“I have no idea,” the queen-to-be remarked from Gervase’s side. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair; her wound was infection-free and mending well, but it still pained her. “Honestly, that went better than I expected.”
“I’m not sure I’d agree,” the king said. “We’re going to have to read it once he’s done.”
Another pocket of resistance to change was much more surprising to me—the Yvettes and Yvonnes. A few of the younger ones came out of the women’s wing to mingle with society, but most of them remained cloistered in spite of their newly inaugurated freedoms. Toward the end of my stay at the castle, I began to wonder why, so I made my way to the sewing circle to find out.
“Oh, you’re back,” Eldest Yvette said when I arrived, acting for all the world as if I had been gone for no more than a few unremarkable days. “I’ve heard tell you’re a princess.”
“Yes,” I admitted. “I’m sorry for the deception.”
She glowered at me. “You should have said. Princesses have no business using a spinning wheel.”
So saying, she thrust a half-finished bonnet into my hands with the clear expectation that I would sit in my accustomed spot and commence chain stitching. So I did. And before I had a chance to ask any questions, one of the Yvonnes started a story.
“Once upon a time,” she said, “when the world was younger and the air smelled a little sweeter, there was a young girl who lived in a village near a forest. Her grandmother, who loved the girl dearly, had given her a hooded cape of red velvet and warned her always to be wary of wolves….”
I attended for a number of days, sewing and listening to folktales, before I gleaned what the difficulty was from snatches of conversation.
“All very well to say we can go,” one grumbled on the third day, “but go where? And do what?”
“I don’t think it’s safe,” said another.
“Princess Angelique could have told us whether—”
This last comment was silenced with a sharp glance.
“We are not to speak of her,” said Eldest Yvette, “by royal command.”
That caught me by surprise. I had noticed Angelique was seldom spoken of after her death, but I hadn’t been aware Gervase had ordered silence.
The Yvettes and Yvonnes, I realized, had been cast adrift. No one had told them anything more than that they were free to leave the women’s wing. No provision had been made to ease their departure or explain what was expected of them. The person they would have trusted to lead them had been cut down with a sword and accused of murder, and now they couldn’t even discussit.
I resolved to talk to Jack about helping them find their place in the kingdom; she wasn’t from Tailliz, and I didn’t think she’d realized there was any need for it. I certainly hadn’t.
For my own part, I could, perhaps, do one thing for them—explain what Angelique had done and why. I was not one of Gervase’s subjects, so I decided his decree did not apply tome.
And I had heard the tale from the princess herself.
“Once upon a time,” I began. It was the first time I had joined the storytelling there. A head or two turned in my direction, but most of them continued spinning or sewing. No one stopped me, though, so I went on. “Once upon a time, when the world was younger and the laws were a little crueler, a child was born to a king and a queen. This was a great disappointment to the king and was considered a terrible waste of time and effort by most everyone in the land. The queen, you see, was getting on in years. So was the king, but no one really cared about that….”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Fairy-Tale Wedding
Since I would be traveling by ordinary means, rather than on the back of a dragon, I had to wait until the mountain passes were clear before making the trip to Skalla—which meant I could justify delaying long enough to attend the royal wedding in the spring. Sam and I both wanted to see his sister married to her true love at last. In part because it would be the final proof that I wasn’t the one getting married to him.
The castle was still under repair, and the wedding procession through the courtyard occasionally had to detour around unstable, roped-off areas. There was a brief downpour in the early afternoon, and everyone got damp, which made me feel somewhat smug. They should have listened when I suggested a backup plan in case of rain.
The ceremony as a whole was elaborate, opulent, and astonishingly dull. Jack appeared to have had no better luck requesting changes than I had. She’d been shoved into a dress with a train that required most of the other hunters to trail behind her holding it off the ground. It had a hem so tight she had toshuffle along, rather like the flightless black-and-white birds I’d sometimes found nesting on the plain of the trackless ice. She would have tripped if so much as a single pebble hadn’t been cleared from the route, and suddenly I realized why the lion had been so certain peas on the floor would make an infallible woman detector. I would have to explain it to him, for the new edition.
When the interminable preliminaries were done with and the couple exchanged vows, the crowd applauded and cheered—loudly in the case of the assembled soldiers and villagers, but the nobility exhibited something closer to restrained politeness. I was pleased to see a few of the Yvettes and Yvonnes scattered about the crowd. More and more of them had been venturing out of the women’s wing since Jack had begun consulting with them about their needs. Rehousing and retraining had been offered to those who desired it. And some had found themselves better suited to their new circumstances than they’d assumed; Eldest Yvette was already in popular demand as a storyteller.
The feast that followed the ceremony was as sumptuous as could be managed, considering the meager winter stores were at their lowest ebb. Decorative pastries had been made with the scant remains of the flour, sugar, and dried fruits. Thanks to the hunts, there was still venison, but the whole castle was thoroughly sick of venison by then. The chefs had done their best to supplement the game meat with whatever vegetables could be foraged in the early spring. Everyone was looking forward to the coming months, when more would be in season, and the eventual harvest that would presumably proceed unthreatened by horrible monsters. Even Sir Alexandra, the hunter who could eat anything, was tired of dining on rubble and twigs.
Sam and I took full advantage of the limited variety on offer. I was nibbling on the wing of a cake shaped something like a deformed gryphon when the king and queen detached themselves from a crowd of well- and ill-wishers and made their wayover to us. This required considerable maneuvering and more than a bit of shoving from the hunters wrangling her train.
“Congratulations on your marriage, Your Majesty,” I said. “And…Your Other Majesty.”
“Hi. How’s the cake?” Jack asked, eyeing the sculptured confection with skepticism.
