Briarheart Read online

  But, oh, big events like a royal christening would bring them all out if only to remind everyone in the entire kingdom that we were never really safe. You never knew, you see, if they’d found another loophole to exploit. The last time that had happened, a piper was going to lure an entire village full of children into a swamp until a heroic goose girl pointed out that the Dark Fae in question had arranged for the piper to be paid in counterfeit coin.

  And, of course, the Dark Fae enjoyed reminding us of just that because it kept the unease going even during the happiest of days.

  We worked away diligently, underlining the corresponding name on the list of invitees, with a check on the left for “not coming” and one on the right for “coming.” And there was a pair of clerks going through the replies we had already opened, making sure we had ticked off the correct side. Then a set of ladies-in-waiting made several lists of “coming” and “not coming” to be distributed to the heralds who could read, so we’d have yet another check at the gates of the castle, at the front door, and at the door of the Great Hall. Because, when it comes to Fae, there is no such thing as too much caution. It was nearly suppertime when we finished the last of the replies, and I was glad of it. Being reminded of Father had put a shadow on my day that not even Aurora could lift, and having illusory blood dripping over my hands twice hadn’t helped.

  In the hour or so I had before suppertime, I needed to purge my melancholy. Before we moved to the palace, the place where I could do that had always been the woods on the doorstep of our manor. On the rare occasions when I wasn’t happy, the peace and solitude of the forest had always put my heart at ease again.

  Now that I was living in the palace, I couldn’t get to the woods, but we had the next-best thing: a woodland garden, a piece of actual wild land that had been left to itself. According to Mama’s ladies, you almost never saw that sort of thing in a formal garden like the palace had, and I think that someone in the past, a king or a queen, must have shared my love of wild spaces. The gardeners were forbidden to tend it, and at the heart of it was a tree older than any other I had ever seen. While the others hurried away to take care of personal tasks before dinner, I took the stairs down to the garden door, and since no one was there, I threw dignity to the winds and ran. Soon, I was winding my way through the tangle of vines and bushes on a little path I had found until I reached the ancient forest giant.

  From here, I could neither see nor hear the palace and all the people in it. I might have been alone. I sat on one of the enormous roots that stuck up out of the soil and leaned against the trunk. I then pulled my handkerchief out of my sleeve and let go.

  I never cried where Mama and Papa could see me if I could help it. It wasn’t fair to them. Papa had made me a Court Baroness, given me our old manor and a separate country estate with enough land to make certain that I had my own independent income—even though he already supplied me with everything I could possibly want. I could be cynical and say that this made me an attractive marriage prospect, but I don’t think he really had that in mind. It would have been unspeakably ungrateful to go about with a sad face, as if I didn’t approve of his marrying Mama. So whenever missing Father got to be too much for me, I’d go to the one place almost no one else ever came to so Papa wouldn’t be told about it. I never wanted him to think that crying for Father meant I hadn’t come to love him.

  So here, or with Giles, I could let down the walls and allow the tears to come.

  I was so immersed in my own crying that I didn’t hear Papa; I didn’t even know he was there until he sat down beside me, took my shoulders, and turned me so I was crying into his chest instead of the tree trunk. By then, of course, it was too late to stop crying and pretend I hadn’t been drowning in tears.

  He didn’t say anything at first, just let me sob. Then he pulled out a handkerchief of his own, took my soggy one away from me, and pushed his into my hands. “I miss him too, Miri,” he said, one arm around my shoulders, as he began to stroke my hair with his free hand. “Every day. He was my best friend. We were squires together, did you know that? We both served Sir Delacar, the fattest knight in the kingdom. All Delacar wanted out of us was to serve him at meals and run errands for him. But Geniver used all the spare time he had to train; he probably did more work than any two of the other squires put together. He was determined to prove that he deserved to be among the squires and that he would grow up to be as good a knight as any of them. He used to tell me that when I was King, he’d be my Champion. And I used to laugh at him because, of course, my brother, Aethan, was going to be King, and who would ever make a landless boy whose mother had wheedled him into the squires a knight much less the King’s Champion? But Delacar did make him a knight, and Aethan died in the wars, and I was made King, and…” He sighed and hugged me. “And now, every time I look at you, it’s as if I were looking at him, my fellow squire. You have his black hair, his green eyes, and his way of sticking your chin out when you are about to be stubborn about something.”

  No one had ever told me that before. Maybe because there weren’t too many people in the palace who had known Father as a boy. “I… do?” I said haltingly.

  “You absolutely do,” he said firmly. “It wasn’t until he turned sixteen that he developed into the stalwart warrior everyone else remembers—not even your mother knows what he looked like as a boy since they didn’t meet until he was seventeen. But I look at you—and there he is. I see other attributes of his in you, Miri. His bravery, his intelligence, his honesty—it makes me proud and breaks my heart all at the same time.”

  I felt the tears slowing as my cheeks got hot. I wasn’t used to being praised for things besides the stuff girls are usually praised for—being obedient, dutiful, pretty. I blotted my eyes. “I didn’t want to make you or Mama unhappy, Papa,” I said.

  “And that’s why you came out here by yourself and why you don’t let us know when you need to cry, I understand.” He continued to stroke my hair. “I noticed you weren’t in your room reading and studying before dinner the way you usually are. I wanted you to know that you’re not alone in missing him, so I came to find you. This is where Geniver always used to come when he was frustrated or angry or sad.”

  This was a whole new side of Father I had never heard about before, and I was hungry to hear more.

  Papa took my chin and tilted my head up so he could look down into my eyes. “It’s been a very upsetting time for you, and you’ve been a little star about it all. No sulking because I couldn’t make you a princess, no jealousy over your baby sister, and no objections to my taking Geniver’s place with your mother. So I am going to promise you something right now. When the christening is over, you and I are going to spend more time together, and I am going to tell you what Geniver was like when he was your age. I’ll tell you everything I know and remember. And I’m going to promise you something else. Whatever you want or need to learn, I will find you the tutors for it. I want you to blossom. Be like Geniver, Miriam. Be everything you can even if it takes you into situations that may be strange to you or makes you try things that frighten you.”

  Maybe those last words should have scared me. But… they didn’t. They lifted my heart and made me feel… exalted. And excited. A whole new part of Father’s life had just been unveiled to me, with a promise of more to come. And the promise that Papa would stand behind me no matter what I wanted to do. Most girls never hear that from their blood fathers much less a stepfather.

  “Feel better?” he asked. I nodded. “All right then. We’ll stop at the fountain so you can splash some water on your face so no one will know you were crying. And then we’ll get your mother and we’ll all go in to supper together so everyone can see that no matter what your title is, you are still my daughter.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  HAVING LIGHT FAE IN THE KINGDOM MEANT THAT ANYTIME there was going to be a big event, you could count on the weather being perfect. Actually, not even Dark Fae would allow bad weather for a big event they w
ere invited to—sure, they loved to make a terrifying entrance with thunder and lightning, but they didn’t want to get soaked by the corresponding downpour any more than ordinary people did. And, yes, they could have avoided that by simply not coming and sending the bad weather anyway, but that would mean that all their rivals would be there—and getting rained on—and then they’d begin gossiping or starting feuds.

  Fae politics are worse than human politics, because Fae live so long and can hold grudges for centuries. Papa had a separate clerk of the court and two underclerks just to keep track of all the gossip and who was feuding with whom. Or at least as much of it as we were allowed to know. It isn’t so bad for the common folk, but if anyone above the rank of a knight doesn’t know about the feuds among any Dark Fae he might encounter, he runs the risk of offending them, and that opens the door for them to go after him and anyone else within a degree or so of relationship to him.

  But the result of all that was that we were guaranteed to have excellent weather not only for the christening itself but also for a few days before and after. And what that meant was that we could invite a great many more people than we had space for in the palace because they could camp in their fancy pavilions in the great meadow in front of the main gate without any fear that horrible weather would spoil their stay.

  I could already see some of those fancy pavilions from my room. I’d had a stroll down there yesterday, and believe me, those pavilions were the height of luxury. Carpets on the ground, clever folding furniture, cushions everywhere, masses of servants, anything you could ask for, really. To be honest, they had more room and were probably more comfortable than the guests who’d had the privilege of being squeezed into the small chambers in the palace. At least those out there had as much room as they cared to enclose under canvas. From here, it looked like a field of mushrooms, since all I could see from five stories up were the plain canvas tops and not all the pennons and hangings festooning the sides.

  “My lady,” said Belinda in that icy tone of voice that meant she was getting really annoyed with me. “You are not dressed. You are not one of the Fae. You cannot lark about in nothing but gauze.”

  “I have everything on but the overdress, and I was waiting for the maids,” I replied truthfully, and I stepped away from the window with regret. Belinda didn’t approve of my hanging out the window in my chemise. Not that anyone could see me; the window was narrow and no one would be able to tell if I was male or female, much less that I was in only my chemise.

  Belinda was in a mood. And she had the overdress draped over both arms. I knew that there are times to talk back and that this wasn’t one of them. Meekly, I held up my arms and she pulled the overdress on with impatient tugs. When she got it in place, she pulled the back lacings tight and picked up the upper oversleeves.

  I was fortunate that the maids appeared, plucked them out of her hands, and got on with the job before she could try to wrestle those in place. I’d long ago learned the trick of taking in the biggest breath I could and holding it if Belinda took it on herself to dress me so the back lacings weren’t nearly as tight as she wanted them to be. If they had been, I probably wouldn’t have been able to breathe. If Belinda had put on the oversleeves, she’d have laced them as tightly as she could, and that would make it impossible to flex my arms properly.

  With the oversleeves in place, the chemise nicely pulled through the openings at the shoulders and the elbows so it showed properly, and the gold belt fastened around my hips, it was time for the hair.

  My hair was so straight and fine that there wasn’t a lot that could be done with it. If you’d tried to put it into ringlets, they’d have disappeared by the time I got to the Great Hall. So, despite Belinda’s disappointment, all the maids did was put it in a single long braid with green ribbons, then they took the gold chaplet that matched my belt and tied it around my head. And that was that. I looked into the little mirror at the side of my chamber, placed where it would reflect the most light from the window, and was happy to see that I still recognized the person in it.

  “No necklaces? Earrings? No bracelets?” Belinda asked mournfully.

  “No time,” one of the maids replied, and hustled me out. She winked at me as we got outside the door. There was still plenty of time, but she knew how much I disliked being laden down with trinkets. If Belinda had had her way, I’d have been wearing two necklaces and an (aptly named) choker, huge earrings that would leave my ears sore for the next two days, and so many bracelets on either wrist that I’d jingle every time I raised my hand. Wearing that much heavy jewelry makes me look like I’m trying to attract attention when, in fact, I’d prefer to do the opposite. The only jewelry I ever really wore regularly was a plain silver locket on a silver chain that held three locks of hair—Mama’s gilded chestnut, Father’s night black, and now Aurora’s golden curl, each one bound up with a bit of silk thread.

  At this point, I really envied the servants who had dressed me. You never saw them laced into tight gowns until their cheeks were red. You never saw them wearing the sorts of things Belinda thought “appropriate,” which generally meant “impossible to move in.”

  I kind of understood why Belinda thought that this was necessary. Servants had jobs to do. People like me were supposed to look as if we never had to raise a finger for anything because everything was done for us. But, in the first place, I’m not like that because I would always rather be doing things than having them done for me, and in the second place, that’s always seemed very precious and pretentious to me.

  The maids rushed off to some other task—probably to help one of the visiting ladies get into her gown—leaving me to make my own route to the chapel. Normally, I’d have taken the servants’ stair rather than the long path to the main stair, but today there would be so many servants running up and down that I’d be seriously in the way. So I continued through the maze of interlocking rooms to the front of the palace.

  Our little manor had actual corridors, so when I’d first come to live in the palace, all this running through other people’s private spaces had just felt wrong. Actually, it still felt wrong, but according to Mama, the polite thing to do was to pretend that you were a ghost and saw nothing, so that was what I did.

  I finally got to the front of the palace; the main stair was there, and it took up a lot of space. There was a walkway around it, and it went down to the fourth floor, where it split and went down to the third floor, where it joined up again into a much wider “presentation” staircase down to the second floor that ended in the anteroom to the Great Hall. The last part of it actually spread out with each step so everyone could make an impressive entrance.

  I wasn’t the only one on the stairs; I hadn’t gotten far before I was joined by a growing stream of guests. I was extremely grateful not to be laden with jewelry at this point; most of these people didn’t recognize me, but they assumed that I was probably their equal in rank, so there wasn’t the constant interruption that there was anytime Mama and Papa went anywhere, with people stopping and bowing as they passed. When I reached the stairs down to the second floor, I stuck way over to the side next to the rail. Let other people make their impressive entrances; I was happy to stay unnoticed for the moment. Mama and Papa were finishing their own preparations and easing their nerves right now, and the best thing I could do would be to get to them as quickly as I could, which was something I wouldn’t be able to do if people recognized me and stopped me for an obsequious little chat.

  Everyone but me was filing into the Great Hall, which took up the entire width of the building on this floor. I, however, slipped over to the side and opened an inconspicuous door to another stair that took me down to the first floor, which was where all the business of the palace took place. From there, I could go through all the offices and workrooms—which were empty right now—to another stair that took me up to the pantry at the head of the Great Hall. This was where the food was brought when the Hall was being used to eat in. Papa, in a splendid
indigo uniform, and baby Aurora, in a waterfall of white silk lace and cradled in her nurse’s arms, were already there, and just as I entered, Mama came down the last few steps of the privy stair, which comes off their bedroom and goes straight down to the pantry. She looked amazing; the enormous dagged sleeves of her gown were lined in gold silk, and she wore her Crown of State, a more delicate match to the one Papa wore.

  The Great Hall was used for every function where lots of people had to be housed, everything from meals to great ceremonies. There was a peephole in the door of the pantry that looked into the Hall, and I used it. The Hall was absolutely full.

  At the front of the right-hand side were all the Light Fae. This was the first time I had seen more than two Light Fae at any one time, and I was a little startled by their variety. Some were wearing so little that they were almost nude; some wore clothing in styles like ours but made with much finer materials than anything I had ever seen; and some were wearing elaborate outfits that were so absolutely impossible, there was no way someone could actually have sewn them. Like the clothing that looked as if it was made of leaves or flower petals or snow or water. They all had long hair, often done up in equally impossible styles that came in every possible color. There were jeweled hair ornaments, and necklaces, and belts and bracelets on all of them, even—or maybe especially—on the ones who had very little actual clothing. One couple looked as if their clothing was jewelry.

  And, of course, they all had wings. Tiny wings that seemed like an afterthought, huge sweeping wings that rose several feet above their heads, velvety bat wings, transparent metallic-veined insect wings, bird wings, moth wings, butterfly wings. The one thing that they all had in common was that they were studiously ignoring the group on the opposite side of the center aisle from them. If there were the kinds of infighting among them that we see in the Dark Fae, we humans would never know. We see only a tiny fraction of their lives and habits, and they like to keep it that way.