He drew his blade and gently sawed through the thread.
“Thank you,” I said. “For everything. I’m grateful for your timely arrival, truly. But that being said”—I took a deep breath—“you are a group of armed men. You appear to have been roving through the forest looking for a wealthy noblewoman. I would very much like to know your intentions before we proceed any further.”
There was a moment of silence while they blinked at me, and then Hat On Ear burst out laughing so hard he had to sit on a stump.
“She thinks we want to rob her!” he managed to gasp out as the others turned their perplexed stares on him.
“Yes,” I admitted. “It’s the masks, really.” I began stitching anew, working on another deep gash. Sam’s fingers tightened on the log.
My suspicions had been eased somewhat by the gales of hysterical laughter, but the possibility remained that it was all a ploy.
“We’re not highwaymen,” Bloody Knee said. “We have no intention of robbing anyone.”
“I see.” I didn’t add that theft wasn’t my greatest worry. Abduction seemed far more likely. Saving my life would have had little point if all they wanted was jewelry, but a corpse has no value to kidnappers seeking a ransom. Or, of course, there was a chance they wanted to take me to their lair and force me to keep house for them. That would be a problem; my stepmother might believe I’d gone with them voluntarily, to avoid the marriage.
Direr possibilities existed as well. I couldn’t discount them. But the men in green had made no threats, and if I was any judge of character, they didn’t strike me as the worst sort of villain.
“We’re King Gervase’s huntsmen,” Bloody Knee told me. “Now, are you the princess or not?”
“Huntsmen,” I repeated.
“Yes.”
“So you’re out for a hunt then, I suppose?” I looked up from my stitchery and glanced around. “Without horses, hounds, or hawks.”
He hesitated only for a moment. “We were questing for the stag.”
“All six of you.” Looking for tracks was normally a task for a single person and a dog. “And isn’t that usually done before breakfast?” Overhead, the light gray clouds had dimmed to dark gray with the arrival of twilight. I turned my attention back to the task at hand. I needed to finish while I could still see what I was doing.
“Our hunting methods are unorthodox but”—he gestured toward the piles of dead spider wolves—“very effective.”
A fair point. I nodded in acknowledgment. “And are the masks also part of your unorthodox approach?”
“Masks,” said Detachable Leg smoothly, “are the latest fashion at the court of Tailliz.”
“Really. So before I arrive, should I borrow one from you, so I can fit in?”
“It’s the latest court fashion we are trying to start,” he amended. “It’ll catch on eventually.”
“This is beside the point,” Bloody Knee said. “We don’t have to explain ourselves to you. We are duly appointed officials of the king. So, I will ask one final time—are you the princess?”
They were hiding something, that much was obvious. Their story was so full of holes that a real hunting party could have ridden straight through it. Which meant I had to decide whether I would be better served by telling the truth or by matching their lies with one of my own.
There is a school of thought that says telling the truth isalways the best policy. According to this doctrine, liars inevitably end up tangled in their own web of falsehood and soon enough suffer a suitably ironic punishment. Cry wolf, and you will be devoured, with none coming to your aid; cut off your toes to change your foot size, and all you’ll get is a painful limp and a blood-filled glass slipper. Which can’t, incidentally, have been pleasant for the next person to try iton.
The truth-tellers, meanwhile, will be seen for the pure souls they are and always come out on top in the end. They’ll win by virtue of their virtue, so to speak.
This is complete nonsense. The next time a giant asks whether you are a delicious, edible mortal woman or some kind of oddly shaped rock formation, try giving the first answer and see what happens. So my judgment was that until I had more information about my current situation, deception was the better part of valor.
I finished off a final stitch and patted Sam on an unwounded patch of shoulder. “There. That should do for now.” He sighed in relief and gave me a crooked, if pained, smile.
I turned to Bloody Knee.
“If I am a princess,” I said, “then where is my retinue? My servants? My guards? Where is my carriage?”
The masked men had already made half my argument for me. They’d noticed I was out alone and had little besides the sturdy clothes I’d been wearing for the journey, now somewhat torn by the claws of monsters. Nothing but scattered teeth remained of my traveling companions, and there’d been no sign of my gowns and jewels and squirrel-selected shiny shoes in the remains of the enchanted carriage; presumably, they were pumpkin innards now. Never, ever leave anything important inside a dying spell.
“For that matter,” I continued, “if I were the mighty sorceress you’re apparently expecting, then why would I need to be rescued from a few, um…” I glanced over at the tangle of monstrous corpses. “What were those, anyway?”
