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  He said to Faline, “What about you in the north? I don’t quite get it.”

  “Here,” Faline said. “I’ll show you. Got some of your duds you could lend me?” She gave Leander an acute, narrow-eyed scrutiny that fascinated Kyale and made Leander feel uncomfortable.

  Leander closed his eyes, muttered, and with a soft paff! of displaced air some neatly folded clothes appeared, smelling of the rosewood trunk where they’d been stored.

  Faline grabbed them and vanished into Kyale’s dressing room. She came back a few moments later, and both kids were startled to see Leander’s twin appear in the doorway. “Convincing?” she asked. The voice wasn’t quite the same: it was a teenage boy’s voice, but the intonations weren’t Leander’s.

  However, it would do.

  Leander let his breath out in a whoosh. “What this means is, we’ve got hope. All right. I’ve got to send some people out to locate these Marlovens, and we’ll use your plan. It sounds better than anything I’d come up with. And thanks.”

  “Well, thank Clair, if you ever meet her,” Faline said, clearly embarrassed. “Was her idea. I just pinched it.”

  Kyale snickered at the sight of this copy of Leander who spoke in such an un-Leander-like tone.

  Faline whisked herself back into the dressing room, and returned a bit later as herself. She dumped Leander’s clothes into his lap, and sat down cross-legged on one of Kyale’s satin hassocks.

  Leander got up, thrust his clothes under his arm, and said, “Kitty, you stay here and entertain our guest. Arel and Portan should be in the stable, but where’s Lisaeth?” He opened the door and stampeded out, his mutters diminishing rapidly.

  Kyale sighed, then turned to her guest, wondering where to begin. Faline was hardly dressed like one would expect of a member of a royal court, but hadn’t she been a prisoner? Maybe she’d stolen that ugly tunic and those old kneebreeches from some peasant during her escape.

  She’d listened carefully when Faline described being friends with a queen and a princess who were also girls. She hadn’t once used titles; Kyale veered between introducing herself as Princess Kitty, to maintain proper rank, and—”You can call me Kitty, if you like,” she offered, watching Faline anxiously.

  Perhaps Faline would suggest the proper ranking herself.

  Faline said, “Kitty! That’s a great nickname! Diana would like it—she likes animals. So does Seshemerria.”

  No Maybe I ought to call you Princess Kitty. But at least she hadn’t rolled her eyes, like the Mayor’s daughter had, or worse, sneer, like that girl had who’d come with the duchess from Telyerhas, the big kingdom to the south, when Kyale had tried to get them to call her ‘Princess Kitty’ as a friendly compromise between informality and proper decorum.

  “My best friends are animals,” Kyale said. It was the truth. She had had no success finding local friends—either they were too lowborn for her to bother with, or else they were, like that duchess, used to a proper court and fine things, and they looked down on her even though she was a princess. “How many friends does your queen have?”

  “There are nine of us, all told.”

  “And all of royal birth—or noble?”

  Faline snickered. “Only Clair. I think. I dunno, never asked. Clair adopted us all, and some talk about their past and some don’t. But we don’t have any nobles in Mearsies Heili,” Faline added cheerily, without the slightest vestige of embarrassment or apology. “It’s mostly farms and mountains and forest—we’re too small, I guess. Why, you can cross most of our kingdom in a week’s ride!”

  Kitty stared at her, thinking, Vasande Leror is much smaller than that.

  But Faline went on to describe the girls’ underground hideout, magically protected, all cozy and decorated by the girls, where they had endless fun—no adults allowed—and when they wanted they ran around in the woodland above their hideaway and played day-long games. They also had duties, such as guarding against the Kwenz’s teenage heir and his friends, who kept trying to discover the underground hideout.

  Kitty listened in fascination, her emotions swinging between dismay at the utter lack of the protocol and etiquette that she had always thought was essential to one’s status, and envy at all their fun.

  It wasn’t until Faline had yawned several times, her vivid blue-green eyes bleary, that Kitty realized she might be tired and hungry.

  When she suggested a meal, Faline agreed with fervent gratitude. She ate with enthusiasm, but her yawns came more frequently, and after a short time back in Kitty’s rooms, she reluctantly suggested a rest.

  “Oh, that would be nice,” Faline said, her relief plain.

  “Llhei will show you to a suitable room.” Kitty reached for her summons bell.

  “L—ya—lya—how do you say her name?”

  “Ll-yeh-AY-ee, but you run it all together,” Kitty said. “She comes from Sartor, or somewhere far away like that. Sartoran has all those funny l’s and yuh sounds, Leander says.”

  “Really?” Faline asked. “How did she end up all the way here? Must be a good story!”

  Kitty said, “She’s only my maid.”

  “Oh.” Faline looked surprised, a subdued sort of surprise, and Kitty wondered if she’d said something wrong.

  Llhei opened the door. “I trust you are going to let your visitor rest now?” she said, beckoning to Faline, who jumped up. “She had a very long day.”

  “Of course,” Kitty said, hoping to impress Faline. “That’s why I rang. I’ll see you in the morning,” she added as the two left the room.

  Hopefully those idiot Marlovens wouldn’t try any tricks for a while, and in the meantime, Kitty would have this entertaining girl all to herself.

  TWO

  The horrid thing is,” Kitty said the next day, “that Leander doesn’t know the least thing about being a king. It’s not his fault,” she added quickly. “I mean, his father was king—the Tlennen-Hess family is very old—but my mother, the wicked Queen Mara Jinea, did away with his mother when Leander was really small, and used magic to enchant the king, which is how she got to be queen. Alaxandar sneaked Leander away to keep him safe—Alaxandar was the captain of guards—and they lived in the forest. So that’s why we usually eat in the kitchen, and there aren’t enough servants, and Leander wears old clothes when he ought to dress like a king. He’s used to living in a forest camp, not in a castle.”

  She sidled a peek at her guest. Faline was listening with a polite, friendly expression on her face.

  Kitty rushed on, “So you see, if you mentioned to Leander that your queen always observes proper protocol when interviewing people of lower rank—so everyone knows where they belong, and how to behave—it might help him to see how we should do that here.”

  Faline reached to stroke the closest cat, her lips pursed. Finally she said, “Well, I don’t know if I’m the best person for that kind o’ thing. Fact is, we don’t really have any protocol, at home. Or at least not much. I guess Clair has some when she meets with people who have petitions and things, or gets advice from the grown-up governors, but we girls usually stay out o’ that kafuffle. And except for CJ, we don’t have titles or anything.”

  Kitty gave up, and changed the subject. “How did you end up with Latvian, since you live on a different continent?”

  “Kwenz of the Chwahir is a friend of Latvian’s. He needed someone to experiment on with these spells. Latvian tried it first on his son, and made him crazy, so the long and short of it is, old Kwenz and his heir, Jilo, scouted me out, on account of my being an Yxubarec, and they wanted to get back at Clair for—well, never mind that. Anyway, I bumbled into Jilo’s stupid trap. Next thing I knew, I was in Latvian’s house.”

  “Ugh!”

  “It almost worked, too. Clair has no idea where I am. If Fern hadn’t been been studying light magic—she’s the real hero, not me—and I didn’t happen to be able to shape-change, I’d probably be as crazy with wicked enchantments as poor Stefan, Fern’s brother, who set fire to
Latvian’s house one day, after he saw my red hair!”

  “No,” Kitty exclaimed—less envious and more frightened. Oh, sure, she wanted to have adventures. But nothing creepy or really, really dangerous!

  “It was pretty weird. But Fern is fun, and she knows a lot of stories about magic history. And it was fun talking to 713 through the window. The warriors give up their names when they join, and they only get numbers, which change when they get promoted. I always thought guards and the like would all be creeps and bullies. Well, a couple of them were. But ol’ ‘3 was funny! He even liked my jokes!”

  Kitty thought about Alaxandar, Leander’s most trusted liegeman during the bad old days, and shuddered. “Some are definitely bullies,” she said, but didn’t explain. After all, Alaxandar was loyal to Leander, and if he’d thought Kitty was like her mother at first, well, she had to admit she couldn’t really blame him.

  Faline shrugged. “So that’s my story. How about yours?”

  “Oh, it’s probably not as interesting as yours,” Kitty said, hoping to be prompted. Faline’s life was interesting, all right; but Kitty wanted desperately for someone to think her own life interesting.

  Faline laughed. “Evil queens and outlaws—boring? Try another one!”

  Relieved, Kitty smiled. “There isn’t a lot to tell. I didn’t really do much. See, I didn’t know my mother was horrible, that she used her magic against people, so she could get to be queen. I thought she was very beautiful—which she was—and I never saw her do bad things because mostly I lived in Tannantaun, a day’s ride south, all alone except for servants. Sometimes I went to court, and everyone smiled at me, and I got to wear pretty clothes. Then Leander’s people kidnapped me, and took me to their hideout in Sindan-An—that’s the forest north of here…”

  Kitty didn’t tell her story well. She kept jumping back and forth in time, and it was very hard to make herself the hero of actions she’d only peripherally witnessed or understood, but she tried.

  “… and my mother didn’t trust any of her courtiers, not really, so I was never permitted to see other children. Just once a year, on my birthday. They didn’t like me, and I didn’t like them. So I made friends with the local cats.”

  Faline nodded, understanding a lot better now. This girl was about as pretty as any girl Faline had ever seen, with her silvery eyes and silvery hair and her beautiful dresses, but it was really obvious she had no other girls to talk to.

  “All of these cats I see here?” Faline asked, looking around at the cat-loaves on the bed, the couch, and the cushions. There must have been at least a dozen of them, all resting contentedly, their eyes slitted.

  “Oh, these aren’t the only ones,” Kyale said. “I have six friends among the big felines, and my favorites are Meta, who’s a leopard, and Conrad, who’s a lion. But they don’t like to come inside.”

  “A lion!” Faline exclaimed, her eyes round. “Wow!”

  “He understands me—he really does,” Kitty said. “Le—other people don’t believe it, but I know he does. Watches out for me, too. Meta and Conrad both. I think animals know a lot more than we think they do—or some of them, anyway. Horses, well, I think they’re stupid.”

  “Two of my friends will agree with you about animals and understanding,” Faline said. “Though maybe not about horses. But I think it’s great about those cats!”

  Kitty talked on about her experiences with her pets, and some of the stories she’d made up during her days alone in the garden at Tannantaun. Faline listened with obvious sympathy and interest, and by the time the two parted for sleep that night (there having been scarce sign of Leander all day) Kitty was determined to lure Faline into staying as her own special friend. Surely that thirteen-year-old queen Clair, who had seven other friends, wouldn’t miss just one, and anyway, if she had magic, she could go find another replacement, couldn’t she?

  A knock on Kitty’s door brought her out of sleep.

  “Huh?” she sat up, then thrashed her way out of the blankets. “Who’s there?”

  “I am.” Leander opened the door, and snapped a zaplight into being. In its mild blue glow Leander looked as tired as he felt.

  Kitty stared at him in worry.

  He said, “Would you give these to Faline? I don’t want to embarrass her by waking her up, but we need to hurry.” He thrust a bundle of clothes into Kitty’s arms, a heavy bundle that chinged faintly. When Kitty began to frown he said in haste, “The Marlovens have been sighted. The plan Faline overheard seems to be happening. Have her dress and meet us downstairs.”

  He ran back down the hall to his next task, and his magic light winked out. Kitty’s initial annoyance at being asked to do a servant’s job vanished. Adventure beckoned, and she did not want to be left behind.

  Excitement thrilled through her. She ran down the hall to Faline’s door and opened it. “Faline! The Marlovens are coming!”

  The girl sat up, snorting, her wild red hair barely visible in the weak pre-dawn light.

  “Here—put this stuff on, and come down at once!”

  She dropped the clothes onto the bed, and backed to the door, realizing that if she were to join whatever was to happen, she had to get dressed as well.

  When Kitty emerged from her room, she thought she saw Leander—except he was stamping oddly about in the hallway. “Is—which one are you?” she asked, and then giggled from sheer nerves.

  The supposed Leander looked up, and grinned back, a grin that was characteristic of Faline even though it used Leander’s features. “It’s this stuff,” Faline said plaintively. “Heavy clothes—I’m not used to these quilted vest thingies, much less a mail-shirt, and these klunking boots. I feel like I’m wearing a house!”

  Kitty could make out the sky blue with gold and red trim on the battle tunic—Vasande Leror’s colors. Below the tunic were quilted long trousers that tucked into high blackweave riding boots with iron on the heels. Faline stamped about, saying over her shoulder, “I gotta get used to these clodhoppers.”

  “Get used to them going downstairs,” Kitty said, gesturing. “We ought to hurry.”

  Faline groaned. “How do people wear this stuff? No wonder the Chwahir are such sour-pies…”

  Kitty smothered laughter as Faline muttered on in a voice somewhat like Leander’s yet not, mixing insults with how scared she was.

  They stopped in the morning room, where Leander was waiting in an outfit twin to Faline’s. Unsmiling, he handed her yet more weight—a sword and dagger—and she rolled her eyes.

  “I don’t know how to put these on,” she said, and then looked around. The expression of dismay on her face, and the servants’ reactions, caused Kitty to cram her fingers in her mouth to keep from laughing.

  Lisaeth and Arel, servants who had been with Leander during the forest days, all stared from the real Leander to the fake Leander, their faces aghast, their heads jerking back and forth, back and forth. Kitty’s eyes watered with her efforts not to give in to giggles.

  “This is why I hate changing so much,” Faline whispered to Kitty. “People don’t trust me.”

  “Are you really a boy?” Kitty whispered, almost too soft for Faline to hear.

  Faline gave her a surprised glance. “Of course. Shape changing is shape changing.”

  Kyale laughed and backed away again.

  “Here,” Arel said awkwardly, holding out the sword and belt. “I’ll help you put them on.”

  Faline obligingly held up her arms, but she said to Leander, “If there’s to be a duel to the death, be sure to tell Clair what happened. I never even held a sword before, and I only use knives to cut my food!”

  Leander felt a weird flutter of laughter inside him. He knew it was nerves, but the absurdity of this twin standing there next to tall, capable Arel, making faces and whispering words like gnarg and fazoo, made him want to sit down and howl.

  A glimpse of Arel’s anxious face doused the laughter.

  “You don’t have to use the weapons,” Leand
er said to Faline. “This’ll work, if it’s going to work at all, if you look the part and stay silent. Alaxandar will do all the talking.”

  “I’m going too,” Kitty stated, crossing her arms. “Don’t say it’s too dangerous. If we lose, I’m in danger anyway.”

  “Oh, let her come,” Faline begged, which surprised and delighted Kitty. “If she hides?”

  “I’ll hide and watch,” Kitty stated.

  “All right,” Leander said, feeling that the situation was sliding beyond his control already. There was no use in keeping Kitty out, even though she did not know the first thing about self defense. She was right about danger. If the plan failed and the kingdom was overrun by enemies they were finished anyway, and so he lined them up for transfer.

  Alaxandar came in, a tall, grizzled man who stared at Faline in frank disbelief. Kitty had no time to react—though she felt laughter bubbling up inside again—before the weirdness of transfer magic seized them.

  They appeared on a little hill with great pines at their backs. Fighting against the dizziness and inward wrench of magic-residue, Kitty followed Faline and Alaxandar through the trees to the edge of a long, sloping bluff. Below, bisecting the summer-green meadowlands, snaked a long, neat formation of warriors, some mounted, more on foot.

  They had come to a halt, their black and gold banners glinting in the dawn light.

  As Kitty’s vision cleared, she felt magic all around her; the edges of her vision glittered and blurred. She ducked behind a huge maple tree directly behind Alaxandar and Faline.

  “Why do my eyes think I’m inside a bubble?” she asked.

  Alaxandar said, “Leander has a ghost army up here, an illusion spell. What the Marlovens see are helms and swords gleaming among the trees. Supposed to look like a couple thousand—more than twice the numbers we see here.”

  Faline sighed. “Oh, good. What now?”

  “If they break their march formation and line up for the charge anyway, we’re in for trouble. Ah! They’ve definitely seen the illusions—” Alaxandar broke off, pointed a callused finger. “They’ve spotted us. Comes their galloper.”