The eldest Yvette cleared her throat and resumed. “The queen had declared that anyone who wished to woo her daughter must first complete an impossible task or else perish. But a prince had heard tales of the maiden’s great beauty and set off to win her hand in spite of the danger. One day, as he was riding to the sorceress-queen’s lands, he saw what he thought was an enormous haystack. When he got closer, he realized it was aman with a stomach the size of a small mountain, who had lain down there to rest. ‘Take me into your service!’ the man importuned the traveler. ‘For whenever I take a deep breath, I become three thousand times larger than this.’ The prince thought he could make use of such a miraculous talent and agreed to take the man on. After a while, the two of them came upon a fellow who had covered his eyes with a bandage. ‘I can never remove my blindfold,’ he repined, ‘for my gaze is so devastating that whatever I look at shatters into pieces….’ ”
I found my attention drifting; the tale sounded a great deal like one I’d heard before. Although there was little enough for my wayward attention to land on. There wasn’t much to do in the quarters set aside for women, other than sew and listen to stories.
My cunning disguise had turned out to be the worst possible choice. A full week after my arrival at the castle, I had absolutely nothing to show for it. My investigation into who might be trying to murder me had made no progress. I’d scarcely seen Gervase and had no notion of whether I should be pleased or dissatisfied to be his fiancée. For that matter, I hadn’t made much headway with the wedding plans that were my purported reason for coming.
The problem should have struck me earlier. I hadn’t found it odd that the hunters were all men; identical duplicates, after all, are required to be identical. But the same had been true of the guards at the gatehouse and the nobles in the Great Hall—all men. If nothing else, the lion’s sneering disdain at my presence might have given me a hint.
Say what you would about my stepmother—and I always did—she was not of the opinion that women were only fit for childbearing and child-rearing. She might be happy to trade away a daughter like a rug, but prior to the trade, she wanted that daughter put to the best possible use in her service. I had traveled enough on her various quests, however, to havediscovered there were many countries where this was not the case. Pawn that I might have been in Skalla, there were places where I wouldn’t be considered a playable piece at all. And Tailliz, it appeared, numbered among them.
The burden here seemed to fall most on unwed noblewomen of marriageable age. In other words, precisely the guise I had chosen. Had I announced myself upon arrival and wed Gervase, I would have had the run of the castle along with the duties and privileges of a queen. Had I claimed to be a humble goosegirl seeking a flock of waterfowl to tend, I would have had more freedom to come and go as I pleased. But the traditions of Tailliz dictated that noblewomen be cloistered behind stout walls, rarely seen until they emerged for an arranged marriage.
The reasons for this remained obscure to me, although apparently they were detailed in the lion’s book. I had failed to obtain a copy; few of the women knew how to read, so books were not kept in their quarters. And my questions on the subject received contradictory answers when they weren’t contemptuously dismissed. I was left unsure whether it was presumed the women would be assaulted by ruffians, infected with disease, or driven to fornicate like bunnies the moment they were let out of doors. Perhaps all three at once.
My attitude toward Tailliz, which had not been optimistic to begin with, became darker with each passing day. I was offended not only by the treatment of women but also by the blatant waste of space during a national emergency. While the women’s wing was crowded—noble families from every part of Tailliz had lingered in the capital after Gervase’s coronation, as keen as anyone else to seek the safety of the castle walls—the rooms weren’t so packed that they couldn’t have sheltered a few of the villagers who’d been sleeping outdoors.
In the mornings, the inmates of the women’s wing were allowed to take the air on a wide balcony, hidden from the masses in the courtyard by a filigreed wooden screen. We peeredthrough cutouts shaped like flowers and diamonds to watch the daily hunting party set forth. Cheers erupted from the crowd as the king, his lion, and his band of masked hunters sallied through the gates, accompanied by a din of clattering horseshoes and baying dogs. I tried to pick out Sam from among their ranks; I was fairly certain I could tell which one he was, although I wasn’t sure what made him stand out. Perhaps it was his posture. Did he, I wondered, ever think aboutme?
“I’m surprised there are any hunts,” I’d remarked to Angelique on the first day. “Aren’t they concerned about being ripped apart by the horrors in the forest?”
The young blonde next to Angelique—Yvette, I later learned she was called; I soon discovered most of the ladies were named Yvette, along with a sprinkling of Yvonnes—gave me a glare so baleful that if she’d had a shred of magic in her body, it would have flayed my skin off. Angelique merely smiled.
“They never go the same way twice,” she told me. “No one can predict which route they’ll take through the woods.”
Jack’s strategy of straying from the known paths was being put to heavy use, it seemed. “Does it work?”
“It’s been weeks since the last attack on a hunting party. Well,” she added, “at least until the one that beset you.”
“I wouldn’t think that makes it safe enough to risk the king.”
The smile faded from her lips. “My brother can be brave to the point of foolishness. If the hunts must take place, then he insists upon joining them.”
I was about to ask why the hunts had to take place at all, but the answer occurred to me before I opened my mouth. With the farmers huddled within the castle walls, the daily hunts were likely one of the few regular sources of food remaining. The animals the villagers had brought with them couldn’t possibly feed everyone. But a single stag could provide a hundred meals and a wild boar almost as many. The king and his huntsmen were risking their safety to make sure no one starved.
After that morning, I scarcely saw Angelique. In the absence of a queen, she had been given special dispensation as the king’s sister to leave the women’s quarters and fulfill the role. Her debilitating headaches kept her confined in her chambers the rest of the time. And I, in the meanwhile, spent my days finding out what unmarried upper-class women in Tailliz did with their lives:
Sit.
Spin.
They spent most of the day assembled in the largest room in the women’s wing, a circular chamber with a great stone hearth, crouched over spinning wheels or needle and thread. To make the time pass more quickly, they told stories like the one Eldest Yvette was sharing now. She was the most frequent storyteller and had been granted permanent possession of the most desirable seat, next to the fire. I had gathered she was the king’s great-aunt, and I wondered if the other Yvettes had been named in her honor.
It shocked me that so many of the ladies took the dire, deadly risk of spinning thread so cavalierly, endangering their very lives for the sake of clothing, bedding, and tapestries. But I supposed if the king and his huntsmen were going to throw themselves in the path of horrible monsters, the ladies of the court felt they could do no less. And it was, of course, as necessary a task as gathering food. I came from a realm where clothing was fashioned by other means, and my travels abroad had been more concerned with magical quests than textiles. It had never occurred to me that in a place where sorcery was uncommon, enormous daily energy had to be expended in order to prevent an outbreak of mass nudity.
However much I admired their bravery, I couldn’t bring myself to join them. The first few days, I had the excuse of my sprained arm. After that, I insisted, I needed to repair the slashes the spider wolves had left in my beloved red cloak. But when that was done with, they tried to sit me in front of a spinningwheel, and I flatly refused. I was happy to embroider, sew, and knit, especially as there was little else to occupy my time. Pricked fingers, I could live with. But some lines I wouldn’t cross, not with the habits of a lifetime warning me off.
“The princess was convinced her new husband was a swineherd,” Eldest Yvette recited, her story coming to its end, “and tended the pigs with him for a week, until she thought she could stand it no more. But one day while he was out, a pair of strangers came to the farm. ‘Come,’ they urged, ‘we will take you to your husband.’ They led her to a palace where the prince stood in wait, dressed as befit his station. She did not recognize him until he kissed her. ‘I had to endure much to be with you,’ he admonished her, ‘and now you have likewise endured much to be with me.’ And they lived happily ever after.”
The ladies around me murmured their appreciation. Personally, I thought the prince had behaved like an ass. Although admittedly the princess had tried to set him on fire earlier on in the tale, so forcing her to feed hogs for a week might not have been the worst punishment imaginable. I had my doubts about their future happiness together.
During the chatter that followed the storytelling, I turned to the Yvette to my right. “I was wondering,” I said, “if you might be able to help me with something.”
Righthand Yvette sucked her cheeks in as if she were being forced to chew on a lemon. “Oh?” Her gaze remained locked on her whirring spinning wheel. My carefully schooled expression, friendly, open, and ingratiating, was completely wasted.
I forged ahead nonetheless. “I find myself a bit lost in the politics of Tailliz,” I confessed. “When my lady arrives, I hardly know what to tell her. Does the king—”
“I know nothing of such matters,” she said. “You must make your inquiries elsewhere.”
“Attend to your sewing,” said the Yvonne to my left, a tall, imperious woman. “Smaller stitches. Don’t be sloppy.”
