Prologue
It was the raspberry sundae that did it. Noa stormed across the banquet hall, dodging guests and servants. “Princess Noa?” more than one voice called after her. She bumped into a man carrying a tray laden with frozen guava. As he fell, the tray rose in the air in a spectacular arc, spraying horrified courtiers with ice shavings like pink snowflakes.
Noa didn’t care. She ran up the black marble staircase, eyes blurring with tears, mouth aching from holding it in a stiff, calm, princess-like line.
If she had to listen to one more courtier tell her how sorry they were that her mother had passed on or slipped away, as if Mom were a tricky spy escaping into the night, Noa was going to throw up all over her horrible, funeral-appropriate dress. Her older brother, Julian—soon to be crowned King Julian—didn’t see her leave.
The staircase wound around and around, offering a view of the courtyard at every turn. The royal palace’s architecture was typically Florean, with large, airy galleries built around a central garden teeming with cacti and vine trees and lavawort. Normally, Noa stopped and said hello to the finches that liked to perch on the staircase railing, but right now there was a storm inside her, and she kept running until she got to her bedroom.
There was nothing particularly princess-like about Noa’s room—no chests filled with jewels or fantastical chandeliers. It was messy in an organized way, piled with books and logic puzzles and model ships. She wasn’t interested in ships, but she liked taking things apart so she could study them and improve the design. Reckoner, her brother’s ancient dragon, was sprawled across the polished floor like a fat, spotty rug. Reckoner disliked Noa, though he disliked her less than he disliked most people, probably making a strategic allowance for the fact that her room had the best afternoon and evening sunbeams.
Noa went straight to the wardrobe and locked herself in. Then she collapsed in a heap of sobs and scattered dresses and coats.
Her mother, the queen of Florean, had been dead for a week. It was weird that this was the first time Noa had cried—that it hadn’t happened when Julian had told her, or the first time she had walked past her mother’s empty bedroom. No, it had been the sight of that towering raspberry sundae, a sundae so magnificent it took three servants to carry it out, piled with cream and chocolate and butternuts, the raspberries fat as chickadees. Her mother had loved raspberry sundaes, and Noa had turned instinctively to catch her look of astounded delight.
And that was when she had understood.
Noa stayed in the wardrobe until she thought the funeral guests had left. Then she stayed a little longer, for good measure. One of her mother’s cats came in and meowed at the door in order to point out how difficult he was to fool. After a while, he got tired of bragging and went to nap in the sun with Reckoner. Noa’s mother had loved cats and had accumulated sixteen of them over the years. She probably would have reached twenty if—
If.
Eventually, Noa ran out of tears. She occupied herself with cataloging by size and shape the dust motes dancing in the light that spilled through the wardrobe doors. Noa cataloged a lot of things, partly because it was calming and partly because it was useful, particularly in helping her win arguments with Julian. She was just wondering if tiny hairs from Reckoner’s snout counted as dust when her bedroom door opened and two assassins stepped in.
Noa froze. She knew they were assassins immediately, even though she could see only a sliver of them through the wardrobe doors. They were dressed in all black like the funeral guests, but Noa had mentally cataloged the funeral guests and these two didn’t fit anywhere. Their clothes weren’t rich enough for courtiers, nor plain enough for servants, and they moved too quietly to be up to any good.
Also, the woman was holding a large dagger.
Noa’s heart thundered so loud she was sure they would hear it. The assassins approached her rumpled bed. The woman relaxed her grip on the dagger when the man pulled the blankets back, revealing Noa’s stuffed walrus.
“Odd,” the woman said. She strode idly over to the wardrobe and pulled on the door, and Noa almost did throw up then, but of course it didn’t open, for Noa had locked the wardrobe from the inside. She always did, to keep her sister out.
“We’ll find the little one first,” the man murmured. “Her bedroom is in the next hall.”
Noa felt as if she had floated out of her body. As soon as the door shut behind the pair, she tumbled out of the wardrobe with a pair of pants tangled around her head. Reckoner was still asleep, of course, because he was the most useless dragon in Florean and wouldn’t interrupt a good nap if a dozen assassins danced around him, tossing knives in the air.
The assassins had disappeared around the corner, and Noa ran in the opposite direction, because the assassins were wrong, and her sister’s bedroom was next to hers.
Mite had already been put to bed, on account of her being only five, and several lavasticks had been left glowing on various tables in her room. She started to scream when Noa dragged her roughly out of bed, but Noa clapped a hand over her mouth.
“It’s me,” she hissed. “We have to find Julian. There are—there are bad people looking for us.”
Mite’s eyes were wide. Her dark hair stuck up, and there was something smeared on her cheek that Noa suspected was chocolate, because Mite was an expert at sneaking food into her room. “Bad people? Are they librarians?”
“Um—yeah,” Noa said. Their mother had been in a long-standing spat with the librarians at the royal library, who had bitterly protested her habit of borrowing books indefinitely, even though every library in Florean technically belonged to her. “Mean, angry librarians. I heard them say you forgot to return something.”
Mite gaped. Hans, the head librarian, had once scolded her for getting fingerprints on the card catalog, and she now lived in fear of him and all librarian-kind. “But I didn’t!”
Noa dragged her out the door and down the hall. “Don’t worry—Julian will sort it out.”
They ran down the staircase, which was strangely deserted. Where were the palace guards? Where were the turquoise-clad servants? How had the assassins managed to reach Noa’s room in the first place? Dread coiled her stomach into knots. They needed Julian. He was sixteen, and even better, he was one of the most powerful magicians in Florean—or he would be, if he ever bothered to practice his spellwork.
Noa stopped at the bottom of the stairs, pushing Mite behind her. There was a terrible clamor coming from the banquet hall, shouting and clashing swords. What was going on?
“Let’s try the throne room.” Noa still felt nauseous, and she prayed she wouldn’t faint. She led Mite down a quiet servants’ corridor. Mite was barefoot and kept tripping on the hem of her nightie, but at least she wasn’t crying. They took the shortcut through the gardens—night was falling, and the sky was a deep purple curve like the inside of a mussel shell.
A black-cloaked figure came racing into the courtyard, and Noa’s heart faltered, but it was only Julian. His cloak was singed, and he had a cut on his cheek. Noa leaped into his arms with a cry of relief.
Her brother drew back, and they examined each other. Most people thought Julian was handsome, so handsome that some bards had even written fawning songs about it, full of awful metaphors about his eyes that gave Noa no end of material to mock him with. He had the same olive skin and overlarge ears as her and Mite, but his eyes were blue like their mother’s. He seemed fine, apart from the blood, though his gaze was cold and glazed over, like ice, and he was gripping Noa too tightly. “You’re all right. You’re both all right.”