Princess of the Silver Woods (Twelve Dancing Princesses) Read online

  “That’s what he told Father and the ministers,” Rose said, nodding.

  “But it’s just silly,” Orchid protested. “Why would they think she was a witch just because she was Bretoner? Papa isn’t completely unreasonable!”

  “But Bishop Angiers was,” Petunia said. “And he was the one doing the accusing. I remember that horrible man trying to question me, as though I were a murderer.” She shuddered.

  “Oliver’s mother, Lady Emily, was one of Mama’s closest friends,” Rose said. “I remember her, though the rest of you are probably too young. Anyone who knew Mama would have recognized Lady Emily.”

  “She was there when Mama thought she couldn’t have any children?” Poppy asked.

  “And when she suddenly started to have us, one after the other,” Rose said with a nod. “Witchcraft.”

  “I still say that’s a silly way to think,” Orchid protested, but they ignored her.

  “I wonder,” Daisy said slowly. “I wonder if Lady Emily wasn’t already scared because their estate had been given away. That would certainly make me wonder if the king was angry with me. And when they arrived in Bruch, she heard the rumors and thought that she had already been accused, and that was why the earldom had been divided up?”

  “Oh, pooh!” Lilac fluttered her hand. “Like Petunia said, Papa wasn’t the one doing the accusing! I agree with Orchid: this whole thing seems very odd.”

  “Indeed it is,” Rose said. “More than odd. Galen and I are certain that there was witchcraft involved—but it wasn’t Lady Emily who was responsible.”

  “Then who is responsible?” Petunia asked.

  “We don’t know yet, although now that we know the grand duchess is one of the Nine Daughters,” Rose began, but Petunia interrupted her.

  “The grand duchess couldn’t possibly be a witch! You’ll never meet a more respectable lady!”

  “At any rate,” Rose said, “something is highly suspicious about Oliver’s situation. Once we’ve … taken care of … our own problem with the King Under Stone and his brothers, Galen has promised to sort out Oliver’s missing earldom.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Petunia said.

  “If it works,” Lilac said ominously, and then, at the expression on Petunia’s face, she took out her knitting and fiddled with the needles.

  “It will be well,” Rose said firmly. “Galen and Heinrich took care of it; that’s why they aren’t joining us until tomorrow.”

  “What did they take care of?” Petunia felt faint, and the question was barely a whisper.

  “They let Oliver go,” Rose said complacently. She took out her own knitting. “And the men that came with him to confess.”

  “It was Heinrich’s idea,” Lily said with pride. “Papa was determined to execute the poor boy at the end of the week! But the old earl, Oliver’s father, was Heinrich’s commander in the Eagle Regiment. He saved Heinrich’s life, twice, and Heinrich said he couldn’t possibly let his son die. Dr. Kelling had already convinced father to go to the fortress for a few days, to take some time to think. Once they left, Galen was going to set Oliver’s men free while Heinrich helped Oliver escape.”

  “Do you think they succeeded?” Pansy’s hands were twisted together.

  But Petunia didn’t doubt it. She felt as if a great weight had been lifted from her chest. Galen and Heinrich had set Oliver and his men free. They could return to the forest and hide. They would be all right—he would be all right!

  “If Galen can defeat the King Under Stone, I’m sure he can let a few prisoners out of the Bruch jail,” Poppy said staunchly, and Rose smiled at her.

  “But Galen didn’t defeat the King Under Stone,” Hyacinth said, gazing out the window at the barren winter gardens. “Not yet, anyway.”

  Worried

  When Oliver and his men walked through the gates of the old hall, everyone within froze. Sentries had seen them, of course, and sounded no alarm, since there was no sign of any Westfalian soldiers. But they did not have the look of men returning triumphant, either. A few of the children sent up a ragged cheer, but their mothers quickly hurried them away, as though they knew that Oliver’s news was nothing to celebrate.

  “What happened?” Simon couldn’t wait for Oliver to start talking. He leaned forward on his crutches, his face eager. “Did you see the king? Will he make you a real earl?”

  “We went to Bruch,” Oliver said, and to his own ears his voice sounded ten years older. Lady Emily put a hand on her younger son’s arm. “And we saw the king.”

  “What did the king do?” Lady Emily asked gently, when Oliver did not continue.

  “I was put in the palace attic,” Oliver said, “and the others were put in the city jail.”

  Karl’s wife, Ilsa, who had followed them into the old hall, clucked a bit at this, but Karl put a comforting arm around her.

  “The room was small, and the windows were barred, but we had clean bedding and there was plenty of food to eat,” he said. “Not that it was as good as yours,” he added.

  “I was in much the same situation,” Oliver told his mother and brother. “A small room, but clean, good food. I even had books to read. I told the king everything—about Father, about us. I told him about meeting Petunia, and … accidentally abducting her. He brought in one of his sons-in-law, Heinrich, who had been in Father’s regiment. He confirmed that Father had died, that he had had a son, and that I looked like him,” Oliver finished.

  “And then what did you do, Lord Oliver?” Karl’s eight-year-old daughter gazed up at him in awe, as though this were the best story she had ever heard.

  “And then I went back to my room,” Oliver said, wishing he had a better story to tell her. “Two of the princesses came to see me, and I told them everything as well. One of them brought me two books she thought would interest me. I read them, trying to find out why. Both of them had stories of the King Under Stone in them.” He looked at his mother. “One talked of the King Under Stone being the father of the sons of the Nine Daughters of Russaka,” he said meaningfully. “And other children.”

  “What does that have to do with us?” Simon’s face was screwed up with confusion.

  The men, who had not heard this part before, also looked confused, but Oliver ignored them for the moment. He could see that his mother was starting to understand some of the implications in the King Under Stone having a whole pack of strange half-human sons, and what it might mean for the beautiful daughters of King Gregor.

  “But then Prince Heinrich came to my room.” Oliver reached under his jacket and pulled out the dull purple cape he had stuffed there for safekeeping. “Wearing this. It makes you invisible.” Karl’s daughter clapped her hands in delight, and Simon looked like he would have done the same if not for his crutches. “King Gregor had decided to execute us.” This did not make Karl’s daughter clap. “But Heinrich owed Father his life. He claims that once the king has had time to think, he will go easier on us. He and Crown Prince Galen will argue with the king on our behalf.”

  “It was the crown prince himself who set us free,” Johan said. “He marched right into the jail, and all the guards went to sleep like new lambs. He opened our cell, told us where to meet young Oliver, and then saw us out the door like we had been guests in his home.”

  “So, it’s good news,” Ilsa said doubtfully.

  “We’re wanted men,” Karl told her.

  “You have been for years,” she scoffed.

  “But now we’re wanted men who’ve escaped jail,” Karl clarified. “And who are to wait and see if two princes can argue their father-in-law to amnesty.”

  “Princes can be rather flighty,” Ilsa said sagely. She had been born and raised in the forest, and Oliver’s parents were the closest she had ever come to nobility, let alone royalty.

  “So, now what?” Simon looked disgusted. “We all just sit here and wait to see if the king forgives you?”

  “More or less,” Oliver said. “They’ll send someone with the n
ew verdict to the place where Petunia’s coach got smashed.” He turned to Karl. “We’ll have to keep a watch on it. But not for a few days. The king is hunting, and the princes will be at the grand duchess’s estate with their wives.”

  Karl grunted. “We watch that spot anyway,” he said with a shrug. “It’s not far from where we wait for likely coaches.”

  Oliver shook his head. “Just have the sentries watch that one spot. We won’t need to know about any other coaches.”

  “What do you mean?” Simon looked from Oliver to Karl. “Did they give you money?”

  “Think, Simon,” Oliver said. “We’re trying to convince the king to forgive us for robbing all those coaches for all those years. In order to show him that we’re penitent, we need to stop robbing coaches.”

  “But what will we live on?” Simon wanted to know.

  Oliver rubbed his face, wondering if he had lines etched at the corners of his mouth the way Johan did. He felt like it. He felt like he was a hundred years old. He took a breath and let it out.

  “Well, you tell me,” he said to his little brother. “Haven’t you begun taking over the steward’s duties? What have we got? How long will it last?”

  Simon thought for a moment. “We’ve got potatoes,” he said. “Lots of dried things. You’ll still let us poach game, I hope? And there’s some money in the strongbox.…”

  “We’ll be fine,” Lady Emily said.

  And abruptly Oliver was done. He was tired. He wanted to lie in his own bed, in his own room, and never come back out. He spun on his heel and made his way up the creaking staircase, not looking back at the circle of faces below, watching him.

  When he got to the top of the stairs, however, Karl’s little daughter called out, “Nighty-night, Earl Oliver!”

  He leaned over the banister and waved to the child, not meeting her or anyone else’s eyes, and then went into his room and shut the door.

  Fingering the invisibility cloak, Oliver sat down on his bed. Then he lay down, boots and all, and went to sleep. When he woke up it was dark in the room except for a single lamp near the one chair. His mother was sitting in the chair, darning a stocking.

  “Are you ready to talk?” Lady Emily asked as he blinked at her.

  “I hate the king,” Oliver said. It surprised him.

  It did not, however, appear to surprise his mother.

  “He changed when Maude died,” she said. She bit off the thread and rolled up the stocking, putting it in her sewing basket and taking out another. “But then, you’ve always hated Gregor.”

  “I didn’t meet him until four days ago,” Oliver protested weakly.

  “Don’t think that I don’t know why you and your men have gone after every coach with a crest on the doors,” she said in a reproving voice. “It was only a matter of time until you robbed one of the princesses, or Gregor himself. You’ve been trying to get the king’s attention.”

  “And now I’ve succeeded,” Oliver said bitterly. “And I didn’t even have to let that fool of a Russakan prince hunt me down.”

  “For which I will always be grateful,” Lady Emily said.

  The real fervor in her voice made Oliver look at her more carefully. The golden lamplight couldn’t hide her pallor or the strain around her eyes.

  “I don’t like the sound of this Prince Grigori,” she said, and Oliver nearly laughed. “And if the King Under Stone is the father of the Nine Daughters’s children, then Prince Grigori is the nephew of Under Stone’s sons.”

  “Which means what for us?” Oliver asked.

  He shifted uneasily on the bed, sitting up and fussing with the pillow behind his back. Oliver pictured Grigori roaring through the forest on his black horse, sitting impossibly tall, dark-haired, white-skinned—he didn’t look human. But he was, wasn’t he?

  “I don’t know what it means,” Lady Emily said, “except that we must be cautious.”

  “I am,” Oliver began.

  “You are not,” his mother countered. “Now, you cannot just lie here until the princes send word. And you did not just throw in that link between the grand duchess and the King Under Stone as a point of minor interest to your story. What is happening?”

  “You’re too clever,” Oliver told his mother.

  “It’s why your father married me,” she said with a small smile. “Now talk, boy.”

  Oliver did smile now, but it soon faded as he related the rest of the story to her. How he had told Heinrich about the shadows in the garden, and how Heinrich had taken the matter very seriously. He told her about meeting Rose and Galen, and how they, too, had seemed haunted by something.

  “The King Under Stone wants them for his sons, if not for himself,” Oliver finished. “I know it. He wants Petunia.”

  “I can hardly blame him,” Lady Emily said. “Beautiful girls—beautiful women, I should say—all of them.” She eyed him. “If you were a properly landed and titled earl, you would make a fine match for Petunia.”

  Oliver opened his mouth and closed it again. He wasn’t thinking such things. He only wanted to help.

  Didn’t he?

  “Thank heavens you still have the crown prince’s invisibility cloak,” Lady Emily said with a heavy sigh. She finished darning the second stocking and put it away. Getting to her feet, she shook her head. “Just try to be careful, sneaking onto the estate. Prince Grigori, as we’ve said, is not to be trifled with.”

  Oliver opened his mouth and closed it yet again, feeling like a fish gasping on the bank.

  “I—I’m not—” he finally managed.

  “Of course not,” his mother said drily. She bent over and kissed his forehead on her way out of the room. “I’m just glad that Simon’s injury keeps him from following you.”

  Assassin

  That night, for the first time since Rionin had declared he would marry Lily, Petunia dreamed she was back in the Palace Under Stone. She didn’t know why they weren’t returning there every night, but knowing Rionin, it was probably just another way to toy with them.

  In this dream she was not in the ballroom, however, but in a room that contained furniture made from worn ebony, upholstered with faded violet silk. It was a bedroom, but not one she had been in before. Before, when she and her sisters had been trapped there overnight, they had all slept in one long room furnished with six narrow beds.

  She looked around, almost idly, glad that she wasn’t being forced to dance in her dreams, or being pestered by the princes and court of the Kingdom Under Stone. The dressing table had an onyx box of face powder and a set of silver-backed brushes, the silver tarnished black. She fiddled with one of the brushes, wondering whose room it was. One of the strange court ladies? It didn’t seem much used.

  “Do you like it?”

  Petunia dropped the brush with a clatter and wheeled around, nearly falling over the stool as well. Kestilan stood in the doorway, his face so blank that if she hadn’t recognized his voice, Petunia wouldn’t have known who had spoken.

  “It’s the same as every other room here,” she said, desperately seeking for her composure. “Black, purple, blue, silver, black, purple, blue, silver. An entire palace of bruises and darkness and nothingness, night after night, always the same.”

  Kestilan looked at her, one eyebrow just slightly arched. “Why would my father have wanted to be reminded of what he had lost?”

  “What he had lost?” She gave him a baffled look. “What had he lost?”

  “The sun,” Kestilan said.

  There was silence for a moment.

  Then Kestilan went on, “Even I, who have never seen it, feel diminished when you come to us, reeking of upper world as you do, clad in colors that hurt our eyes with envy.”

  Petunia blinked. Rose had once accused the princes of being fools, but they weren’t, she had later said. They had played at being dull because their father had wanted no rivals, and he saw his sons as easily replaced as well. What Kestilan had said made terrible sense. Gold, brocade, bright colors
all belonged to the sun, to flowers and things that could not be replicated here below, where even the trees were made of silver and bore no fruit.

  “I don’t remember everything being so tatty,” Petunia said, and now she was covering up the sudden pang of sympathy she had just felt for the late and previously unlamented King Under Stone. She fingered the silver inlay on the edge of the dressing table. It was tarnished, and there was a bit missing at the corner.

  “My brother’s power is not as great as our father’s,” Kestilan said. “But that is easily remedied.”

  “Is it?” She tried not to look too interested, but rubbed her fingers on her skirt as though the table had dirtied them.

  “Yes,” Kestilan said with the same rather studied indifference that Petunia was trying for. “He will give Jonquil and some of your other sisters to members of the court, since we are lessened in numbers. That will elevate the courtiers, and bring more power to Rionin when we dance.”

  “If we let you,” Petunia said.

  Kestilan laughed. “I have always loved how you all pretend to have any choice in the matter.” He came toward her, and she did her best not to back away. He was tall, as tall as Prince Grigori, and he loomed over her, making her bend back over the dressing table a little. She put her hands behind her. “As if you were not born for this very purpose,” he hissed in her ear. “To marry us, and bear our sons.”

  Petunia struck Kestilan across the face as hard as she could with the grimy silver hairbrush. When he howled and grabbed his cheek, she skipped around him and out the door of the room, though she did not know where she was going. She ran down the hall with him in pursuit, dark blood—darker than human blood—coming from his nose.