Princess of the Silver Woods (Twelve Dancing Princesses)
Read Princess of the Silver Woods (Twelve Dancing Princesses) Online
Authors: Jessica Day George
Jessica Day George
For Amy Jameson, friend and agent
“You promised us brides!”
“I grow weary of your whining, Kestilan,” said the King Under Stone. The king, who had once been Rionin, third-born son of Wolfram von Aue, gripped the arms of his throne, and the black stone made a thin cracking noise.
“Do you see?” Kestilan pointed to the throne, though no fracture was visible. “Our home crumbles around us! Something must be done!”
“Do you think I merely sit here night after night and gloat over my kingdom?” The King Under Stone’s chill voice would have done their father proud. “I am not blind.” The king gestured at the ballroom with a broad sweep of his long arm.
The marble floor had lost its sheen and there were shallow dips worn into it from a hundred thousand dances. The gilt was peeling from the mirror frames, and the velvet upholstery had faded from black and purple to gray and lavender.
Blathen murmured something, and the king’s head turned sharply. “What was that, dear brother?”
At first Blathen looked as though he would demur, but then he squared his shoulders. “Our father ruled for centuries, yet the palace was ever new,” he said again.
The King Under Stone nodded. “Very true. And you think that it decays now because I am not as strong as our father.”
None of his brothers moved or spoke, afraid to agree or disagree with this statement. Whatever his strength in comparison to their father’s, the new king could still kill any of them as easily as breathe.
The King Under Stone got to his feet, smiling as his brothers moved away. They stepped down off the dais, making him appear taller though they were all the same height. He took the opportunity to loom over them, and his smile became even more terrifying.
“I assure you this is not the case,” he said. “The truth of the matter is that the Kingdom Under Stone is dying because it was meant to contain our father, and our father is gone.”
“So we can leave?” Tirolian’s voice was rich with relief.
The king paused for a while, mulling over how best to tell his remaining brothers the news. “Not yet,” he admitted. “The kingdom is dying,” he went on at last. “Dying with us trapped inside. Like a birdcage smashed beneath a stone. The door to the cage is still locked and there is no way for us to fly out.” His smile became even more terrifying as he saw his words sink in.
“Then what do we do?” Blathen folded his arms across his chest. “I am not going to sit here and let the stone crush me.”
“Of course not,” the king said. “We need only to collect a few things to enable our escape.”
“And what do we need?” Blathen was still frowning, not convinced that his older brother had the answer.
“Just what Kestilan has asked for,” the King Under Stone said, sitting back on his throne. “Just what our father wanted for us: brides.
“Beautiful brides who can walk in the sun.”
TravelerPetunia was knitting some fingerless gloves to match her new red velvet cloak when the Wolves of the Westfalian Woods attacked. She dropped one of her needles when she heard the first gunshot, and though she could clearly see the silver needle rolling on the floor of the coach, she didn’t stoop to pick it up. The bandits had surrounded them so quickly and so silently that she froze at the sound of the coachman’s rifle and the sudden halt.
“Put the gun down, my good man,” called out one of the wolves. “All we ask is your coin and any jewels, and you can be on your way.”
Sitting across from her, Petunia’s maid, Maria, began to cry.
Petunia pushed back the hood of her cloak, intrigued. No one had ever told her that the Wolves of the Westfalian Woods were young … but the voice clearly belonged to someone near her own age. An educated someone near her own age, unless she was mistaken. She retrieved her knitting needle and
then tucked all four needles and the yarn into the basket on the seat beside her, pulling out her pistol as she did so. She checked the bullets, then cocked the weapon.
“Oh, Your Highness!” Maria was scandalized, but she had the good sense to whisper, at least. “Put it away!”
“They aren’t taking
my
jewelry,” Petunia said.
She owned only a few pieces—as the youngest of twelve princesses, she was hardly dripping diamonds and pearls. But what little she had was in a cedar jewelry case under Maria’s seat.
“They are not getting my mother’s ruby earrings,” she said. “Nor the necklace that Papa gave me for my sixteenth birthday. I’ve only gotten to wear it twice.”
It had a small ruby in the center of a petunia-shaped pendant, and the chain was made to look like petunia leaves. She would shoot anyone who tried to take it. She might regret shooting them later, but she would still shoot.
Hearing a sound just outside one of the coach windows, Petunia trained her pistol on it and braced her wrist with her other hand. She could see figures outside the coach—masked figures in the trees on either side of the road—but none clear enough to shoot in the twilight.
Then a face, the upper half covered by a leather mask made to look like a wolf’s head, poked through the coach window. Petunia carefully adjusted her aim so that the pistol was pointing at the bandit’s left eye.
“Give us your—Here now! Put that thing away!”
It was the one with the young voice, who sounded as if he were in charge. Petunia didn’t move.
“Now, Your Ladyship,” the bandit began. “No one will get hurt if you just give me your jewels and your money.”
“Correction,” Petunia replied. “No one will get hurt if you crawl back to your filthy den and leave us be. If you try to take my jewels, however, you will be very, very dead.”
“She means it,” Maria said, and Petunia was decidedly irritated by the dismay in her maid’s voice. “They can all shoot like men. A tragedy waiting to happen, I’ve always said.”
“Who can all shoot like men?” The bandit peered into the coach to see if there was anyone else inside.
“The princesses,” Maria said, before Petunia could shush her.
Petunia closed her eyes in despair, but only for a moment. She quickly refocused on the bandit, making sure that her aim was still true. She did not want the Wolves of the Westfalian Woods to know she was a princess. They would assume that she was loaded with gold and jewels, and they would not let her go until they had searched every inch of the coach.
“The princesses taught me how to shoot, when I was at court,” Petunia said hastily. “Though I am only the daughter of a lowly earl.”
“Only a lowly earl’s daughter, is it?” the bandit snarled. “What a pity.”
Petunia refused to be fazed by the bandit’s sudden anger.
He was no doubt hoping for better quarry, but that was hardly her fault. She inched the pistol forward until it was almost touching his nose.
“I can hardly miss from this distance,” she told him coldly. “Call off your men!”
The bandit had gray eyes, as gray as the dyed leather of his mask, which gave him a cold, wintry look. Petunia almost made a remark that wolves were supposed to have yellow eyes, but she didn’t think he would find it particularly amusing. It was more something Poppy would do, anyway. She concentrated instead on her hands, which were about to start shaking from the strain of holding the pistol still for so long.
Finally the bandit stepped back. “Come now, lads, it seems that this young lady is only the daughter of a lowly earl,” he called.
There were hoots of derision from the rest of the bandits.
“She can hardly have anything worth stealing, now can she?” their leader continued in his bitter, amused voice.
“Is she pretty?” asked one extremely large man, stepping into Petunia’s line of sight.
She promptly transferred her aim to him.
“Not bad,” countered the leader. “For an
earl
’s daughter.”
“Faugh!” There was the sound of spitting. “The only earl I’ve ever known was uglier than the backside of a donkey!”
The bandits seemed to find this the height of hilarity.
“Drive on, drive on,” Petunia chanted under her breath.“Why won’t you just drive on?”
None of the bandits that she could see were paying
attention to their coach anymore. Was the coachman having the vapors? Maria appeared to be doing so, but Petunia couldn’t spare her much attention. Petunia released the hammer of her pistol and rapped on the roof of the coach with the butt, signaling for the driver to pick up the reins and
move
.
The coach moved. Not, however, in quite the way Petunia had in mind.
The noise of her pistol on the roof apparently scared the guard sitting on top of the coach, and he fired his rifle at one of the bandits. The bandit fired back, startling the horses. They bolted, dragging the coach behind them. There were shouts, and more shots fired, and the sudden lurching motion of the coach threw Maria off her seat and into Petunia’s lap. Petunia dropped her pistol, and her knitting basket fell to the floor, the contents spilling out and entangling her and Maria in red wool.
There was a scream from the roof of the coach, and then a thud on the road as the guard fell off. Maria, still on the floor of the coach, was now praying loudly.