Palace of Mirrors Read Online Free PDF Page B

again I want to scream,
Stop treating me like a little girl! Tell me the truth!
I know Nanny is pretending. Maybe she even knows I know. But I let her lead me over to my sleeping mat, pull my quilt up to my chin.
    She’s so rattled she doesn’t even realize I still have my dress and apron on. Her shawl is still on my shoulders. I don’t remind her.
    “Good night,” she calls, blowing out the candle. “May the Lord bless you and keep you, this night and every other.”
    “You too,” I say, because that’s our bedtime routine. We’ve said those words to each other every night since I was old enough to talk.
    But I don’t plunge into sleep immediately. I lie there, wide awake, and it’s like I can feel Nanny’s wakefulness—her watchfulness—on the other side of the room.
    She wanted the light out,
I think.
So nobody could see in our windows, see that I was studying. . . .
    Or was she just trying to calm me down, so I’d stop thinking of all the worst possibilities? Surely she really is planning to get word to Sir Stephen somehow. Isn’t she? Isn’t that what she’d do?
    A new thought strikes me, one that makes my entire body stiffen under my quilt. If Sir Stephen finds out that I’m in danger here in our village, he’ll whisk me away. He’ll take Nanny and me off to some other village, maybe on the other side of the kingdom, some place that shows up on even fewer maps.
    Harper . . .
I think, and it’s like a sob in my head, a sob or a wail or a prayer. I couldn’t leave Harper without saying good-bye. I couldn’t let this be our last day together, not when I mocked him this morning and snubbed him this afternoon. I’d have to apologize first, apologize and explain.
    Am I willing to tell him the truth?
    That question has been hanging around at the back of my mind since before the door blew open, jolting me to think of other things. Somehow all the questions in my mind are jumbled together.
Am I really in danger—more danger than usual, I mean? What’s Nanny planning to do? How much should I tell Harper? What would be the problem with telling him everything, anyway? He’d never betray me, and he could help me watch out for my enemies. . . .
    I try to untangle my thoughts the way Sir Stephen has taught me to plan my strategy playing chess. Sir Stephenbegan teaching me the game years ago, about the same time he began teaching me to read. I can still remember my awe the first time he pulled the carved ivory pieces out of his sack, unwrapping them and naming each one in turn.
    “Rook, knight, bishop, king, queen, pawn . . .”
    “Where’s the princess?” I asked when the pieces were all lined up on their squares.
    Sir Stephen pointed to the queen.
    “This is the princess, all grown-up,” he said. “This is what princesses become. She’s the most powerful piece on the board.”
    I liked that, and so I liked chess right away. But it took me a while to understand Sir Stephen’s explanations.
    “The trick to chess—the trick to strategy—is to keep track of each piece individually, and also in relationship to every other piece. You have to see the board as a whole, and each individual piece alone, all at the same time.” He talked about trees and forests, drops of waters and rivers, soldiers and entire armies. I said I thought forests were made up of trees and rivers were made up of water and armies were made up of soldiers, so what was the difference? And anyhow, weren’t these chess pieces made of ivory, not wood or water or real people? I drove him to tug on his beard in exasperation and threaten to put the game away until I was older. But I was hooked, and eventually I understood well enough that he stopped both the tuggingand the threats. And now I see how everything is connected, how a chess queen’s fate can depend on a pawn, how the questions in my head are all related. The danger I’m in, Nanny’s pretense, Sir Stephen’s response, Harper’s outrage—I can’t do anything about any