Page 56 of Uprooted

In a burst of frustration and anger, I called vanastalem, but slurred deeply, and between one passing wagon and the next, I put myself back into the clothes of a woodcutter’s daughter: good plain homespun, a skirt that wasn’t too long for sensible boots to show beneath it, an apron with two big pockets in it.

I breathed easier at once, and found myself suddenly invisible: no one was looking at me anymore.

No one cared who I was, or what I was doing.

There were hazards to invisibility, too: while I stood there on the edge of the road enjoying the pleasure of a deep breath, an enormous carriage swollen out over its wheels on all sides and four footmen hanging off it came rattling past me, and nearly knocked me over.

I had to jump out of the way into a puddle, my boots squelching and mud spattering my skirts.

But I didn’t care. I knew myself for the first time in a week, standing on earth instead of polished marble.

I went back up the hill in the carriage track, my stride swinging wide and free in my easy skirts, and slipped into the inner court without any trouble.

The fat carriage had drawn up to disgorge an ambassador in a white coat, a red sash of office brilliant across his chest. The crown prince was there to meet him, with a crowd of courtiers and an honor guard carrying the flag of Polnya and a yellow-and-red flag with the head of an ox upon it, one I’d never seen before.

He must have been coming to the state dinner.

I’d been meant to go there with Alicja this evening.

All the guards were watching the ceremony with half an eye at least, and when I whispered to them that I wasn’t worth taking any notice of, their eyes slid over me the way they wanted to, anyway.

Going back and forth from parties three times a day from my inconvenient room had been good for one thing, at least: I had learned to find my way about the castle.

There were servants in the hallways, but all of them were laden under linens and silver, hurrying to make ready for the dinner party.

None of them had attention to spare for a mud-spattered scullery-maid.

I eeled around and through them and made my way down the long dark corridor to the Grey Tower.

The four guards on duty at the base of the tower were bored and yawning with the late hour. “You missed the stair to the kitchens, sweetheart,” one of them said good-naturedly to me. “It’s back down the hall.”

I stored that information away for later, and then I did my best to stare at them the way that everyone had been staring at me for the last three days, as though I were perfectly astonished by their ignorance.

“Don’t you know who I am?” I said. “I’m Agnieszka, the witch.

I’m here to see Kasia.” And to have a look at the queen, more to the point.

I couldn’t think why the trial would be put off so long, unless the king was trying to give the queen more time to get well.

The guards all looked at each other uncertainly. Before they could decide what to do about me, I whispered, “Alamak, alamak,” and walked straight on through the locked doors between them.

They weren’t nobles, so I suppose they weren’t inclined to pick a quarrel with a witch.

They didn’t come after me, at least. I climbed the narrow staircase around and around until I came out onto the landing with the hungry imp knocker gaping at me.

Taking the round knob felt as though my hand was being licked thoroughly by a lion that was deciding whether or not I would taste good.

I held it as gingerly as I could and banged on the door.

I had a list of arguments for the Willow, and behind them flat determination.

I was ready to shove my way past her if I had to; she was too much a fine lady to lower herself to wrestling with me, I suspected.

But she didn’t come to the door at all, and when I pressed my ear to it, I faintly heard shouting inside.

In alarm, I backed up and tried to think: would the guards be able to knock the door down, if I shouted for them?

I didn’t think so. The door was made of iron and riveted with iron, and there wasn’t even a keyhole to be seen.

I looked at the imp, which leered back. Hunger radiated from its empty maw.

But if I filled it up? I called a simple spell, just some light: the imp immediately began to suck the magic in, but I kept feeding power to the spell until finally a little candle-wavering gleam lit in my hand.

The imp’s hunger was an enormous pull, guzzling in nearly all the magic I could give, but I managed to divert a narrow silver stream: I let it collect into a tiny pool inside me, and then I squeezed out, “Alamak,” and with one desperate jump I went through the door.

It took all the strength I had left: I rolled out onto the floor of the room beyond and sprawled flat on my back, emptied.

Footsteps came running across the floor to me, and Kasia was at my side. “Nieshka, are you all right?”

The shouting was from the next room: Marek, standing fists clenched in the middle of the floor and roaring at the Willow, who stood ramrod-stiff and white with anger. Neither of them paid much attention to my falling in through the door; they were too busy being furious at each other.

“Look at her!” Marek flung an arm out at the queen. She still sat by the same window as before, listless and unmoved. If she heard the shouting, she didn’t so much as flinch. “Three days without a word from her lips, and you call yourself a healer? What use are you?”

“None, evidently,” the Willow said icily.

“All I have done is everything that could be done, as well as it could be done.” She did take notice of me then, finally: she turned and looked down her nose at me on the floor.

“I understand this is the miracle-worker of the kingdom. Perhaps you can spare her from your bed long enough to do better. Until then, tend her yourself. I am not going to stand here to be howled at for my efforts.”

She marched past me, twitching her skirts to one side so they wouldn’t even brush up against mine, as if she didn’t care to be contaminated.

The bar lifted itself at a flick of her hand.

She swept out, and the heavy iron door clanged shut behind her, scraping on the stone like an axe-blade coming down.

Marek turned on me, his temper still unspent. “And you! You’re meant to be the foremost witness, and you’re wandering the castle looking like a kitchen slut. Do you think anyone is going to believe a word out of your mouth? Three days since I got you on the list—”

“ You got me!” I said indignantly, wobbling up to my feet with the support of Kasia’s arm.

“—and all you’ve done is persuade the entire court you’re a useless bumpkin! Now this? Where is Solya? He was supposed to be showing you how to go on.”

“I don’t want to go on, ” I said. “I don’t care what any of these people think of me. What they think doesn’t matter!”

“Of course it matters!” He seized me by the arm and dragged me out of Kasia’s hands.

I stumbled with him, trying to gather together a spell to knock him away, but he pulled me to the window-sill and pointed down to the castle courtyard.

I paused and looked down, puzzled. There didn’t seem to be anything alarming happening.

The red-sashed ambassador was just going into the building with Crown Prince Sigmund.

“That man with my brother is an envoy from Mondria,” Marek said, low and savage. “Their prince consort died last winter: the princess will be out of mourning in six months. Now do you understand?”

“No,” I said, baffled.

“She wants to be queen of Polnya!” Marek shouted.

“But the queen’s not dead,” Kasia said, and then we understood.

I stared at Marek, cold, horrified. “But the king—” I blurted. “He loved —” I stopped.

“He’s putting the trial off to buy time, do you understand?

” Marek said. “Once memories of the rescue have faded, he’ll get the nobility to look the other way, and then he can put her quietly to death.

Now are you going to help me, or do you want to keep blundering around the castle until the snow flies and they burn her—and your beloved friend here—once it’s too cold for anyone to come out and watch? ”

I curled my fingers tight around Kasia’s stiff hand, as if I could protect her that way.

It felt too cruel and hollow to imagine: that we could have won Queen Hanna free, brought her out of the Wood, all so the king could cut off her head and marry someone else.

Just to add a principality to the map of Polnya, another jewel to his crown.

“But he loved her,” I said again, a protest I couldn’t help making—stupidly I suppose.

Yet that story, the story of the lost beloved queen, made more sense to me than the one Marek was telling me.

“And you think that would make him forgive being made a fool?” Marek said.

“His beautiful wife, who ran away from him with a Rosyan boy who sang her charming songs in the garden. That’s what they said of her, until I was old enough to kill men for saying it.

They told me not to even mention her name to him, when I was a boy. ”

He was staring down at Queen Hanna in her chair, where she sat blank as waiting paper.

In his face, I could see him as he’d been, a child hiding in his mother’s deserted garden to escape that same crowd of poisonous courtiers—all of them smirking and whispering about her, shaking their heads and pretending at sorrow while they gossiped that they’d known it all along.

“And you think we can save her and Kasia by dancing to their music?” I said.

He lifted his gaze from the queen and looked at me.

For the first time ever, I think he really listened to me.

His chest rose and fell, three times. “No,” he said finally, agreeing.

“They’re all just vultures, and he’s the lion.

They’ll shake their heads and agree it’s a shame, and pick at the bones he throws them.

Can you force my father to pardon her?” he demanded, as easily as if he wasn’t asking me to ensorcell the king, and take someone’s will away from them, as dreadful as the Wood.

“No!” I said, appalled. I looked at Kasia.

She stood with a hand resting on the back of the queen’s chair, straight and golden and steady, and she shook her head to me.

She wouldn’t ask that of me. She wouldn’t even ask me to run away with her, to abandon our people to the Wood—even if it meant the king would murder her, just so he could kill the queen, too.

I swallowed. “No,” I said again. “I won’t do that. ”

“Then what will you do?” Marek snarled, angry again, and stalked from the room without waiting for me to answer. It was just as well. I didn’t know what to say.