Palace of Mirrors (14 page)

An infinity of mirrored images keeps flashing at us as we walk the length of the hall, but I train my eyes on the door at the other end. A man is standing there.

“Ye-es?” he says imperiously as we approach.

“We’re the first, uh, competitors,” Harper says.

The man nods condescendingly.

“Ah,” he says. “Wait here.”

It’s a long wait. I fiddle with the edge of my sash, wanting to tuck it differently, or maybe just rip it off completely. And the shoes! I shall have to tell Desmia that felt
shoes were simply the fashion in my village. . . . Maybe Desmia and I have the same size feet, and she’ll loan me a pair of real shoes before we go to tell anyone else who I really am. Maybe she’ll loan me a dress, too.

“Cecilia?” Harper mumbles. “Remember, you play five C’s before the first time you move to the D string. . . .”

I nod, but a moment later I can’t remember if he said five C’s or four. We worked out a simple song, where he plays the melody and I pluck a string every so often in harmony. I couldn’t master true harp-playing, the way he does it—flicking his fingernails against the strings, bringing out a clear bell-like sound—so my technique is more of a strumming.

It doesn’t matter,
I tell myself.
You only have to play well enough that no one kicks you and Harper out before you have a chance to talk to Desmia.

“Ready?” the man says.

I guess he went through the doorway and just now came back out—I wasn’t paying close enough attention. Now he holds the door open for us.

“You will walk to the center of the stage,” he says. “There’s a chair if you must use it.” He frowns, not in apology for having only one chair, but as if he already regrets offering it to us. “When you are finished, you will bow or”—he looks at me disdainfully—“you will curtsy in front of the judges. And then you will leave through the
opposite door.” He sniffs. “Good luck,” he adds, as though he’s certain we will need it.

I sniff back, and toss my head.

“Thank you, good sir,” I say, trying to sound every bit as imperious as him.

Then the door shuts behind us. We’re in an even larger room now, one that’s mercifully a bit dimmer. And as far as I can tell, there are mirrors on only two of the four walls.

“There are stairs up to the stage,” Harper hisses at me. “Follow me.”

So far my eyes haven’t focused well enough to locate Desmia or the other judges. Only when we’re standing on the stage, peering out at rows and rows of cushioned, empty seats, do I realize that the judges are seated off to the left, near the door we’ll be leaving through.

So I can talk to Desmia on the way out. . . .

“I’ll have to take the chair, since I’ll be holding the harp,” Harper whispers to me.

“Fine,” I say.

I stand beside him, and we have a few moments of confusion, figuring out how my arms can stretch around the harp he’s holding. I hear someone laughing, and someone else muttering, “This one is billed as a musical act, not a comedy routine. . . .”

Lamps flare to life, and I am blinded glaring out at the judges.

Harper has to arrange my hands, so I’m ready to pluck the right strings.

“Harper and Cecilia Sutton,” someone announces.

I lean forward, prepared to play, and I feel something pulling at the back of my dress. In the silence, I even hear the first sound:
ri-ip . . .
I want to clutch the back of my dress, but that would mean taking my carefully placed hands off the harp.

“Now,” Harper whispers.

Dazedly, I pluck my first C, thinking,
How much ripped back there? Was it just the sash or a huge swath of the dress?
I’m supposed to wait for Harper to play ten more notes before it’s time for me to pluck my second C, but I’m so distracted, trying to listen for another
ri-ip
and watching for the sash to maybe go swinging down toward the floor, that Harper barely makes it through two notes before I pluck my harmony note again.

“Slow down!” Harper hisses at me.

“Speed up!” I hiss back. “My dress just ripped and I’m scared it’s going to fall off completely!”

Harper gives me one darting, startled glance and instantly shifts into double time. From there the rest of the song is like a race, Harper flicking frantically at the strings, desperate to catch up with my plucking. Flick, pluck, flick, pluck . . . Finally, I’m done with all the notes that my right hand is supposed to play and I reach around and clutch the back of my dress.

“We can slow down now,” I tell Harper, but I don’t think he hears me. So then it’s me plucking frantically, trying to keep up with him.

Finally, we run out of notes.

Harp music lingers. A properly appreciative crowd, I think, is supposed to wait until the last chiming note fades out of hearing. Our last notes fade into nothingness, and still there’s a shocked silence. I squint, trying to see past the bright lights trained on the stage. Harper, beside me, is dipping into a bow.

“You’re supposed to bow in front of the judges, right before the door,” I whisper.

Jolted, he stands up again. Still there’s no applause. We scramble down the stairs and stumble toward the judges. Now I can see that they’re staring at us—in awe and amazement, I hope, not complete disgust. The judges are a collection of distinguished-looking men in dark coats, and one girl in a pale pink dress, with a glistening crown nestled in her dark hair.

Desmia.

Forgetting the music—fiasco or phenomenon, whichever it was—I weave my way toward her. This is my lucky day: She’s sitting in the front row. Still clutching the back of my dress, I lower myself into a curtsy. Rising, I scoot forward, so that my face comes up only inches from her right ear.

“I am the true princess,” I whisper. “I have come to relieve you of your dangerous duty.”

Desmia squints at me for a moment, and at first I think that I have spoken too fast; she seems not to have understood a single word I’ve said. But then her eyes widen, her rosebud mouth forms into an
O
of surprise.

“Meet me in the antechamber,” she whispers back. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I nod, and then I feel Harper’s hand on my back. Bless him—he’s clutching the ripped part of my dress together for me, under the pretense of chivalrously guiding me out of the room.

We step through a lavishly padded door into another hallway that’s just as mirror-filled as the first one. This hallway has pillars as well, so every other step blocks out my view of the mirrors. It’s funny to see how our faces change between steps: At first we both just look stunned, as if we’re surprised we’ve escaped the music competition alive. Harper has sweat dripping off his brow, and his hair is sticking out in all directions. By the next glimpse we both have huge grins on our faces, relief making us giddy. And then, two steps on, anxiety and anticipation have taken over our expressions again. I’m thinking about how Desmia will be coming out to meet us, and what I should say and do then.

I don’t know what Harper could possibly be thinking, to look so grim.

“It worked!” I whisper to him. “I told her!”

“Good,” he replies in a clipped voice.

“She’s meeting us in this hall, I guess,” I say. Surely that was what she meant by “antechamber,” wasn’t it? I crane my neck, looking around, as if I expect to see a huge sign someplace labeling the room. This motion pulls at the back of my dress, and I feel a few more stitches give way.

“Uh, Harper?” I say. “How bad is it back there?” Now I’m trying to look over my shoulder, but I can’t see the rip.

Harper bends down, his hands hesitantly touching my waist.

“I think if I just pull off the sash . . .,” he says, and I feel another tearing behind me. He stands to face me, and holds up the mangled, fraying remains of the yellow ribbon I’d been so proud of. “There. You’ve still got a rip in the dress, but it’s not that big. At least now it’s not going to get any worse.”

“Thanks,” I say. “That’s a relief.”

Harper stuffs the ruined sash in his pocket.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says roughly. “Soon you’ll be getting a new dress. All the dresses you want. New dresses, new home, new life . . .”

“Sure,” I say, and smile at him. But he’s looking past me, over my shoulder.

I turn around, and Desmia is right there.

  15  

Desmia is stepping through the same door from the theater that we used. Her cheeks are flushed just as rosy pink as her dress—
she’s excited,
I think.
Thrilled that I’ve come to rescue her.
Her dark eyes are still wide and startled-looking—
of course
.
She never expected me to just show up like this.
Even though she’s rushing toward us, her skirt sways with a graceful elegance that I could never emulate. The dress worries me anyhow. It’s silk, I think, and gleams as much as the mirrors around us, beauty beyond beauty. You’d have to be so careful, wearing a dress like that. Maybe you wouldn’t even be able to breathe.
And I didn’t do very well even with regular clothes. . . .
I sneak another glance in the mirror, at my ripped dress with its grass stains and dirt smears and fig juice spills. I don’t look so ridiculous without the sash, but I still look like a ragamuffin. I look even worse in contrast to Desmia.

But I am the true princess,
I remind myself.

“Desmia—,” I begin.

“Shh,” she shushes me, her finger to her lips. “We can’t talk here.”

A man I hadn’t noticed before comes up behind us, and clears his throat in a way that makes me feel scolded.

“A-hem. Contestants should not be bothering the princess,” he says.

The brass buttons on his coat are so large and polished to such a gloss that I can see our reflection in them—mine, Harper’s, and beautiful Desmia’s.

“You’re dismissed, Fulston,” Desmia says imperiously. “I shall see these competitors out myself.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” the man says. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”

He bows low and backs away, and I nearly giggle, because that is exactly how servants act in
The Royal Guide to Palace Decorum,
Chapter 3
: “It Takes a Village to Run a Palace.” He all but fades into the shadows, opening and closing the door back into the theater so quickly and quietly that it’s almost as if he was never there.

As soon as he’s out of sight, Desmia beckons to us.

“This way,” she says.

She slides around behind one of the pillars, gently touches the frame of one of the mirrors, and—amazing!—the mirror swings out like a door. Behind the mirror, stairs ascend into darkness.

“A secret passageway?” Harper whispers, in awe.

I’m awed too. But I’m also thinking that I should have known about this. With everything else Sir Stephen had me memorize, why didn’t he have me study a map of the palace? Knowing about secret passageways in my own home seems a lot more useful to me than knowing the exports of countries three mountain ranges away.

“Where does . . .,” Harper starts to ask, but Desmia has her finger pressed against her lips again, silencing him. She gazes anxiously from side to side, then removes a lamp from its ornate holder between the mirrors.

“You can’t talk in here at all, understand?” she says. “People can hear everything from the rooms around the passageway, and they’re not supposed to know it exists.”

My head is bursting with questions. Like,
Why would the princess—or someone pretending to be the princess—have to skulk around in secret passageways in her own palace? Who is she hiding from? What “people” is she so worried about? What would happen if they did hear us?
But I bite my lip and follow her into the darkness.

Desmia moves swiftly up the stairs, and Harper and I have to rush to keep up with her, to keep up with the light. This isn’t easy in clumsily sewn felt shoes, since the stone stairs are slippery and uneven. After a few steps and a near stumble I see Harper shrug and pull the shoes from his feet. “I’d make an awful noise, tripping,” he whispers
apologetically in my ear. “I’ll put them back on as soon as we get to the top.”

I decide his logic is sound, and so I do the same. I hope Desmia doesn’t notice.

She glances back at us every few paces, but it doesn’t seem like she’s trying to make sure that we’re keeping up. Now that we’re in this dim, narrow stairway, I can’t see her face, can’t read her expression at all. But it’s starting to feel like she’s trying to run away from us. Like she’s afraid of us.