The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince Read Free

stand with her at last, declared that perhaps his daughter would be more reasonable if she saw the extent of the work that her habits required. Thus, she was less than ten when he took her on her first hunt. It troubled me, for I did not like horses and did not ride with pleasure. But Princess Caution insisted I must accompany her and, as I always did, I gave way to her.
    If her father had thought to dissuade Caution, that hunt was the wrong tack to take. She rode well, as she had from the first time she was set on a horse, and kept up easily with the lead riders. She saw the stag brought to bay, saw the dogs bring him down and be whipped off him, and took no discouragement from any of the wild and bloody scene. I was spared that sight for I had lagged far behind the pack and only caught up with the party as they were preparing to return home. But I might as well have been there, because for days afterwards the princess talked of little else.
    In one regard the king succeeded, for his daughter became a huntress in her own right, and expanded her diet to include any game that she herself brought down. So she provided pheasant and duck for the table, venison in plenty and even wild boar as she grew stronger and more capable. Only when hunting did she abandon my company, but as it put her often at her father’s side and among his nobles, the king rejoiced in his offspring’s new-found interest. So I took care not to interfere, even if it did put her outside my influence. Instead, I became the willing listener for every exploit she cared to share with me. Indeed, I think that my own clumsiness on horseback and squeamishness at the blood delighted her. For so long I had been her elder and always the better at whatever we did. When I saw how pleased she was to have bested me, I took care never to compete with her, but always expressed my wonder at all she could do.
    I realized then that she was growing up. As the difference in our stations became more and more clear to her, I took care not to overstep my place. And so, although I attended her lessons with her, and cut her pens and mixed her ink, I was careful that she never discovered that I could both read and cipher as well as she could. I took care to study at night, borrowing her scrolls while she slept, ensuring they were always back on her desk as if they had never been touched before dawn. It was the same when she received her lessons in history and later, in diplomacy and deportment. By then she was a young woman, wearing a simple tiara to show her rank. I sat on a low stool at her feet as the minstrels who sang the histories performed for her. I listened to her father’s ministers as they lectured her on the dangers of Chalced and the intricacies of striking advantageous trade agreements with Bingtown. I learned what she did, and applied it, not to foreign powers, but to the shifting tides of influence within the court. I never forgot my common birth and lack of standing, but that does not mean I did not find ways to circumvent these obstacles.
    As the court began to surround my princess with ambitious young noblewomen and eligible young lords, I learned to navigate my way through them. Given my plain face, evading the interest of the young males was easier than weathering the vicious storms of young female politics. Some of her companions resented me and took every opportunity to humiliate me. Others saw me as a path to her favor and courted me with kind words and small gifts. I would be hard pressed to say which were the more dangerous. By day, I took care to be correct and unobtrusive. But in the evenings, when I was brushing out the princess’s hair or folding her clothing to put away for the night, I told her any gossip I had heard, and spoke of which young woman I’d seen exchanging a token with a young man who was already pledged to another, and giggled with her over which girl was cursed with garlicky breath and which young man suffered from warts on his hands.