Around a month after we first met, I had picked Prince Cato up a few more times on his way in to the castle. I learned that he was a year older than me, and found it silly that a twenty-three year old man couldn’t go out and come home as he wished. I guessed it was a royalty thing. One morning started just like all the others.

  He waved at me, wrapped the sheet around himself and climbed into the wagon. I drove on. We got to the castle gate, but this morning Peach was being unusually stubborn. I had to get off her right before we entered through the servants’ entrance, and pull her by her reins.

  I dragged the donkey ahead. She brayed with annoyance.

  “Yeah, yeah, Peach, I’ll get you a few pears for your extra work, and I’ll have someone reimburse the cost.” I shot a gnce at the pile of undry where I knew Cato could see me from the inside. Then I walked along into the middle of the courtyard and towards the alley.

  From the main gate I could hear someone riding in on a horse. I looked around to see who it was.

  It was Jarion!

  He rode in on a big bck horse. His bck hair shone in the light of the dawn, his piercing blue eyes were looking up at the castle ahead. There were no other people on our side of the courtyard. If he looked just a little to the side he would see me.

  I felt like I had been struck by lightning, and then in a hurry I crawled straight in to the undry cart where Cato was hiding.

  “What? What are you doing!?” Cato whispered, perplexed.

  “Shut up!” I whined as quietly as I could.

  I crawled in next to him, and then tried to stay perfectly still. I pulled the bedsheets over me at all sides to make sure I was covered and then cowered in silence. I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel Cato’s body heat next to me.

  “Ria,” he whispered, annoyed but also amused. “What is going on? Are you hiding from someone.”

  He paused for a moment.

  “Ohhh, Ria, you dirty dog. Are you hiding from Jarion?”

  “Shut up, Cato,” I whispered as quietly as I could while still getting my frustration across.

  I tried to remember to call him ‘Your Highness’ every time, but it did not come naturally to me. Sometimes I slipped up and called him Cato. He found this very entertaining.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” now he was purely amused. “Ria, little heartbreaker, did you use him for a night of fun and them ditch him in the morning?”

  I found his leg in the pile of undry and pinched it as hard as I could.

  “Ouch!” now the cart was shaking with his ughter.

  The clopping of the hooves came closer. Was it him?

  “Uh oh, he’s coming,” Cato wheezed.

  My heart was pounding in my chest, I did not want to see him again. I did not want to talk to him. Now he was going to find me hiding from him and that was even more embarrassing than it would be to just meet him.

  “Are you really worried?” Cato whispered.

  I didn’t even dare say anything.

  “Fine,” he sighed. “I’ll do this for you, but you’ll owe me for it.”

  He climbed out of the cart, and I could hear Jarion start to ugh heartily as he saw Cato appearing.

  “Cato, you devil! Are you still sneaking in on the undry carts?”

  “You know me,” Cato ughed, walking away from the cart. “I was hoping to get by undetected, but I guess nothing gets past Medora’s most brilliant duke. I don’t know where that old man Garon went off to, but he just left the cart standing here in the courtyard.”

  “Well you’ve blown your cover now,” was the st thing I heard, as they both walked away.

  I waited a good many minutes before I could gather up the courage to cmber out of the cart and go on with my work.

  ***

  In the following days various people started to flock to the castle. They were combining the king and queen’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary with a diplomatic banquet with various members of the Pyrrhan royal family. Everyone in both the castle and the undry was very busy.

  Finally the afternoon of the banquet arrived. I drove to the castle in high spirits, thinking about how soon my work would be easier. Two days ter we would have a day off. Then slowly the guests would leave and leave the workload lighter as well. I drove in through the servants gate. The door to the storage where I unloaded the sheets was open, but no-one was there to receive me and help me. I cursed, and started to do it myself. Typical!

  I was only about halfway done, when the head waitress Albera came running out towards me.

  “Ria! Oh!” she came out calling, her red cheeks flushed with heat and stress. “Thank the Mothers, you’re still here!”

  “Are you coming to help me?” I asked, annoyed and knowing well that she was not about to help.

  “Help? No, Ria we need your help!”

  I frowned.

  “Why?”

  “Half of the staff are sick,” she panted. “There’s some stomach bug going around. The banquet starts in two hours! We need extra waiters!”

  “You want me to be a waiter? I don’t even know how.”

  “Please, we’ll pay you ten decets for the evening.”

  “Albera there is no way I am doing all that for just ten decets. Especially since they’ll be angry at me at the undry if I don’t come back on time.”

  “Please, Ria,” she whined. “Twenty decets! I’ll take it out of my own pay, if I mess this banquet up they’re going to demote me again I just know it!”

  “Anyway, I don’t know how to serve royal people, isn’t it very complicated?” I asked.

  Really I was terrified of the idea that I might end up serving Jarion his food, and vexed at the idea that I might have to serve Cato.

  “You wouldn’t be serving the main royals, just the minor royals and their allies in the lower hall. High ranking soldiers, merchants, doctors and such. Most of them are just so excited to be at a royal banquet that they don’t notice the servants at all.”

  The Lower Hall, I thought. That must be a different room than the Great Hall.

  Still, I felt like it would not be worth the trouble, even if there was no chance of Jarion seeing me.

  “I’m sorry Albera, I am simply too tired to do it. As a favour to you, I can unload these sheets by myself now, but then I am going home.”

  “Please, Ria, is there nothing I can give you that you want?” she pleaded.

  Then I remembered that afternoon. The one when we had been drinking, and she had let slip that she had seen something in connection to Prince Plinius’s murder. Something concerning the queen.

  “I’ll do it on one condition,” I said calmly.

  “Anything,” she said.

  “You have to tell me what you saw. When you said the queen isn’t innocent. You’ll have to tell me what you meant by that.”

  Her face grew pale.

  “If the wrong person finds out, I’ll be fired.”

  “You just said that if you don’t provide enough waiters you’ll be fired. Anyway I promise not to tell anyone. I’m just nosy.”

  She hesitated for a bit, then she said:

  “Fine.”