Palace of Mirrors Read Free Page A

door—pound, Pound, POUND!—then dash away.
    Nobody jumps out at me from behind any of the trees, neither dog nor human. Nobody reaches out to drag me into the bushes and muffle my mouth, bind my arms, stab my heart. Nobody even glances at me twice.
    “How was the fishing?” Nanny asks, when I shove my way into our cottage.
    “Fine,” I say.
    It’s funny. I used to tell Nanny practically every thought that flitted across my mind. I told her what kind of dress I wanted to wear to my coronation; I told her every single time I got a mosquito bite, and exactly how messy each mosquito looked when I squashed it. I told her how my quill pen squirmed in my hand and shot out blots of ink when I least expected it, and how Sir Stephen couldn’t possibly expect me to memorize twenty pages of
A Royal Guide to Governance,
not when just one page of the book put me to sleep. But lately my jaw seems to lock up even when there’s something I really want her to know. And I
don’t
want her to know what I said to Harper. Because of that, I also don’t tell her about the shadow I saw on the path, the dog that was thrown (or jumped) at me, the possibility that my enemies know where I am.
    Am I foolish? Foolhardy? Or just “keeping my own counsel,” as royals are advised to do in the addendum to Rule Three of the Royal Code?
    “Have you forgotten what to do with fresh-caught fish?” Nanny asks.
    I realize I’ve been just standing there, staring at Nanny as she cuts up potatoes for the expected fish stew.
    “Uh, no. Sorry. I was just . . . thinking. I’ll get the knife.”
    We have a special knife for scaling and deboning fish. I take it down from a hook near the fireplace and carrythe basket of fish back outside. The wooden knife handle feels cool in my hand as I make the first slash through fish skin.
    I could defend myself if someone jumped out at me now,
I think.
There’s no need to tell Nanny or Harper or anyone else about what I saw, what I suspect. I can take care of myself.
    The knife slides across the slippery fish, and before I can stop it, the blade nicks my thumb.
    “Ow! Blast the dark one’s sneezes!” I shout, which is the worst curse I’ve learned from Harper. I drop the fish and the knife and clutch my bleeding thumb in my apron. Nanny appears instantly in the doorway of our cottage. She’s got her own knife held high over her head, clasped in both hands, ready to attack.
    “I cut myself,” I say sheepishly. I peel back the apron and look. The wound has already stopped bleeding. “Just a little.”
    Nanny lowers her knife instantly.
    “You were screaming like a stuck pig,” she says. She walks briskly over and inspects my thumb. “Humph. Doesn’t look much worse than one of those paper cuts you get from all that reading.”
    I’m staring at the wound too—it
is
worse than a paper cut. (Really. I wouldn’t scream over a paper cut.) But out of the corner of my eye I can see that Nanny’s trembling. There’s a quaver in her voice, too, that she’s trying to hide with brusqueness. My mind flashes back to the image ofher standing in the doorway, knife held aloft, her normally gentle face twisted into a fierce expression. A
murderous
expression.
    Nanny’s scared of something too.
    “Why’d you do that?” I ask.
    “Do what?” Her voice is still a little wobbly. She’s actually scanning the woods around the cottage, as if she still believes there’s some great danger out there.
    I take the knife from her hand, and do an imitation of her pose. I could be an illustration in one of my books: “Warrior with Weapon Ready.” Except the warriors in the illustrations never wear dresses and aprons.
    “The way you were screaming, I thought you were being attacked by a wild boar,” she says lightly. Too lightly. “I thought I’d kill it, and then the whole village could feast on pork chops.”
    I don’t believe her. She’s so tenderhearted about animals that if I ever really got attacked by a wild