I wasn’t sure if he was joking, but it could have been the truth. Carethia didn’t have many princes, and there were plenty of people who considered marrying into the royal family a personal victory. Wealth, power, money.
And death threats.
“This pile,” he continued, “is land disputes. Some are neighbors arguing about nonsense: who owns a strip of land the width of their hand, servants too noisy in the morning, dogs pissing on their statuary.”
Little wonder the former prince hadn’t wanted to deal with the commoners.
He returned the stack to the table. “After all that, I’ve earned some fresh air.” He glanced at Galen and Talia. “I’m going to give Fox a tour of the grounds. I’ll return shortly.”
“Your Highness,” Galen said, stepping forward.
But the prince waved him off. “You can stand down. I’m not leaving the palace.” With that, he gestured me toward a side door opened by a guard as he strode toward it, me behind him.
“How are you going to give me a tour of the grounds without leaving the palace?” I asked when we walked together down a stone passageway.
“I have a shortcut.”
“Shortcut” was relative when crossing a royal palace. The building was enormous, with hallways that branched into more hallways like a tree in need of spring pruning. Memorizing the layout—a thief in a palace was still a thief—was going to take time.
Along with rummaging through the library—and maybe, very carefully, the treasury—I decided that making a mental map would be my “work” while I was here. As Wren pointed out, one never knew when one might need to sneak into or out of a royal palace.
We walked through a corridor paneled in more of the palace’s favorite pale green stone. Arches rose, tapestries lined the walls, and light was shed from ornate standing candelabras and reflected in golden mirrors. We reached a large round space where several corridors met, the domed ceiling gilded and heldaloft by multicolored marble columns too big for me to put my arms around. The walls were covered in tiny mosaic tiles that must have taken decades—and thousands of strongholders—to finish.
“Library is that way,” he said, pointing to the left. A small scroll had been carved into the stone arch that separated the passageway from the vaulted space. I looked around. The other passageways had small stone carvings, too: a crown in the direction we’d just come from, an apple, and a sword.
“Kitchens and armory?” I guessed.
“Small armory,” he said. “Most of the weapons are stored in the barracks. And the dining room. The kitchens are in another wing.”
We reached an alcove where a stairway of pale stone spiraled upward.
He stopped and looked back at me. “Do heights bother you?”
“I don’t think so. Is it taller than a pangan tree?”
“Much,” he said with a smile. “If it’s too high, we’ll come back.”
I nodded, but curiosity beat out fear every time.
It took time to climb the stairs, and both of us were breathing heavily by the time we reached the top. The stairs ended in a plain wooden door—no mountain lily this time. My balance wasn’t completely back and my head was spinning a bit, so I paused at the threshold until I was sure I wouldn’t fall over.
“Ready?”
When I nodded, the prince pushed open the door to a brilliant blue sky dotted with fluffy clouds. He took a step outside, then turned back and offered me a hand.
I didn’t take it. But I stepped outside and onto a narrow wooden balcony that ringed the exterior of the dome we’d stoodbeneath downstairs. And beyond the balcony railing was…everything.
The palace’s tower was behind us, the central spear flanked by four buttresses that rose halfway along its height. The rest of the palace was a long box that swept back from the tower, its roof steeply pitched, all of it covered in more of the pale green stone.
The surrounding grounds looked like a painting. There were courtyards and gardens, and paths that led to a large pond and then over it, with a gazebo perched in the middle above the water. There were small waterfalls, flowering trees, and benches where the Western Gate princes could contemplate their wealth and power. Another pond with a high arching bridge, then a rolling meadow that led to a deep wood, the trees beginning to bud. Beyond that was the river, then the palace wall.
“Where’s your army?” I wondered.
He pointed toward a cluster of buildings in the far northeast corner of the grounds, not far from the river. “Barracks, stables, main armory. They also have rooms in the palace.”
“And servants?”
“Palace servants have quarters in the palace. There are also working areas to the south.”
