Chapter Ten I Am Greeted with a Toad to the Face
Chapter Ten
I Am Greeted with a Toad to the Face
Castle Tailliz was not as breathtaking a sight as the soaring giant-carved spires of my stepmother’s palace.
It wasn’t very big, as castles go, but it was imposing in its own way: a solid, pugnacious-looking edifice designed for defense and not pretending otherwise.
The castle took up the whole of a small island in the center of a half-moon-shaped bay, the walls rising straight up from a high cliff face of white stone.
Narrow-windowed towers loomed over the ramparts at every sharp corner.
A single wide bridge leapt across the bay on soaring arches, connecting the castle proper to a stout keep on the mainland.
We at last rejoined the road, which wound ahead through a cluster of houses and farms lining one side of the bay before it reached the keep. The capital city of Tailliz, presumably, as unimpressive as might be expected of the capital of any minor, unimportant kingdom.
Something about it seemed not quite right to me. I wasn’t sure why until we got closer.
No smoke rose from the thatched roofs, and no fishing boats plied their trade in the water.
When we reached the outskirts of the village, I saw no one in the fields planting crops of winter wheat or washing their clothes in the small river that poured into the bay.
No children played in the street. The buildings stood eerily silent around us; our footsteps on the cobbles were the only sounds not made by wind or surf.
The paint on the walls was peeling. Fences slumped in disrepair.
As far as I could tell, the place was deserted and had been for some time.
The first time I came across anything in Tailliz that didn’t strike me as an ominous portent, it would come as a very pleasant surprise.
Had the villagers been eaten by monsters? Surely the hunters would have said something. They appeared to be unconcerned by the emptiness of the village and made no comment as we passed through.
Jack led us to the keep, where the gate was warded by a formidable portcullis and huge ironclad wooden doors that might each have been carved from the great trees in a single piece. Any army with plans to take Castle Tailliz would have a tough job of it.
Of course, the assaults on the kingdom weren’t being made against the walls. They were being made against any who dared to venture outside of them. This was a country under siege by an unseen enemy, even if no sign of that siege showed in the placid, unruffled waters lapping at the seashore.
And it was, according to my stepmother’s design, going to be my home from that point on. Or at least, it would be my home once I admitted to my true identity. The idea failed to fill me with a swell of happy anticipation.
I wondered briefly if the castle would turn out to be as empty as the village, but I was quickly disabused of that idea. “Hallo, the keep!” Jack called up to the gatehouse.
“Hallo, the huntsmen!” a voice replied. “Which one are you? Is that Jack I hear?”
“Indeed, it is.”
“Glad you’re back at last. We were getting worried!”
It was reassuring to find the castle inhabited—although that destroyed any remaining shreds of my theory that I had been kidnapped by bandits.
I hadn’t been taking the idea all that seriously by that point, anyway.
Whatever secret had led the hunters to don masks and accost young women in the woods, it wasn’t that.
A soldier poked his helmeted head over a parapet. “What’s that you’ve caught for us there? A fat deer? A succulent boar?”
“Alas, neither,” Jack replied. “ ’Tis a girl.”
“Oh, is it? And how does she taste?” Riotous laughter echoed from above.
“The ogres always thought I’d be delicious,” I said. “But then, they say that about everyone.”
Jack blinked at me. “A very strange girl,” he muttered. Sam grinned.
Soon the small troop of soldiers standing guard (all human—no ogres, dragons, or transfigured teeth here) raised the portcullis and let us through. From there, a trek across the long bridge led us through another gate and into a courtyard within the castle walls.
A very crowded courtyard. The bridge had been silent save for the cries of seabirds and the slosh of the waves against the stone supports.
Here, noise assaulted my ears, and my vision was blocked by the great mass of people crammed into the yard.
My nose was likewise overwhelmed. The scent of unwashed people mixed with a strong smell of horse and dog; I imagined stables and kennels lurked somewhere nearby.
As we pressed through, I saw that crudely constructed shelters had been erected haphazardly throughout the courtyard, springing up from the ground like mushrooms. Most were rickety structures, made of whatever material had come to hand—loose lumber, boxes and barrels, blankets to keep out the rain.
Sheep and cows were packed shoulder to shoulder in rough pens, adding their noise to the general clamor.
Cookfires had been lit wherever there was enough room.
There must have been a few hundred people jammed into the cramped space.
“So this is where the villagers got to,” I said, relieved. They hadn’t been devoured. They’d sought shelter behind the stout castle walls.
“No one wants to take their chances with the monsters,” Sam said.
Hundreds of refugees. My notion of a country under a siege hadn’t merely been a colorful metaphor. I’d been more correct than I’d known.
The Tailliziani packing the courtyard were a varied lot, with hair that could be anything from ash blond to so black it was nearly deep blue and complexions that ranged from almost as pale as my Ecossic escort to almost as dark as my sister Jonquil.
Pretty much what I’d expect in a kingdom on the western shore that, as I recalled from my lessons, had a reasonable lumber trade during the months when the coast was navigable.
Dynastic marriages weren’t the only reason foreigners came here.
Which didn’t guarantee I’d be welcomed to the court with open arms, but at least I wouldn’t be an inconceivable oddity solely because I spoke with a different accent.
It took us an age to pick our way through the courtyard, as the pathway weaving between the structures shifted with the crush of people, sometimes vanishing before our eyes.
“Gervase has tried to make room for as many as possible.” Sam surveyed the makeshift campground, his lips drawn into a grim line. “As much as the court nobles have allowed him to, anyway.”
“Allowed?” I said. “Isn’t he the king?”
“Aye, but…it’s complicated.”
“The Great Hall is over here,” Jack broke in as we approached a pair of doors leading to the castle’s interior. “We’ll find you an escort to the women’s wing and let the king know you’re here.”
“An escort to the what?”
Before we could proceed any further, we came to a halt as half a dozen men fought their way out of the press and approached us.
All of them were dressed in green and wearing masks.
I was unsurprised to see they each bore the stamp of an Ecossic lineage and were in fact identical in appearance to my traveling companions.
The duchess’s brothers had come to rejoin the rest of their peculiar fraternity.
The two groups greeted each other with boisterous cries and joyous hugs, and I immediately lost track of who was who.
“We were expecting you last night,” one said, talking loudly to be heard over the noise. He paused, taking in our torn clothing and assorted bloodstains. “What happened?”
“Nothing that couldn’t be overcome by a nip of frostbite,” another replied. Max? Yes, he had the hat. “What about here?” he asked. “Anything attack while we were gone?”
“No, but there’s something you should—”
One huntsman had been looking me up and down the entire time, frowning. “Who’s this?” he spat. “Is this the princess?”
A toad leapt out of his mouth and smacked into my face.
I batted at the creature as it busily crawled up my hair. It was large and surprisingly heavy. “Excuse me. Did you just spit a toad at me?”
“Serves you right,” he said. “I hope it gives you warts.” As if to emphasize the point, he spat again, ejecting a tiny, colorful frog onto my shoe. It hopped away into the crowd. I dearly hoped it wasn’t one of the poisonous ones.
“Jude, we’ve talked about this,” another hunter said with the weary air of frequent repetition. “Don’t spit amphibians at people. It isn’t polite.”
“I’m doing it for Jack!” the frog spitter protested.
“Look at her,” said the other one. “Would any princess be so bedraggled? Her dress is all over muck.”
The toad croaked loudly in my ear.
My interest in the rest of their argument was nonexistent. Nor did I care what imagined grudge Jude held against a princess he had never met. For whatever reason, while wounds, exhaustion, and a desperate need for a bath hadn’t pushed me over the edge, a toad in my hair was the final straw.
I wrenched the toad off my head, painfully ripping out the tangle of hair it clung to, tossed it aside, and stalked off toward the Great Hall, forcing a path through the multitudes in the way.
Some of the huntsmen shouted after me and ran in pursuit, but the crowd closed in my wake, slowing them down.
One almost managed to reach me before he was cut off.
The villagers’ boots crushed the flowers that sprung up under his feet where he walked.
I ignored that and ignored the shouts, which soon faded into the rest of the noise.
Enough was enough. The huntsmen’s secrets and dislikes and strange powers were of little consequence now that they had brought me to the king.
I had no need to wait in the “women’s wing,” whatever that was, until the king deigned to call for Clover the handmaiden.
It was time to drop the disguise and present myself as I was.
I didn’t know what my husband-to-be was going to make of me in my current state, and I didn’t much care.
I wasn’t the one who’d asked for this wedding.
If he was shocked to find his bride straggling in encrusted with blood and dirt, he could damn well learn to live with it.
It probably wouldn’t be the last time it happened, given my luck and my history, so I figured I might as well start as I meant to go on.
I threw open the double doors to find a large room, its high wooden ceiling held up by broad smoke-blackened beams. Dust motes danced in the dying sunlight that slanted through a dozen west-facing lancet windows.
Before me were the backsides of a pack of nobles in richly dyed clothes, scarlet and gold and vermilion and indigo, like a flock of bright birds.
I caught glimpses of their faces as they turned to talk with one another, and I noted that none appeared to be wearing masks.
The “latest fashion at the court” had decidedly failed to catch on.
A clear avenue led across to the other side of the room, where the top of an ornate throne peeked up above the elaborate feathered hats. Heads swiveled in my direction as I strode boldly ahead.
And then something rolled under my shoe, and my foot slipped out from under me. I landed on my arm with a sickening crack.
I yelped in surprise at the sharp stab of pain, which quickly dulled to a low, aching throb. Around me, the murmurs of the crowd ceased.
In the silence, a deep, sonorous voice spoke. “That,” it said, “clearly proves my hypothesis. We have here before us, in this very hall”—the voice paused for dramatic effect—“a woman!”