Somewhere along the way, he simply disappeared. She barely noticed, her thoughts only on getting to bed and going to sleep. Shouldn’t be any problem tonight, she thought with a smile. Nothing would keep her awake after this.
Taking a quick look up and down the hallway before she did so, she opened the door to her room and stepped inside.
She knew immediately that something was wrong.
“Taking a nighttime stroll, Princess?” she heard His Eminence ask her from the darkness.
Then she caught a whiff of something bitter and raw, and she tumbled away into blackness.
SADLY MISTAKEN
When Mistaya came awake again, she was lying on a straw pallet in a dark, windowless room with only a single candle sitting on the floor beside her for light. She had a splitting headache, but otherwise she felt all right. She lay without moving for long moments while her eyes adjusted, trying to remember exactly what had happened to her. When she did remember, she wished she hadn’t.
A figure moved out of the darkness, coming over from another part of the room to sit on the bed beside her. She flinched involuntarily and hunched her shoulders, frightened that it was His Eminence or Rufus Pinch. But when she saw Thom’s worried face, she exhaled sharply in relief.
“Are you all right?” he asked her, leaning close, his voice a whisper.
She nodded. “Are we alone?”
He nodded back. “But they might be listening.”
“They brought you here, too?”
“Actually, they brought me here first, then you.”
She tried to lift one arm to rub her pounding head, but her hands were surprisingly heavy. When she glanced down to find out why, she saw that they were encased in what looked like clouds of swirling mist that completely hid them from view.
“What’s happened to me?” she gasped, shaking them wildly, struggling to free them. “Who did this?”
“His Eminence.” Thom put his hands on her arms to quiet her. “No, don’t. Not yet. Stay still. Your hands are bound with magic so that you can’t work spells. If you try to free them, you will only hurt yourself.”
She stopped thrashing and stared at him. “He knows everything, doesn’t he? He knows who I am. I heard him call me by name before I passed out. What did he use on me?”
Thom shook his head. “A spell. He had me frozen in place with another one so that I couldn’t do anything to help. He’s a much more accomplished wizard than we gave him credit for. And, yes, he knows who you are.”
She gave a long sigh and lay back. “So now you know, too.”
He smiled. “Oh, I knew who you were all along. Right from the moment I saw you standing in the doorway.” He laughed softly when he saw the look on her face. “I told you I saw you when I was at court all those years ago, when you were just a child. You looked different then, but you had the same eyes. No one could ever mistake those eyes.”
To her horror, she found herself blushing. Her face turned hot, and it was only the darkness that hid her reaction. “You must have gotten closer to me than I would have thought possible for a servant.”
He shrugged. “Other things gave you away, as well. Your hands are too soft for a village girl’s. Also, you are too well spoken, and you’ve had training in how to carry yourself.”
“You seem awfully well informed about Princesses.”
“Not really. I just pay attention to things.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew?”
He seemed to consider. “I’m not sure. Once I had you here, I didn’t want you to leave. I wasn’t making that up, you know. I was afraid that if I told you I knew you were Mistaya Holiday, it would change the nature of our relationship and you might decide you had to go. It just seemed easier to go on pretending I believed you to be who you said you were.” He paused. “I actually do have a sister named Ellice, but she’s much older than you.”
She grimaced. “I don’t know whether to be angry with you or not. I guess I’m not. It just feels funny, knowing I was pretending with you for nothing.”
“We were both pretending. It was a game. But there wasn’t any harm done. Except now that it’s out in the open that you’re a Princess, I’m afraid you might not want to have anything more to do with me.”
She laughed despite herself. “It doesn’t much matter what I want at this point, does it? I’m a prisoner of His Eminence, and so are you. We can’t pretend much of anything now. What do you think he plans to do with us?”
Thom shook his head. “I don’t know. He didn’t say. He brought me here and left me, and a little later he brought you here, too.”
“If he knows who I am, and he’s keeping me prisoner anyway, then we are in a lot of trouble. He can’t be planning anything good for either of us if he’s willing to risk all that.”
“No, I don’t suppose so.”
“This is all my fault,” she declared, sitting up next to him, resting her mist-encased hands in her lap. She was already trying to think of a spell that would free her from the bindings, running through the lessons she had studied under Questor’s tutelage. “If I’d stayed in my room instead of going back into the Stacks, none of this would have happened. I was so stupid it makes me want to scream.”
“So that’s where you were. I came looking for you earlier, but you weren’t in your room.”
“I didn’t want to tell you,” she admitted, giving him a rueful smile. “I’m sorry about that. I wish that I had.”
“It isn’t too late for you to do so now, is it?” he asked.
She smiled and proceeded to tell him everything she had been keeping from him. She even told him about Edgewood Dirk, despite her promise to the cat. It was necessary, she reasoned, given her present situation.
She had kept so much from him, she told Thom, because she was worried about involving him further.
“Also, I was worried about the same things you were,” she added. “I thought it would change how you felt about me, and I didn’t want you not to be my friend.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Funny that we were both so worried when there was no reason for it.”
“Funny peculiar,” she agreed, just managing to meet his gaze. Then she looked quickly away. “Anyway, I messed up.”
He looked away. “Maybe I was the one who messed up. Your getting caught might not have been your fault. It might have been mine. If I hadn’t come to your room looking for you and then gone prowling around out in the Stacks, His Eminence might not have caught me and found out about you.”
“Well, it doesn’t much matter now. It’s over and done with, and we can both take some share of the blame.” She swung her legs around to rest her feet on the floor. “Where are we, anyway?”
“One of the storerooms, down by the kitchen. There’s no way out; I’ve already searched. Even if there were somebody who might try to help us, the walls are two feet thick. We can yell all we want, but no one will hear.” He paused. “Any chance the Prism Cat might help us?”
She shrugged. “There’s always a chance. But Dirk thinks mostly of himself. I don’t think his attention span is all that long, either. If he knows we’re here and feels so inclined, he might choose to help us. But he might just as easily not.”
“Some friend.”
“I wouldn’t call Edgewood Dirk a friend. More on the order of a particularly nettlesome aunt or a nagging teacher.” She was thinking now of Harriet Appleton. But that wasn’t fair, she knew. She tossed the comparison aside. “Dirk is unpredictable,” she finished.
He shifted himself on the pallet so that he was sitting closer. “You told me how you happened to come to Libiris, but not why. You said you were escaping from your grandfather and hiding from your family so you wouldn’t have to come here. But why was your family making you come here in the first place?”