Nine

 

Bianca settled into a new routine quickly. She woke with the dawn, while her sisters slept on until well past noon. After breaking her fast, she rode or walked to Kun's cottage. On her return, she would walk beside the lake. Some days it was mirror calm, reflecting the sky and birds above as though there were a second world below, if she but had the courage to pierce the surface. On other days, the beach vanished beneath an onslaught of waves blown up by the slightest breeze, and the lake licked at the very foundations of the Summer Palace.

She grew more skilled at making things invisible. She'd managed to vanish most things in Kun's cottage, before making them visible again. Today, Kun had insisted she bespell the cottage roof. Except she was not to make it vanish entirely – oh, no. Kun asked her to vanish patches of it so that there appeared to be holes in the roof, yet anyone looking through those holes would see nothing of what went on within her house.

The strange twist on her invisibility spell had made Bianca work harder at her magic than ever before. She'd felt worn out by the time she'd accomplished it, only to find Kun demanding proof that the spell had worked. That meant climbing on the cottage roof and peering in.

Bianca had protested at first – after all, princesses did not climb on roofs. Her mother would be horrified at the very thought – but Kun was adamant that one of them must, and the old woman was hardly spry enough to make the climb.

Bianca managed to hoist herself onto the water butt and scramble onto the roof without too much trouble, but climbing down had been her undoing. She'd hit the lid of the water butt on the way down wrong so that it tilted, and instead of landing firmly on it with both feet, she'd slid into the cold water. The butt was easily as deep as she was tall – Bianca might have drowned had Kun not witnessed her fall. As it was, the woman had reached in, seized her collar and dragged the spluttering princess to the surface where she could breathe again.

While Bianca's clothes dried in the sun, she sat in her shift before the fire with a scalding cup of tea in her hands to ward off the chill from her immersion. Kun didn't ask her to perform any more magic, so Bianca decided it was her turn to do the asking today.

"What is this mystery in the palace everyone keeps talking about?" Bianca said, blowing on her tea to cool it.

"Do you mean the shoes?" Kun asked as she poured herself some tea.

The shoes were no mystery, Bianca was sure of it. The other girls piled them up to keep adventurers out of their sleeping chamber, for she'd counted at least half a dozen different men who'd come and gone. They shared the princesses' table and slept on a pallet outside their door for three nights, before they disappeared, never to return.

More than once, Bianca had wondered whether the men were some sort of illusion she'd conjured to keep her hopes alive of finding a husband and a way out of exile, but she knew the men were real. The first adventurer, who'd dropped his sword beneath the table on her first night in the Summer Palace, had neglected to retrieve it. Bianca had found the sword, scabbard and belt several days after his departure, half-hidden under the bench where he'd sat. She'd carried it all to her bedchamber and concealed the items under her bed. The sharp steel was real enough, so the sword's bearer must have been real, too. As were all the adventurers who claimed to be able to solve the mystery. A mystery so mysterious even Bianca didn't know what it was.

"I don't know. The mystery that draws men to the palace like flies to honey," Bianca said finally. "I know men are fools when faced with a beautiful woman – we learned that with our first breath in my father's harem – but they seem taken...nay, obsessed with the notion that they can solve some mystery and claim one of us as a wife. It's not just them, either. The servants say the same. Whoever solves the mystery will become master of the Summer Palace and marry one of us. If I have to make myself invisible to avoid it, I swear his bride will not be me."

She meant it, too, Bianca realised. She would not trade her freedom in exile for marriage to some lusty brute she barely knew.

"The choice may not be up to you," Kun chided. "If the king offers a man a princess for a bride, he might also offer the man his choice of his daughters."

Bianca shuddered. To be given away as a prize, instead of a marriage alliance...as though she were a possession instead of a person...it chilled her. Her father was many things, both bad and good, but he was fiercely protective of his family. "What would make my father offer his own flesh and blood as a prize to any man?"

Kun grinned gummily. "Have you noticed anything unusual about the shoes?"

"They are worn out," Bianca replied. "My sisters pile up their worn-out dancing shoes on the threshold to our sleeping chamber, to trip the unwary adventurer if he seeks to enter without our permission." Permission that would never be granted, she was certain of it.

"So they do, and every morning, a maid comes to tidy away the broken shoes. She throws them on the refuse heap, and brings new shoes for each princess. Yet the next morning, there are more broken shoes." Kun drank deeply from her teacup. "How do you explain this?"

It was on the tip of Bianca's tongue to say that her sisters must have quite a store of broken shoes, or they retrieved them every night from the refuse heap. But that could not be. None of them would soil themselves by setting foot anywhere near the refuse heap, especially not to claim some old shoes. Instead, she said, "I can't."

"And nor can the king, or any of the adventurers who hear of this mystery. That is why the king has offered the Summer Palace and the hand of a princess in marriage to any man who can solve the mystery for him." Kun set her empty cup on the table.

Bianca still didn't understand. "All that because of some shoes?"

Kun shook her head slowly. "Not just some shoes. A dozen pairs of dancing shoes every night. Fine shoes suitable for a princess. Why, it would take a dozen craftsmen more than a day to make such shoes. And all the silk and leather that must be used to make them...why, you and your sisters will bankrupt the treasury if this keeps on much longer. What else can your father do but offer a reward to anyone who can find him a solution before you and your sisters run his treasury dry?"

"I have not had a single pair of new shoes since I arrived," Bianca objected. "Nor have I worn any out. My father cannot blame me for whatever it is my sisters do. I will not be punished for their carelessness!" She rose and stormed outside to where her clothes were almost dry. She dressed quickly, ignoring the way the still-damp cloth clung to her. It would surely dry on the ride home.

With a curt farewell to Kun, Bianca spurred her horse toward the Summer Palace.

"Not all women see marriage as a punishment," Kun called softly after her. "If you marry a good man, what feels like duty at first can be a pleasure, in time."

The horse snorted, echoing Bianca's sentiments. She might have lived a sheltered life, but she'd lived in a harem. A harem full of wives who spoke little of the pleasures of marriage. If a woman wanted pleasure of any kind, she must make it for herself. The pleasure of a refreshing ride, or a brisk walk by the lake. Such were the pleasures available to her now, and Bianca found very little enjoyment in Kun's company if the old woman intended to harp on about duty.

Instead, she would ask her sisters to let her know their secret, and protect it so fiercely no man would pry it from her. For if no man solved the mystery, no man could marry one of them. It was the perfect solution.