Perhaps it’s one of the prince’s, she thought. Yes, I can imagine Eneas in just such a modest garment, leading his soldiers. It was certainly long enough to belong to him.
Agnes soon returned and Briony sent her on another errand, this one taking a letter to Ivgenia e’Doursos. Briony wanted to let her friend know what happened, and had written to tell her she had been unjustly accused, but of course wrote nothing about what she was planning to do. She had learned she could not trust anyone, not even Ivvie—in fact, she was being forced to rely on young Agnes far more than she liked, but some things could not be helped.
Briony stood in the doorway again and made sure the guards saw her. “Push it under her door,” she told Agnes. “Don’t wake her.”
Agnes smiled. “I’ll be careful.”
The other ladies looked irritated that they were not being sent on these apparently important errands. Briony put them to work getting her some food.
“Bread and cheese from the common store,” she told them. “Lots of it. Let no one know it’s for me. And some dried fruit. Medlars, too—wrap them in a kerchief or they shall get on everything. And what else? Yes, I’d like some quince paste.”
“Are you very hungry, then, Princess?” one of the girls asked.
“Oh, famished. After all, it is hard work being betrayed.”
The ladies went off with wide eyes, whispering behind their hands before they were three steps out the door. Briony noticed that one of the guards had gone somewhere. The other soldier barely looked up as the two young women hurried past.
When the bread and cheese and the rest had been brought back, Briony took it to the retiring room where no one could see, unrolled her bundle, and hid the food in the center of it. “You may go to bed now,” she called to the women. “I am going to wait for Agnes. I am not yet sleepy.”
Disappointed in their hope to see more eccentricity—or perhaps to see Briony eat the entire mound of supplies they had brought back—the ladies-in-waiting went to the retiring room to prepare for bed. A short time later Agnes came back.
“Thank all the gods,” Briony said. “I was beginning to fear something had happened to you.”
“There were people in the hall and I did not know whether you wanted me to be seen or not,” Agnes told her, “so I waited until they were gone. Have I done wrong?”
“Merciful Zoria, you have done nothing of the kind! Why didn’t I discover you before?” She gave the girl a quick kiss on the cheek. “There is one more thing. Give me your dress.”
“My dress, Princess?”
“Quiet! Not so loud—the others are just in the retiring room. We must be quick. Then take this robe and put it on.”
To her credit, young Agnes did not waste time asking questions. With Briony’s help she got the dress off, and as she stood shivering in her shift Briony draped the night-robe around her.
“Now help me,” Briony told her.
When she was laced into the dress, Briony took Agnes to the chest. “It goes without saying that you may have any of my dresses you choose,” she said. “There are several in the big chest. But I want you to have something else. Here. The fool who gave this to me did not get what he wanted for it, but he gave it to me nevertheless, so it is mine to give to you.” She took out the expensive bracelet Lord Nikomakos had sent her as a love gift and clasped it around the girl’s wrist.
Agnes’ eyes grew wide, then a tear welled up in the corner of each. “You are too kind to me, Princess!”
“No. You still have one more job to do and it is not an easy one. You must convince the king’s men when they come for me—it may be tonight if something has made them wonder, or it may not be until sometime tomorrow—that you did not know what I was doing.” She frowned. “No, that will not work—you are too clever a girl. You must convince them that I frightened you into keeping quiet.”
Now it was Agnes who frowned and shook her head. “I will not blacken your name, Princess Briony. Leave it to me—I will think of something.”
“May the gods bless you, Agnes! Now, when we get to the door, come halfway out and no farther—and keep your face turned away from the guards.”
Just as they opened the door, Briony said loudly, “Hurry, girl! You must go to her and come back quickly. I want to go to sleep!”
There was only one guard, and as Briony hoped, he only straightened up long enough to see the two familiar shapes—the woman in the robe bidding her servant go out one last time—before leaning back on the wall again.
“Princess running you near to death, is she, my lady?” he called as Briony trotted past with the bundled cloak clasped to her breast.
“Oh, yes,” she said—but in a murmur only she could hear. “It’s true, I am quite beside myself tonight.” A moment later she had turned into the adjoining corridor.
She retraced the route she had traveled with Eneas, stopping in the stables long enough to don the boy’s clothes she’d worn as a player. She thanked Zoria and the other gods that the cloak she had picked was a warm one: it might have been spring in Syan, but it was a cold night. She was also grateful that it was a market night and the palace’s gates were open late as people went in and out. She buried the dress Agnes had given her in the straw and made her way out of the stables and through the gate to the town.
Briony headed straight for the tavern where the players had been staying. The Whale Horse was in a narrow street in a dark but active part of Tessis near the river docks; its sign depicted a strange sea creature with tusks curling from its mouth. Drunken men wandered past, singing or quarreling, some of them with women on their arms as drunk and quarrelsome as themselves. Briony was glad she was dressed as a man and she prayed that no one tried to make her talk. This looked like the kind of place where it might not go well for her even if she were thought a boy instead of a girl.
Nevin Hewney was sleeping with his head on a table in the tavern’s main room. Finn Teodoros, in somewhat better condition beside him, still did not recognize her for a long moment, even after she whispered his name.
He leaned back as if to see her whole, then leaned forward again. “Young Tim… I mean Prin—”
Briony smacked her hand over his mouth so sharply that a less drunken man would have cried out in pain. “Don’t say it! Is the company all here? ”
“I sink tho… I mean, I think so. Big Dowan has gone to bed hours ago. I believe I saw Makewell chatting up a local merchant ...” He goggled at her again, as if not sure he wasn’t dreaming. “What are you doing here? And dressed… like that?”
“I’m not going to talk about it here. Round up Hewney and meet me in your room.”
“Feival?” Teodoros went pale. “Is this true?”
“True? Do you think I would lie? He betrayed me!”
“I’m sorry, Highness, I just wouldn’t have… that is… by the Trickster, who could have guessed?”
“Any of us, if we’d had any sense.” Nevin Hewney sat up, dripping. He had been dousing his head in a basin of water. “Always had a taste for the better things, our Feival. I said he’d leave us someday for a rich man… or even a rich woman. Well, he found one. And he doesn’t even have to swive her.”
“Hewney!” said Teodoros, shocked. “Not in front of the princess.”
Briony rolled her eyes. “None of it is new to me, Finn, just because I went back to being a princess—only my clothes changed.” She laughed sourly. “And look! I’m back in my old clothes again.”