Whispered Magics Read Online Free PDF Page B

over her hem, and Kimet
pulled the door shut a heartbeat before heavy boots tromped into the reception
chamber. Zarja’s breathing was harsh. She had obviously never run in her life,
and was further encumbered by her heavy, brocaded-silk dressing gown with its
voluminous, dragging skirts.
    When the noise of the search diminished again, the Princess
said, “Get me away from here.”
    Kimet obeyed, of course, as good pages are trained to do. She
led the Princess down the strangely empty service corridor, and at the landing,
paused and said, “Where to, Your Highness?”
    “Anywhere,” the Princess snapped, though her voice shook.
“Anywhere secret. Don’t let them find me.”
    Hide from the King’s guards? The Princess choked on a sob.
Kimet shook her head as she led the way up the stairs.
    “Are you in trouble, Your Highness?” she asked as they started
up another flight of stairs. She could imagine the royal heralds wanting to
beat the Princess, but she couldn’t imagine them being allowed to, any more
than the royal tutors had been when the Princess was small and had thrown her
shoes, her dishes, and her toys at them. From all accounts she didn’t throw
shoes anymore, but she ignored the heralds just the same, though she was supposed
to be learning statecraft. And there was nothing they could do but smile.
    “You’re not supposed to ask questions,” the Princess scolded.
That sounded more like her usual self, and though Kimet felt a stab of the old
annoyance, she found it a little reassuring. At least one thing was back to
normal. She might not like it, but she was used to it. This being allowed to
sleep in, the guard in the royal chambers, above all the distant laughter and,
close by, the Princess’s weeping—those things were frightening because they
were so strange.
    They climbed in silence, stopping midway up one of the towers.
They were on a seldom-used service landing. The main rooms in this tower were
crammed with old-fashioned royal furnishings and ancient trunks. When younger,
before Steward Greb came into control, the pages had sometimes retreated there
to play during their rare free time. Kimet had always liked to sit perched on a
pile of ancient baskets next to one of the old-fashioned arrow-slit openings,
and practice her more difficult stitches on rags and scraps as she chatted with
friends.
    She led the Princess into the tiny hidden room. Morning
sunlight streamed in through the two slit-windows, parallel shafts of light
painting the stone floor. As the two girls moved, dust swirled in and out of
the sun-shafts, brief-lit then dimming.
    “This is disgusting,” the Princess snapped, arms crossed,
hands tightened into fists.
    “It’s storage, your highness,” Kimet said.
    “At least it could be clean.”
    Kimet didn’t know how to answer that without earning a
beating, so she just bowed, hands folded before her the way the Queen required,
her head meekly lowered.
    “Don’t just stand there, dolt! Dust something off so I can sit
down,” the Princess commanded, but her voice was still breathless, still too
high.
    Kimet obeyed, using the edge of her own clothing to clear off
a place on one of the trunks. She spied a new addition to the clutter, yet
another of the ancient tapestries, this one from the formal audience chamber,
now junked in a bent roll like an old carpet.
    As the Princess glanced at the dusted trunk, sniffed, and
lowered herself daintily to the very edge, Kimet lovingly lifted the tapestry
and smoothed it onto an old table.
    There were only two tapestry restorers now. Both were aging,
having been appointed by the previous Queen as the present Queen hated old
tapestries, which was why the tapestries had been migrating one by one from the
public rooms to the back halls, and finally to this jumble.
    The Queen had stated at Kimet’s promotion interview, “This
stitchery of yours is all very well, but I want to be rid of those dirty, ugly
things. When my daughter marries, I