The Two Princesses of Bamarre Read Online Free

told me of a fair in Dettford where a performer had danced a jig on the heads of ten villagers, who could hardly stand still for laughing. Another time he described a tapestry in an earl’s castle that illustrated the meeting between Willard, an early Bamarrian king, and the specter that had predicted the cure to the Gray Death. He added that the tapestry was almost as skillfully done as my embroideries.
    But he never sought me out. I saw him most often during dinner in the banquet hall. Indeed, in his peacock’s attire, he was hard to miss.
    He was very different from me. He was dramatic. He smiled easily, frowned easily, and laughed easily and with abandon, head thrown back, shoulders heaving.
    Once I saw him fly. I had been sitting in my window seat, sketching. It was a gray day, and a fine mist was falling.
    He stood with Father in the courtyard. Father read something from The Book of Homely Truths , the book of sayings he quoted constantly. Then he closed the book and raised his hand in a gesture of parting. Rhys lifted effortlessly, as smoke rises. From a few feet up he bowed to Father. Then he sailed off—backward. I was beginning to know him, and I suspected that he was showing off. I wondered if he knew I was watching.
    Before I met Rhys, I’d been infatuated with Drualt for years. I used to put myself to sleep at night by imagining meetings with him. I’d tell him my long catalogue of fears, and he’d comfort me and describe his adventures.
    But now I imagined meetings with Rhys instead. I wouldn’t mention my fears, because I wanted him to think well of me. In their place I told him about my sketches and my embroidery designs, and he told me about his experiences in Bamarre. At some point he always mentioned that he adored talking to me, and I always blushed and mumbled that I liked talking to him too.
    I’d never before been infatuated with someone living, someone real. However, infatuation with Rhys was as foolish as infatuation with a legendary hero. I was still a child, and Rhys was a sorcerer.
     
    When I was sixteen, Father began building a new wing to Bamarre castle. Rhys was needed to straighten walls and to keep stones from falling on the laborers.
    The sitting room that had been our nursery overlooked the work. Whenever I had time, I’d sit there with my embroidery and watch. Once Rhys saw me and waved.
    Then, after a week, he took pains to find me—and Meryl and Bella too. He stationed himself in the garden, along the route we took on our afternoon walk.
    The irises were in bloom, and I had been thinking of sketching them when we turned into the rose walk. There was Rhys, seated on a bench, head tilted back, breathing in the perfumed air so deeply that I could see his chest rise and fall.
    He sprang up, and I felt Bella stiffen. She considered sorcerers to be outsiders, and she distrusted them.
    When we got near, he bowed. “Princesses, Mistress Bella.” That day his doublet had green-and-blue stripes, and his boots sported golden spurs.
    The three of us curtsied.
    “I have gifts for you, if I may.” He picked something up from the bench, a sword in a silver scabbard. He knelt to present it to Meryl. “I believe you like to fence, Your Highness.”
    She took the sword and drew it out of the scabbard. “It’s beautiful.” She held it out for me to see. “Isn’t it splendid?”
    It was, but I hated it. She had no need for a sword, not while I was still unwed.
    She must have seen something in my expression, because she touched my shoulder and said in a low voice, “Stop worrying, Addie.” Then she began to fence with a rosebush. “Take that, you dastardly roses. Take that.” She parried and thrust, handling the sword easily, as graceful as a festival dancer.
    “Meryl, a princess doesn’t—” Bella began.
    “See how it catches the sunlight? Sword, I dub you Blood-biter.” Blood-biter was Drualt’s sword. “I’ve longed for a sword, but . . .” She looked up at Rhys. “How