Chapter Five Rapunzel
Five
Rapunzel
Shawl? Check.
Shoes? Unfortunately, check.
Satchel full of art supplies just in case there’s a lull in this morning’s tour and she can sneak in an architecture study? Check.
Rapunzel runs a hand through her hair, wondering if it will ever grow long enough to tie back again, then takes one more glance at the mirror in her guest room and—
Gently pries the chameleon from her shoulder and sets him on the bed. “I’m sorry, Pascal, but you know it’s too chilly for you.”
The problem is the colder it gets, the groggier Pascal becomes, so he only starts plodding sleepily across the bedspread toward her once more.
There’s a knock at the door. She opens it to find Eugene waiting in the parlor that connects her quarters, his, and Cressien’s. He points to her satchel. “Is he allowed to come with you?”
Rapunzel looks down. Pascal is doing his drowsiest attempt at blending in to the purple fabric, which renders him a mottled magenta. “No,” she sighs. “How about you?”
“Apparently”—Eugene makes air quotes—“ ‘Princess Verette prefers small parties,’ so no. I’ll keep an eye on your frog.
” Then he sobers. “Be on the lookout today. I think they’re hiding something from us.
After all that fuss about Enver being sick, I saw him trotting around the gardens last night, fit as a fiddle. ”
There’s a creak from Cressien’s quarters, though his door stays closed.
Rapunzel quickly passes Pascal to Eugene, speaking low. “I’ll be careful. Can you try to figure out where your book came from while we’re out? The royal seal has to mean something.”
“I’m on it.” Eugene hides Pascal behind his back as Cressien’s door opens.
The minister steps out, regarding them both with faint misgiving, but all he says is “Good morning, Your Highness.”
“Good morning!” Rapunzel chirps.
“Our schedule has us touring the city most of the day,” Minister Cressien recites, apparently from memory, “and returning for a garden party in the late afternoon, where the three of us will be introduced to various Asteran dignitaries. Fitzherbert, I would suggest”—he says suggest like he means anything but—“that you stay within the palace grounds today.”
“Maybe you can check on Max,” Rapunzel offers. The white stallion wasn’t exactly thrilled about the ocean voyage, but as a secret security measure, he seemed to understand his assignment.
There’s another knock, this time at the parlor door. It swings open to admit Hughes, the king’s chamberlain. “The king and princess are ready to depart, Your Highness.”
“Have fun out there, you wacky kids,” Eugene says blithely, waving with the hand not currently full of chameleon.
As Hughes leads them out of the palace, Rapunzel can’t help taking a better look around, noting the architectural motifs, the propensity for geometric windows and arches carved with sun rays, floor mosaics patterned in charts of the seasons, all things Hughes highlighted last night but that only truly come to life in the day.
The daylight also reveals something she missed before: an iridescent glitter in the pale stone of the walls and columns, not unlike the shells she’s looking for.
And even more curiously…in some of the halls and corridors, the stone looks cloudy, almost mottled, where the surface’s shimmer is subdued.
Almost as if it’s been repaired, but not quite good as new.
“Good morning and clear skies!” King Enver booms as they emerge into the sunlight. Princess Verette is by his side, wearing an icy blue dress and an icier expression.
“Clear skies,” Verette echoes impassively, as does Hughes.
“Clear skies?” Rapunzel ventures, because that seems to be the proper response.
King Enver beams. “A quick study! Come, Teophine is waiting with the carriages.”
“Your Majesty, if I may…” Minister Cressien produces a sealed letter from a pocket. “Her Majesty the queen requested that I send her daily reports via our galleon’s messenger hawk. Might we visit the docks so I can hand this off?”
Rapunzel’s heart leaps into her throat. The little folded paper might as well be a sword over her head. No one said anything about reports before. What is he telling her mother—that she flubbed her introduction to Verette? That she keeps sticking her foot in her mouth?
That she isn’t ready to be a real princess after all?
“No need. Hughes will send a courier.” Enver waves his chamberlain over.
“Right away, sire,” Hughes says, taking the letter. Rapunzel’s gaze catches on a mark on the back of his hand, almost like a rusty sunburst of scar tissue just south of his prominent knuckles.
Verette’s lips thin. “Teophine is waiting on us, Father.”
Enver’s hand lands on her shoulder. “Right you are! Let’s be off!”
The tour takes them all over the main city of Astera, starting with grand glimmering pavilions of the same pale stone as the palace, where Teophine and a high priestess explain their solstice and equinox ceremonies.
Then it’s off to the lavish opera house for a performance of King Enver’s favorite arias, and then a public amphitheater to watch a troupe of traditional Asteran dancers.
A crowd gathers everywhere they stop, kept at a safe distance by a line of guards.
From the shouts and cheers, Rapunzel assumes the fuss is just for King Enver and Princess Verette, until she spots one citizen at the amphitheater slashing a finger in the air by their chin as they confer with another onlooker, and mouthing what looks like heard it was longer.
“This way, Princess.” King Enver steps between them, tossing out a quick wave to his subjects as he ushers her inside.
Rapunzel can’t quite put her finger on it, but something’s…
not quite right. It’s like the tickle of a hair caught in her lashes, impossible to see clearly, maybe just a feeling.
But everything is dazzling. Everything is new.
It’s all the sort of thing she dreamed was waiting beyond Gothel’s tower, isn’t it?
Admittedly, she hadn’t factored blisters into the equation.
Her heels were already raw by the time they left the opera house, and when they leave the amphitheater, she can feel a full-blown boil swelling up. Climbing back into the carriage is even worse, as the back of her slipper digs in deeper.
It comes to a head—well, more like a foot—at the tour of the Northeast Secondary Sunmill while the chief engineer explains the main pump mechanism over groaning pipes, creaking timbers, and the rush of water.
“…and as the sails on the mill spin, that turns…well, it turns a bunch of shafts and cogs, but eventually, it turns this water screw.” From their perch on the catwalk ringing the interior of the sunmill’s main tower, she indicates a giant hollow cylinder rising from the ground at an angle, and a spiral-threaded shaft rotating inside, its diameter nearly twice as wide as Rapunzel is tall.
A steady stream of water flows from the bottom rim of the cylinder into a great pool.
“This water screw reaches all the way down into one of Astera’s natural aquifers. ”
“Amazing,” Rapunzel says sincerely, because it’s the sort of engineering feat that would bore Eugene to tears but makes her want to throw the people responsible a parade.
And if her heel weren’t throbbing, she’d probably have about a hundred follow-up questions, but instead at least half her attention is devoted to discreetly taking the weight off her right foot.
“And this supplies all the water for the district?”
The engineer looks pleasantly surprised at her interest. “First it passes through our filtration system, and then it feeds out into our distribution system via the transmission mains—”
“I don’t think we want to bore our guest with the technical details,” King Enver lightly interjects.
“Oh no, please do,” Rapunzel lobs back, then corrects herself. “I mean, it’s not boring to me at all!”
The chief engineer’s eyes flick to the king, and at a dip of his chin, she continues.
“At first, residents got water directly from the sunmills, but for the last fifty years, we’ve operated a system of public fountains.
Our next stage of development will be installing pipes in community buildings to provide fresh water on demand. Does Kourenne have something similar?”
The tightness in Cressien’s face suggests she should answer carefully, but Rapunzel’s not sure why. Or maybe she’s imagining it because her left ankle is now getting a bit wobbly from doing double duty.
Either way, they’ve practiced an excuse to get her out of any dodgy questions: “I’m sorry, my tutors haven’t gotten to our water system just yet.
” Then, because she chafes at playing ignorant, and she did read the geology book in Gothel’s tower cover to cover over a thousand times (she counted): “Though I don’t think we could create anything like these structures in the capital.
It’s built on a granite deposit, and I assume Astera’s springs are volcanic.
” Oh no. She’s starting to lose her balance.
Rapunzel overcorrects, only for her blisters to flare up.
“Ow-rrr is it,” she tries to cover, “a, a—karst—syst—”
A firm hand steadies her elbow. “Princess Rapunzel, is everything all right?” rumbles King Enver.
She looks to Cressien, who seems just as wary and disappointed as ever.
She remembers Eugene’s warning to stay on her guard.
But…
What was the point of leaving the tower, if she’s just going to see everyone new as a Gothel waiting to happen?
“I’m so sorry, Your Majesty, I seem to have some blisters,” Rapunzel confesses. “I’m still getting used to shoes.”
Minister Cressien runs a hand over his mouth.
But to her surprise, Enver just lets her go with a booming laugh. “I never even considered! Of course you’d have no need for them, living indoors all that time. We can pause the tour and go back to the palace. You’ll have plenty of time to see the rest.”