Kingdom of Ruses Page 6

  I feel the need to add that, like everything else in Lenore, the nifaran are entirely fictitious. The tales could never even account for how the human was resurrected, let alone why he suddenly would become a creature of magic and power. Rubbish, all of it.

  Viola stayed up late writing that night, and when she finally went to bed, she didn’t sleep well. The few times she dozed off, her dreams were peppered with images of golden eyes and whispers from a self-assured voice. The dreams were by no means improper, but it disturbed her that the stranger had infiltrated her thoughts to that extent. She arose with the dawn, vaguely wondering if he had slept or if he had stayed awake in the Prince’s library.

  At breakfast, her mother commented on her wan appearance, and Viola smiled and made some excuse. Elizabeth Moreland was a good mother and knew when something was bothering her children, but she also knew when to prod and recognized that this was not the right time. Thus she let Viola’s excuse slide and went on about her own business.

  Charles had already departed for guard duty, and Edmund surfaced from his room with tousled hair and a wide yawn. The Prime Minister’s apartments occupied the second floor of the palace’s residential wing, with one door to the outside (with stairs that led right into the garden) and another that led into the palace itself. There was also the hidden staircase up into the Prince’s rooms, but it was only used when the children needed to sneak around to cover for his presence. Otherwise, they entered and exited the Prince’s apartment through its main entrance, so that their comings and goings could be seen by the guards in the hallway.

  The outer door opened, and Viola looked up, expecting that her older brother had returned for some forgotten item. She was rewarded instead to see her father enter, his coat on his shoulders and one side bulging from the presence of an object concealed beneath. One hand was tucked there, holding the item.

  “What do you have, Nicholas?” asked his wife.

  “Something for Viola,” he answered with a smile. “There’s a light drizzle outside, and I didn’t want it to get wet.”

  Indeed, now that Viola looked, she could see a fine sheen of droplets clinging to his coat and to his hair. “For me? What is it?” she asked.

  “Actually, it’s for the Prince, something he requested, but I thought I would send it up with you when you went to wait upon him,” said her father, much to her surprise.

  Edmund, too, wore an expression of confusion. “But I thought you said—”

  “He had some instructions for me to give to both of you,” Nicholas interrupted. “I have to get to my office, Elizabeth, so perhaps I can take these two aside for a moment…”

  “By all means,” said his wife, good-naturedly. “You must convey the Prince’s instructions, and it’s no business of mine.”

  Viola followed her father and Edmund from the room, but she favored her mother with an odd glance as she went. She sometimes wondered if her mother suspected the truth about the Prince, for she never questioned the rest of her family and their strange antics. She simply accepted whatever explanation they gave her and respected their rights to secrecy, as though the clandestine dealings held no interest for her.

  Nicholas Moreland ushered Viola and Edmund into his small private office, which was cluttered with books and papers. He shut the door securely behind them. “It seems I overreacted last night,” he said before either of them could ask what was on his mind. “I’ve already spoken to Charles this morning before he left. The situation is this: for the duration of his stay here, the young man upstairs will be the Eternal Prince of Lenore. You will address him as ‘your Royal Highness’ and continue to perform the duties that you should perform.”

  “He won you over too, is that it?” Viola grumbled, thinking of how easily Charles had fallen into friendship with the golden stranger.

  “Not exactly,” replied her father with a guarded look. “I spoke with him at great length last night, though, and I have a better understanding of his reasons for coming here. He will be confederate to our purposes.”

  “Are you certain?” asked Viola.

  “He would have sworn a blood-oath, if I had let him,” her father said. “The truth is, Viola, that his advent comes at a particularly fortuitous time for us. Lord Conrad has been seeking for information about the Prince. There are rumors in the palace that the Prince is not what he seems, and Conrad has made clandestine alliances with members of Parliament and the military to discredit me. Last night when you came upon us, he was asking me about Lenore’s magic reserves and whether individuals other than the Prince have access to them. Until we know how much he has discovered, having an extra body who is unconnected to anyone in Lenore can only help us. The doppelgangers have too much risk for discovery when someone is snooping around for a fraud like that, but if we have an actual Prince…” His words trailed off, but their intent was clear enough: the Prince’s presence could not be disproved if he was actually there, because no one would recognize an imposter.

  Viola swallowed. “I thought Lord Conrad was untrustworthy,” she said, “but how do you know this stranger is not confederate with him? What if we’re being played from both directions?”

  Her father frowned. “I had considered that, but I don’t think it’s possible. I can’t tell you why,” he added before she could ask, “so please don’t press me for details. Suffice to say that this stranger has offered to act the part of the Prince for the time being, and that his timing is particularly good. We will continue as we always have, so you must make certain that he behaves as the Prince always has—that is, that only glimpses of him are ever caught within his own chambers, and that if he leaves, he does so covertly.”

  “And what have you brought me to give him?” she asked. His hand still concealed that something beneath his coat.

  Her father withdrew the object, and Viola was astonished to discover that he held the small metal bucket and glass flask of magic that she had collected yesterday. Also hanging from his wrist was a slim drawstring bag. That too she recognized, and she knew that her father kept all these objects in a private study near the dungeons, under several layers of lock and key.

  “Why…?”

  “He has offered to help you with your magical instruction, Viola—he is quite qualified, I assure you,” said her father. “Also, the midsummer festival is only a few weeks away, so we need to start collecting more reserves anyway. With Conrad snooping around the palace for information, I no longer feel comfortable having these objects out of the Prince’s quarters. I don’t put it past Conrad and his cohorts to pick locks.”

  He handed over the bucket and flask and then held up the drawstring bag. “You know what this holds,” he said. “You are to give one of these to him as well.”

  “What’s in there?” Edmund asked curiously.

  Viola exchanged a glance with her father. “The Prince’s cat’s eyes,” she said quietly. The jewels themselves were worth a small fortune, but in the Kingdom of Lenore they marked those chosen of the Eternal Prince. More specifically, they marked anyone who knew the truth about the Prince. The Prime Minister and his three children, along with Dr. Grayson, were currently the only members of the palace that wore the cat’s eye brooches, but it only made sense that the Prince himself would wear one as well.

  “You’re putting an awful lot of trust in him, Father,” Viola said.

  He smiled wanly. “Unfortunately, I don’t have much choice.” Then, to her confusion, he pulled his daughter into a hug and tugged Edmund to him the next moment.

  Viola had never thought of her father as a fragile man before, but in that moment, he seemed to be very fragile indeed.

  He excused himself almost immediately afterward, after he had charged Viola to complete her delivery soon and not to let her mother see any of those objects in the meantime. Viola slipped to the hidden stairwell while Edmund acted as a distraction for their mother in the kitchen. She crept to the top and placed the flask and bucket on the step there, then pocketed the drawstr
ing bag and returned back downstairs.

  Comings and goings were of the utmost importance when it came to the Prince’s quarters. There were always sentries positioned outside, so it was imperative that anyone who would emerge had been seen going in. As Viola was a regular visitor to the Prince, she could not go by the hidden staircase, but neither did she want to be seen carrying the bucket and flask into the Prince’s apartments. Edmund had been seen taking it from that place, so if Conrad decided to track it down (and Viola had no reason to suspect he wouldn’t, given that he was asking about their magic reserves and that his son had been snooping around the rose garden the previous day), then he would continue to search the main palace rather than assume it had returned to the Prince’s quarters.

  The next thing Viola did was retrieve her journal out from under her bed. If she was to be allowed back into the library on the former conditions, then she felt much safer keeping her tell-all writings there rather than in her room, where her mother might come across them.

  “I’m going now, Mother,” she called as she passed through the main room.

  Her mother was busy trying to keep Edmund’s fingers from the cake batter she was mixing, but she spared a moment to lift her head and smile at her daughter. “Goodbye, dear! Give the Prince my warmest regards!”

  During the walk through the palace, Viola fingered the bag in her pocket, feeling the weight of the stones within. There were probably two or three there. The headdresses in the Prince’s wardrobe also each bore a cat’s eye, but they could hardly expect the stranger to wear one of those all of the time. It only made sense to give him a brooch, just in case any of Conrad’s confederates dared to enter the royal apartments in search of the truth.

  Viola nodded to the guards at the Prince’s door, then passed through. She paused in the entryway, took a deep breath to steel her nerves, and resolutely continued forward into the library. She did not know if the Prince would be there, but the access to the hidden stairwell was her more prominent concern.

  The room was indeed empty, and Viola felt a certain sense of relief at that. Quickly she crossed to the hidden panel that marked the top of the staircase, pressed the edge to release it from its latch, and opened it to retrieve the objects she had left there. She tucked the bucket and flask beneath one arm as she shut the panel again.

  “Hello.”

  Viola shrieked and whirled. The stranger stood right behind her, and in her surprise she dropped the objects in her arms. His hands moved lightning quick to catch them before they could hit the ground. The smile on his face was one of sheer amusement.

  “Did I surprise you?” he asked.

  “Don’t sneak up on me like that!” she retorted. Then, she snatched her items back from him. She realized with discomfort that he had her trapped in a corner of the room, with the stair-panel behind her and a wall adjacent. The stranger’s nearness put any immediate retreat out of the question without some sort of awkwardness. “Let me by,” she said in a clipped voice. “I need to put these things away.”

  He arched his brows but wordlessly stepped to one side. Viola hurried past him, discomfited by his easy manner and the butterflies that roiled in her stomach.

  “What exactly did you say to my father that has him so easily fooled with regards to your character?” she asked as she stepped toward the Prince’s small study.

  The stranger ambled behind her. “That’s unkind,” he said. “Do you really think your father is a man to be easily fooled? I don’t.”

  She turned a nasty glare upon him as she paused at the door. Of course her father couldn’t be easily fooled under normal circumstances, but these circumstances were hardly normal. This line of conversation wasn’t worth pursuing, she decided. She shoved open the study door and entered. Within, she set the items on a small, pristine desk and opened a nearby cabinet to store them. One nice thing about the Prince’s quarters was that it was peppered with many pieces of furniture that held locked compartments—there were desks and cabinets, of course, but also chests and bureaus. The wardrobe in his bedchamber could be locked, and there were even a couple of footstools with hidden compartments beneath. The keys were typically kept with the locks until the hiding place was put to use.

  “What are you doing?” asked the stranger as he leaned against the doorjamb.

  “Father wants the flask of magic to be kept here,” Viola responded mechanically. “This is one of the safer places in the apartment to keep it, so I’m putting it away.”

  “Let me see it,” he said, and he extended one elegantly formed hand toward her. Viola was disconcerted that she had noticed his hands were so elegantly formed, so she ignored him in favor of placing the flask on its shelf next to the bucket.

  “I see you’ve already forgotten what happened yesterday when you refused my request,” said the stranger with disinterest.

  Viola froze in the act of closing the cabinet door. Terror clutched at her heart, and she could not bring herself to lift eyes to his face, though she could feel his stare upon her. He had blocked her into a confined space again, standing in the doorway as he was, and she had never realized it until this tense moment.

  After what seemed an eternity of silence, he said, “I suppose I should tell you that I knew perfectly well that there was magic in that well and not water. I only want to see how strong it is. Come on, then, hand it over.”

  He stepped into the study, and Viola immediately snatched the flask from the cabinet and shoved it into his waiting hands. She ventured a glance at him in time to see a momentary expression flash across his face—regret, perhaps?—but it was immediately replaced with his customary aloofness. He turned from her and strolled back into the library.

  Viola left the cabinet unlocked and hurried after him. He stood in the center of the room, where he held the flask up in the bright sunlight that streamed from the wide bay of windows on the north wall.

  “It’s too pale,” he said critically. “It should be a deeper red, not this sickly rose color.”

  “It’s always been that color,” Viola defensively replied.

  The golden stranger seemed to ignore her, for he gave no response. Instead, he simply uncorked the flask and took a generous swig of the substance. His face twisted in displeasure. “It’s weak, as I suspected.”

  “Don’t waste it,” Viola said with a frown. “We don’t have the luxury of waste. The supply has been steadily dwindling for as long as I can remember.”

  He cast a scowl her direction. “It’s no wonder, if you’re such a miser about it. You haven’t been making the proper offerings, have you?”

  “The what?” she asked, confused.

  He made a disapproving noise and moved back toward the study. She thought he meant to put the flask away, but instead he emerged with the bucket as well. “I suppose that’s the first thing we have to do,” he said. “Do you know the pattern for a spell of good health?”

  “Of course,” she replied stiffly.

  “Come along, then,” he said, and he headed for the door.

  Viola panicked. Quickly she scrambled after him and caught him by the arm. “You can’t go out there, your Highness,” she hissed. “The Eternal Prince of Lenore only leaves his apartment for official business.”

  “The Eternal Prince must get very bored,” he replied. “Besides, if he’s the ruler, why do you keep him prisoner up here?”

  “It’s not that he can’t leave, but that he doesn’t,” said Viola crossly. “His presence causes too much of a stir—you would have the entire palace in an uproar if you suddenly left by that way!”

  “Do you mean to say there’s another way for me to leave?” he asked shrewdly.

  For a moment, she hesitated. She knew that he had seen the hidden stairwell, but even if they used that, they would still have to sneak through the Prime Minister’s quarters to get outside. The chances of being seen were too risky. “You can’t be seen outside,” she said at last.

  An annoyed expression crossed his face. “
My dear girl, that is what stealth spells are for. Surely you’ve used one of those before.”

  Viola scowled, as she had not. “Father hasn’t taught me that yet,” she said. “I’m not even sure if Charles knows it. Where did you learn magic?”

  “From my parents,” he said offhandedly, “and elsewhere.” It was the “elsewhere” that had her suspicions bristling, but he did not elaborate. Instead, he continued, “It’s not a very difficult spell, except for the pattern of the seal. I don’t suppose I have time to teach you that. We really should get to your well as soon as possible.”

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “Because you’ve obviously been neglecting it. Honestly, if I had known that not only the Prince was a fake, but that fabled Lenore itself had nothing more than a single dying reservoir of magic, I don’t think I’d have bothered with the journey down here at all.”

  “Where exactly did you come from?” asked Viola.

  She was surprised when he answered quite readily, “From the north.”

  “But there’s nothing to the north but forest.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “So you came from the forest?” she asked.

  “That is what I’ve implied, isn’t it,” he responded maddeningly.

  An exhausted sigh wrenched itself from Viola’s lips and her head dropped. “Are you always so difficult?” she quietly inquired.

  “I could ask the same of you,” he said, wholly unfazed by her sudden change of demeanor. Silence hung between them, as Viola had nothing to say to this allegation. Of course she had been difficult, she wanted to scream. He was absolutely infuriating, coming in and taking charge as though he had been the Prince all along. She couldn’t bring herself to speak the words aloud, though, partly because she didn’t like confrontation with strangers and partly because he was so unpredictable that she couldn’t begin to guess how he would respond.