The Royal Trials: Imposter Read online

  Once upon a time, our country had been matriarchal—the crown passed from mother to daughter when she became of age, along with the magic that sustained the balance of nature. All that had changed when our last queen was murdered, and her baby girl stolen.

  That was the beginning of the Darkness, and Teich had never been the same since.

  So here we were, about to enter the Trials with three royals looking for their soulmate, instead of just one. City officials swore the magic of the tests would remain unchanged, but I found that seriously hard to believe. Especially given the magic had all but disappeared from Teich entirely.

  “They won't execute him on day one of the Trials,” Jules continued, not willing to give up on changing my mind just yet. “Maybe just give it another night or two to think it over? Maybe Bloodeye can be talked into lending some extra muscle.”

  I snorted a bitter laugh. “I’m his favorite, not his daughter. No, he told me quite clearly, I was on my own with this one. Besides, what better time to break in? The lucky contestants get announced at dawn, so until then it's all drinking, dancing, and revelry.”

  “So, you’re, what? Just hoping the guards will have been indulging?” Jules screwed her face up at me like I was insane, but I just shrugged.

  “Pretty much,” I admitted, tucking my dark cloak around me tighter. “This is where I leave you, Jules. If I’m not back by midmorning…” I sighed and shrugged. “Well, it’s probably safe to assume I’m dead.”

  “Don’t joke, Ry. It’s not even close to funny.” Juliana’s voice quivered as she spoke, and I could tell she was on the verge of tears. Not what I needed right before the most foolhardy mission of my short lady-criminal career. So it probably wasn't going to help for me to admit I wasn't joking.

  “I'll be fine, babe,” I assured her, giving a confident smile. “I'm slippery, remember? They won’t even know what hit them until it's too late. Besides, you still owe me that bag of silver from cards last week.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she grumbled, pouting about her loss. “I'll wait here as long as I can. Who knows, maybe I'll find someone to pay that bag of silver I owe you.”

  I laughed and gave her a quick hug. “That's the spirit! Work it, girl.” Slapping her playfully on the ass, I took the opportunity to make a speedy exit.

  As much as Juliana was just trying to keep me safe, her fears were only serving to make me nervous. It wouldn't stop me from breaking into the palace to save Flick, but when I wasn't totally focused, it could lead to stupid mistakes.

  Leaving my glamourous friend behind, I slipped into the shadows below the towering wall I'd need to scale to get into the palace. It might have seemed like the most hairbrained idea in the world, but if I was totally honest, I had been eyeing up the royal palace for years, plotting what the best way in and out might be.

  Of course, back then I'd been thinking more along the lines of getting into the treasury, not the dungeons. But the same access points should work. Theoretically, anyway. It wasn't like anyone had blueprints of the palace layout, so I'd have been guessing where the treasury was, just as I'd be guessing where the dungeon was.

  Sucking in a deep breath, I checked all around me for anyone who might be watching. When I found no one, it was time to begin. I wiped my palms dry on my dark gray breeches and set my fingers into the grooves of the worn stones.

  One of my major advantages over men in this profession was that I was small and light. There was no way a fully-grown man could do what I was doing; their fingers simply wouldn't fit the cracks. But for me, they were perfect.

  I didn't fuck around getting up and over the wall, then lying flat on the top for a moment to check that the gardens were clear before dropping down silently. Some of the partying nobles were spilling out onto the grass, but the beautifully manicured greenery should be more than enough to hide me if I was quick and quiet.

  “Good to see the royals using their magic for the good of the kingdom,” I murmured under my breath as I passed fragrant roses and heavily laden fruit trees. Meanwhile, the rest of Teich was struggling to get their crops to grow.

  Several times on my dash across the gardens I needed to pause and wait for guards to pass me by, but they had all clearly been indulging, just as I'd suspected. In hardly any time at all, I was below a darkened window—which I seriously hoped indicated an empty room. Or at least a sleeping occupant.

  Pushing off hard, I jumped and caught the worn sandstone frame before pulling myself up and into the room with barely a whisper of noise. So far, so good.

  As soon as my feet and hands touched down on the plush carpet, I froze on the spot, willing myself to blend with the shadows so I could check that the room was clear—it was—before straightening and rushing to the interior door.

  Cracking it just an inch, I peered out into the brightly lit corridor where several sharply dressed gentlemen stood chatting and laughing with cups of drink tucked securely in their fists. I could only hope they would move along soon because from a cursory glance around the room I was in, there was no other exit.

  It was little more than a sitting room, probably used for guests to wait in until they were called by whoever they were visiting, but it offered me no other option but to stand there and wait until the men moved along.

  Unfortunately for me, I'd already used up a good portion of my luck for the night, and they were in no hurry to get back to the main party. At one stage, one gentleman even leaned on the wall right beside my cracked door, making himself comfortable.

  I groaned internally when this happened and slid down the wall to sit. There was no sense in wasting energy, and my legs were already burning from standing there so long.

  Fishing around in my pants pocket, I pulled out an old, ladies’ pocket watch that had been with me since I was a baby. Time was ticking by, and my chance of retrieving Flick from the dungeon was slipping further and further away...

  But I'd come this far. Surely I couldn't fail now, when I was so damn close.

  Just as despair was beginning to set in, my ears pricked up at the sound of the men bidding one another farewell, and I scrambled to my feet once more. Sure enough, when I peeked through the crack in the door, the three of them were departing my corridor—leaving it empty.

  “Finally,” I sighed, waiting only a moment more before slipping out of the room and darting in the direction away from the party sounds.

  Dungeons would be down, it was only logical, so I set about looking for a staircase that would lead me to a lower level and hopefully away from the brightness of the magically powered lights in the corridor.

  The sound of a woman's laughter trickled toward me, so I picked up the pace and, thankfully, darted into the entrance to a narrow flight of stairs mere seconds before I would have been seen.

  “That was close,” I breathed to myself in a whisper before eyeing the staircase. It went down, which was what I'd been looking for, so I shrugged and padded down it cautiously. My heart was still racing from the near miss in the corridor, so I was on high alert for running into anyone else who might sound the alarm to palace guards.

  To my relief, the stairs led me through to a servants’ area where—while bustling with people—no one even batted an eyelid at what they would have assumed to be a young boy in a cloak. Slipping into the mannerisms of a servant myself, I hurried through the other servants with confidence, and no one so much as stopped me. It was almost too easy, and I laughed to myself as I slipped out the other side of the room unobstructed.

  “Alright, Rybet,” I murmured under my breath. “Servants area, below ground level... dungeons can't be too far from here.” To help with my disguise, I grabbed a sack of flour that had been propped against the wall and slung it over my shoulder.

  Yep, nothing to see here. Just a servant boy carrying some flour to the kitchens.

  Okay, so as far as disguises went, it was definitely not my best work, but everyone was so busy with the celebrations upstairs that no one really had time to look twi
ce at me—exactly what I had been hoping for.

  It took me longer than I'd hoped to locate the dungeons, so the relief was almost staggering when I found the dank stairwell leading down further and two bored-looking palace guards sitting on stools at the bottom playing cards.

  “Here, boy, what are you doing down here, then?” one of them asked me, barely glancing up from his losing hand of cards.

  “I came to...” I trailed off, searching for a plausible excuse for why a servant would be carrying flour into a dungeon. Finding none at the front of my mind, I shrugged and hoisted the flour off my shoulder. “Fuck it,” I muttered, then swung the heavy bag hard, hitting the first guard clean in the face and knocking his head against the stone wall with a sickening crunch that made me cringe.

  The second man—on whom I could smell the alcohol from where I stood—barely got a chance to open his mouth before I hit him in the temple with the butt of my knife.

  The whole altercation had taken less than a minute, but I was left panting from adrenaline and nerves. It wasn't often I needed to kill anyone, but I'd be lying if I tried to say it hadn’t happened in the past. Still, I had no idea whether these men deserved it and I was vehemently against senseless killing, so it was with shaking fingers that I checked their pulses to assure myself that they were still alive.

  Feeling the steady thumps, I breathed a sigh of relief before dragging their unconscious forms into an empty cell and closing the barred door.

  A heavy ring of keys hung from a peg near their card table, so I grabbed it and locked the door to the cell I'd deposited them in, hoping that if anyone came down, they'd think the guards were just two sleeping prisoners.

  “Flick?” I called out in a loud whisper, praying for a response. The dungeons looked like they went for damn miles though, and I got all sorts of leers and smartass remarks back from various prisoners, none who sounded anything like the little sandy-blond kid I was there to save.

  Conscious of the ticking time, I grabbed a light orb from the guard area and started making my way down the long line of cells. Using the light, I peered into each one and called out for Flick but had no luck. They were all grubby men, some of whom I vaguely recognized from the Pond, but none was the gawky twelve-year-old I was seeking.

  Shit.

  A hand seized my wrist just as I was about to start down the next line of cells, and I stifled a small scream of fright.

  “Well, well, what have we here? A dirty little thief breaking in to save his friend, eh?” The man holding my wrist in a death grip sneered at me, and I swallowed down a shiver of terror. I knew that voice. Everyone who had even remotely walked the line with the law knew that voice.

  “Lord Taipanus,” I gasped out, almost forgetting to lower my voice. Almost.

  “Ah, I see my reputation precedes me,” the king's spymaster boasted with a cruel grin curving across his scarred face. “Then you'll know how much trouble you're in right now, boy.” He punctuated this with a rough shake, and my teeth rattled in my head.

  I saw no easy way out of this situation. I was fucked. Well and truly fucked. There was no point in trying to fight Lord Taipanus; he was the spymaster for a damn good reason. He was utterly lethal and totally unbeaten in combat.

  Still, I felt like I owed it to myself to at least try.

  Just as I coiled my muscles to launch an attack on the Snake of Teich, an odd sound halted me. Was that... a woman's heels?

  “Oh, Lord Taipanus,” a woman gasped from behind me, “oh thank the stars, you found her. I was so worried.”

  “Her?” the deadly man repeated, frowning at me in confusion, then flicking his gaze back to the woman who had spoken. “You're mistaken, Mistress Mallard. This is a boy I caught trying to break someone out of the palace cells.”

  For my part, I said nothing. Let them figure it out between them; my night couldn't possibly get worse.

  There was a rustling of skirts as the mysterious Mistress Mallard came closer. She clicked her tongue and chuckled. “Don't be silly; this is one of the young ladies chosen for the Princes’ Trials. Her handmaiden was just telling me how they were set upon by bandits, so only the two of them made it in time. See?” The woman reached up and whipped the cloak hood from my face, knocking a pin out of my hair in the process and causing my moonlight blonde curls to cascade down my back. “Now, either that is the prettiest boy I've ever seen or it’s the missing lady I'm looking for.”

  Lord Taipanus scowled at me for a long moment, his eyes running over my delicate and clearly feminine features. “But why is she in the dungeons? And dressed like a boy?” He cast a disgusted look down at my shirt and breeches, then narrowed his eyes at me once more.

  When the woman didn't respond for me, I licked my lips nervously and cleared my throat. “I, ah... I needed to ride, and I find trousers much more dignified to do so in. Besides, plenty of women wear pants; there are no laws against it. As for why I'm in the dungeons... well... I...” I really was an awful actress—surely another reason why I'd have made a hopeless courtesan.

  “She has a terrible sense of direction and took a nasty blow to the head, didn't you dear?” Mistress Mallard covered for me, placing a firm hand on my forearm almost like she was reminding Lord Taipanus to let go of my wrist.

  With a skeptical glare at me, he slowly peeled his fingers from my sleeve and settled his hand on the sword at his belt. “How do you know this is the girl? She could just as easily be a thief or criminal.”

  He wasn't stupid, this one. Then again, I didn't imagine it was the type of job one was awarded for being stupid.

  “Oh, how silly of me,” I tittered in my very best Juliana impersonation. “Here.” I reached into an inner pocket of my cloak and produced the invitation to the Trials which I had stolen earlier that day. I had no idea why I'd tucked it into my pocket at the last second, but I'd learned to trust my own instincts and left it there.

  Taipanus unrolled the invitation and scanned it quickly, his eyes darting up at me and back to the paper several times before he was satisfied.

  “I trust that answers your question?” Mistress Mallard prompted him, holding out a hand to take the small scroll from him. “If you don't mind, I really do need to get Lady Callaluna changed and looking presentable. The announcement ceremony is in less than an hour, you know.”

  Lord Taipanus squinted at me for another long moment, then forced his lips up in a cold smile. “Of course, my mistake. It must have been someone else that was spotted scaling the north wall earlier.”

  Plastering on my most vacant smile, I batted my lashes up at the spymaster. “Goodness, then it definitely couldn't have been me. I barely have the strength to hold my head up let alone scale a wall that high!”

  Mistress Mallard tugged on my arm to draw me away, and we made polite goodbyes before hurrying back out of the dungeons.

  “You were laying that on a bit thick, dear,” the older woman murmured to me as we rushed back up the stairs that would lead us back to the main palace area. “You're going to need some acting lessons if you're to make it through this alive, I think.”

  “Excuse me?” I choked out, still a bit in shock at my brush with death himself. “Who are you, anyway?”

  She pursed her lips at me, giving me a small shake of the head as she kept up our quick pace through countless twists and turns of the inner palace. “I'm Mistress Mallard, dear. Head of Household for Her Majesty Queen Filamina.” She paused to let that shocking news sink in, and I gaped at her. “More importantly, I'm an old acquaintance of Bloodeye. He asked me to keep an eye out for you tonight, just in case things went wrong. Good thing, too, hmm?”

  “Bloodeye set up a safety net for me?” I exclaimed, thoroughly shaken. I hadn't realized the old criminal cared so much. “Well, thank you. Truly, you saved my ass in a big way. I promise I'll get the hell out of here and you won’t see me again.”

  Well... after I get Flick out, that is.

  The older woman barked a laugh and shook her head
at me. “Oh no, dear. You misunderstand. You're not going anywhere until you're eliminated from the Trials.”

  Pulling up short, my jaw dropped open so far it could have hit the floor. “What?”

  “You heard me, Lady Callaluna.” She arched a brow at me, and I saw the steel that Bloodeye would have seen in her. “I just vouched for you to the King's Snake himself. If you don't appear at the announcement ceremony in”—she checked her delicate wrist watch— “under half an hour, then it's my life on the line. Sorry, but I'm not taking that risk. I have grandbabies to think of, and Bloodeye's favors with me do not extend any further.”

  Stunned at what I was hearing, I followed silently behind her as she continued leading me through corridors, while desperately trying to make sense of my jumbled thoughts.

  “Wait, this is insanity. I can't impersonate a lady!” I exclaimed as we arrived in front of a closed door and Mallard knocked sharply.

  “Not right now, you can't. That much is clear,” she muttered in a dry tone, and my cheeks heated. “So just smile, do what you're told, and generally don't speak. If you make it through the first pick, then we can work on those acting skills.”

  Flushed at her implication that my speech was unrefined, I scowled. “I meant if anyone finds out I'm a fraud, then I will face the executioner.”

  Mistress Mallard knocked on the door again, louder this time. “Is that any worse of a position than where I just found you?” This point rendered me speechless. “Exactly. Now, shut that pretty mouth of yours and try not to get us both killed before daybreak, yes?” When I said nothing, from lack of anything to say, she gave me a sharp nod like it was all sorted.

  Whatever else I might have said—had I found the words—was cut off with the door slamming open and a wizened old man peering up at us from his frail-looking four-foot-something height.