Hidden
Hidden Princess
Chapter 1 - Fireflowers and Gossip
504 years after the founding of Breyconland
“Oh, Sheralie, you managed it perfectly!” Robin squealed.
Sheralie grinned at Robin. Her best friend shook her head
slightly and dropped to her knees in the dirt, ready with her small trowel and
pot to transplant the new fireflower before it could root too deeply into the
soil of the overgrown garden plot.
Sheralie carefully withdrew her own finger from the soil.
She’d had to touch the seed to perform the charm, but she didn’t want to damage
the fragile flower before Robin could dig it up. She’d finally gained the
control to speed up the aging process of plants, just in time. Bailey had done
it for years, urging along the growth of the small kitchen garden, making sure
that the school had enough vegetables and herbs and even some fruit
consistently throughout the year. But Bailey would be leaving to get married at
the end of the year. Someone needed to take over the responsibility, and there
were no other biologic Talents at Madam Rusk’s Young Ladies’ Seminary. Flowers
were particularly tricky— for whatever reason, they preferred to take their own
sweet time, at least if they were going to look colorful and fresh, rather than
faded and wilted.
Difficult as they were, when Robin’s father brought her some
fireflower seeds, Sheralie agreed to try. Fireflowers were Bailey’s favorite,
after all, and Robin wanted something to cheer Bailey. She had been confined to
bed for over two weeks now with pneumonia. Bailey was finally starting to
improve— to the collective relief of everyone in the school— but it would still
be a while yet before she had the strength to be up and about.
As soon as Robin’s flower was safely transferred to the
small ceramic pot, the girls tried to wipe their hands off as thoroughly as
possible on their aprons and then headed up the back steps to enter the school.
Once it had been a grand mansion, but its glory days were long past. Sheralie
struggled to get the door open— it stuck like always, and it took her full
strength to pull it open with both hands. Robin tromped past her into the
servery, and Sheralie shoved the heavy door back into place and bolted it shut.
Deb poked her head out from the pantry door.
“Sally’s back from the market. Want to hear the news?”
Robin eagerly assented, but Sheralie looked down the hallway
in concern for Madam Rusk. Deb caught Sheralie’s nervous look. “Don’t worry,
Miss Sheralie,” she reassured. “Madam Rusk has a headache. She’s gone up to
rest, and Miss Milena went to attend her.”
Sheralie relaxed and followed Robin and Deb down the staff
staircase and into the cavernous kitchen. It had once provided the meals for
crowded, fancy parties. Even when Sheralie arrived at the school four years
earlier, there was a cook making meals for eighteen students plus the servants.
Now Sally and Deb, the former scullery girls, mostly managed the cooking on
their own, though occasionally Maxine, the housekeeper, pitched in. But Madam
Rusk was a stickler for propriety—she would have hysterics if she found two of
her students sitting in the kitchen and gossiping with the staff. Madam Rusk
also had some form of dementia, and it was getting worse every year. By this
point, she couldn’t seem to remember for more than a few minutes that she was
no longer the headmistress of an exclusive finishing school for highborn young
ladies, one that taught etiquette and manners as much as it taught the use of
magick. Most of those students were long gone—killed in Queen Daria’s deadly
purge that sent most of the kingdom’s Gifted enchanters to Clyris Cave. With
Madam Rusk’s failing mind, the school now had only eight students. There was
little need to act as courtly young ladies and a great need for the chores of
the house to get completed somehow. Maxine had assigned all the girls various
responsibilities, but nothing upset Madam Rusk more than to come across one of
her “wellborn misses” wielding a broom or a duster.
In the kitchen, Sally was unpacking her basket and setting
out various paper-wrapped parcels on the big worktable. “I got cutlets for
dinner tonight, and there’s some sausage that’ll do for tomorrow,” she said.
“The butcher had a special.”
“Oh, I love sausage,” Robin said enthusiastically.
Deb reappeared with an armful of carrots from the cold
storage and dumped them into the basin to scrub clean. “So? Anything exciting
in the wind?” she asked Sally.
“More talk about the hidden princess,” Sally said. “Bobbi
says she’s certain she saw the princess the other day, sneaking out of the ale
shop.”
“Hidden princess?” Sheralie asked, puzzled, as she grabbed a
paring knife and a clean potato from the basin. “Princess Aysel lives in the
palace. That’s hardly hidden. Just because she’s rarely seen doesn’t mean she’s
sneaking out to shops.”
“Not the crown princess, Miss Sheralie,” Sally said, shaking
her head.
“But Queen Aston doesn’t have any other children,” reminded
Sheralie, as she started peeling a potato.
“How have you not heard of the hidden princess?” Robin
dribbled some water into her fireflower’s pot. “People have been talking about
her for months.”
“Remember the attack in Justice Square several years back?”
Deb said. “Where rebels freed some of the Silver Wolves about to get axed?”
Sheralie paled. Of course she remembered. She and Emilio
were the rebels. They had saved his mother Flavia and her father from
execution.
“Well, none of them were ever found, right? And we all found
it dead impossible that they escaped the Queen’s Guard?”
She nodded, keeping her eyes on the potato she was peeling.
It still gave her nightmares, the fear that one day the Queen’s Guard might
catch up to them. As far as she knew, her father and Emilio and Flavia were all
still free—on the run and hidden who knew where, but safe from Queen Aston.
Sheralie herself hid in plain sight—a registered student in an officially
recognized school of magick, right in the capital city of Stramere. No one at
the school but Maxine knew the truth.
“Now, everyone always knew that they had a powerful
enchanter with them,” Deb continued. “How else did they free the Silver Wolves
from the stocks?”
“And how else did they get away in the theater district?
That fire in Sophia’s Millinery was not natural,” Robin added. Though the queen
had never publicly admitted that the fire was connected with the escaped
prisoners, most people believed that it was. The Queen’s Guard spent months
questioning everyone they could find in connection with that fire, or anyone at
all who frequented the theater district. Sheralie heard rumors for three years
about the dark magick that attacked the Queen’s Guard and allowed the fugitives
to escape, though sometimes she wondered if it was simply a lucky guess. Likely
Ike, the street urchin she’d chased into the millinery, had spread the rumors
himself. It was doubtful the guards did.
“But what does this have to do with a hidden princess?”
Sheralie asked.
“See, the rumors started last spring,” Sally said, as she
started to lay out the cutlets on the cutting board. “Because one of the guards
who likes his ale was in the Brass Tankard, and he was talking a little too
loud one day. And he said the fugitives only escaped Justice Square because
they snuck into a special tunnel—one sealed with a bloodstone that only royals
can open. Someone reported it to the papers, and now everyone is talking about
it.”
Sheralie dropped her knife in shock.
“I know, right?” Robin said, her voice high with excitement.
“There’s another royal out there somewhere.”
“Unless Princess Aysel herself helped the Silver Wolves
escape,” suggested Deb. “It’s possible. Maybe she hates her mother that much.
Would explain why the queen’s never found the missing enchanter.”
“But you know what this means, right?” Sally said, lowering
her voice.
All three of the other girls leaned in a little bit closer.
“One of the Gifted survived the Purge.”
Suddenly, the door swung open, and Madam Rusk popped into
the kitchen. All four girls sprang to attention. Sheralie hid the potato and
the knife behind her back, and Robin clutched her fireflower pot to her chest.
“Ladies!” Madam Rusk exclaimed, her voice shocked. “Why are
you in the kitchen?”
Obviously Madam Rusk had recovered from her headache, but
she had to be disoriented again. Why else had she ventured down to the
basement? It was the first time any of them had seen her in the kitchen. Proper
class custom meant that a great lady would never set foot in certain areas of
the house, below stairs most of all.
Robin recovered first. “I needed to water my fireflower.
It’s for Bailey—um, Miss Mason. She’s still sick, you know, and I wanted to
give her this.” Madam Rusk’s expression cleared a bit. Then she turned to Sally
with a frown. “I rang for Maxine three times, but she has not appeared.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” Sally answered with a little bob of a
curtsy. “Maxine went to the apothecary, needing a tonic for Miss Mason’s
cough.”
Madam Rusk shook her head. “Why did she not send Missy?”
Sally and Deb exchanged glances. Deb was the one who
answered. “Missy left, ma’am, some two years back. Don’t you remember?”
Madam Rusk’s eyes clouded. “Oh, yes.” She stared around
vacantly for a moment, and Sheralie stepped forward, intending to guide the
disoriented woman back to her room. But when Madam Rusk’s eyes fell on
Sheralie, she started.
“Miss Silver!” she exclaimed.
Sheralie exchanged glances with Robin. It wasn’t the first
time that Madam Rusk had confused her with a former student. Apparently
Sheralie looked a good deal like her. She’d mistaken Sheralie for this Miss
Silver even back when she was regularly more lucid.
“Accompany me to my study,” she ordered. “Since you have
some free time, I will share a very important lesson with you. I have been
meaning to do so for some time.”
“Of course, Madam Rusk,” Sheralie answered.
Deb stepped behind Sheralie and deftly plucked the paring
knife and the potato from Sheralie’s hands, keeping them both out of sight
still. After all, since entering the kitchen was questionable, peeling
vegetables was absolutely crossing the lines of proper decorum, and no one
wanted Madam Rusk to cry, or worse, go into hysterics.
Madam Rusk turned with a swish of her long skirt and swept
out of the kitchen, leaving Sheralie just enough time to shake some errant
potato peels off her apron.
“Good luck!” whispered Robin.
Sheralie knew she would need it. Navigating Madam Rusk’s
tenuous grip on reality was a challenging balancing act.
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