Chapter Two Eugene
Two
Eugene
“Oh, it’s not just you,” Eugene tells Rapunzel, watching her brush a streak of violet across the wall as he perches on her ladder.
It could be a garland, or a decorative flourish, or, as he’s learned, the dark base she’ll build lighter layers into.
And heaven knows she won’t tell him; it’s a game they like to play, seeing how long it takes him to guess what she’s painting.
He’d like to think he’s gotten better at it, but then she goes and does something like turn a purple line into patina-green rooftops. “Nobody knows anything about Astera.”
Rapunzel frowns and blows a hair out of her eyes. Eugene’s witnessed her various attempts to keep it away from her face; today’s handkerchief is just this side of peasant quaint, but it seems to do the job better than most.
Which is good, because after last night’s invitation fiasco, Rapunzel’s spent most of the day painting through her feelings in her nursery.
Well, nursery turned painting studio. From what Eugene’s eavesdropped on, the king and queen had the room locked fourteen years ago, once they accepted that if their daughter was ever found, she’d be too big for her crib.
One thing Eugene will give himself credit for, though, is noticing how Rapunzel kept staring at the relatively plain palace walls, and discreetly telling the king how Gothel’s tower bloomed with Rapunzel’s work.
Her parents were all too glad to open the nursery and clear those fourteen years of dust just so she could paint new life into it.
“I thought it was only a day and a half away.” Rapunzel steps back from the wall. By now Eugene knows the tilt of her head when she’s assessing a painting’s composition. Pascal, in his semipermanent post on her shoulder, tilts his head too. Then she swallows. “At least…it was for Gothel.”
Eugene squints, trying to piece together the blocks of color and see what she sees. Still no dice. “At least three days by ship, with good wind and good seas, and another three back. But she was a creepy old witch—maybe she just turned herself into a bird and flew? I could see her as a seagull.”
He’s never sure how jokes about Gothel will go over. Sometimes Rapunzel laughs, and sometimes she looks like she bumped a bruise. This time, he can see her ears lift with her smile, which means it landed well. “Maybe. That’s still not that far, though. Why don’t we know anything?”
“Well, for one thing, they don’t let outsiders onto the mainland.
May I?” Eugene hops off the ladder and picks up a stick of chalk.
Sometimes Rapunzel will use it to sketch her paintings out first. When she nods, he moves to an empty stretch of wall and draws the outline of Astera—or at least, his best recollection of it, which looks like a fried egg being orbited by other, smaller breakfast foods.
“It’s an archipelago. Most everyone lives here on the mainland”—he taps the fried egg—“but foreign ships can only dock here.” This time, he indicates a tiny croissant to the south.
“It’s called Merchant’s Crescent. Asteran traders will cross the bay to do business with foreigners there and then sail right back.
Guards even observe the trading to make sure no one spills Asteran secrets. ”
“How do you know all this?” Rapunzel asks as she studies his crude map.
A blob of pale yellow waits precariously on the tip of a brush in her hand, abandoned for the moment.
Candle-flame yellow, he realizes, and finds she’s already sprinkled it over the upper half of her painting, the earlier purple now the folds of a velvet drape.
It falls into place: She’s painting last night’s ball, before everything went sideways.
“Solena, one of the caretakers at my orphanage, wanted to see the world before she retired. She joined the crew of a trade ship but wound up falling for an Asteran. She came back to say goodbye, because once you set foot on mainland Astera, you can’t leave the archipelago.
I’m assuming they make exceptions for royalty.
And royal emissaries.” Eugene dusts the chalk off his hands and jerks his thumb at the couch, where a worn book lays half under a throw pillow.
“Flynnigan Rider’s supposedly Asteran, you know.
Got his start as a royal guard, even. But I think the author was just making things up, since no one outside of Astera… ”
Familiar voices seep from the hallway beyond the door.
“…too harsh on her,” the queen is saying.
“…knows the truth,” Eugene finishes. Rapunzel goes still; Pascal brrrrs a protest as Eugene quickly plucks him from her shoulder.
The echoes in the hall distort the words, but he catches still learning and doing her best.
Eugene likes the queen. It’s hard not to like a woman who saw him standing on the outskirts of their reunion with a long-lost daughter and pulled him quite literally into their family.
The thing is…princesses don’t marry criminals. Not even pardoned ones. He remembers that every time he passes the guards’ barracks and sees the gallows still waiting in the courtyard.
So Eugene has no doubt that, sooner rather than later, the queen will be every bit as understanding and gracious when they make it clear it’s time for Rapunzel to move on from him.
The other voice belongs to Cressien, minister of diplomatic affairs, currently running neck and neck with the captain of the guard for Eugene’s number one hater. “…see the consequences herself,” he’s insisting. “She must understand what’s at stake.”
Eugene and Rapunzel trade looks. He sets Pascal on the couch to blend into the cushions.
“I just didn’t want to be rude,” Rapunzel whispers.
There’s a beat filled with slowing footsteps, close to the door now, not quite at the threshold. Then the queen asks gently, “How are you doing with the separation?”
“Thomas returned his wedding ring two days ago,” Cressien says shortly. And after a moment: “Always had a rotten sense of timing.”
“You know we can manage if you need to step away for a bit.”
“I need no such thing,” Cressien replies almost immediately.
The pause stretches a little too long. Eugene realizes the silence on their side of the door is betraying their snooping too. “It occurs to me,” he all but brays, “that we need a new nickname for you, since Blondie is a bit, oh, obsolete now. How do you feel about Blossom?”
Rapunzel wrinkles her nose. “Okay?”
“ ‘Okay’ is code for ‘no thank you,’ ” he surmises.
She grins sheepishly. “It’s too close to Flower.”
“Good point. Florals are completely out.” He rubs his chin. “Something flashier? Razzmatazz?”
“That’s just as many syllables as Rapunzel.”
“True, true. Punzie?”
She doesn’t have time to shoot that down before there’s a knock at the door. “Rapunzel? May we come in?”
“Of course!” Rapunzel’s face tightens as her mother and the minister enter. “I’m so sorry about last night—I didn’t mean to cause any problems—”
The queen crosses over to her. “We know, dear. No one expected you to be in that position—oh, wait.” She catches Rapunzel’s chin and wipes a fleck of purple paint off her cheek. Eugene wonders if Rapunzel’s aware of how much she lights up at the simple gesture. “Cressien can explain better.”
The minister straightens, tugging at his cravat. “The fact of the matter is, we know very little about the kingdom of Astera.”
“Eugene was just telling me no one ever leaves,” Rapunzel says.
Cressien’s gaze briefly flicks to Eugene as if he’s a dog who jumped through an unexpected hoop.
“Correct,” he says mildly. “The last record we have is of a wedding announcement between Queen Gaelle and a Duke Enver over fifty years ago. King Enver is presumably their son, and Verette their granddaughter. We’ve sent customary invitations to neighboring kingdoms, including Astera, for all significant events as a matter of courtesy, including the ball last night.
But it is unprecedented for Astera to actually make an appearance.
And it is even more concerning that they’ve singled you out this way. ”
Rapunzel pushes the paintbrush into a blob of reddish pink that’s increasingly matching her cheeks, her eyes on the palette. “I didn’t want to insult them by refusing.”
“A skilled leader is able to receive an invitation without committing to attend,” Cressien says.
“Express gratitude in public, decline later in private, send gifts, soothe egos. But because you accepted, no matter the excuse we give, Astera will know we’re suspicious of them and be insulted nevertheless.
Something of a minor”—he clears his throat—“catastrophe.”
Eugene doesn’t miss Rapunzel’s flinch. Yet a month’s distance from his life of crime has not dulled his eye for a scam, and this is checking all the boxes: vague terms, forced urgency, targeting someone too new to know better. “Is it me, or does that sound like a setup?”
The minister only shoots him another good boy, now shake look, but the queen’s lips purse.
“I don’t disagree. The Asteran ship only arrived right before the ball last night, and Councilor Teophine delivered their invitation in the most conspicuous way she could.
It suggests they wish to strong-arm us into a visit. ”
Rapunzel still twists her hair when she’s anxious, even if it’s harder with it cropped short. “So…when am I leaving?”
“You aren’t,” Cressien says, at the same time her mother says, “Oh, no.” The minister bobs his head in deference to the queen, and she continues, “You’ve barely been here a month.
We just want you to be aware of what’s happening, since this is a very delicate situation.
No one expects you to navigate it yourself. ”
Rapunzel sets her paintbrush down.
There’s a look in her eyes that Eugene recognizes.
It doesn’t show up often, but he pays attention when it does, because the first time he encountered it, Rapunzel was threatening him with ten pounds of cast iron and a likely concussion.
Sometimes he thinks people focus more on the tower, and less on the fact that Rapunzel spent eighteen years playing chess against herself.
“Right,” she agrees, “so why don’t we use that?”
Minister Cressien frowns. “I don’t follow.”
Rapunzel’s chin lifts. “They expect me to be completely na?ve, don’t they? So they won’t bother trying to hide what they want from us in front of me.”
Eugene’s belly flops as the queen steeples her fingers, considering. Rapunzel’s right—it’s risky, but she’s right.
And the moment her ship clears the horizon, he has no doubt he’ll be kindly and firmly escorted out the back door.
“I could go with,” Eugene volunteers quickly. “So you’re not on your own.”
Two more weeks; one more adventure with her. Then maybe, once he’s asked to go, he’ll be ready.
“I would consider alternative courses of action, Your Majesty.” Cressien looks like he’s barely repressing a lip curl.
“But Eugene’s more…unorthodox skills could be quite useful, I think,” the queen muses.
Right. That clinches it. Pardon or no, this is how they’re always going to see him. Eugene forces a laugh. “Ah, yes. I can spy, steal state secrets, keep an eye out for any traps, you know. Rogue things.”
“That’s not all.” To his dismay, Rapunzel is picking up The Tales of Flynnigan Rider from the couch and handing it to her mother. “Eugene’s favorite book is about a man from Astera. He might actually know more about the customs than we do.”
As the queen flips the pages, Eugene’s face burns. “Well,” he blusters, “maybe…it’s just a kids’ book, and the author could have made it all up.”
The queen’s hands go still. “Cressien…do you have the invitation with you?” When he passes the envelope over, she flips it and lays it against the book’s first page, then turns it around to show them what caught her eye.
There’s an old mark embossed into the inside of the front cover, one he always assumed to be simply ornamental: a crown surrounded by four stars, like the points of a compass rose.
The same symbol that’s pressed into the envelope’s wax seal.
The seal of the king.
“How did you get this book, Eugene?” the queen asks.
Sometimes you can hear the asterisk attached to a question. This asterisk’s annotation reads, Do we need to draft an extradition treaty?
“The orphanage,” he answers, bewildered. “It was just—always there.”
To his surprise, the queen shuts it and hands it back to him. “You may just be an accidental expert after all.” She thinks for a moment, then shakes her head at Rapunzel. “I appreciate your initiative, dear, but it’s not worth the risk. We’ll decline and say it’s just too soon.”
“And since they won’t believe it, I will handle the aftermath,” Cressien says stonily.
“But—” Rapunzel’s hands ball into fists. “But I made this problem. I should help fix it.”
Her mother squeezes her shoulder. “Believe me, there will be plenty of opportunities to help in the future. For now, let us deal with it. And if this Teophine tries to seek you out directly, tell her I summoned you, and come straight to me.”
It’s the tone Eugene’s heard a thousand times from mothers sending their children down to the market with a very short list and exact change. From the look on Rapunzel’s face, she has no idea how to parse it.
“Okay,” she says, almost confused. “If that’s what you want.”
“Everything will be fine,” the queen tells Rapunzel with one final squeeze.
As she and Cressien leave, he flips The Tales of Flynnigan Rider open once more and studies the seal.
Now that he thinks about it, the orphanage had a bookshelf…
and this book was never on it. Even when he left it in another room, somehow he would always find it later on the foot of his bed, or under his pillow, or resting on the crate he used for a nightstand.
And for a book that was always there, it’s even stranger that he’s never come across another copy.
How did he get this one?
Rapunzel waits, head cocked, until the footsteps in the hall fade. Then she picks up her paintbrush again, eyes narrowed, and says, “Pascal, you can come out now.”
And as she dips the brush in a dollop of midnight-blue paint, Eugene knows one thing for sure: Even if the queen thinks everything will be fine, it’s certainly far from over.