The Hostage Prince Read online

  He admired the serving girls, who managed to scamper from kitchen to table and back again all the while keeping their balance and, at the same time, dodging the various pinches, slaps, and lecherous comments sent their way. It seemed almost as if they had trained with a traveling show of jugglers and jesters, mountebanks, and escape artists.

  That thought was so absurd, he laughed at his own imagining.

  But the banging and bragging and bashing of spear hafts had reached such a fever pitch already, he had no interest in trying to make his way through the crowd to the king’s table where he, as a noble, was expected to sit. Instead he stuck to the wall, and went the slow way around, hoping to avoid notice for as long as possible.

  Though, being the Hostage Prince, he thought, means I can never avoid notice for long.

  SNAIL IN THE KITCHEN

  As soon as she was alone again, Snail went over to the mirror and ran her fingers through her cockscomb hair, which was a dull orange and ugly, not a color often seen in the Unseelie lands. She let out a deep sigh. Only she of all the apprentices in the castle seemed to be affected by too much faerie cake, that golden berry cake soaked with a spell made on Midsummer’s Eve. Only she ever suffered any consequence from eating it.

  “You!” she said, pointing her finger at the mirror. The mirror did not answer her of course. It was not a magic mirror like the queen had, but rather one of the silvered glass shards stolen from some house in the mundane human world.

  “Yes?” she answered herself. If one doesn’t have a lot of close friends, she’d often thought, make a close friend of oneself. She wasn’t sure if she’d made that up or heard it somewhere. Either way, it suited her. Certainly, she knew a lot of apprentices—pot boys and dog boys, kitchen maids and dairy maids, first-year blacksmiths and second-year needleworkers, and a couple of girls learning to be hedge witches, and the like. She danced and sang with them, and they held parties in the servants’ hall. But she wasn’t sure she’d call any one of them a close friend. Just fey folks she knew.

  Surely a close friend was something else. Something . . . deeper. Or stronger. Or—well—closer.

  She shook her head and the mirror girl shook her head back.

  “Get going,” she admonished her reflection, one finger raised. “You know, the queen is about to . . .”

  The angular girl in the mirror with the one green and one blue eye, the hair that no brush could tame for long, the nose too broad for beauty, and the ears too short to hear grass sway, had raised an answering finger.

  “I know,” she told herself. “I know.”

  Then she washed in the basin that Mistress Softhands had filled with hot water, though by now it was only lukewarm.

  “Blessed be,” Snail whispered. Sometimes the midwife was a loving creature. Other times . . . well, Snail didn’t like to think about the other times.

  First she washed her face, for the new mother would need to look at rosy cheeks. Next, she looped the sleeves of her dress above her elbows, then scrubbed her hands all the way up to where the cloth of the sleeves drooped. This was in case she had to hold the newborn babe.

  All slippery from spiraling down the birth canal! It made her giddy just thinking about such a possibility. She had, of course, not been alive two hundred years earlier when the unfortunate Prince Disaster had been born. Nor had anyone she knew.

  Except the queen. And the king.

  The king and queen of Faerie were always very long-lived. It was one of their privileges. Actually no one—maybe the minister of history—knew how old the king and queen really were.

  Well, Snail thought, I suppose the king and queen know.

  But everyone had heard about Prince Disaster. And everyone knew that she, Snail, was sometimes accident-prone. Why, Yarrow, that toffee-nosed suck-up, stuck-up apprentice to Mistress Yoke, had once laughed at her in front of all the midwives and said she had Dropitis and the Oopsies. Another time, at an apprentice party, she’d singled Snail out, saying to a pot boy, “Be careful around her, she’s got slipshod fingers and careless hands and she never thinks ahead.”

  Snail shrugged. That was the way of it. Apprentices put other apprentices down. It was how they were able to curry favor and rise in rank. Even so-called friends whispered behind one another’s backs, traded secrets, told tales.

  At least I don’t do that.

  She wasn’t actually sure she had any talent for midwifery. Or, for that matter, anything else. But she knew it wasn’t from lack of trying. She knew that she was no stranger to mistakes. Like any apprentice, she’d fumbled a time or three.

  She shook her head. Be honest. All right, I’ve fumbled more than that. With things like dishes, spoons, bottles, and ham bones. But she’d never dropped a baby.

  Not ever.

  Not . . . yet.

  Though of course, she’d only actually handled three. The first was a dark-skinned, red-eyed drow infant, screaming and clawing as it came out into the light. The second had been the ostler’s child who was part horse and part fey, with an ability to kick as soon as it was free from its sac. The third was a mermaid’s newborn, the fish part of him wet and slippery. She hadn’t dropped that one, either.

  But what if she dropped the prince?

  Or the princess.

  She sighed aloud. It could be a princess, though nobody wants one. They already have three of those, and two of them are twinned, haughty, stuck-up . . . She shook her head. Well, that’s not much different than the other royals, really.

  She smoothed down the sleeves of her dress, and took a brush to her hair, beating it into submission. Perhaps, she thought, perhaps Mistress Softhands should have named me Disaster, and not Snail.

  Making a mistake in the queen’s birthing room—with its stark white walls and its large, high bed—carried more consequence than making a mistake in the birth cave of an ogre. After all, ogres were no longer allowed to eat midwives or their apprentices, a rule Snail had more than once been comforted by. But the queen—the queen could do anything she wished. And if someone made a mistake involving her newborn child, her wish could be very brutal and very swift.

  Being eaten by an ogre, Snail thought, might actually be a preferable fate.

  Snail suddenly remembered that no one ever spoke of the midwife who’d been in attendance when Prince Disaster had been delivered. No one mentioned her apprentice either. That very silence, Snail thought uneasily, means something. Thinking about it made her tremble.

  She looked down at her traitorous, shaking hands and whispered, “That’s the last thing I need, wobbly hands!”

  This is not, she was sure of it, going to be a good day.

  But she had to go to the kitchen to get something to eat. Mistress Softhands always cautioned, Never deliver babies on an empty stomach. Because, Snail knew, sometimes it takes many hours for a baby to appear and mistakes driven by hunger or thirst could often occur.

  Her stomach continued to warn her that she’d eaten too much the night before. It was an argument she didn’t dare lose. Instead, she ignored it and left the room without even making her bed, which she knew would almost certainly win her another telling-off.

  Going quickly to the stairs, she headed for the kitchen below. She’d make an appearance and grab something small to stick in a pocket of her apron, something to eat later on, when her stomach was quieter.

  The sounds of the kitchen on a feast day drifted up to meet her: clanging pots and chopping knives, the spits turning with a loud whirring noise. There were kettles boiling merrily and the shouts of cooks barking instructions to their apprentices, who shouted back at them. Cook boys and cook girls got away with sass that the midwife apprentices never dared.

  All four ovens must have been in use, for the heat nearly drove her right back up the stairs. But she sneaked a quick peek in to see what might be on offer.

  “Here at last, Mistress
Drop-Everything.” It was Yarrow, sitting like a lady at the cook’s own table, acting as if she owned the kitchen. Her hair, unlike Snail’s, was pulled back in a sedate black bun. Beside her sat the newest apprentice midwife, hand over mouth, giggling. She was one of those poor creatures whose only way of advancement was to toady up to a more successful girl and do her bidding, laugh at her jokes, fetch and carry without complaint.

  And she does it very well, Snail thought.

  Yarrow went on relentlessly, her narrow lips in a sneer that did not destroy her beauty. In fact, it enhanced it.

  Some toff, Snail thought, will soon notice her, some princeling or duke. And soon enough she will leave midwifery behind. She’ll be renamed Star or Moonbeam or Sunshine, and eat in the Hall.

  “Well, you didn’t drop things fast enough to get down here in time, and breakfast is already served, eaten, and digesting properly. And . . .” Yarrow turned and smiled that namby-pamby, peely-wally smile at the journeymen cooks around her, all of whom seemed to melt under the heat of her simper. If the journeymen cooks had a vote, Yarrow would have forthwith been elevated to a full midwife, despite the fact that—to Snail’s certain knowledge—she had little intuition about a laboring woman’s danger and less patience with the poor woman’s complaints than a midwife needs. “And—” She made a jab toward Snail with a long fork, as if she knew Snail hated being poked in the belly.

  Even that far away from the fork and in no danger of being poked with it, Snail flinched. She almost yelled at Yarrow, but bit back the response. She knew that fighting Yarrow spit for spite would win her nothing in this company, except that then everyone would know about her hating to be poked, so she bit her lip and didn’t answer back. Instead she edged toward the barrel where the good leftovers were kept, ready to send out with the swine boy for his pigs.

  “Away there, Snail!” hissed Nettle, one of the pot boys, and as close to a friend as she had. “No pinching food today.”

  As usual, his thatch of hair stuck straight up from his head as if permanently startled. It never needed any of the goop or goo or oil the other boys used to give them that banty-rooster hair.

  Nettle looked perky today, not green or wan, though Snail definitely remembered him eating much more cake than she had last night. It seemed unfair. A few of the other apprentices in the kitchen looked as haggard from their long night’s party as Snail felt. But there was Nettle grinning and pink-faced, clutching a huge haunch of raw venison to his chest and staggering toward the spits with it. As it was one of the finer pieces of meat in the kitchen, Snail knew that it was destined to be roasted with savory herbs and served to the High Court. The lesser pieces would be thrown into the stew pots for the rest of the guests. But raw—that was how the Border Lords liked theirs. Raw and still bleeding—like their enemies, as they proclaimed at every feast. Usually while banging their tankards loudly on the table.

  “Why no pinching?” Snail asked, suddenly thinking, Maybe it’s a good thing I ate so much cake last night. Her stomach seemed to congratulate her for the thought.

  Nettle nodded his head to where a huge, squat creature perched on a high stool in the center of the room. “Bonetooth hisself is here today.” Then he was off, maneuvering through the crowd of kitchen workers with his bloody burden.

  Snail sighed and shifted her aim for the far doors of the kitchen, rather than the pantries. She needed to stay out of sight. Master Chef Bonetooth brooked no nonsense in his domain—and no latecomers or visitors! It was said that he got his cooking skills from his mother, a brownie who’d kept the kitchens in Dunvegan Castle for a hundred years, drinking milk from silver bowls left for her by the island chiefs themselves. While that may or not have been true, everyone knew that he got his temperament from his father.

  An ogre.

  Ducking and scampering to keep bodies between her and Bonetooth’s line of sight, she was just passing the door into the Great Hall when disaster struck.

  Disaster always comes at the end, Mistress Softhands liked to say, meaning that once disaster came, nothing else was ever the same.

  Turning for a lingering a glance at a sideboard covered in soft cheeses and fresh bread, Snail failed to notice either the newest apprentice midwife sneaking behind her, nor the serving girl with a tray full of hot violet tea by her right elbow.

  Suddenly, she felt a sharp shove in the small of her back, and cried out, “What are you . . .”

  The girl behind her giggled.

  The journeymen cooks wahooed.

  Nettle cried out, “Snail!”

  But it was too late. Snail crashed against the server, and they both fell through the doors into the Great Hall.

  As they tumbled to the floor, the tray went sailing end over end. The teapot dropped, tea splattered, and Snail found herself looking up at a set of fine silken breeches that had, until very recently, been a beautiful shade of periwinkle. She looked up past the spreading stain on the left leg, past a green tunic to a white silken shirt with periwinkle threading and a slight spattering of purplish tea, to a clenched jaw and a pale face with high cheekbones that was framed by long, pointed ears.

  Oh, Puck, Snail thought, horrified. This was almost as bad as making a mistake in the birth chamber. I’ve spattered a noble.

  She reached her hands toward the toff, then stopped, holding them stupidly midway between rubbing at the stains and dropping them back in her lap.

  I’m no laundress. What if rubbing the stains makes them worse? Then she thought, What does it matter. I’m dead either way.

  She should have been terrified. But instead she was angry.

  That stupid girl has killed me. I’ll never get to hold a royal babe.

  She suddenly realized that she’d actually been looking forward to holding the new prince. Or princess. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d looked forward to something, and that thought made her even angrier.

  She turned her anger on the nearest thing to her, glaring at the noble she’d spilled the tea on. If she’d given it a moment’s thought, she would never have dared to do any such thing.

  PRINCE ASPEN REGRETS

  Prince Aspen watched the girls tumble and heard the teapot and cups shatter on the stone floor, only slightly softened by the rushes, but he didn’t feel the spatters of tea on his well-lined silken breeches or his shirt. Only when some of it soaked through his sleeve was he aware of the heat.

  Glancing down at the two girls sprawled at his feet, he saw that one was a midwife’s apprentice. He knew her by her starched white apron and striped dress and the ghastly striped hose. He remembered that once the twin princesses Sun and Moon had remarked about a passing midwife that if a baby wasn’t ready to come out on its own, all the midwife had to do was a shake a leg at it and the “horrible hose,” as they called them, would frighten the baby into dropping down.

  Unaccountably, the midwife’s apprentice was glaring up at him. Glaring, though he was the injured party here, and she being a servant, of no importance at all.

  He drew his hand back to strike her because that was what was expected of him, and then he looked into her eyes. Truly looked. Astonishingly, one eye was green and one blue. He’d never seen anything like it. Fey eyes were always blue—not the blue of robin’s eggs or the blue of running water, but the blue of a spring sky after a good soaking rain.

  His hand was still uplifted and the other members of the High Court had gone silent, waiting to hear the sound of the slap on the girl’s face and to drink in the sound she made in response, probably a whimper, possibly a cry. They would feast on the coloration of her cheek and the bruise after.

  But his hand didn’t move. He was mesmerized by her two-color eyes, and her cockscomb hair, an odd shade of red. They made him smile. And then laugh. His laughter was high-pitched still, his voice unbroken, although he was already fourteen and well past the time when it should have changed. He hadn’t mea
nt to laugh. He knew he’d regret it. Probably get nicknamed Prince Hee-Haw or something.

  He had a collection of such names already. But he couldn’t help himself. The girl’s eyes were funny. She was funny. Should be helpless and frightened, head-bowed and shaking, and yet here she was, glaring up at him. He shrugged slightly at her to let her know he meant no harm, but no one else could tell, of that he was sure.

  Aspen whispered, “Get up. Get up and get out of here. Do not stop to ask why. Now!”

  She got up, bowed, moved swiftly, never turning her back on any of them, which would be inviting death. And then she was gone. The other girl must have left almost immediately after dropping the tray.

  Aspen knew it was a mistake when the laughter expanded all around the Great Hall, the Border Lords laughing loudest of all. But he found he couldn’t regret it.

  Probably will, though, he thought. Later.

  “PRINCE Aspen!” A loud, familiar voice cut through the laughter. “And have we not taught you better in all this time with us?” It was his foster father, King Obs. Obs of the Hard Hand, as he was called, and his right hand was not only hard but huge. It was the size, someone once said, of a roasting platter. There were whispers that there had been a troll somewhere in the far back of his ancestry. But no one ever said such things aloud. “Your family will not thank us. They will say you are a tortoise, not taught at all.”

  For a king’s witticism, Aspen thought, that’s pretty lame. But then no one ever said this king was the brightest spark in the fire that was the Unseelie Court. Perhaps another gift of his troll ancestry. Still, they’ll all call me Tortoise now.

  He could live with it. He’d lived with all the other names.