By the time the sun began to set, I had to admit that either the monkey seller hadn’t known what I wanted, or he was playing a cruel joke on me. I had plodded up and down the streets and found no sign of a dress shop or even a glove maker. In fact, for the last hour I hadn’t seen any shops at all. Instead I had been wandering among large houses with brightly painted shutters and window boxes full of flowers. No one I passed would give me directions. The people on foot looked to be servants hurrying about their errands, and the rest were fine ladies and gentlemen riding horses or closed up in carriages.
As the streets darkened, lamplighters came along with their long torches and lit the polished lanterns that hung from posts in front of every house. I tried asking one of them for directions, but they were all foreigners, and only brandished their torches at me and shouted, “Fire hot, maidy! Fire hot!” so that I would stay clear.
“Here now, what are you doing out and about?”
I wheeled around to see a guardsman in a green leather jerkin glaring at me. I clapped my hands in relief.
“Oh, please, sir,” I said, so tired that I was swaying where I stood. “Could you direct me to the cloth-workers’ district? I just came from the country today, and I’m looking for work.”
“It’s nearly curfew, girl,” the guardsman said in a rough voice. “It’s not time to be lookin’ for work. Get on home with you!”
“I haven’t got a home, sir,” I began.
“Vagrant, are you?” He frowned at me.
“Er, no. I’ve only just arrived in the King’s Seat,” I repeated. “I’m looking for work, but haven’t found the cloth-workers’ district –”
“So you don’t have work or a home?” He chewed his lip. “I’ll have to take you in for violating the curfew,” he warned me. He glanced up at the sky, where the sun had set and the smaller moon was just rising.
“Please, I don’t understand,” I pleaded. “I’ve only just arrived; what is this about a curfew?”
“What town are you from?” The guard’s eyebrows were approaching his receding hairline. “The curfew, girl, the curfew!”
I looked at him with a blank expression. None of the traders who stopped in Carlieff Town had ever said anything about there being a curfew in the King’s Seat.
“The curfew’til the crown prince’s wedding!”
“What?” I still didn’t follow.
The guard and I both turned to look at the young man who had come up while we’d been trying to understand one another. He looked to be about my age, some sixteen years or so, but was far better dressed than I in a tunic of fine grey wool and black leather breeches. He had brown eyes and brown hair with streaks of gold in it.
“Your Highness!” The guardsman tapped his fist to his chest in salute.
“Another one?” The question burst out of me in a squeak before I could stop it, and I stared at the young man in horror.
The prince and the guardsman looked at me with amusement and shock, respectively. I covered my mouth with both hands, wishing I could take those two words and shove them right back into my mouth.
“Another one?” The prince looked momentarily confused, and then he burst out laughing. “Don’t tell me you’re the maid who faced off with Amalia this afternoon? The one she claims tried to assassinate her lapdog?”
My face turned red and I put my hands on my cheeks. “Oh, no, has the entire city heard that story?” I silently cursed the princess and my clumsy feet. “I wasn’t trying to kill her dog! I swear!”
“Oh, this is too wonderful,” the prince said. “Did you hear that, Tobin?” He looked over his shoulder at someone.
Out of the shadows came a large man neither I nor the guardsman (judging by his flinch of surprise) had seen. He was huge, taller than any man I had ever met, his shaved head rising even above the prince’s, and the prince was quite tall. Blue tattoos ran up both bare arms and over his scalp, and there were fat gold rings in his ears. He opened his mouth and laughed soundlessly, looking at me with kind blue eyes.
“This is the person who attacked the Roulaini princess?” The guard gaped at me. “I shall take her into custody at once!” He reached towards me.
I skipped out of the way. “I didn’t attack her! She was only …” I couldn’t say that she was being mean, or foolish; she was a princess, after all. “It was a misunderstanding.”
“Yes, yes,” the prince said, waving his hand. “My brother was quite satisfied that no harm was meant.”
Suddenly, bells began chiming all across the city, making me jump. Both the prince and the guardsman looked up at the sky, checking the position of the moons, I guessed. The tattooed man, Tobin, continued to simply stand and watch.
“It’s curfew, Your Highness,” the guard said, a trifle unnecessarily, in my opinion.
“Indeed it is,” the prince said lightly. “So I had best escort this young lady to her lodgings. Carry on there, guardsman.” And with that, the prince took my elbow and steered me away.
I was too numb to protest. I had not thought it possible to be more tired or frightened or lonely than I had been as I had made my weary way along the King’s Road from Carlieff. But I was wrong: right this moment I was so exhausted and terrified and homesick that it was all I could do to stay on my feet. “I don’t have any lodgings,” I mumbled.
“Yes, I heard. And you’re trying to find work in the cloth-workers’ district?”
I could only nod and blush; he had heard me pleading with the guard. I was embarrassed, though I wasn’t entirely sure why.
“I’ll take you there, or near there. I know someone who has an inn just a few streets over.”
“Why is there a curfew?” It was the only one of the many questions buzzing around in my head that I could think to ask just now.
He looked at me, seeming surprised. “You haven’t heard? You must be from far away, then.”
I didn’t say anything, so he went on.
“It’s because of Amalia and Miles getting married. A lot of people don’t like the idea of him marrying a foreigner, especially one from Roulain.” A shrug. “Old prejudices run deep. There have been protests, and even attacks. Mostly little things: mud thrown at her carriage, threats of harm from people who couldn’t possibly do anything to a heavily guarded princess.” He shrugged again. “But as a precaution my father has ordered that everyone stay in after dark, at least until after the wedding.”
“Oh.” I felt I owed him some sort of explanation, since he was helping me, after all. “I’m from Carlieff Town, all the way in the north. We had barely even heard that the crown prince was betrothed.”
“I’m hardly surprised, it’s been rather sudden.” The prince flashed his bodyguard a grim look, which Tobin returned with an eloquent expression, making me realise that he wasn’t taking part in the conversation because he was a mute. Despite his handicap, it was clear that he shared his prince’s distaste for the speed of this controversial marriage.
“So,” I began, thinking to change the subject, “who exactly are you taking me to? Not that I’m not grateful to you, Your Highness, for all your help,” I added hastily.
“Tobin’s older sister runs an inn just outside the cloth-workers’ district,” the prince explained patiently. “Ulfrid was my nanny when I was a child, and will be happy to help you.”
“Oh, thank you.” I looked back at Tobin, who was shadowing us with one hand on the hilt of his sword. “And thank you, Tobin,” I told the bodyguard.
He raised his eyebrows and nodded curtly.
I slowed my steps, though, as we passed beneath a brightly burning lamp. “But, Your Highness, if I may ask: Why are you helping me?”
He stopped and raised his eyebrows. “Why shouldn’t I help you?”
“Because … well, I’m nobody. I’m a farm girl from Carlieff. You’re a prince: Why do you care if I get locked up for vagrancy?”
The prince looked at me thoughtfully. “Had a hard day, eh?”
I looked down at the blue toes of my slippers, peeping out from under my hem. “You have no idea,” I said softly, thinking of the endless walking, the dust, the raucous laughter of the woman who had shaken her broom at me. And that was before I had stepped on the princess’s dog.
“Well, that’s why. Because it is my duty to make up for the harsh treatment you have received thus far,” he said, striking a noble pose.
Now I raised my eyebrows.
He grinned. “Actually, I like to walk around at night. I think the curfew is stupid. And the city jail is no place for a young girl.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Also, Ulfrid makes some very fine sausage rolls.” He took a few steps forward. “Shall we?”
I was so tired. I nodded.
Tobin’s sister was not a mute, but neither was she much of a talker. She opened the door after her brother gave it a few loud knocks and ushered us inside without saying a word. She had seated us by the remains of the common-room fire, stirred the ashes to life again, and brought sausage rolls and tea before I heard her say a thing.
“Do that, did you?” Ulfrid was pointing at the cuffs of my gown. She had a heavy accent. But then, from the looks of her brother’s tattoos and earrings, and the strange way her long white-blonde braids were wrapped around her head, I had figured that they weren’t from Feravel. “Your work?” she asked.
“Er, yes, it is.” I straightened my skirt to display more of the hem, now rather dusty, that I had also embroidered. “And these.” I pulled open my bundle and showed her the woven sashes and embroidered kerchiefs. She grunted and nodded.
“Think you can help her find some work?” The prince smiled cheerfully at her. “I would hate to have her carted off by the guards for breaking curfew again.” He winked at me cheekily and I pulled a face, forgetting for the moment that he was a prince, and treating him as I would my brother, Hagen. Then I remembered my place and looked away, cheeks hot.
“There are places,” the woman said, nodding her head. “I will take her tomorrow.” Her tone was neither encouraging nor discouraging, merely neutral.
“Excellent!” The prince put down his mug with a bang, then looked sheepish when his former nanny frowned at him. “Well, Tobin and I need to get back to the palace, or Father will be sending out the army to find us.”
I wondered what it would be like to call a man “Father” when everyone else called him “Your Majesty”. And to know that if you went missing, he would and could send an army to look for you.
“Yes, Luka, it is late,” his nanny said in a voice that was almost fond. “You need more sleep.”
I heard his given name with a start. I hadn’t even known the name of a prince of my own land! Carlieff Town really was far out in the country. I knew that King Caxel and Queen Temia had had two sons and a daughter, and that the queen and the young princess had died during an outbreak of blue fever ten years ago. But beyond that I knew only that the crown prince was named Milun and would one day be Milun the Fourth. And here I was, being rescued from breaking the curfew and given food and lodging by a kind prince whose name I had never bothered to learn! I shook my head, trying to clear it of all this strangeness.
“Is something wrong?” Luka got to his feet and stretched, smiling down at me.
“Not at all, Your Highness.” I hopped to my feet as well, and curtsied. “I still don’t know why you’re doing this for me, but I want you to know that I am truly, truly grateful.”
Now Luka blushed. “It was my pleasure, maidy. Ulfrid would have my hide if she found out that I had seen a fair maiden in need of aid and failed to render it.” He shot a playful look at his former nanny. “Or even an ugly maiden,” he added.
Ulfrid, with long, skilled fingers, twirled a bar cloth into a rope with one quick snap and then whipped the prince’s shoulder with it.
“Ouch!” He rubbed his upper arm. “That hurt!”
“Begone with you, begone with you both,” she said, threatening her mute brother with the towel as well. “The girl needs rest, and so do I.”
Prince Luka and his bodyguard fled, laughing, while I sank back on to a stool, exhausted. When she had barred the door behind them, Ulfrid returned and surveyed me with bright blue eyes like her brother’s.
“You can have a room at the top of the house, on the left.” And she turned away to gather up the teapot and cups.
I trudged upstairs and collapsed on to the bed. Just before I fell asleep I thought to wriggle out of my gown and lay it across the room’s one chair, to prevent it from being too crumpled in the morning. Then I laid myself down again and was instantly deeply asleep.