One slept in a soft, warm bed and wore soft, warm dresses, and the words spoken to her were soft and warm as well. They called her theprinzessin.
The other girl slept on the hard, cold ground in the pantry, to keep away the rats. It didn’t always work.
Her only dress was too small, for no one wanted to buy her a new one when it would just be stained and torn too, and quickly outgrown. The words she heard were cold and hard: scrub this, empty that, clumsy oaf, don’t let the guests see you so dirty. The hands she caught were harder.
They called girls like herrussmagdt, soot-wench, for that was all they were good for: cleaning soot off pans, and wearing it.
In the castle lived a clever and beautiful magician who knew the ways of enchantment and charm, and one night she took pity on the littlerussmagdt. She taught the girl tricks to help her impress the masters of the castle through flattery and cunning, and helped her practice night after night, even when both of them were weary to the bone.
And then one day, a great lady came to visit, and a serving maid fell ill. Therussmagdtwas given a rough bath and a clean, too-large uniform and sent to take the maid’s place. When the great lady had gone and the castle was beginning to settle once more, the soot-wench was asked to help theprinzessinget ready for bed.
The soot-wench saw the golden hand of Fortune reaching for her, and knew this was a chance she would not see again. “Of course,” said therussmagdt, “but—there’s something in your hair, m’lady.” She pulled a silk daisy from behind theprinzessin’s ear.
The princess’s mother burst into astonished laughter. “How clever! Did Joniza teach you?”
Both mother and daughter were delighted. By week’s end, theprinzessinhad a new lady’s maid, and the (former)russmagdthad a clean new dress and a straw pallet beside the hearth.
And for a while, that was good enough.
Theprinzessinand her maid were together every day. The little maid learned more of the magician’s tricks to dazzle the masters of the castle, handstands and somersaults and making salt bowls disappear. At theprinzessin’s insistence, the maid also learned to read and write and do her sums.
Then, of her own volition, the maid began to eavesdrop on the tutors sent to school the princess-elector-to-be in history and politics and all things a ruler ought to know. The maid learned of who lived in a castle. Who cheated their way into one. Who took coin from whom, and why.
The two girls became friends in a strange kind of way, for when it was just the two of them, they could have been cut from the same cloth. They shared secrets and dreams and jokes. They climbed the same trees, read the same books, and sometimes the princess snuck sweets off her plate for the maid. To find one was to know the other was not far away. The dame even began to call themRohtpfenniandWeysserpfenni, the red penny and the white.
But the seam split whenever anyone else was there, for they were two little girls of almost the same age, but one had been born to own the castle, and the other called hermistress.
When I was nine, and new to the higher stories of Castle Falbirg, I thought the dame called me her red penny for my bright copper hair.
I remember the day I was dusting the bookshelves as Gisele’s tutor droned on about the importance of standards in minting coins. I remember furtively rolling my eyes at Gisele, and trying not to giggle as she pulled a face behind the oblivious tutor’s back.
“It used to be there were only white pennies,” the man was wheezing. “Silver through and through. But then thekomteof Kaarzstadt started sneaking copper into the coins to stretch his silver further, and the practice spread, and no one could agree on what a silver penny was worth when it wasn’t pure. The Blessed Emperor Bertholde, your ancestor, declared any copper in a coin made it a red penny, worth one-fiftieth of a white penny. The mints sorted themselves out in short order after that.”
I remember the startled, awful look on Gisele’s face then. It matched the feeling in my chest.
It was the first time we understood why she was called the white penny, and I the red.
And it would not be the last.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TheGoldenWolf
Before we go much further, there are a few things you should probably know about my betrothed,MarkgrafAdalbrecht von Reigenbach of Bóern.
First: He is all things a nobleman of the Blessed Empire should be, handsome and charming and bold. He’s won favor by expanding his march’s borders—and thus the empire’s—biting off mouthfuls of the kingdoms of Thírol and Östr in the south, even nibbling at Ungra to the east. He haskeptthat favor with an easy smile, a hearty laugh, and an iron grip when he clasps hands with other noblemen.
Second: Adalbrecht is still alive because he’s not a direct threat to the Blessed Empress. Long ago, the noble houses of Almandy were given a choice: the crown or the sword. Houses that chose the crown, who kept their eligibility for the Blessed Throne, had to give up most of their armies.
Houses that chose the sword ceded their claims to the Blessed Throne, but in exchange, they were given control of both the empire’s armies and its borders.
House Reigenbach chose the sword, and thus, theKronwählercannot elect Adalbrecht to the imperial throne. TheKronwählerassembly itself is a revolting knot of internal politics and recreational backstabbing, comprised of one princeps-elector for each of the seven remaining royal bloodlines, and anywhere between thirteen and twenty-seven other delegates and cardinals, depending on how good that week’s assassin is. But only the sevenprincepz-wahlen,including Gisele’s father, can be elected emperor.
When Adalbrecht was eighteen, the Blessed Empress sent him to the southern battlefront to die anyway, like his two brothers before him, because that empress took no chances.
Instead, for five years, Adalbrecht made a name for himself: the Golden Wolf of Bóern. (He’s a blond, and House Reigenbach’s symbol is the wolf. What can I say? Soldiers aren’t usually prized for their command of poetic imagery.)
He survived. His father did not; nor did the ailing empress. TheKronwählerelected someone a little less cutthroat in her stead, and the new Blessed Empress Frieda had no interest in a feud with someone who could never have her crown. The eight years since have been remarkably quiet.
