Whispered Magics (4 page)

“Anything could happen,” I said, thinking of all the stories
I’d read—and all the ones I hoped to act out some day, on the stage.

“She might even start looking for it,” Nikki said, nodding
slowly.

“So we’re all in favor?” I asked.

Lissa smiled, making a graceful dancer’s bow, and Nikki
smacked her hands together. “Do it, Margo.”

I raised the talisman, the other two reached up to touch it as
well, and I said, “We wish Pat would see magic.”

Then we turned to face Pat, not knowing what—if anything—to
expect.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then Pat’s head came up, and she looked at us. It was a long
look, an odd look, as if she saw something else besides us. I felt a weird
tingling in my bones, and around the edges of my vision light flickered, like
tiny stars, but I didn’t dare move. Turn my head, even.

For a long time we all just stood there, and then Pat got up.

And she smiled.

It wasn’t a big grin, like Nikki’s best, or a giggly smile,
like Lissa when she’s feeling silly. It was a little one, but it glowed in her
eyes and her cheeks and her forehead—it made her all bright.

She picked up her books and came down the hill, still smiling.

I looked down at my empty hands—the talisman had disappeared.
But it didn’t matter, I realized as I stooped to pick up my backpack. It didn’t
matter because we’d each gotten a gift after all. We’d given Pat her glass
slipper, and the look in her face gave it right back again.

“C’mon,” I said, laughing as I looked at the others. “Let’s
go, or we’ll be late for the ball.”

Kimet opened her eyes. Her dream vanished in the strong
morning light slanting through the row of tiny attic windows. It was so cozy in
her warm nest of blankets with the sun on her cheek—

The sun! She threw off her blankets and reached for her
livery.

It was the first time she had ever woken up to sunlight in the
dismal attic where the pages slept. Her shoulders hunched, braced against the
anticipated sting of Steward Greb’s stick as she yanked her tunic straight and
fumbled her sash into place.

She dashed out of her cloth-hung cubicle, glanced into the
sleeping spaces directly opposite hers, and stopped when she realized that she
was not alone. Blanket-covered bumps in the three she could peer into meant at
least three of the other pages stuck on extra duty late the night before, when
the Queen decided to have a midnight supper, were still asleep. Such a thing
had never happened before.

“Sun’s up!” she cried, not wanting anyone else getting into
trouble.

Tousle-haired girls popped their faces out of the cubicles,
and heavy eyes widened to round-eyed surprise and dismay when they saw one
another.

“It’s late!”

“Why weren’t we called, Kimet?”

“Is this a Greb trick, Kimet?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a low voice, peering fearfully
down the ladder. “But I do know I was supposed to be on duty in the Queen’s
chamber at sunup.”

At the word
Queen,
all the faces blanched. Kimet scrambled down the ladder, leaving shrill,
anxious voices behind her, everyone asking questions that no one listened to.

She hesitated at the narrow door used by the servants. This
route was long, dark, and often crowded, and being only a page and not yet
under an order, she’d have to give way to everyone else pushing slow carts of
dishes or bed-linens, dashing with royal messages, or bringing up silver trays
with steaming food from the kitchens.
Besides,
if the Queen’s spies see that I’m late, they’ll blab to Steward Greb.
She
tiptoed away, and up to the carved door opening onto the upper landing of the
royals’ Residence. You weren’t supposed to use that door unless you had to
deliver something directly beyond it, then you had to come right back.

It would mean a terrible beating if she were caught wandering
the royals’ halls, unless she could convince someone she had an errand. On the
other hand the royals’ hallway was less than half the length of the servants’
as it did not have to wind around and up and down and behind all the huge
rooms, and it was never crowded.

The stick if caught here, the stick if caught late—but if she
used this shortcut and wasn’t seen, she might avoid both punishments.

Yes. Worth a try.

She opened the door and sped soundlessly down the marble hall.

Usually she gazed hungrily at the age-darkened tapestries on
the walls, each time garnering some new detail of stitchery, design, color, and
longing for the day to arrive when she’d have her place restoring them. That
is, if the Queen didn’t get her way and use her daughter’s marriage to a
neighboring Prince—or the new war—as an excuse for burning them all.

On her way to the Queen’s suite, which lay all across the
entire length of the castle front, she sped by the newly-decorated corner wing
where Princess Zarja had moved just before the visit from King Orthan’s son
last winter. Last time Kimet was in this hall the door to the afternoon parlor
had been open and she’d glimpsed the Princess sitting with the other noble
girls on the terrace outside, their drawling voices carrying as they sat
decorously, eating fruit from golden bowls and making fun of the customs of the
other kingdom. The same noble girls who flattered the Princess to her face but
maligned her behind her back, overheard by the pages who were regarded as
furniture. The Princess wore a gown of crimson and gold that day, her skirt
spilling in rich silken folds around her chair. Kimet had longed to feel that
fabric, to smooth it against her cheek, and to examine the embroidery. . .

The Princess! Kimet ran faster. The pages assigned to her said
that Zarja’s temper was growing more like the Queen’s every day, particularly
since the recent declaration of war against King Orthan, whose son had spent
the entire winter here, dining and dancing and hunting and hawking. Kimet did
not want to be seen by the Princess, for Steward Greb’s beating would have to
be severe indeed. The Queen would watch to make certain of it, and the
Princess’s narrow, sour face would be right at her shoulder.

Voices echoed down a side hall. Voices and sword clanks and
the ringing ching of chain mail. She skidded to a stop under a massive
sideboard. Cowering there, she clapped her hands over her face. The laughter
and voices resolved into familiar ones: four of the guardsmen from the castle
walls.

What were they doing inside the Residence? The Queen had
forbidden the guards to enter wearing anything but livery and the other
servants’ silent wool-slippers, their weapons hidden, and decently muffled.

The voices diminished abruptly, as if the speakers had gone
into a room and shut a door. Kimet climbed out and was about to run when she
heard a muffled, gulping cry. It wasn’t very loud, but it reminded Kimet of the
way the pages sounded after one of Steward Greb’s beatings, and her guts
tightened with pangs of sympathy. She hoped it was no one she knew.

She sidled to the doorway from which the weeping had come, and
peered in to discover no page, but Princess Zarja herself. Surprised, Kimet was
about to retreat when the Princess, who was staring out the window at something
in the rose garden, sucked in her breath on a shuddering sob, then put her
hands over her face.

Kimet’s surprise sharpened into amazement, followed by a
brightly burning ember of glee. See how the royal snit liked feeling that way!

Then loud voices echoed down from the corridor round the
corner: “The Princess is not in her sleeping chambers! Find her. Now!”

“The Wizard wants a matched set, eh?” someone else said, and
this was followed by harsh laughter.

The Princess jerked around, and she and Kimet stared into one
another’s eyes for a long, painful heartbeat.

The Princess’s eyes were red from weeping, and her narrow face
was drawn, not into the usual anger or haughtiness, but terror.

The same terror to be seen in the faces of the pages when
Steward Greb loomed up, tapping his switch against his palm.

Kimet didn’t think. She just acted. This room was the smallest
of the reception chambers, with the service door on the opposite wall from the
entry way. Kimet sprang to it and pushed the catch. The door opened silently.
She beckoned to the Princess, who ran inside, stumbling over her hem, and Kimet
pulled the door shut a heartbeat before heavy boots tromped into the reception
chamber. Zarja’s breathing was harsh. She had obviously never run in her life,
and was further encumbered by her heavy, brocaded-silk dressing gown with its
voluminous, dragging skirts.

When the noise of the search diminished again, the Princess
said, “Get me away from here.”

Kimet obeyed, of course, as good pages are trained to do. She
led the Princess down the strangely empty service corridor, and at the landing,
paused and said, “Where to, Your Highness?”

“Anywhere,” the Princess snapped, though her voice shook.
“Anywhere secret. Don’t let them find me.”

Hide from the King’s guards? The Princess choked on a sob.
Kimet shook her head as she led the way up the stairs.

“Are you in trouble, Your Highness?” she asked as they started
up another flight of stairs. She could imagine the royal heralds wanting to
beat the Princess, but she couldn’t imagine them being allowed to, any more
than the royal tutors had been when the Princess was small and had thrown her
shoes, her dishes, and her toys at them. From all accounts she didn’t throw
shoes anymore, but she ignored the heralds just the same, though she was supposed
to be learning statecraft. And there was nothing they could do but smile.

“You’re not supposed to ask questions,” the Princess scolded.
That sounded more like her usual self, and though Kimet felt a stab of the old
annoyance, she found it a little reassuring. At least one thing was back to
normal. She might not like it, but she was used to it. This being allowed to
sleep in, the guard in the royal chambers, above all the distant laughter and,
close by, the Princess’s weeping—those things were frightening because they
were so strange.

They climbed in silence, stopping midway up one of the towers.
They were on a seldom-used service landing. The main rooms in this tower were
crammed with old-fashioned royal furnishings and ancient trunks. When younger,
before Steward Greb came into control, the pages had sometimes retreated there
to play during their rare free time. Kimet had always liked to sit perched on a
pile of ancient baskets next to one of the old-fashioned arrow-slit openings,
and practice her more difficult stitches on rags and scraps as she chatted with
friends.

She led the Princess into the tiny hidden room. Morning
sunlight streamed in through the two slit-windows, parallel shafts of light
painting the stone floor. As the two girls moved, dust swirled in and out of
the sun-shafts, brief-lit then dimming.

“This is disgusting,” the Princess snapped, arms crossed,
hands tightened into fists.

“It’s storage, your highness,” Kimet said.

“At least it could be clean.”

Kimet didn’t know how to answer that without earning a
beating, so she just bowed, hands folded before her the way the Queen required,
her head meekly lowered.

“Don’t just stand there, dolt! Dust something off so I can sit
down,” the Princess commanded, but her voice was still breathless, still too
high.

Kimet obeyed, using the edge of her own clothing to clear off
a place on one of the trunks. She spied a new addition to the clutter, yet
another of the ancient tapestries, this one from the formal audience chamber,
now junked in a bent roll like an old carpet.

As the Princess glanced at the dusted trunk, sniffed, and
lowered herself daintily to the very edge, Kimet lovingly lifted the tapestry
and smoothed it onto an old table.

There were only two tapestry restorers now. Both were aging,
having been appointed by the previous Queen as the present Queen hated old
tapestries, which was why the tapestries had been migrating one by one from the
public rooms to the back halls, and finally to this jumble.

The Queen had stated at Kimet’s promotion interview, “This
stitchery of yours is all very well, but I want to be rid of those dirty, ugly
things. When my daughter marries, I will have the castle walls redone in
gold-flecked velvet. Begin a new fashion. In the meantime, I require pages.
Errand runners are useful. Stitchers on old rubbish are not.”

Remembering that remark about Zarja’s marriage, Kimet looked
down at the Princess’s face and saw dried tear-tracks on her cheeks.

There was silence for a time, Kimet standing, hands folded,
watching the Princess who picked at the lacing on her gown. Finally Zarja
jerked her chin up. “You could at least get me something to eat.”

“What if someone asks after you, Your Highness?”

“You don’t know where I am. Unless it’s . . .” The Princess
bit her lip, and her shoulders hunched up sharply. “No. I don’t know whom I can
trust. I’d thought Master Elcan was a friend, and Captain
Dormar . . .”

Kimet was puzzled. She pictured Master Elcan’s bony face. The
nobles called him ugly, but he was always interesting to Kimet as he performed
little tricks to entertain the staff. “The Master Wizard? Not a friend?”

Princess Zarja sniffed again, but it wasn’t the sharp hissy
sniff of anger, it was the gulping sniff of someone on the verge of tears. She
raised her blotched face and rubbed her pointy nose. It was red from her
crying, almost as red as her eyes. “He . . . he turned my parents into statues.
In the royal garden. And Captain Dormar . . . He always bowed so low whenever
he saw me, and his guards were always so polite . . . He laughed when he saw
them. Laughed. And said, ‘They’ll make royal bird perches!’”

“Statues, your highness?” Kimet repeated, horrified.