CHAPTER FIVE: RUNAWAY PRINCESS
Princess Valance sat before a vanity, practicing her reading and writing. Her father was determined a little hard work was all anyone needed to turn them into an intelligent, disciplined person. That was how he was raised—his father did the same to him, and his father to he. So the princess was forced into the tradition, knowing she would have been excluded from it had her brother not died at birth.
That was one of the things the king blamed her for. He lost his wife and firstborn son in childbirth, and afterwards never tried to find a new partner. The princess did not blame him—all memories of her mother were sweet ones. Queen Valance was the most tender, loving woman in the world. No one could come close to matching her. But when the king lost her, he lost his source of affection too, and he became as bitter as the boque roots growing in one of the castle's courtyards. He searched for a scapegoat and found his daughter, who had absolutely nothing to do with the death of her mother and brother, but the king was full of resentment and needed someone to unleash it on.
Her homework for the night was repetitive. She would read a sentence, then write it out, then read another sentence, then write that one out. The king intended it to help her comprehension skills—if she was reading and writing sentences, surely she would begin to grasp the meanings of words and how they tied together. But that was not the case. The princess would copy down the individual shapes of letters, string them together and add spaces when necessary, and be done with it. She learned nothing. She rushed through the tedious work without retaining any of the knowledge her father hoped she would acquire.
At the age of twenty, this would only hurt her.
The king opened the door to her bedroom. "My darling, you're excused from your work for tonight. I would like you to come downstairs and join me in a meal with the Newarks of Relifour."
The Newarks were the ruling family of the Free City of Relifour, a colony of lasseiz faire capitalists to the east of the Chrome Empire. They made their fortune from just about every form of resource collection—mining, fishing, woodcutting, the list goes on. Relifese merchants were the wealthiest tradesmen in Blockland, known for their vast inventories of weapons, tools, foods, and bricks. Across the land, whole empires envied the economic prosperity of Relifour, which they all eclipsed in both land and population.
"I won't be punished if I don't finish my work?" she asked.
"No, dear. I'm not a monster."
She got out of her seat and approached the door. King Valance led her downstairs to the meeting hall, where a long wooden table sat surrounded by chairs. Both the table and its complementing chair army were crafted by the most skilled experts the royal family could find, and it was very obvious. The legs on each piece of furniture had more definition than the dictionary entry for 'take.'
The Newarks stood in a loose group by the entrance of the hall. There were four of them—a king, a queen, a prince, and a newborn daughter who could not yet speak. King Valance bowed to them with false humility. He felt they were ants compared to the power of the Chrome Empire, but knew better than to be arrogant.
"Newarks of Relifour," he said. "Thank you for coming to dinner. I don't think any of you have been introduced to my daughter yet." He gestured for her to step forth. "This is Princess Valance. Dear, this is King Newark, Queen Newark, their newborn daughter Paloma, and their son, Sir Beck."
She knew her father would spend the night verbally pushing her in Sir Beck's direction. He was both a prince and a knight—nobility and strategy rolled into one striking young man, a man her father admired already.
"Please, Newarks, be seated." King Valance stepped over to the head of the table and pulled out a chair for himself. A silver platter sat in the middle of the table, host to a couple wineglasses already filled halfway. "My chefs have prepared for us the finest of meals. Tell me, have any of you had tyrannosaurus before?"
"Tyrannosaurus?" said King Newark. "I thought they were too isolated for any hunters to find, let alone kill."
"You thought correctly. But the Chrome Empire is not a nation of people who accept defeat in the face of overwhelming odds." King Valance reached forth and plucked a goblet of wine from the platter. He sipped from it, adding a suspenseful pause to the conversation. "You see," he said, putting the wineglass down, "when a Valance wants something, they take it. And when I first learned the Newarks of Relifour desired trade with my empire, I wanted to show them a warm welcome—and food has always been the warmest form of welcome, in my opinion."
A door leading to the kitchen swung open at the other end of the hall. Servers in spotless white jackets came streaming out, carrying covered plates and bottles of wine. They placed the plates on the table and refilled King Valance's glass, then revealed the plates bore appetizers. The servers disappeared afterwards.
"Salad from the fields and shrimp from the sea," said the king. "All grown here in the Empire. Please, I insist, taste what my nation has to offer."
The Newarks accepted the appetizers, but their king did not lose his interest in the tyrannosaurus meat. Valance knew he wouldn't, too—he was prolonging the mystery of how he managed to obtain it.
"Delicious shrimp," said King Newark. "But it will not make me forget about the tyrannosaur. You must tell me more, King Valance."
"Of course." He clapped his hands. "Wolfe!"
A burly figure appeared in the entrance to the hall. He had messy hair, an unshaven face, and wore leather armor rich with the natural cologne of a man who didn't know what cologne was. The brute stepped further into the hall, until King Valance put a hand out to him.
"Far enough, Wolfe." He then spoke to King Newark, "Here's the hunter responsible for the death of the tyrannosaurus we will dine on. Wolfe led a party of twenty men into the Primordial Jungle, ordered not to come out until they killed a beast worthy of royal taste. Two weeks later, Wolfe and three surviving men dragged a dead dinosaur out using just their muscles and whatever rope they had with them."
"Golden Brick up above," exclaimed Newark. "I'll be damned if that isn't the greatest feat any hunter has ever achieved. You ought to be proud of yourself, Wolfe."
"Proud?" growled Wolfe. "I will not know such a feeling until I have been presented a challenge. A tyrannosaurus is no challenge."
"It isn't? You lost seventeen men, did you not?"
"I did. A tyrannosaurus is no challenge."
"Wolfe, please, please." King Valance stood up. "As riveting as your tales may be, we're preparing to feast, and your smell offends." He waved Wolfe away, and the hunter obeyed. "Newarks, if you will excuse me, I must speak to my daughter privately for a moment."
The princess had been filling up on wine and appetizers in silence. She was doing her absolute best to lay low and avoid any humiliations her father may have in store for her. That's why she was so surprised when he took her by the arm and escorted her out into the corridor, and once there, took it a step further and walked her out of earshot.
"What the unholy hell are you doing in there?" he fumed.
"Father?"
"Do not 'father' me. Why are you stuffing your face?" He grabbed her hands and groaned in disgust at the shrimp residue on them. He threw them down to her sides. "Do you wish to embarrass me in front of this family? Do you wish to remain unwed your whole life?"
"Father, I—"
"Silence. Sir Beck has been watching you since the moment I introduced you. For reasons beyond me, he seems intrigued. Do you even know what he has accomplished in his twenty years?"
"No."
"More than you have in yours. I would list his history for you, but the Newarks would miss us." He hunched down and got eye level with her. "Promise me you will behave better, love."
"Okay."
"Okay what?"
"I promise to not sit around stuffing my face."
"That's not all. I want you to talk—make him fall in love with your voice, laugh at what he says, and try not to sound dull. Promise."
"I promise."
"Then let us return."
The Valances went back to the meeting hall and took their seats. King Valance apologized for the short absence, and chalked it up to an urgent matter they forgot to take care of before the Newarks arrived. He put on a little show by telling them he usually runs his empire much more efficiently, and that this was the first time he ever had to walk out of a dinner to give orders, and then he laughed with them about it. And King Newark sympathized with him by sharing a story about how a warlock once attacked his castle while his in-laws were staying there, and that he had to discreetly battle it without his wife's parents finding out. And they laughed about that too.
Then the tyrannosaurus was brought out. Servers toted massive platters, as wide as the doorway they stepped through and requiring multiple people to carry. They placed the platters down before the two royal families and exposed the different choice cuts available—shank, ribs, tenderloin, and boiled cranium. The last item was literally the tyrannosaurus's head boiled in water, so that most of its facial features were preserved. Its eyelids had been cooked off though, and now it stared at them bug-eyed like it did when it saw Wolfe for the first time.
"You weren't lying," said King Newark. He eyeballed the meat in awe. "Valance, you perfect man! And that hunter of yours, my, what a monster he must be."
"I have seen him take down a giant before. Monster is an understatement."
"It must be!"
"Well, do please enjoy the meal. Don't serve yourself modestly—there's enough meat here to feed us for weeks."
They ate ferociously. Even Queen Newark, who went to great lengths to maintain a shapely figure, could not resist it. Princess Valance did not eat much though—she had filled up on shrimp, salad, and wine. Her father expected her to conjure up conversation, seeing as she wasn't eating, but she never did.
• • •
The princess lay in her bed. She wondered what life as a commoner was like—did the average girl her age have to put up with a horrible father? Were all fathers like hers? She knew they couldn't be—she had seen families in the marketplaces beneath the castle and knew many fathers treated their children excellently. So then why was her father so unfair to her?
She blamed herself, of course. Every time King Valance lost his temper, he would make sure to tell her how much he loved her afterwards, and that he was just doing his job as a father. It made her feel like her punishments were totally warranted because she was a troublesome daughter. And this time would be no different. King Valance opened up her door and spotted her on the bed. He shoved her off.
"I tried to be reasonable," he said, and delivered a kick into her side. "I asked you to behave better, and you promised you would."
"Father! Please!"
"Sir Beck probably thinks there's something wrong with you. The way you acted in there was ridiculous, do you know that? First you couldn't stop eating the appetizers, then you wouldn't touch the dinosaur. Your mouth did a lot of chewing but no talking." He kicked her again.
"I'm sorry!" she pleaded.
"And so am I." He sat down on the edge of her bed, looking down at his aching daughter. "I don't like hurting you, dear. I love you. I love you so much." He sighed. "I'm frustrated."
"I don't try to anger you." She coughed.
"I know. Pick yourself up so I can give you a kiss."
The princess collected herself and got to her feet. King Valance kissed her on the forehead and started for the door.
"Now go to bed," he told her. "The Newarks will be here for two more days. Try not to be any more foolish than you were tonight."
She nodded, and he left. She would be foolish by his standards again that very night. The foolishness began with her putting on new clothes, an outfit more casual than the one she was wearing. They were almost commoner clothes. Then she slipped her journal and a picture of her mother into her pockets, and was gone.
The next morning King Valance walked into her room and found the princess was missing. He would not tell the Newarks, and he would not tell the public. He told a tight-knit group of people he trusted very much, and requested they find her. He clearly told them failure was not an option, and that they must recover his daughter whether she was dead or alive, then prayed to the Golden Brick asking for her to be watched over.
• • •
It was one of the few times the princess had left the castle, and the only time she had ever been outside of its walls alone. Out here, walking among peasants and merchants and craftsmen, she got a feel for what common life really was. Scents drifted from stalls and tents and mingled with body odor and incense, and the resulting smell was mixed up by the hundreds of people passing through it. The atmosphere was fundamentally different than that of the castle overshadowing the marketplace. Where the halls of the castle were filled with deafening silence, the streets of the town beneath were filled with pleasing shouts and conversations fighting for dominance. It was very alive.
One shack in particular caught her attention. The sign on its roof labelled it a print shop, where people could go to have letters and numbers printed on bricks. The bricks could then be used as advertisements, signs, and so on. But this shack, which had no door, also seemed to be a residence. She could see mattresses on the floor inside, and a table where a man sat reading papers.
"Miss? You're in front of my door," said a young man behind her. She swung around and saw him standing there with a long block held over his shoulder.
"Sorry." She moved out of the way, but he kept staring at her.
"Princess?"
"Pardon?"
"Princess Valance!" He threw the brick aside and got on his knees. "I apologize, Princess. I didn't know it was you."
"It's fine, get up, please." She looked around, hoping no one would notice. The young man got to his feet.
"What brings you here? Do you need prints?"
"No."
"Reed?" the man inside the shack called out. "What are you doing out there?"
"Dad, you'll never believe it!"
The princess hushed him. "Please, I don't want anyone to know I'm here."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know. Would you like to come inside?"
She nodded, and they went in. The man at the table got up at the sight of the princess and looked ready to speak, but couldn't find any words.
"Princess," he said at last.
"Nice to meet you."
"Uh, where are my manners? I'm Klaus, my son is Reed. Is there anything we can do for you? Anything at all?"
"No thank you Klaus, I'm fine."
"Would you like some water?"
"No thank you. I'm just looking for a place to stay the night."
"Well Princess, you're more than welcome here. We couldn't turn down a royal."
She looked around. "Yes, I would appreciate it."
"I'll get started on dinner." He went into the next room.
Reed sat in a chair against the wall, next to an empty one. He invited her over, and she took a seat beside him. Their chairs were far weaker compared to the ones in the dining hall.
"Princess Valance, may I ask why you're here?" said Reed.
"Please don't call me that. Call me Melinda." Melinda was her first name, the same as her mother. "I'm here because I don't want to be royalty anymore."
"You don't?" he seemed amazed. "Why not?"
"Why would I want to be?"
Reed looked at her like she was speaking a different language. "Because you get to live in a castle, and you have all the food you want."
"It's not all that great."
Klaus came out a few minutes later with three servings of a modest dinner. He handed the princess a plate of salad with bread on the side, and though she wasn't very hungry, she ate anyway. Eating was her favorite form of escapism—whenever her father would get angry at her, she would sneak off afterwards and raid the kitchen. Having different tastes in her mouth distracted her from the hellish reality her father had created, and it made her feel warm inside. She could barely remember the hugs her mother gave her as a child, but the warmth of a post-beating meal reminded her of them.
Klaus's salad and bread did not taste very good though. The salad was old, not quite rotten, but definitely aged to the point where she couldn't stomach it. So she switched to the bread, which was hard as rock, but didn't taste horrible.
"Do you have a mother?" she asked Reed out of the blue.
"No, she passed away when I was young."
"So did mine."
Reed and the princess felt each other's pain. She connected with him for the first time there, and they would continue to grow closer over the next few weeks. She wouldn't know Klaus for long, his death was minutes away, but the man's hospitality was enough to make her think fondly of him for years to come. He had raised a good son.
"I bet you've seen a lot of plays," Klaus said. "With you being princess and all."
"Indeed I have. Have you?"
"No. Reed saw one last year though."
"Which one?"
"Builder on the Roof," Reed replied after forcing a chunk of bread down his throat.
Princess Valance gasped. "That's my favorite."
"Mine too. It's the only one I've ever seen, but it's my favorite."
"What was your favorite scene? I cried when the girl's boyfriend died in lava."
"That was definitely the best part. But I also liked the part in the field just before it."
The field scene was excellent. It was pure heartwarming bliss, where the protagonist and her boyfriend spent a whole day in a field picking flowers and picnicking. They slept there, too, and woke up the next morning knowing they were in love. Neither of them said it, they just knew. In the next act, however, the boyfriend died a grisly death in lava as the girl looked on in terror. She didn't try to save him either, because she was stricken with fear.
Princess Valance was similarly struck with fear a few moments later, when the front of the shack was torn away. The wall was there one moment and gone the next, ripped off and thrown like a shred of construction paper. All three of them screamed in surprise as Wolfe, the tyrannosaurus hunter, stood where the wall once was, surrounded by imperial guards.
"Princess, we're here to take you back to the castle," said a guard. "If you'd please step away from those men and come with us."
"How did you find me?"
"Wolf led us by—" the guard was cut off by King Valance shoving his way to the front of the group.
"Step aside, damn it. Move!" He elbowed past them and reached the front of the group, where he stopped and stared furiously. "She will talk your ear off if you let her, with an artillery of 'I'm sorry' and 'Please stop.'" He looked at Klaus and Reed. "And who are you two? Actually, never mind. Guard," he reached back and was handed a pistol. "Thank you."
The only thing worse than losing one parent was losing both. And the only thing worse than that was seeingone of them die in front you. Reed would experience that morbid pain today, and it would continue to ache in his heart for the remainder of his life.
King Valance angled the pistol in the direction of Klaus and pulled the trigger, putting a bullet through the man's upper chest. Blood splashed out and painted the side of Reed's face. Klaus fell back in his chair and hit the wall hard, snapping his neck. If the bullet hadn't killed him, surely the backwards tumble had.
"Dad!" shouted Reed.
King Valance lowered the pistol. "Shut the fuck up. You're being charged with royal kidnapping—for which only the death penalty exists."
"No!" Princess Valance threw herself over Reed. "I won't let you do this!"
"Peel her off of him."
The imperial guards rushed in and grabbed the princess. They dragged her to the king's side and held her there while Reed watched his father's corpse twitch. Tears started to pour from his eyes, and he leaned over the arm of his chair to vomit.
King Valance decided to let the young man live a little longer while he scolded the princess. He wasn't about to shoot a boy while bile hung from his lips, his guards would end up cleaning it off when they disposed of the corpse. Best to let the boy clean himself.
"This could have all been avoided," he told his daughter. "Honestly, I cannot even begin to fathom your thought process this time. In the past you've been an utter idiot, but at least I was able to understand your motivations. But this?" He looked at the room. "You left the castle for this? Why? Was it worth killing these two men over?"
"Why are you doing this to me?" she asked.
"Don't blame me, dear. You know I love you very much, but you made me do this." He brought the gun back up and pointed it at Reed, who was now on his feet and creeping over to his dad. He needed to see the blood for himself, or else he wouldn't accept that he was dead.
The princess screamed now. She screamed at the top of her lungs. People out in the street had been gathering for a few minutes, attracted first by Wolfe tearing the wall apart, then by the gunshot, and now by the screams. But no one could see past the wall of imperial guards.
"Don't kill him!" she begged. "What will it teach me? What!"
The king's finger was pressed hard against the trigger. Any more force would have fired the gun, effectively ending Reed's life right there. But then he realized his daughter was actually making a good point—what would this teach her? He'd beaten and humiliated her countless times before because of how poorly she behaved, and clearly none of that worked.
If he wanted to teach her a lesson, he would need to dig deep. None of the past attempts were successful because they were redundant violence, kick after kick, punch after punch. If he really wanted to hit her hard, he would need to make a more serious investment. He would need to cultivate a sweet spot so tender that striking it would destroy her.
"You're right." He lowered his weapon. "I love you. This isn't how it should go." He gave the pistol to a guard. "All this time, I've been trying to help you—but none of it has worked. I've been the fool."
Reed was sitting on the ground. He didn't seem to know what to do.
"Do you have a name?" the king asked him.
"His name is Reed," the princess said when Reed didn't answer.
"Reed, I'm sorry for what I did. I can't make it up to you." The king got down on a knee. "Would you like to come stay at my castle?"
Reed did not answer.
The king stood up. "Guards, take Reed and the princess to the castle. Give Reed his own room across the hall from her."
"Your Majesty?"
"You heard me. Take his father to the Smeltery."
"Yes sir."
The princess was blown away. Nothing about the situation was characteristic of her father—not the apology, the generosity, nor the sympathy. Had he snapped? Was he really trying to turn over a new leaf? Or did he have something sinister planned? People weren't generally known to go from abusive to caring so quickly.
Time would tell. Time would also reveal what the Smeltery was.