Uprooted(67)
Author: Naomi Novik

That wasn’t much comfort: by the law, Kasia and the queen should both have been put to death at once. But Kasia whispered, “It’s all right, Nieshka.” It wasn’t, but there wasn’t anything else to do. The guards put her among them, four men before and four men after, and marched her away into the palace.

I stared after them hollowly for a moment, and then I realized I’d never find her again in this enormous place if I didn’t see where they took her. I jumped and darted after them. “Here, now,” a door guard said to me as I tried to follow them inside, but I told him, “Param param,” humming it like the song about the tiny fly that no one could catch, and he blinked and I was past him.

I trailed after the guards like a dangling thread, keeping my hum going to tell everyone I passed that I was too small to notice, nothing important. It wasn’t hard. I felt as small and insignificant as could be imagined. The corridor went on and on. There were doors everywhere, heavy wood and hung with iron. Servants and courtiers bustled in and out of enormous rooms hung with tapestries, full of carven furniture and stone fireplaces bigger than my front door. Glittering lamps full of magic hung from the ceilings, and in the hallways, racks of tall white candles stood, burning without melting.

Finally the corridor ended in a small iron door, guarded again. The guards nodded to Kasia’s escort, and let them and rag-tag me through into a narrow circling stairway, their eyes sliding over me. We climbed and climbed, my tired legs struggling to push me up each step, until at last we came crowding onto a small round landing. It was dim and smoky: there wasn’t any window, and only an ordinary oil lamp stood set in a rough niche in the wall. It shone on the dull grey of another heavy iron door, a big round knocker upon it shaped like the head of a hungry imp, the knocker’s ring held in its wide open mouth. A strange chill came off the iron, a cold wind lapping at my skin, even though I was pressed up against the wall in the corner behind the tall guards.

The chief guard knocked, and the door swung inward. “We’ve brought the other girl, milady,” he said.

“All right,” a woman’s voice said, crisply. The guards parted to let Kasia through. A tall slim woman stood in the doorway, yellow coiled braids and a golden headdress atop her head, wearing a blue silk gown delicately jeweled at the neck and waist, with a train sweeping the floor behind her, although her sleeves were practical, laced snug from the elbow to the wrist. She stood to one side and waved Kasia in past her with two impatient flicks of her long hand. I had a brief glimpse of a large room beyond, carpeted and comfortable, and the queen sitting upright in a straight-backed chair. She was looking blankly out a window down at the glitter of the Vandalus.

“And what’s this?” the lady said, turning to look at me. All the guards turned and stared, seeing me. I froze.

“I—” the chief guard stammered, going a little red in the face, with a darted look at the two men who’d been last in their party, a look that promised them trouble for not noticing me. “She’s—”

“I’m Agnieszka,” I said. “I came with Kasia and the queen.”

The lady gave me one incredulous stare that saw every snagged thread and every mud-spatter on my skirts, even the ones in back, and was astonished to find that I had the gall to speak. She looked at the guard. “Is this one suspected of corruption as well?” she demanded.

“No, milady, not as I know,” he said.

“Then why are you bringing her to me? I’ve enough to do here.” She turned back into the room, her train swashing along after her, and the door slammed shut. Another cold wave washed over me and back to the imp with its greedy mouth, licking away the last of my concealing spell. It devoured magic, I realized: that must have been why they brought corrupted prisoners here.

“How did you get in here?” the chief guard demanded suspiciously, all of them looming around me.

I would have liked to hide myself away again, but I couldn’t with that hungry mouth waiting. “I’m a witch,” I said. They looked even more suspicious. I brought out the letter I still clutched in my skirt pocket: the paper was more than a little grubbier for wear, but the charred letters of the seal still smoked faintly. “The Dragon gave me a letter for the king.”

Chapter 18

They took me downstairs and put me into a small unused stateroom, for lack of anyplace better. The guards kept watch outside the door while their captain went off, my letter in hand, to find out what ought to be done with me. My legs were ready to give out on me, but there was nothing to sit on but a few alarming chairs pushed up against the wall, delicate fragile-looking confections of white paint and gilt and red velvet cushions. I would have thought any one of them a throne, if there hadn’t been four in a row.

I leaned against the wall for a while instead, and then I tried sitting on the hearth, but the fire hadn’t been lit in here for a long time. The ashes were dead and the stone was cold. I went back to the wall. I went back to the hearth. Finally I decided that no one could put a chair in a room and not mean anyone to sit on it, and I gingerly perched on the edge of one of the chairs, holding my skirts close against me.

The moment I sat, the door opened and a servant came in, a woman in a crisp black dress, something like Danka’s age with a small pursed mouth of disapproval. I sprang up guiltily. Four long gleaming red threads followed me unraveling from the cushion, caught on a burr on my skirt, and a long sharp white-painted splinter snagged in my sleeve and broke off. The woman’s mouth pursed harder, but she only said, “This way, please,” stiffly.

She led me out past the guards, who didn’t look sorry to see the back of me, and took me back up yet another different staircase—I’d seen half a dozen in the castle already—and showed me to a tiny dark cell of a room on the second floor. It had a narrow window that looked out on the stone wall of the cathedral: a rainspout shaped like a wide-mouthed and hungry gargoyle sneered in at me. She left me there before I could think to ask her what to do next.

I sat down on the cot. I must have slept, because by the next thought I had, I was flat on the cot instead, but it wasn’t a deliberate choice; I didn’t even remember lying down. I struggled up still sore and weary, but too conscious that I had no time to waste, and no idea what to do. I didn’t know how to make anyone pay attention to me, unless I went to the middle of the courtyard and began to lob fire spells at the walls. I doubted that would make the king any more inclined to let me speak at Kasia’s trial.