Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

F ollowing the walk with Korth, there was a long list of duties I had to tend to in order for my fellow rebels to get comfortably settled. Korth, determined to tend to my every need, led me throughout the estate as I checked on the accommodations and sent a missive to ensure that the Falada was properly docked and all cargo unloaded. Right before the evening meal, I received word that Garrik and his two “children” had been settled at the gooseherd’s cottage. As much as I wanted to dash down to check on Odette, I restrained myself. The rebellion would only be successful if each member did their part. My part was charming Korth, not babysitting a spoiled princess.

The evening meal was held in a large banquet hall, and so many people introduced themselves to me that I knew I’d never keep them all straight. Most looked very similar to Korth: exceptionally tall with dark hair and tanned skin, though a few had lighter hair and fairer complexions but bore a strong family resemblance nonetheless. The only people I committed to memory were Korth’s parents, Queen Serena and King Orion, who were both gracious and welcoming.

One of Korth’s cousins was a blond man about my age who was every bit as animated and talkative as Tess but was especially noticeable because he signed with his hands as he talked, and I felt mesmerized by it. A tall, visibly muscular girl who didn’t speak all evening would occasionally sign back to him, and she was accompanied by an enormous man with olive skin and shoulder-length black hair who also signed. I kept pulling my attention away from them, determined not to rudely stare at any of Korth’s family members.

Conversation went on for what felt like hours. I felt the way Korth must have during our turn around the lake as I pumped him for information, trying to put him at ease. His family asked me endless questions about Ebora, my voyage here, my interests and hobbies, my family, and so many other things that I barely managed to eat anything. My fingers slowly crumpled my napkin in my lap as I tried to blot away the perspiration beading out of my palms.

“Treva says we should let Odette rest,” the blond cousin finally said, nodding at the tall young woman who hadn’t spoken a word all meal. “And that not everyone likes talking as much as our family, especially since she only arrived this morning.”

“Of course; you must be exhausted. We’ve simply been so eager to meet you,” Queen Serena said, signaling for the wait staff to clear the dishes. “We’ll let you retire.”

I threw a glance Treva’s way, and her eyes flicked down to where my hand had crumpled my napkin. I hastily released it, surprised that she had picked up on such a tiny visual cue when I had been doing my best to hide my nervousness, but I couldn’t help but be grateful. The knot in my stomach had grown all evening as I did my utmost to answer questions as a princess would, while bearing in mind everything I’d written in the letters over the years and still trying to remain charming.

The weight of the day settled over me as Korth escorted me back, and I felt fatigued in every way possible. No day had ever lasted so long, not even when Odette had me pick out each of her mistakes from the last month’s worth of sewing. Everything had been carried out exactly as planned—I had been accepted without question—but the constant anxiety of making a mistake was heavy on my mind, and my muscles tensed up my back all the way through my neck.

“Good night,” Korth stated, bowing stiffly over my hand.

“Good night.” I couldn’t even work up the energy to wonder what he thought about me.

Gerta helped me out of my gown, then as I pulled pins from my hair, she crossed to a set of cabinet doors I hadn’t had time to examine yet. When she opened them, there wasn’t shelving or a rod to hang dresses on as I’d expected. Instead, a dumbwaiter four times the size of what we had in Ebora was there, large enough for two men to comfortably sit in. I paused in unpinning my hair as Gerta placed my garments from the day on it and tugged on a moss-green cord. Somewhere far below, a bell clanged. Gerta withdrew her head and as she closed the cabinet doors again, I caught a glimpse of the platform lowering noiselessly, a vast difference from the grinding gears that always accompanied the dumbwaiter in Ebora.

“That’s an impressive mechanism,” I commented as I placed the final hairpin on the table. “The ones back home were much smaller and noisier. How does it work?”

“It’s a fairly recent addition,” Gerta said, coming over to brush my hair. “But the explanation of its operation is rather tedious; I’m sure you wouldn’t want?—”

“I’m very interested,” I assured her. “What’s transported in there besides laundry?”

“All sorts of things. Just last week when we were furnishing this room to prepare for your arrival, the men used it to bring up chairs and bedding. It’s much faster than climbing all those stairs. It can even be operated from the inside.”

“Can it?” I asked curiously.

Gerta, deciding that I was sincerely interested, nodded eagerly. “No more page boys blocking the way trying to navigate around the winding steps while carrying tables. There is a much larger dumbwaiter in the west wing for transporting the large furniture. This one connects all the rooms for the royal family’s laundry and smaller loads to be delivered to the bedrooms and such.”

“So it connects to Tess’s room?”

“Hers is the room directly below us. You may hear her singing from time to time. Prince Korth’s rooms are below hers, though he doesn’t sing,” Gerta went on, picking at a resilient snarl in my hair. “The rooms are all stacked on top of each other.”

“That’s very convenient,” I mused.

“How so, Your Highness?”

I looked up at Gerta in the vanity mirror’s reflection. “I would assume it would be much more convenient to have an attendant always on call at the bottom of one dumbwaiter, as opposed to several.”

“It is, isn’t it?” she mused, plaiting my hair swiftly. “There, you’re all set.”

“Thank you.” I patted my hair and looked again at the doors hiding the dumbwaiter. “What are the different cords for?”

“Green for laundry, red to call the guards, yellow for meals, that sort of thing.” A sudden stricken look came over her face. “I’m so sorry, I ought to have told you before so you could call for service.”

“No need; I’m simply interested. You go ahead and get some rest.” I smiled pleasantly as she left. Once the door clicked shut, I crossed the room to run my hand over the cabinet’s carved door. “How very convenient indeed.”

Even though I was ready to drop right where I was standing from exhaustion, I couldn’t resist pulling the cabinet doors open and looking down. A vast, empty chasm swelled before me, with dark shadows shifting on the shaft’s walls. Far below, I could hear the echoes of maids opening the dumbwaiter’s doors and extracting laundry, gossiping away happily as they did so. Unable to dismiss the urge, I reached out and gently strummed the taut ropes inside the shaft. At least now I didn’t have to cater to Odette’s constant demands. If I wanted to examine the inner workings of a machinery, I would be able to, so long as no one saw a princess engaged in such behavior.

But my exhaustion was so great that not even the allure of a dumbwaiter could keep me away from my bed for long. I slowly closed the cabinet doors and latched them, promising myself that I would have more time to look at it the following day.

There was so much about Haven Harbor that I was eager to learn more about. What powerful allies they could be to our cause.

The next morning, I went to inspect the dumbwaiter again as soon as I woke up. Sunshine filtered in, throwing patches of light to replace the shadows on the walls so I was able to examine the elaborate pulley system better. Fixed pulleys were secured to the top of the shaft, and when someone down below pulled one of the cords, I watched as the dumbwaiter was elevated by means of additional pulleys that moved with it.

Fascinating.

There were even tags that had Tess’s and Korth’s names on them. I eyeballed the distance between the tags and determined that they must serve to instruct the person pulling the ropes at the bottom of when to stop. The itch to climb directly into the shaft nearly overpowered me, but a soft rap on my door made me withdraw my head and hastily close the doors.

“Odette, it’s me!” Tess’s sweet voice chirped from the other side of the door. “I thought we could get ready together today.”

I couldn’t help smiling, wondering if this was what it was like to have a sister. “Enter.”

She bounced through the doors, a hairbrush in one hand and a gown flung carelessly over her other arm. Without being prompted, she plunked herself down on one of the stools and examined her reflection in the mirror.

“If we both wear blue, we can be twins today,” she announced. “We can even have Gerta do our hair the same.”

“I love that idea,” I told her with equal enthusiasm, pulling up another stool and looking in the mirror as well. “I wish my hair was as dark as yours. Then we really could be twins.”

She beamed as Gerta bustled in and began helping us get ready.

“Korth likes you,” Tess announced. “He’s really happy.”

“I have a hard time telling,” I answered. “Your brother is difficult to read and barely speaks to me.”

Tess eyed me. “Want to know the secret to get Korth to talk more?”

“Yes. I love secrets.”

“Me too!” Tess’s face fell slightly. “Does it matter what he talks about?”

“I will take anything at this point.”

She nodded solemnly. “Then just ask him about bridges. He’ll start talking.”

“Any bridge?”

Looking me dead in the eye, she slowly nodded her head up and down. “ Any bridge. It will be boring, but at least he’ll talk.”

“Thanks for the tip. I’ll have to try it.”

Tess beamed. “That’s what sisters are for.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had one.”

“You do now. I’m your sister!”

I couldn’t help returning her smile, glad that I wouldn’t have to exploit this girl who trusted so freely and wholly. “So you are.” With a meaningful look at her, I tapped the side of my nose. “Let me know if you think of anything else to help me get to know your brother.”

During our stroll in the courtyard, Korth remained stiff and silent. No matter how many questions I asked about his day, he would only respond with short phrases that were courteous but didn’t invite more conversation.

Across the lawn, a narrow bridge curved over the moat, leading to a closed door on the east side of the castle, nearly hidden away in the hedges that bloomed with flowers. “I wonder how much weight that could hold,” I mused aloud, nodding at it. “I don’t know much about bridges.”

Instantly, Korth’s entire demeanor brightened. “That’s a simple footbridge that can support upwards of a thousand pounds, but most bridges will differ on how much weight they can hold based on the length of the bridge, materials used, and the design specifications.”

Excitedly, he pointed to the drawbridge in the distance. “That one, on the other hand, can support carriages and horses, but their payloads are actually much smaller than most people think because of all the moving components that are used in the assembly. Truss bridges are the most common in our kingdom, but I’d like to upgrade the infrastructure to something less prone to erosion. Since the materials will corrode over time, we will need a more robust system in place.”

I made to step off the path to take a shortcut over to examine the drawbridge, but Korth’s arm became iron beneath my fingers. “We aren’t supposed to walk on the grass.”

“I’m sure the gardeners wouldn’t mind if the prince does it.”

“But they’re the rules.”

Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I nodded politely. “Of course. I lost my head from your enthusiasm. Tell me more about bridges.”

He did so, barely pausing to draw breath, and I made a mental note to thank Tess for her tip.

“Most people don’t recognize how important bridges are to the economy. Just like how sirens prevented trade when our ships couldn’t take to the seas, merchants can’t trade in other cities and towns if rivers block their way and they don’t have safe passageways. I even heard”—he lowered his voice as if he were about to reveal the answer to life’s greatest mysteries—“that in Berkway, their stone arch bridges support entire aqueduct systems that provide running water to the entire kingdom.” Korth sucked in air, marveling at such a phenomenon. “I’ve always wanted to visit. Once Tess is fourteen, she will attend a finishing school there and I told her I would take her.”

“Because you want to ensure that she arrives safely, or to examine their bridges?”

Korth’s cheeks tinged pink, and I found myself admiring how attractive he was. “Both. But…can you imagine? Their streets are even kept cool because they have aqueducts that run under the roads filled with water that absorbs the heat of the summers. All because they have the stone bridges that go from hill to hill, sometimes spanning several miles! They have to maintain a certain angle, see, to ensure that the water is always running at a downward slope and doesn’t pool in recessed areas.”

“You seem to know a great deal about them if you’ve never seen them yourself.”

“I’ve read about them. Do you know what a keystone is?”

“No, tell me.”

Korth did so, lovingly detailing more facts about different types of bridges than I ever dreamed one could know. After describing each of the different types of bridge load-bearing capacities, he went on to give his opinion on the efficacy of the various construction techniques and architectural styles as compared to the cost of labor and materials, as well as the duration of the construction period.

I nodded, doing my best to absorb the information that clearly meant so much to Korth, because if talking about bridges made him feel more connected to me, I would gladly talk about bridges. But after a lengthy lecture about the geometry of arches and how they compared to the more triangular construction of truss bridges, my brain felt as saturated as a soaked sponge, and all new information simply dribbled away and was lost.

“I’m sorry; this must be very boring for you,” Korth apologized.

“No, not at all. I’m fascinated by what interests you.” With a coy smile, I asked, “Is that why you kept looking out of the carriage window when you brought me here from the harbor?”

Korth shrugged one of his shoulders. “One of the reasons.”

“I’ve never been to Berkway either,” I said. “But I look forward to you showing me the bridges there. We’ll be married by then.”

“I’d love to show you.” Korth placed his hand over mine that was curled around his elbow and for the first time, it didn’t feel stiff and awkward. “What interests you?”

I raised one shoulder. “It really isn’t a typical interest for a princess, but…”

“What?” As I’d expected, Korth’s relief at my expressing genuine interest in his unconventional passion had made him much more eager to listen to mine.

“I have an interest in dumbwaiters. Silly, isn’t it?”

“Not at all!” Korth assured me.

“I’ve never seen any as large or grand as the ones here. I spent far too long examining the one in my room last night and then again this morning.”

He perked up again. “I’ve never thought much about them, but they are interesting, aren’t they?”

“Have you ever looked at the pulleys? I was trying to figure out how many are needed to move such heavy loads. You would probably be able to figure it out since you’re so good at mathematics and the architecture of bridges.”

“There would be some similarities. Any simple machine will share commonalities with others, and each pulley used to support the dumbwaiter will reduce the strength needed almost by half. Take the mathematical advantages of a lever, for example.” And he was off again, explaining at length about the scientific principles of how things worked.

I let his words wash over me. Korth’s tone, normally so flat and monotonous, had taken on an almost giddy quality so I felt nearly as enthused about his interests as he was, though I couldn’t think of anyone I’d ever met as interested in bridges as Korth was. The rest of our walk flashed by in no time, and our chaperone, upon hearing snippets of our conversation, had retreated many more paces back, clearly confident that nothing inappropriate or overly romantic could or would happen when Korth was on one of his monologues about the inner workings of machines and bridges.