Tuesdays at the Castle (9 page)

Khelsh gave the man a hard look. “You no like?”

“Not like it? You are talking about treason, and assassination!” Sefton clutched at the edge of the table as though it were the only thing keeping him upright.

“What were we talking about at the last meeting, or the one before?” the Emissary said with an expression of amusement that made Celie want to punch him until his smile went away. “But if you’re feeling squeamish now … guards!”

Immediately two burly Vhervhish soldiers, one of them the man whose foot Celie had stepped on earlier, came into the room. “Arrest him for treason,” the Emissary said, flicking a finger at Lord Sefton, whose fists were clenched, lips bloodless in shock.

The two men seized the Councilor and dragged him, shouting, from the room.

“We appear to have an opening on the Council,” the Emissary announced as soon as the door closed behind them. “Can anyone think of a likely candidate?” His voice was perfectly cool.

Khelsh grunted. “I want my cousin Khulm. Smart. But not so smart I must kill him, eh?” Khelsh didn’t wait for an answer. He laughed and pushed himself to his feet. “He here, wait in room. I tell him,” he said. “No others here be foolish,” he warned, wagging his finger at Lord Feen as though he were a child. Laughing again, he went out of the room and slammed the door.

Celie didn’t care what Lord Feen or the Emissary said after he left. They were traitors and cowards, and would probably sit there dithering and wringing their hands anyway. She pulled the cloak tight about her so that she wouldn’t trip, and hurried up the stairs to tell Lilah about the terrible new thing Prince Khelsh had done.

And that they might have another ally, although this one was locked in the dungeon for the time being.

Chapter

15

I
t was the next morning, almost noon, before Rolf could join them. He brought some food with him, which his sisters fell upon like wolves. While they ate he told them everything that had happened to him.

“It’s just as I thought it would be, only now the Emissary has come right out and said it to my face,” Rolf said, staring at Lilah as she folded an enormous slice of ham and crammed it into her mouth. “I’m to be their puppet: do what they say, say what they tell me, or they’ll kill me and put Khelsh on the throne.”

“Won’t they try to do that anyway?” Celie was eating an apple, taking the largest bites she could without choking. Juice ran down her chin onto her gown, and she didn’t even try to wipe it off with a napkin.

“I don’t think so—at least, not if I cooperate,” Rolf said. “The Emissary probably needs to wait until people get used to having a Vhervhish prince around. I just hope Khelsh is that patient,” he said, shaking his head skeptically.

“He won’t be,” Celie said. “He’s already replaced one member of the Council with one of his own men. He’ll keep doing it until they’re all Vhervhish.” She shuddered.

“He’s replaced someone? Who?”

Celie and Lilah told him what Celie had heard, and then Rolf told them everything else that had happened. Like the Emissary having Pogue locked up, only to find the blacksmith’s son gone an hour later.

“The Castle must have given him a way out,” Rolf assured them. “And what’s more: half the soldiers are gone. And that includes Sergeant Avery! No one will say where they went, but I’m willing to bet Pogue took them to the pass to look for our parents and Bran.”

“But how can we be sure?” Lilah asked. “What if Khelsh and the Council have done something horrible to them?”

“I really doubt it,” Rolf told her. “They’re too angry about the disappearances. They’ve questioned me several times, and everyone else from the lowliest kitchen drudge to the other members of the Council. There’s quite a to-do down there! Everyone is either terrified or offended.”

“Does everyone know, then, what Pogue and the wizards found out?” Celie stopped eating for a moment, looking at her brother with a flutter of hope in her breast.

“They do,” Rolf said, taking a deep breath and smiling at her. “They do, and that’s why I think Pogue must have gotten out all right. Even before the Emissary started to interrogate everyone about the missing guards, I heard some whispers. The maids know, and if the maids know, the whole Castle will soon know as well.”

Lilah relaxed visibly, and Celie found that her appetite came back in a rush. She tore a roll in half, smashed a piece of ham between the two pieces, and ate it in a few bites. Pogue had gotten free, people knew her parents were alive, everything would be all right.

“Where did you go after we fled the throne room?” Lilah was now eating her own apple in rather unladylike bites.

“The Council sent me to my room and locked me in,” Rolf said. Although he tried to sound unconcerned, Celie could see in her brother’s eyes that he was angry about this. “Then the Emissary came and demanded to know where I had sent the guards. And Pogue. And when I couldn’t tell him, he threatened to keep me locked in my room forever, so I told him I didn’t care, since Prince Khelsh was going to kill me as soon as he was named crown prince anyway. That made him leave in a hurry.” Rolf smiled without much humor.

“Now you know that Khelsh put his cousin on the Council, too,” Celie reminded him. “So you can bring that up, and startle him again.”

“Good point, Cel,” Rolf said.

Lilah’s brow was furrowed. “How did you get out of your room? Did he leave your door unlocked after all?”

“Of course not,” Rolf reported grimly. “I went to sleep for a little while, then when I got up I was hungry, and lo and behold there was a door in my room leading to the kitchens! And the door that used to lead to my private study now leads here.”

“What do we do now?” Lilah had finished her apple and was wiping her fingers on a napkin.

“You girls should stay up here, it’s the safest place,” Rolf said. “But I’m going back to my room.”

“I’ll keep spying for you,” Celie said. “I wonder if I could get the Castle to bring us an invisibility cloak?”

“I think you’re better off just not being heard,” Lilah said. “An invisibility cloak sounds too dangerous. You know you’d be tempted to spy on Khelsh, and he’d catch you for certain!”

“Either way, I need lots more information about Khelsh,” Rolf said. “I want to keep him off balance, and know everything he’s planning.”

“I’ll do my best,” Celie said.

“And what am I supposed to do?” Lilah was twisting her napkin around and around her hands. “Sit here studying Vhervhish?”

“Why not?” Rolf cocked his head. “You know, if we had known more about them before Khelsh came, we might have been better prepared for this.”

“You also need to keep a lookout for Pogue,” Celie said, knowing that Lilah would appreciate that duty. “Perhaps he’s almost reached Mummy and Daddy. They might come home any day now.”

“All right,” Lilah said reluctantly.

“It will be a relief to me to know that you’re safe up here,” Rolf said with uncharacteristic gentleness. “I won’t have to worry every minute that the Emissary has taken you hostage or some such.”

“What about me?” Celie put her sticky hands on her hips in indignation. “Aren’t you worried about me spying on the Council?”

“Not at all,” Rolf said. “The Castle would never let anything bad happen to you. You could jump out one of these windows and the Castle would probably conjure up a hundred feather beds to break your fall.”

“Don’t test that!” Lilah put a hand on Celie’s sleeve, but Celie didn’t want to jump out the window. She would much rather be a spy, even without an invisibility cloak. And she knew exactly whom she wanted to spy on next: Prince Lulath of Grath. He, and his small dogs, had been suspiciously quiet for the past week. She had seen him at the coronation, but he had only smiled and waved, and not once approached. Was he involved with Khelsh in some way?

But before she could get to that, Lilah had more questions. “Did anyone see you in the kitchen?”

“No, but I had to hide twice. Vhervhish guards kept coming to get some of the staff, to question them in the throne room. Cook stuffed me into the cold room where she keeps the meat.” Rolf made a sick face. “I never want to do that again!”

“How much do the servants know about what’s happening?” Lilah persisted.

“They suspect a great deal,” Rolf said. “They don’t like Khelsh, or his men, I know that for certain. Cook started to say something about ‘when’ Mother and Father return, but then we heard the soldiers clanking down the stairs, and she pushed me into the cold room.

“When she let me back out, Cook told me that they were all being questioned. And a couple of the kitchen girls whispered that they thought I was too old for a regency as they went by, but they may have just been flirting,” Rolf said, blushing.

“Probably both,” Lilah said crisply.

Celie had to admire her sister for not teasing Rolf more, considering how much Rolf teased her about Pogue.

“So, it seems that the servants aren’t happy about all this mess,” Lilah went on. “That’s good. If you see Cook again, make sure to tell her that Pogue and the guards are looking for our parents, and that the wizards at the College say they are still alive.”

“Yes, General,” Rolf said, and saluted her.

“I want to learn more about Lulath,” Celie blurted out. “Are his rooms really nice? Is he friends with Prince Khelsh?”

Her older siblings stared at her for a moment.

“Lulath!” Rolf smacked himself in the head. “I’d completely forgotten about him! Good heavens, I wonder which side Grath is on?”

“I’m sure that Lulath is on his own side,” Lilah said. “But it would be nice if he wasn’t for Vhervhine, at the very least!”

“You’d better go find out, Cel,” Rolf said. “And
I’d
better go back to my room, before the Emissary finds me missing.”

“And I’ll do a check through the spyglasses,” Lilah said.

They all three hugged, then Celie put on her cloak and demonstrated it for an admiring Rolf. She put her hands on the wall of the Tower, and whispered a plea for the Castle to open a way to Lulath’s rooms. A minute later, a small door materialized next to her, and Rolf shouted in surprise. The door was only slightly different from the one that led to the Council’s room. Celie waved to Lilah and Rolf, and headed through the door and down the narrow steps.

It didn’t take as long to get to Lulath’s rooms as it did to get to the Council’s chamber. Celie was there almost too soon, and nearly smacked her nose on the wall when she came around the last twist of the stairs. Once more there was a slit to look through, this one screened by some sort of drapery.

The Prince of Grath’s room was indeed very nice. It was almost as large as Lilah’s, with an elegantly carved door leading out to a wide balcony, a large bed on a dais, and an enormous fireplace. Through a door, Celie could see an adjoining room full of racks of clothing: the prince’s dressing room. The room had lots of windows, and some very fine tapestries on the walls. Celie was quite impressed, and a little jealous. The Castle certainly must like Lulath a great deal. Did that mean, then, that he wasn’t part of the plot against Rolf?

Impossible to tell, for the prince and his servants were not in the room, or the next room. It was quite silent: not even the dogs were there. Celie waited a little while, then turned away. So he had nice rooms, that was one thing. She decided to find Prince Khelsh’s room and compare.

“Castle,” Celie said, rubbing the wall. “I want to see Prince Khelsh’s room, please.”

A passageway opened up to her left, and she followed it for a few twists and turns, and then down a flight of stairs and around a few more corners. Celie wasn’t sure, but after consulting her atlas she thought that Prince Lulath’s room had been fairly close to the throne room. By comparison, Prince Khelsh was far away from any of the Castle’s main rooms. Not that it mattered; he seemed to walk about the Castle, getting into everyone’s business.

At last she came to his rooms, and laughed when she saw them. She was glad the cloak muffled any sounds she might make, but it didn’t matter, because Khelsh wasn’t in his room, either.

And really, Celie couldn’t blame him. His room was awful. It was about the size of one of the cells in the dungeon. There was only one plain bed, which looked barely large enough to hold someone Khelsh’s size, a chair, a rickety washstand, and a crooked desk. Through an open door, Celie could see a smaller room crammed with cots where she assumed Khelsh’s attendants slept.

Celie had never seen the Castle treat a guest so coldly before. She wondered if his room had always been this bad, or if it had just happened recently. She thought that Lilah had inspected all the guest rooms last week, and Lilah surely would have mentioned Khelsh’s rooms if she’d seen them looking like this!

“Serves you right,” Celie said to the hard bed. “The Castle may not be able to spit you out like a bit of gristle, but it can still let you know that you are not wanted here!”

Grinning broadly, she went to tell Lilah and Rolf.

Chapter

16

L
ilah was delighted when Celie told her what she’d seen. She wanted to tell Rolf immediately, but they weren’t sure where he was. That made them both fretful, worrying that Rolf was being threatened by Prince Khelsh or the Emissary. Lilah paced the room from end to end, muttering to herself, while Celie ate the last of the food that Rolf had smuggled in to them.

Then Lilah went to one of the spyglasses and looked through it, and gave a little shriek.

“What is it?” Celie leaped up. “Is it Mummy and Daddy? Are they coming?” She hurried to her sister, who was already shaking her head.

“No, but look!” Lilah tilted the spyglass so that Celie could see through it.

Celie put her eye to the brass eyepiece and then gasped. The spyglasses always showed things with such clarity that it was hard to believe they weren’t in the same room with you, and this time was no exception. But instead of showing the distant hills, the image it showed was not very far away at all.

It was Rolf. In the throne room.

The spyglass was somehow looking directly through all the layers of stone and slate and who knows what else, to show the interior of the throne room, where Rolf sat on a stool in front of the dais. He looked like a cornered animal, his arms folded defensively across his chest, his face set into a hard expression even though Celie could see from his eyes that he was becoming frightened.

“What’s happening?” Celie whispered.

“I don’t know,” Lilah whispered back. “Let me look.”

“Use one of the other spyglasses,” Celie said. “I don’t think it matters.”

“True.” Lilah went to another window and said, “I want to see Rolf, too,” and then peered through the eyepiece. “Oh, good!”

Celie assumed that her sister meant she could see Rolf, too, because what was happening in the throne room could hardly be described as “good.” Rolf was not alone, but surrounded by the Council and Prince Khelsh, all leaning in on him, talking in turn and over one another, as far as Celie could tell. Their faces were red and even more set than Rolf’s, and Celie could tell that her brother was not cooperating with whatever they wanted.

“We’ve got to find out what they’re saying!” Lilah kicked ineffectually at the stone wall, her eye still pressed to the spyglass. “Ouch!” She was only wearing velvet slippers. “Hello, there?” Lilah looked up at the ceiling. “Castle? Could you open a secret passage to the throne room, please?”

There was no response.

Celie stepped away from the spyglass. She wondered how many of her ancestors, or any of the kings and queens who had lived in the Castle before, had asked for favors and gotten them. Had any of them even tried? Histories of the kings had been written, but they were always vague when it came to the Castle itself. No books had been written on it, and no one had tried to map it, except for Celie.

She decided to try something.

The sound-masking cloak was lying over a stool. Celie crossed to it and quickly put it on, leaving the hood down and the ties open, since she didn’t need to move silently quite yet.

Lilah turned and saw her put the cloak on. “Cel, what are you doing?” She glanced around, puzzled. “There’s no secret passage now.”

“But there’s the door,” Celie said, pointing.

And there it was.

That made four times, at least, that she had needed something and the Castle had provided. She felt a little light-headed.

“I’ll bring us some more food when I’m done,” she said, trying to sound confident and failing.

“Oh, darling, no!” Lilah protested. “You can’t go down there! What if they catch you?”

“No one will catch me,” Celie said, though her voice trembled a little. She clenched her fists, willing herself to relax. “I’ll take my atlas, and I’ll be fine.” She scooped up the collection of maps from the table. She also grabbed a charcoal pencil and put it in the pocket of the cloak. “In fact, I think I’ll make some notes, if I see anything I haven’t noticed before. It will help us sneak around.”

“Let me go—” Lilah began.

“You know that I’m better at this,” Celie pointed out. “I’ll be back before you know it. And you can watch me through the spyglass,” she added.

“All right,” Lilah agreed. “But just go to the throne room and come back. We’ll worry about food later.”

“Fine,” Celie said, privately resolving to ignore that. Her stomach was already growling again.

She went down the narrow steps with a great deal of trepidation that she hid as best she could from Lilah, keeping her shoulders square and her pace steady. Once through the door and into the Castle proper, however, it became even harder as she realized that she would have to maintain her air of false casualness all the way to the throne room.

Well, beyond it, actually. What Celie was aiming for was the servants’ passageway that ran from the kitchen and the other serving areas to the back of the throne room. She was sure that she could either hear well enough through the keyhole, or even open the door a crack without anyone noticing. The door itself was hidden behind an arras.

The Spyglass Tower had been conveniently close to the throne room, so she passed almost no one on her way, just a pair of maids who bobbed their heads and walked on by as though nothing unusual had ever happened at the Castle, and someone she thought vaguely might be Grathian. He, too, bobbed, but with a broad smile as though he had never been as delighted to see anyone as her. She nodded and speeded up just a little.

Soon enough she was going down a long passage that led to the linen storerooms and the ironing room. She turned left, smiled at a maid carrying a stack of freshly laundered sheets, and then found herself at one of the doors into the throne room passage. She noticed that the ironing room wasn’t on her atlas, and made a mental note to add it later. Then she ducked into the passage, following it until it ended at a big, brass-bound door.

Celie pressed her ear to the door, but could hear nothing. Her heart in her throat, she slowly lifted the latch and opened the door just wide enough to slide one hand through and keep it from shutting with a bang if a draft caught it. She couldn’t see anything, of course, but now she could hear well enough.

“… reasonable,” someone was saying. Celie thought it was the Emissary, and felt herself stiffen just a little. “This is the only possible option.”

“To make a foreign prince my heir?” Rolf sounded tired, as though he had said it over and over. “Why not one of my sisters, or one of our own Sleynth nobles?”

“They just don’t have the experience,” the Emissary said.

“Prince Khelsh has never ruled a nation, either,” Rolf said. “Besides, he barely speaks Sleynth and he hardly knows his way around the Castle, let alone the country.”

“It’s merely a precaution,” Lord Feen said. “Your Majesty is very young; Prince Khelsh will have ample time to learn our language and our ways.”

“I’ll be getting married in a few years,” said Rolf in a tone that squeezed Celie’s heart. “I’ll have heirs of my own … probably before this appallingly lengthy regency is through! This seems entirely unnecessary—”

“Sign paper,” Prince Khelsh barked. “Sign now! No more talk!”

“Let me read it first,” Rolf said in a small voice.

There was some rustling, and then silence for a time. Celie wished that she could whisper to Rolf, and if he’d been sitting on the throne, she might have been able to. She wanted to tell Rolf that Khelsh’s rooms were awful, to reassure him that even the Castle would not stand for Khelsh taking over. As it was, she merely tried to send her brother thoughts of love and strength while he faced the horrible Khelsh and his horrible Council lackeys.

“I want to make some changes,” Rolf said.

“No!” Khelsh roared with indignation. “Sign, fool boy!”

“Very well,” Rolf said, anger creeping into his voice. “But I want the paper to say that you are only my heir until I marry and beget an heir of my own.” There was a crackle of paper. “According to this, even if I had ten children, you would still be my heir, and I refuse to sign under those terms.”

“Perhaps Your Majesty needs to go to your room, like the petulant child that you are, until you learn some sense,” the Emissary said.

“Perhaps,” Rolf said lightly.

There was the sound of footsteps receding, and a few of the Councilors sputtering in rage. The door to the throne room closed with a definite bang, and Celie smiled, imagining Rolf stalking out of the room with his head high.

There was some scuffling as the Councilors dithered and Khelsh erupted into angry Vhervhish. He was soothed by the Emissary in that same language, and then at last they shuffled out and it was quiet. Celie waited a minute more, and then she quietly closed the door and followed the passage all the way to its opposite end, which opened into the kitchen.

Where she nearly ran straight into the back of Prince Lulath of Grath.

She made a small
eep
noise, and tried to retreat into the passageway before anyone saw her. But one of the maids, who had been listening to whatever Lulath had been saying, looked at her, causing Lulath to turn around and greet her with wide eyes and an even wider smile.

“Why, Princess Cecelia! The very one of whom I seek!”