Forest Born Page 4

  Tusken hopped to her, and she pulled him close.

  “It’s not the trees,” she whispered, though he would not understand. “It’s me, Tusken. What can I do about that?”

  “Tick,” he said, waving a stick near her face. “Tick. See tick?”

  “It is a beautiful stick.”

  Tusken nodded.

  Rin did not sleep well that night. Early, before the waiting women awoke, Rin crept out into the dark blue morning and ran as if from death itself. The air tore out of her lungs, her feet hammered on the ground. There was no running away here, with a wall enclosing the gardens and stables, and sentries by the gates. No illusion that she could keep on going until she ceased to be. But at least while she moved, the piercing disquiet did not undo her.

  Rin washed her face and arms in a bird bath and sneaked in just as the others began to stretch and awaken.

  That afternoon, Cilie, the fifth waiting woman, returned from her visit home and declared she was nearly expiring from eagerness to have some time alone with Tusken.

  “I’m happy to keep taking him out myself,” Rin said.

  Cilie sat before a mirror, redoing the complicated coil of her hair, which was long and brown and lush, the most striking feature of her otherwise plain appearance.

  “Let her do it, Cilie,” said Janissa. “He seems to like her. She’s had more success than the rest of us.”

  “That won’t last,” said Cilie. Her eyes were small and a little close together, reminding Rin of a pig. “There’s no pleasing the little prince, spoiled to the bones he is.”

  Rin very much wanted to say, “There’s something in you I don’t like. Not a bit. You have the look of a dog who’s eaten its master’s meal and is ready to bolt. And you have pig eyes. So don’t you complain about Tusken in my hearing.” But she stuffed the words inside and did not argue, taking Tusken by the hand without waiting for permission.

  In the gardens that day, Rin and Tusken discovered fat snails, a rainwater-filled hollow teeming with water insects, and once, Cilie crouching behind a shrub.

  Rin strode right up, her fist on her hip, a mannerism that was all Ma. Cilie startled and ran off. Some time later, she spotted Cilie by the stables, arguing with a man Rin did not know.

  “Something there I don’t like . . . ,” Rin muttered.

  The next day Cilie was waiting for Rin beyond the arch that led to the flower garden, a spot hidden both from the nearest sentries and the gardeners working beyond in the sun. She smoothed her glossy brown hair away from her forehead, making sure every hair was in place.

  “It is my turn to watch Tusken. I love him and miss him desperately after so much time away.”

  Cilie did want to be with Tusken, but not because she loved him. There was some other purpose in those pig eyes that Rin could not read. Rin tried to walk around her.

  Cilie grabbed her arm. “You’re not clever enough to care for this boy. The queen doesn’t trust you. She wants me to take him from now on.”

  Rin was afraid to speak with all the hot anger rising to her throat. She pulled her arm free, gripped Tusken’s hand, and started away, saying, “Well, Tusk, shall we hunt frogs today?”

  Cilie darted in front of Rin and shoved her hard in the chest. Rin fell back, hitting the flagstones. Cilie tried to pick up Tusken, but he spun away in an oblivious dance. Rin scrambled to her feet, putting herself between Cilie and the boy. She held up her hands in fists and glared. Razo had taught her how to throw a punch. He’d let her practice on his flattened palms, and she’d laughed so hard she’d gotten the hiccups. But she had never actually hit anyone. Now, facing Cilie, her fists trembled with eagerness. Even more insistent were the words building inside her like a mouthful of stones.

  “Leave him alone.” Rin was as startled by her words as Cilie seemed. Telling others what to do was her ma’s business. Shame burned in Rin’s cheeks, but she did not apologize or turn away.

  Cilie took a step back. “How dare—”

  “I see you.” The passion in her words made Rin feel warm and bright as the sun. “No one else does, but I do. I see you’re hiding something. And if you hurt Tusken, I’ll kill you.”

  Cilie stumbled a few more steps back. Rin could see she believed the threat but still did not flee, her own intent greater than her fear. So what was Cilie’s intent? Could she truly mean Tusken harm?

  Yes. Now that Rin looked, she could see that clearly in Cilie’s face. Secrets, dark designs, murderous thoughts, and desperation. And all of it focused on Tusken.

  Rin’s anger washed away as quickly as it had flamed to life, replaced by clammy fear. She swooped at the boy, flinging him into her arms, and hurried into the garden. Footsteps slapped behind her, and Rin ran faster, casting her gaze around for safety.

  “Finn!” she called to a large soldier with dark, longish hair, one of Razo’s closest friends and a fellow Forest born.

  Finn left his group of soldiers, his eyes darting to Tusken’s face, then around for signs of an enemy. His steps quickened into a run. “What’s happened?”

  Rin glanced back—Cilie was already gone. She took a breath and discovered she was trembling so hard she could no longer hold Tusken and handed him over to Finn. What had that woman been up to? Perhaps nothing serious, perhaps Rin had overreacted. But she still itched with fear.

  And it was not just the altercation that set her feeling like a bag of chattering bones—it was speaking those words. She could feel them in her head still, rolling around, clanging into her thoughts. Leave him alone. I’ll kill you. In truth, Rin could not bear to finish off a pigeon she’d downed with her sling, but the threat had felt so real.

  And she felt bad. Wrong. Sick with herself. Certain that if her ma had heard her speak those words, she would have turned her back. Rin had sworn to herself that she would never speak like that again, not as she had to Nordra all those years ago. Living in the city was dangerous—so many people, so many chances to slip up.

  After a few moments in patient silence, Finn asked, “Do you want me to stay with you?”

  Rin nodded, got on her knees and hugged Tusken, whispering to him of all the spectacular insects they were going to find today. Tusken patted the top of her head and said, “Win,” finding the w sound in her name. Then, “Finn. Win, Finn, Win, Finn,” marching around to the beat of his rhyme.

  Finn stayed by them all afternoon. She’d always felt a certain kinship with the large soldier, who wasted no words, and once her trembling subsided, she found it easy to reflect Finn’s quiet nature.

  When they were ready to go in to dinner, Finn escorted them to the queen’s antechamber.

  “Do you want me to stay?” he asked.

  Rin shook her head. “No, I’ll be all right. Thanks, Finn. Thank you.”

  Cilie was inside, whispering angrily with two of the waiting women. Rin overhead a few words: “. . . completely crazy . . . attacked me . . . Tusken shouldn’t . . .”

  Rin passed them without a second glance, taking Tusken into the nursery.

  She was teaching Tusken a song when the queen appeared in the doorway, tall and slender, her yellow hair braided and hanging in a simple loop.

  “Mama!” Tusken yelled and waddled to her. She picked him up and swung him around.

  “Hello, my most precious. Oh, it’s good to see you. I was so busy this week, but our visitors left today and now I’m all yours.”

  “Mama busy.”

  “That’s true, but no more. Were you playing with Rin?”

  “Pway Win,” Tusken said, tugging on the blue stone necklace at his mother’s throat.

  Rin closed the door between the nursery and the antechamber. In the four weeks since she’d come to the palace, she had never spoken to the queen, and it took a few moments to muster the courage. She kept her eyes on Tusken’s dangling bare feet so she would not lose her nerve.

  “I don’t trust Cilie,” Rin said in a small, shaky voice.

  There was a pause before the queen replied.
“And you think I shouldn’t trust her either?”

  Rin was still anxious from her words of demand that morning, quaking inside like aspen leaves in a windstorm. Be careful, she shouted at herself.

  She took another breath. “I don’t trust Cilie with Tusken.”

  The queen’s arms tightened around her son. “Do you know anything specific? Has she made threats or hurt him?”

  “No, I don’t know anything. She’s . . . I’m sorry.” Rin almost turned and left then, sure she was behaving as no waiting woman should. But she remembered the look in Cilie’s close eyes and summoned more courage. “She was acting oddly, insisting she be with Tusken. And something in her . . . expression . . . made me not trust her.”

  “Do you think she plans to hurt him?”

  Rin shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know anything, but I feel afraid for him.”

  The queen studied Rin’s face. “Thank you, Rin. I’ll take your warning very seriously. If you discover or even suspect anything else, please come to me.”

  Rin believed her. Everything in this woman, every part of her face, every movement of her hands, spoke of truth. Rin watched the queen as she spoke to Tusken, instinctively positioning her own body in a similar attitude, feeling how much more confident she felt with her shoulders pressed down and back like that, how naturally her left arm hung at her side, how pleasant her lips felt in the attitude of almost smiling.

  “Come on,” the queen said, placing Tusken on her other hip. “Your da will want to hear the new song you learned. Let’s go see if we can hunt him down.”

  “Dada hiding?” asked Tusken.

  “In a crowd of ministers, no doubt. We’ll save him. Thank you, Rin.”

  “You’re welcome, Your Majesty,” Rin said, imitating the warm, low cadence of the queen’s voice. It felt nice.

  The queen paused at the door. “I knew your brother before I was a queen. He was, and remains, a friend truer than sun in summer. I like that he calls me Isi. I know all the ‘your majesties’ people ply me with are out of respect for the crown and I should take my due. But when we’re alone, Rin, I’d like it if you’d call me Isi, too.”

  Rin tried the words. “Thank you, Isi.”

  Rin stared at Isi’s back as she left the room. A chill in her blood spoke of fright, though she was more curious, the kind of curious that thrilled and stung. While she’d been with Isi, the constant squeezing in her chest had eased some. For the first time in months, maybe years, she had not felt like a stranger.

  That’s who I want to be, Rin thought. If I had to be someone forever, I’d choose her. There’s something different. There’s something about our queen . . .

  Not that she wanted to be queen of Bayern, she told herself. She just wanted to feel like that, to move through each moment as easily as a fish through clear water. She wanted to see good everywhere, as she imagined Isi did, to have confidence in her shoulders and truth in her face. She wanted not to be the girl who had to trick Wilem for a kiss, who fled toward the deep Forest, who ran from home.

  She’d heard rumors that the queen was friends with the wind, though she did not understand what that meant. Razo had never said much about her, but perhaps Razo did not notice Isi the way Rin did because he had no need to. He was at home in forest or city, cottage or palace, Bayern or Tira. When he left the Forest, he’d been moving toward something good, not running away like Rin was.

  For the next two weeks, Isi made certain there were two soldiers flanking Rin and Tusken on their bug-hunting adventures. Cilie was released from waiting woman duties and sent to report to the chief steward as a maid, but occasionally when Rin looked up from where Tusken had discovered an impressive beetle or a stone shaped like a chair, she would notice Cilie in the distance, watching.

  Chapter 5

  Isi! Isi! Rin, is she in her rooms?” Enna, a black-haired woman of twenty years swooped into the queen’s antechamber, her arms loaded with bolts of silk in red, yellow, and blue. Finn remained on the threshold, one hand on his sword hilt, as if expecting someone to burst in and threaten Enna’s life.

  Rin sat up straighter, energy rushing into her limbs. She’d known Enna for years as a fellow Forest girl and loved reflecting her manner. It made her feel strong and significant—though it was tricky too, since Enna tended to toss out demands as easily as hellos.

  “She’s out,” Rin said. “Caught in a net of meetings, I’d guess.”

  “The poor thing. I’ll stick around. She’s bound to be back soon if Tusken’s here.” Enna plopped into one of the cushioned chairs and put up her feet. “I swear, this entire palace is teetering on the edge of insanity. And, Rin, you’re one of the only ones around with any sense. How do you feel about that?”

  Enna gave dark looks to the queen’s other waiting women darning hems in the corner. The waiting women returned quiet glares.

  Enna sighed, arranging the bolts of cloth on her lap with a look that begged inquiry, so Rin asked, “What’s all the fabric for?”

  “My gown. I refuse to get married in drab white, of all the ridiculous colors for a wedding day. The thread-mistress wants to make my wedding gown, ‘And now, and in a hurry,’ says she, ‘so pick your fabric if you want to be married this summer, or if you dawdle I’ll tell you quick as my tongue can fly that you won’t be getting your dress in time and then that moon-eyed young man of yours,’ (that’s what she called you, Finn) ‘that moon-eyed young man of yours won’t get his wedding and he’ll come blame me. But I’ll tell him sure as I’m telling you how can I make a dress without the fabric? I ask you, how?’ And on and on she goes as if I had all day to listen. I tell you, some people don’t know when to just snap it shut.”

  Enna looked over her shoulder at Finn as if for his opinion, and he smiled at her, and they smiled at each other in silence for so long that when Enna looked back to Rin again, she had a dazed expression as if she’d just woken up.

  “What was I saying?” asked Enna.

  “Snap it shut,” said Rin.

  Enna’s eyes widened.

  “Oh!” Rin laughed, her face burning. How easy it was to say such things around Enna. She needed to be more careful. “I meant . . . not you, I meant that was the last thing you said.”

  “Oh. Right. You have a good memory. Well, I need Isi’s opinion, of course. What do I know about fabric for gowns and weddings in palaces and such? I’m still not sure this big hullabaloo in the city is the best idea anyway.”

  Finn’s smile deepened. Apparently he knew, as Rin suspected, that Enna did indeed prefer a big city hullabaloo of a wedding to a quiet Forest party.

  Razo popped his head around the door and exhaled when he took stock of the room’s occupants.

  “Here you are. I went looking for you two down in the thread-mistress’s chamber, and when I asked her where you were . . .” Razo blew out his cheeks.

  “Say no more,” said Enna.

  “Sure enough, that woman had enough to say for all of us. Hello, Rinna-girl.” Razo knocked her with his shoulder. “I never get used to you in these prettified clothes.”

  Rin smoothed the blue light wool tunic over her skirt, feeling the prick of sweat on her skin underneath. She’d sneaked out earlier in her old Forest clothes to run off the raw panic that was creeping over her again, and had thrown on the fine clothes only moments before Enna arrived.

  Razo poked at her skirt with one finger, as if it were an animal only feigning death. “Almost want to call you some other name . . . I’ll have to think on that. Rinna-lady, maybe? Naw, you don’t have the lady look.”

  “Razo . . . ,” Enna said, scolding in her voice.

  Rin tried to echo Enna’s chastising stare.

  “What? It was a compliment! Rin doesn’t want to look like a lady, do you? Can’t climb a tree in a fancy skirt. And I can’t imagine you at home in any place where there aren’t a thousand trees to climb at a moment’s notice.”

  It was an innocent comment, but he’d unknowingly struck her right in h
er pain. Rin felt a frown dig into her forehead before she turned and pretended busyness with Tusken.

  “Rin,” Enna said, her voice concerned, “now what’s—”

  Before Enna could finish, Isi swept in, picking Tusken off the floor and sitting with him beside Enna.

  “What a morning,” she said, kissing her son’s cheek. “I’m glad you’re here, Enna. Great crows, but what a morning. Hello, Rin, thanks for watching my boy. Was he good?”

  “Always,” Rin said.

  “Always,” Isi repeated. She buried her face into his neck, making eating noises, while the little boy laughed his rough, gravelly laugh. Isi was still smiling at Tusken when she said, “Bad news from the east.”

  “Ugh.” Enna covered her head with a bolt of yellow silk.

  “I know, I’m sorry, Enna, Finn. It does look as if the wedding will have to be postponed. But hopefully just for a week. Finn, Geric needs you.”

  Finn had been sitting on the edge of a table by Enna, one hand on her knee, but now he stood, half-turned to the door, ready to go at command. “What’s happening?”

  “Oh, probably nothing serious,” said Isi. “But after Tira and the war and everything, the ministers clamor to respond quickly to any hostility. A village near our border with Kel was attacked. It could be bandits—though I thought we’d rooted out all the serious banditry that erupted after the war. It could just be a bad tavern quarrel, for all I know. The message was oddly unclear.”

  “Come on, Isi,” Enna said. “You’re not going to cancel my wedding for a tavern brawl? Just send one of those those overeager cousins Geric seems to have by the dozens.”

  “The fact that it’s near Kel . . .” Isi glanced at her waiting women, and Rin wondered if she was thinking of Cilie, who was from a border town. “Something is going on in Kel. They sent our ambassador packing, explaining King Scandlan was feeling under the weather and wouldn’t be holding court for some time. But the dismissal was suspicious, and given that this new trouble is so near Kel, Geric wants to get there quickly and make sure all is well. He’s taking Bayern’s Own.”