The Pauper Princess

“Maybe I should have worried more about the door,” I mumbled to myself. After taking a quick bath, Mehta and I had perused the wardrobe and brushed through our tangled hair. After my impromptu swim earlier, the warm bath water was so luxurious that I was tempted to stay in it forever. However, despite Jegan’s insistence to take as long as we wanted, Mehta wanted to return to the council room as quickly as possible.

I gently rewrapped Mehta’s side, which was nearly healed, and helped her into a burgundy gown.
After slipping into a light purple dress, I rummaged through our pile of dirty clothing beside the wardrobe to find the cloak I had been wearing. I grabbed Ekohl’s badge and fastened it to the collar of my dress.

Now, almost an hour later, we were clean, dry, and ready to leave, but the door refused to budge.

“Mehta, come over here!” I was still tired, and therefore in a sour mood, especially since I had been trying- quite unsuccessfully- to use my own weight to force the passage door open. As of yet, I hadn’t even managed to move it an inch.

“Alright,” Mehta replied, “I’m coming.” She moved aside the curtain and joined me behind the bed, but even with our combined weight, we couldn’t get the door to move.

“This is ridiculous,” I sighed, slowly sliding down the door to sit on the floor.

“Well,” Mehta began, “What now?” I thought about our situation for a moment. We were supposed to go to the council chamber when we were ready. The short cut was impossible to get to, and, judging by the number of landings we had passed, we were about five levels up.

“I think we’ll have to take the main halls,” I said reluctantly. Mehta was visibly nervous about this.

“But there must have been a reason we didn’t use them,” she reasoned.

“Don’t be so serious all the time, Mehta,” I said in a mocking tone.

“Not funny.” She just gave me a look, showing just how far from amused she was.

“Now that I have by knives back we’ll be fine,” I said, lifting my hem a few inches to show her that the sheathes were once again strapped to my calves.

“Didn’t you see the looks we were getting? I don’t think one girl with a few daggers is going to do much against a palace full of people who want us dead, or at the very least anywhere but here.” I took slight offense to her statement, but I understood where she was coming from.

“Well, what’s your plan?” She scowled, trying to figure out some other way to get from our room to the council chamber. She walked out from behind the bed, and I quickly got up and followed her. She walked to the balcony and looked down. As I guessed, we were on one of the higher levels of the palace.

“Fine,” she said finally. “We’ll take the main halls.”