Sleeping Beauty fhk-5 Read online

  The astonishment came when they all started talking about the riddles and the answers, and compared what they could remember of the riddle test with each other. Because it appeared that no one recalled the same riddles.

  No one.

  "I don't believe it. Are you sure you don't remember that one?" Siegfried asked a particularly satisfied Prince Roderick, who was sure that he had done very, very well. The Prince shook his head.

  "And you don't remember the wizard and the staircase?" the Prince countered. "I thought it was as morbid as your coffin one."

  "I know I would have if I'd seen it, wretched murdering wizards..." Siegfried said, feeling more than a little confused now.

  He wasn't the only one. No one was out in the garden tonight. The puzzle just grew and grew, as all thirty-one men conferred and cross-checked, and finally came up with the only possible solution there could be.

  Each of them had answered an entirely different set of riddles. Impossible as it seemed, somehow thirty-one different tests had been assembled and presented to them.

  As they separated, some to go straight to bed, some to drink, some to go straight up in despair and pack, Leopold and Siegfried elected to take the walk out to the King's Arms. They were such regulars there now that they had a preferred table, and the serving boy brought them their drinks before they even sat down. Everyone else that was a regular there knew they were Princes, and no one troubled them about it. Leopold said wistfully that it was just like that inhis favorite tavern, back before he'd left his home. Since in Drachenthal, there were no such things as inns and taverns, Siegfried had merely nodded.

  "That must have taken an immense amount of doing, making up all those riddle lists," Siegfried said, and shook his head. "I don't know how they did it. I don't know how I managed to get through it. That was one of the hardest things I've ever done, and I think if I had known in advance what we were going to do, I'd have packed up and left before trying. My brain feels worse than when Norbert dented my helm."

  "Well, if nothing else would have convinced me that the Queen is the Godmother, this did. The only way you could do something like that is by magic. There weren't enough clerks in the entire Palace to have found and written up that many lists of riddles and never repeat one." Leopold drained his beer and signaled for another, then reached for a handful of the salted, toasted grain in a bowl parked between them. "And although no one said this out loud, I think we all know that the only reason to do it that way is to make sure no one cheated."

  Siegfried chuckled at the idea of any one of the Princes knowing the runic alphabet in which the language of Drachenthal was written, much less the language itself. "I haven't seen that much of my own script written out at one time, ever. I think that test was bigger than every book in all of Drachenthal."

  Leopold smirked at that; the very few times he'd seen Siegfried write something down, he hadn't been able to make head nor tail of how you were supposed to hold the paper, and never mind what was written on it.

  "I supposed that eventually there would be a riddle contest, but I thought it would be just one fiendishly difficult riddle." Siegfried sighed. "And I thought it was going to be recited to us. I never thought I would spend a whole day answering puzzle after puzzle after puzzle." He rubbed his head. "Well, that's over. We might not have proved we're scholars, but we proved we aren't fools, either."

  "I wonder how many of us were knocked out." Leopold sighed. "I saw quite a few long faces, and I think there are going to be more empty guest rooms tomorrow. Too much to hope one of them is Desmond."

  Siegfried shook his head. "Not unless someone stole his paper and substituted another. He's smarter than he has any right to be."

  "He's certainly smarter than I am," Leopold grumbled. "I couldn't get him to play cards with me."

  The next day, there were, indeed, a few new empty guest rooms in the Palace, and there was no announcement of the next contest. It was one of those hot summer days that threatened rain without actually producing it, making people restless and listless at the same time.

  Leopold managed to find himself a card game at last, and proceeded to fleece some of the other Princes.

  At loose ends, Siegfried decided that, although he and Leopold were helping each other as much as they could within the competitions, there was nothing binding them to do so outside of the competitions. If there was any way he could manage to bring himself to the Princess's attention, well — it might not help him in the contests, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.

  And he decided that Desmond was entirely too good at getting and holding the Princess's attention during the evening. It was time to do something for himself, without Leopold.

  He resolved to get her attention in a different way, and maybe a way Desmond wouldn't think of. As always, when he needed to think something out, he took a long, solitary walk. By this time, he knew the Palace as well as any of the servants did, and there were plenty of places where most people didn't go.

  He just followed the lack of noise while he walked.

  And after due consideration, guided in no small measure by the fact that, while he had been raised by aunts, those aunts had given him most of his early training in fighting, he thought he had a good idea. And when Siegfried spotted the Princess alone except for her guards in an obscure hallway, he decided he was going to see if he couldn't give her something new to think about, as well.

  The only reason he was here was because this hall was on the most shaded side of the Palace, for it led to a portrait gallery, and portraits were notorious for fading in sunlight. That meant it was cool — a good place for pacing. She was passing by the stairs going up to the gallery. He wasn't at all sure why she was there, but he was going to take advantage of it.

  He bounded down the stairs and intercepted her, bowing comically, since he knew he couldn't do so gracefully. Her two guards first looked startled, then relaxed when they saw who it was. "Princess Rosamund!" he exclaimed. "Are you busy?"

  She gave him an odd look and a raised eyebrow at his casual manner. Desmond was always formal, so Siegfried had decided to be the opposite. "I'm always busy," she replied warily. "Do you need something?"

  "Some of your time." He looked the guards over for a moment. Stout fellows, yes, but from the way they stood — they'd had nothing but standard training. And they were woefully relaxed in his presence. That was a mistake. "Well let me — "

  Just as he had been taught, he went from an unthreatening stance to a blur of action in the blink of an eye. The only thing that slowed him down was knowing that he didn't want to do anything permanent to either of these boys. He could, all too easily, leave them with broken bones or worse if he wasn't careful. A sweep of the leg knocked the feet of the one nearest him right out from under him so that he fell heavily to the ground, and a follow-up kick to the chin took him out.

  " — show you — "

  He grabbed the first one's pike — a stupid weapon in a hallway! — and rushed the second, pinning his arms to the wall with it at the elbows. Now he couldn't reach Siegfried or his weapons. Bar-fighting tactics, yes, but also the no-moves-barred style of his own people.

  " — what I mean."

  He felt the Princess behind him, and wondered if she was staring at him in shock.

  "Now if this'd been a real attack on you, this lad would've been laid on the ground, too. Hit to his head with my forehead, then a knee to the stomach and then a kick to the groin, he'd be on the floor and you'd be unprotected." He stared into the stunned and angry eyes of his victim, and tried to convey that he was rather sorry he'd done this but also not at all sorry, because these fellows were supposed to be protecting Rosamund, not making themselves victims.

  "Not quite unprotected, I think," came the cold reply right behind him, and he felt the prick of a knife at his kidneys. He grinned.

  "Good!" he said. Then he snaked his arm around, grabbed the side of her hand and twisted. The knife fell to the floor and she gasped a little, though he ha
d tried to be careful. "I'm fair glad that you know to defend yourself. But I want to teach you how to be better."

  He let go of her and her Guardsman at the same time, and jumped back out of immediate range of a punch or a weapon. The man instantly started to draw his sword, but Rosamund stopped him with an outstretched hand.

  "No," she said. "I don't think Siegfried had any intentions of doing anything other than giving us a very pointed lesson. If he'd meant any mischief, you two would be dead, and I would be dead or on a horse by now." She massaged her wrist gingerly. "You have a strange way of trying to impress a woman, Prince Siegfried."

  He shrugged. "I'm not trying to impress you." Then he grinned sheepishly. "Or — all right, I am trying to impress you, but I'm not trying to impress you like the others are. I wanted to make sure you could see that I know what I'm doing, and that you and these good fellows aren't really prepared to deal with a nasty scoundrel with no compunctions about anything. We both know it's not going to do me any good if something happens to you before this contest is over. So can I show you some low fighting tricks that a Captain of the Guard won't teach you?" He glanced at the red-faced Guardsman, and the one on the ground, who was starting to sit up, shaking his head and feeling his chin. "All three of you?"

  The Princess eyed him for a moment, giving him the first really measuring look that he had gotten from her, then nodded. "All right. You may. I have a bit of time that I can spare, and it is clear it will be time well invested. Let me go and change, and I will send someone for you here."

  He waited patiently, and in what he had come to think was a remarkably short period of time for a woman, a servant came to fetch him. The servant brought him to a room he recognized as a wealthy man's toy, a place indoors meant to practice sword work. Only a very, very wealthy person could afford a room with absolutely nothing in it but a pile of thick pads in one corner. Only the amazingly wealthy could afford the walls of mirrors. Or the multicandled things that lowered down from the ceiling to shed an even light at night. The Princess was waiting for him, with four guards this time; she was very sensibly dressed in buff-colored breeches and a linen tunic, a pair of sturdy boots, and with her hair braided up and pinned to her head.

  The surprise was that the Godmother, in her guise of the Queen, was also there. She looked shockingly out of place in this very purposed room, in her elaborate black gown of the finest of silk and knitted lace. He grinned, and bowed. He decided on the spur of the moment that now was the time to let her know what he knew. He walked up to her, where she stood apart from the rest. "Hello, Godmother," he said cheerfully, in a voice too low to carry to the guards. She probably did not want them to know what she was, and she wouldn't thank him for letting the secret out of the bag.

  The woman's eyes widened, but she gave no other indication that he had surprised her. Instead, she granted him a slow smile. Good. She wasn't angry. It wasn't wise to anger a Godmother. Anyone who could casually distribute cursed objects the way she had was someone he did not want to cross.

  "And if I say that you are smarter than you look?"

  "I'll thank you for it. Do you need any lessons?" he asked, with an inviting tilt of the head.

  "Not really. I have magic." She flexed her fingers, and little crackles of lightning ran across the back of her knuckles. "But I am very interested in what you can show Rosa."

  He nodded, and becoming all business, he turned back to face the waiting young woman and her entourage. "Then let us begin with the most common way someone is likely to attack the Princess. When she is alone, because she is in a great hurry, and in a passage she thinks is safe."

  Rosa was not, and never had been, what anyone would consider fragile. She had gotten her share of bruises learning to handle sheep, she had fallen from jumping horses, she had gotten burns learning to cook over a hearth fire. But today she had learned that she was not nearly as hardy as she had thought that she was, and rather than making her feel frustrated, angry or afraid, the realization filled her with elation, because it meant that Siegfried was not holding back with her. He respected her enough and, for whatever selfish or unselfish reasons, wanted to see she was good enough to protect herself. If teaching her that meant that she got hurt, well, that was the cost of knowledge. She had known all her life that nothing in life came without a cost. She would far rather have a bruise now than face the Huntsman again and be unable to stop him or run from him.

  One thing was certain. If the Huntsman ever attacked her the same way that he attacked her before, he was definitely going to have a broken instep, probably would have the most painful goolies in the history of the Kingdom and might even be choking on a broken windpipe, for those were the three moves that Siegfried had taught her to master today. They were shockingly simple. It had never occurred to her that simply smashing her foot down on his instep would break every bone in it — but he proved it by showing her how the same blow would break a thick bit of board, and foot bones were ever so much more delicate.

  "If you're wearing a shoe or a boot with a heel to it, all the better," he'd added. "Like a riding boot. Concentrates all the force on a smaller place. And you might not think it, but I can tell you, there's only one pain that's worse than a broken foot,"

  Then he showed her how, when instinct and pain made the man bend over, to smash the back of her head into his nose. Even if she didn't break it, she'd give him more pain at the cost of very little of her own.

  And then, while his hands were coming up to cover his face, how to pivot and bring up the knee, or smash the point of her elbow into the windpipe.

  Then run.

  "And shout while you're doing it," he told her, over and over. "Shouting keeps you from getting frozen with fear. Besides, you never know who might be about. This is a big place with a lot of people in it. You never know who might be taking a shortcut, or who might be where he's not supposed to be. If anyone hears you, even if they don't come to help you themselves, say it's a little lad or a scullion-girl, they'll probably run off to get help. And even if there are two to grab you, and you get carried off, people will know right away, and pursuit will be on your attacker's heels instead of an hour behind. Now, let's try this again, and shout this time."

  Lily watched from the sidelines with a face thoughtful and approving. Rosa was rather amused at that. It looked as if Lily had decided that Siegfried was going to be worth cultivating after all.

  When they ran out of every bit of time that Rosa could spare for the lesson, she was sure of one thing; she wanted another. In fact, she wanted a lot more than that. She wanted a lot of lessons.

  "Think you can spare me more of your time again, Princess?" the Northlander said as she pinned her hair back up again and tidied herself. "We've only just begun what I'd like you to know." He eyed her Guardsmen again. "No disrespect to your men, Princess, but they're trained for war, not for fighting the sort of lawless scum I've been trained against, the kind that'd rather take you from behind. And that's the kind you've got to be wary of."

  "I'll make time," she vowed. "And I'd like you to train my Guardsmen every day that you can."

  Siegfried grinned. "It'll be a pleasure, and a change from play fighting your other suitors." He waggled his eyebrows at the four Guardsmen, one of whom groaned, for Siegfried had not been at all gentle with them. Then he turned to Lily. "I'd like you to put a stiff leather or metal lining in a high collar in the Princess's gowns, if you haven't already," he said gravely. "Someone trying to strangle her will get a rude surprise, and a bit of surprise will give her a chance to squirm away, do a bit of harm and run."

  "We will," Lily replied, and smiled slowly. "So far, of all the presents that have been given to Rosamund, I think that I like this one the best."

  Chapter 16

  The forest was cool, deep in shadow and fragrant with the scents of leaf and herb. The only sounds were those of birds and the occasional rustle of something scurrying through the underbrush. It was, above all, peaceful. Exactly what Siegfried cr
aved at this point.

  "What exactly are we doing?" Leopold asked Siegfried, as the latter sent his sturdy old horse ambling down another random path in the forest. The leaf-litter sent up the aroma of dead leaf and moss as the horses kicked it up, their hooves making dull sounds as they walked along.

  "I'm not sure," the Northerner replied, taking a deep breath of the forest air and feeling a great deal of tension flow out of him. "I just couldn't stand being in the Palace or the city anymore. You can go back to the King's Arms if you want." He still wasn't sure why Leopold had insisted on coming along.

  "And leave you to get eaten by bears?" Leopold snorted. Siegfried wondered if he was woods-wise in any way at all, or if the only thing that a forest meant to him was something to be gotten through as quickly as possible. "Or worse — run into your fire-circle maiden?"

  Siegfried laughed and shook his head. "The bears are more likely to get eaten by me. I killed one when I was no taller than your waist. You forget I practically grew up in woods like these. This forest is more comfortable to me than any room in any building could ever be. As for the maiden, I think the Godmother might — " He paused, as a sound caught his attention. "Wait, I hear something." He held up his hand to keep Leopold from talking, and listened as carefully as he could. Yes, there it was again, a kind of scrabbling sound and a whimper. "Something's in trouble."