait to go back. I helped kill one.”
Sir Noll told the soldiers, “King Canute was carried off by a dragon. Then, after we’d acknowledged him, King Tove was killed by two ogres.” Cleverly, he’d made the accession clear, so Queen Mother’s crown couldn’t be questioned.
Sir Noll didn’t explain how the ogres had killed King Tove, whose body seemed untouched. Soldiers wouldn’t doubt a knight, and the unknown power of monsters seemed to satisfy them.
But a soldier did venture two questions: What had happened to the grandmother? And where had I come from?
Sir Noll, seemingly an inventive improvisor, began, “The—”
I waved to silence him. On the climb to the pass, I’d anticipated these questions.
Then I hesitated. To explain myself to soldiers would be seen as weak, unbecoming Lakti royalty.
I wondered what King Tove would have done.
Ah. “You’re brave to ask, and we always reward courage,” I told the soldier, daring to speak for Queen Mother. “We left the grandmother in Old Lakti, where I’d been living and exploring since leaving my father and Queen Mother. I doubt she’ll fare as well as I did.”
Drualt laughed. I would have, too, if I could have, as I watched awe grow on the soldier’s face. He didn’t care that an old Bamarre woman had been abandoned, but he revered the new princess, who had crossed the Eskerns by an unknown route and had survived unharmed. How many monsters had she killed?
Before we left the pass, Queen Mother ordered the soldiers not to stop any Bamarre who wanted to cross. “Warn them of the danger and, if they are few in number, suggest they wait for more. But if they insist, let them go.”
There was no earth for a burial at the pass, so we continued to the base camp. We arrived near dusk and found a dozen Bamarre in the soldiers’ custody. Spurred by the rebellion, these people had gathered here to make the crossing.
So few, and unarmed—except one with a pitchfork—they’d cross and be dead in an hour. We’d warn them after the funeral. Soldiers dug the grave, working briskly even in the heat. Sir Noll brought everyone together, the Lakti and the Bamarre, forcing the Bamarre to pay their respects to the creator of the Beneficences.
Before anyone spoke of my former father, Sir Noll delivered a few sentences about King Canute’s steadfastness, enthusiasm, and excellent aim. While he spoke, I observed the Bamarre travelers: six female, six male; most young adults, one as old as Nadira, had appeared, and one a girl as young as Drualt. All appeared healthy, fit, alert.
Would I lead them? Or would I be just one of their companions? I wanted to lead! Few, if any, would be trained in battle.
Would they be glad to have me in their company, the partial Lakti, who usually said the wrong thing? They’d accept Willem sooner than me. He always knew how to behave.
When Sir Noll finished speaking, Queen Mother declaimed about King Tove’s valor and the battles they’d fought together, the kind of praise expected for a Lakti king.
I spoke next. If I’d let my Bamarre side come forward, I’d have dwelled on his kindness when I was small and how he’d seemed to understand me better than anyone else. But all that had been betrayed, so I spoke as a Lakti. I told how he’d come when the Kyngoll had captured me and how proud he’d been that I’d rescued myself first.
I ended with poetry. Let the soldiers hear it from a princess:
“Exalted his departure . . .”
Trying to murder me.
“Dispatched by monstrous ogres,
Valiant, a soldier’s death,
Lakti’s brave King Tove.”
The soldiers covered their surprise at the verse with a blank military gaze. If Queen Mother objected, she didn’t stop me.
The Bamarre exchanged glances. A middle-aged woman, perhaps understanding how much was about to change, asked Queen Mother’s leave to recite, too, for King Tove, and permission was granted. She spoke several stanzas, while I thought how King Tove would have hated this. She ended with these lines:
“High peaks like watchers waiting,
The Eskerns take him in
And welcome him, the Lakti king.”
After the funeral, the Lakti and the Bamarre separated again, each to prepare their evening meals. I knew better than to force them to stay together, but when Annet approached the Bamarre, I started to follow her.
“Perry?”
I turned.
Willem said, “You haven’t told me about your months on the other side of the Eskerns.”
He knew I hadn’t spent months there, so why?
Oh. To stop me from going with Annet and frightening everyone. I called her back to me. “Tell them about our battle. Warn them not to cross until they’re at least two hundred strong.” Four hundred would be better. “And not until they have arms and armor.”
“Begging your pardon, I know.”
Of course. I looked around for Willem and saw him halfway down the hill away from the camp and the Eskerns. As I followed, I saw Queen Mother watching.
The sun had gone down, but light lingered, making the grass greener and the rocks that littered the ground more somber.
He stopped at an outcropping of stone. “Your throne, Your Highness.”
I sat. “I’m happy to share my throne.” I moved over.
Then my words came back to me. Oh, no! Share my throne. Had I proposed to him?
If it was a proposal, he didn’t answer. “Are you eager to cross the Eskerns?”
“I am.” Just saying so made me want to jump up and battle a monster. “It will be simpler there, fighting an enemy we must defeat and won’t enslave. Paradise.”
He laughed. “A monster-ridden paradise.”
“Yes! It was fun to fight them.” I laughed, too. “Aside from King Tove and the imminent match and my likely death.”
He was quiet.
I became uneasy. “Did you enjoy it, too?”
The pause lengthened.
I added, “Will you cross the Eskerns?”
“And be the only true Lakti there?”
That would trouble him? Everyone liked him.
He added, “I’ll go. I don’t want to be apart from you ever again.”
Ah. He may not have minded if I’d proposed.
He grinned. “I think you don’t want to be apart, either.”
I blushed.
He went on. “I thought I’d like fighting monsters, but I didn’t. Perry, I even hate to kill fleas.”
Everybody liked to kill fleas!
He’d do what he hated for me?
Then I wondered if he’d be able to prevail against monsters if he hated hurting them.
As he often did, he read my face or my mind. “I’ll fight them. I’ll be fine, as long as I remember that my power is in my back leg.”
I laughed.
He added, “Killing monsters is much better than killing people.”
I reached out and took his hand, the prerogative of a proposing princess. As soon as I touched him, my heart sped up.
He put a hand behind my head, and gently pressed me toward him.
We kissed. Oh, my! Sweet, the long-promised kiss.