The False Prince (21 page)

A
t the end of the week, a man came to meet with Jaron in the church. If anyone had asked, the priest would have said he did not know who the man was, only that he had the air of someone of great importance. But nobody asked. As far as they knew, the boy living in the church was an orphan.

Jaron recognized his father immediately, despite his extravagant attempts at disguise. They did not embrace. It was not his father’s way. But there were tears in his father’s eyes, and for the first time, Jaron saw his father as a man, not as a king.

They sat in the center of the pews and received little attention from the few patrons who had come that day. It was awkward at first, for although they sat close together, father and son had grown miles apart.

“When I was your age, I wanted to be a musician,” Eckbert said. It was a poor attempt at connecting with his son, but it was all he had. “Did you know that?”

Jaron nodded. His mother had told him that once. And when he was very young, his father would occasionally show him how to play some of his favorite instruments, although he was careful never to do so when there were servants around. His father thought it would be an embarrassment.

Eckbert smiled at the memories of his own youth. “I enjoyed playing the fippler, and although I confess I wasn’t very good, it brought me a lot of joy. Do you remember when you were younger? I taught you a song or two, I believe.”

“I remember one of them,” Jaron whispered. “Mother’s favorite.”

Eckbert folded his arms together and leaned against the bench of the church. “My father, your grandfather, couldn’t tolerate the squeaks and pitches of my music and discouraged me from playing. He said music was a useless education for a future king, and a waste of my time. Although I didn’t understand it then, he was right.”

Jaron listened quietly. It was hard to picture his father as ever having been a boy, as ever having any desire unconnected with the throne.

“You and I are not so different as you might think, Jaron. I spent much of my own childhood wishing I could have been someone other than a crown prince.”

“I’m not a crown prince,” Jaron reminded him. “Just a prince. Darius will take the throne.”

“As he should. And he’ll be a fine king one day. But what about you? What do you want for your life? Being a prince doesn’t seem to suit you.”

His father had intended to mean that Jaron was capable of anything, even beyond the castle walls. Jaron took it that his father felt he was unfit for his title and offered nothing more than a shrug in response.

“How has your life as a commoner been these past weeks?” Eckbert asked.

“I’ve managed.”

“I knew you would. And I know you can.”

Jaron glanced up at his father with questioning eyes. What did he mean by that?

Eckbert sighed. “Still, there will be hard lessons. If you are not Jaron, then you are nobody to the world. They will not care if you go hungry, if you are cold, if you lie beaten on the streets. I’ll do the best I can for you, and beg your forgiveness that I can’t do more.”

“I want to come home,” Jaron said softly. It was difficult for him to admit, but whether he was good enough to be a prince or not, he couldn’t take another day on his own. His mother would want him back, probably Darius too. He wasn’t sure about his father.

“You cannot come back” came his father’s solemn answer.

Jaron set his jaw forward, the way he often did when he fought against his anger. “This is my punishment for running away? To be disowned?”

“You’re not disowned and it’s not a punishment. It’s what your country demands of you now.”

Jaron rolled his eyes. His father couldn’t shove the blame away from himself so easily. “I’m to become a commoner, then? Shall I call you King Eckbert, or forget your name entirely?”

That hurt his father. But Jaron hurt too, so he felt justified in his words.

“You are always my son,” Eckbert answered. “But the situation with the pirates has changed everything. Everyone believes you are dead, and I cannot allow that belief to change.”

They were silent for several seconds. Finally, Jaron spoke. “If I came home, would you declare war on Avenia for sinking that ship?”

Eckbert sighed heavily. “I would have to, because you could provide the proof that it was Avenian pirates who attacked a ship with a royal onboard. If I start a war with Avenia, Gelyn will almost certainly align with them, and we shall be nearly surrounded by enemies. Carthya could not survive that war.”

“And if I remain missing, would you have to declare war?”

“If you remain missing, I can tell my people that I will not declare war until there is proof of your death.”

“Then we both know what has to happen.” Jaron had said it matter-of-factly. He had considered this possibility, but hoped against it. “What about Darius and Mother?”

“Darius … misses you. But he knows there are sacrifices we make for the good of Carthya. Your mother doesn’t know you’ve been found. Obviously, she would want you to come home to her, but she doesn’t see the enemies that surround us, not like I do.”

“We’ve always had enemies at our borders.”

“But not all at the same time. Since you’ve been missing, they have backed off our borders. Royal courtesy in our time of mourning for you. But the news is worse. I have enemies within Carthya, within my own castle. There are regents who look at my throne with greedy eyes. If I declare war in vengeance for you, they may not support me. They are the ones I fear.”

“Do you think they’re a danger to you?”

Eckbert forced a smile onto his face. “Regents are always the greatest threat to a king. But I have Darius. If they get to me, the royal line must continue, or else Carthya will destroy itself in civil war. That’s Darius’s duty, Jaron. Do you understand yours?”

He understood it far too well for a boy of only ten years. “Mine is to remain missing. To not come back.”

“Do you understand that you cannot reveal your true identity out here? You must change everything about yourself that you can. Lighten your hair with some dyes, and grow it out to alter the look of your face. I’m told you speak with an Avenian accent. Keep that.”

“I can use my left hand,” Jaron offered. “I always preferred it anyway.”

“And rid yourself of anything you might have learned in the castle. Of learning, of culture, of skills. There is an orphanage in Carchar, not far from here but back within Carthya’s borders. It’s run by a woman whose reputation is good, Mrs. Turbeldy. Now you must understand that I cannot have payment made to her for your care. You go there as an orphan, without any advantage over the others. It will be a hard few years until you’re of age and can live on your own.”

Tears stung Jaron’s eyes, but he pushed them away. He wouldn’t give his father the satisfaction of seeing his pain.

If Eckbert noticed his son’s breaking heart, he didn’t acknowledge it. He gave Jaron a handful of silver coins. “Come up with a story to get yourself into the orphanage. Say you stole these or whatever excuse you’d like, but they will buy your way through the front doors.”

“I can fake an illness when the coins run out,” Jaron said. “Let her think she’s got the truth from me.”

Eckbert smiled. “You used that trick often enough on your tutors. What an irony that it may keep you alive now. There is always the possibility of Mrs. Turbeldy trying to sell you into servitude, but I don’t think she’d find any buyers.”

“No,” Jaron agreed. “I’m too difficult for anyone to want me.”

“Exactly,” his father said. The full meaning of Jaron’s words probably didn’t occur to him, which almost made it hurt worse.

Eckbert untied a small satchel at his waist, which he pressed into Jaron’s hand. “I have a gift in there for you, the best of anything I could offer. There is a letter instructing you on how to use it.”

Jaron looked in the satchel, then closed it up again. It meant nothing to him.

When Eckbert stood to leave, Jaron placed a hand over his father’s arm and whispered, “Stay a little longer.”

“If I do, the priest will grow suspicious,” Eckbert said.

“This is real, then?” Jaron’s heart pounded, though he couldn’t tell whether it was from sadness or fear for his future. “When you leave, I’m no longer Prince Jaron. I’ll be nothing but a commoner. An orphan.”

“You will always be a royal in your heart,” Eckbert said tenderly. “There may come a time when you must be Prince Jaron again for your country. You will know if it does come.”

“Am I alone?”

Eckbert shook his head. “I will come in disguise on the last day of every month to the church nearest Mrs. Turbeldy’s orphanage. If you ever need to see me, I’ll be there.”

Then he left.

And from that moment on, I became Sage of Avenia. Orphaned son of a failed musician and a barmaid. Who knew little of the king and queen of Carthya, and cared even less.

Completely alone.

M
y head snapped up as our carriage bumped over a rock in the road. Conner, sitting in the seat directly opposite me, watched me with obvious disgust. I knew he hated having to choose me as his prince. But Tobias, who was asleep on my right, was a complete failure, and Roden, sitting up straight on my left, could not convince the regents.

Imogen was on Conner’s left. She stared straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge that she saw anything at all. Mott sat on Conner’s right and nodded slightly at me when I looked at him.

There had been no point in lying any further to Mott. Back at the river, he hadn’t asked whether I was the prince. He knew it. And he knew by my reaction that he was correct. Undoubtedly, he had a hundred questions to ask, and there were so many things I wanted to tell him, just to have somebody to speak openly to. But Conner was anxious for us to leave, and there was no time. All I had asked of Mott was that he keep our secret to himself. Judging by Conner’s sour expression, he had obeyed.

I leaned back and closed my eyes again, not to sleep but to be alone with my thoughts. After four years of pretending, of immersing myself so completely in Sage’s identity, could I emerge convincingly as Jaron?

Conner’s regimen of lessons in the past week actually had been helpful. I had forgotten the names of several court officials and even a few of my ancestors that a prince would be expected to know. As a boy, I had been well trained in both sword fighting and horseback riding, both which were as instinctive to me now as breathing. Although I had practiced whenever possible in the orphanage, those skills had softened over the past four years, and it was good to build them up again.

Even though I was pretending to sleep, I couldn’t help but smile at the memory of Cregan’s anger when I challenged him to his wildest horse. The horse he’d brought me out from the stables really was beyond my skills to train, and I was barely able to control her enough to steal the fake sword while everyone was distracted elsewhere.

Other things had been a waste of time. Obviously, I could read much better than I let on, though to have confessed that would have been disastrous for my disguise. I’d have to apologize later to Tobias for that lie. He would have secured his papers more carefully if he had known I read every word on them while he slept at night. Of course, my back still stung from where he’d cut me, and that was a far worse crime. I’d agree to forgive him if he forgave me.

There were a lot of things I’d have to ask forgiveness for. And I feared I wouldn’t receive half as much of it as I wanted.

Not from Imogen, who had trusted me with the greatest secret of her life, that she could speak. I had trusted her with nothing.

Not from Amarinda, who pled with a broken heart for any truth about whether Darius, the prince she was betrothed to and loved, was alive. Or about the existence of his younger brother, whom she would eventually have to marry if Darius really were dead.

And I’d get no forgiveness, ever, from my mother, who went to her death believing I’d died in an attack by Avenian pirates. Nor from my father.

For most of the past four years, I’d blamed him for keeping me away from the castle. True, I’d accepted his request without argument, but how could I have known then how difficult these recent years would be? He would have known much of what was ahead of me, and still he chose peace for his country over his own son. Maybe it was the right thing to do; I still didn’t know for sure. But it didn’t diminish my shame that they’d had to send me away in the first place. Nor my anger at my father, who at his first reunion with me in the church, already had a plan to keep me away.

I returned every month to the church near the orphanage to see my father. But I never let him know I was there. We never spoke again.

It was only after Conner told me that both my parents and my brother had been killed that I began to understand my father in a new way.

He had said that his greatest enemies were the regents. Conner had told me that all three members of the family were intended victims, so that a regent would have to be crowned.

While at Farthenwood, I slowly began to understand that as long as four years ago, my father had foreseen the possibility that all of them could be murdered one day. He didn’t keep me away to protect himself from embarrassment, nor was it to avoid having to declare war on Avenia. My father kept me away to keep me alive. After pirates had tried to kill me, he must have worried that the rest of his family’s lives were in danger. He had told me in the church that day that the royal line must continue, to save Carthya. So that if the worst happened, and they were all killed, I would remain to claim the throne. He’d even given me a way home. I just never expected to need it.

He had let me think the worst of him for over four years, and I had eagerly done so. For that, I could never have his forgiveness.

When Conner first brought me to Farthenwood, I had thought he knew that Jaron was alive and he was searching for the prince, hoping to use him for some sort of ransom. So I determined that he must never suspect my true identity. That would have been bad, but Conner’s real plan was far worse.

He was hoping to fool the entire kingdom with a fraudulent prince. I knew then that the best course of action was to play along with his plan, get him to choose me on my own terms, then return to Drylliad to prove my identity. Conner had his plan and I had mine. Whether either of them would work remained to be seen.

Conner kicked my feet to get my attention. “We’re nearly there,” he said. “Straighten up and at least try to look like a prince.”

“Are we going to the castle this late at night?” I mumbled while glancing out the window into the darkness.

“Of course not. We’ll stay at an inn. The choosing ceremony is tomorrow evening.”

“If we’re going to the inn, then I go as I am.” I slouched back into my seat. The charade of being Sage was nearly over. I planned to enjoy it as long as I could.