"Ellyn, my only true friend, do you have some time?" I'd caught her moments after her shift, her hair messy, clothes ripe with kitchen smells, and her eyes heavy-lidded.
She unlaced her apron and hung it with the others in the pantry. "If it's a favor you're after, I surely have none left to give."
"I promise, it's not that."
She left the pantry and headed back into the main kitchen with its long preparation table and several other staff, kneading dough for pies or bread, I wasn't sure. "What is it then?" she asked.
"A stroll into town, my treat. Dinner, some mead? It's been too long since we've let our hair down."
She stopped at the table's edge and glowered. "No strings attached?"
"I… well—"
"Levi, catch!" One of the other kitchen staff tossed a potato. I caught it and the two more she threw my way, juggled them for a few cycles, and flung them back. The woman squealed, attracting the attention of a few of the other staff about to retire for the night.
With all eyes on me, I picked up a knife and two others that lay nearby, and flicked all three into the air, juggling them. Chaos controlled, and the stakes were high. If my timing failed, I'd potentially lose another finger. The little knives spun. My onlookers oohed.
"Stop," Ellyn said, a plea in her voice.
"How can I, when you haven't given me your answer?" The little knives danced between my hands.
"Why do you want to go to town?"
I kept the knives spinning, catching each by their handles. Their weight, their length, their speed. Beautiful, and deadly. One wrong move, one ill-timed throw—
"Levi, stop, please," Ellyn whined. "Before you get hurt." Her concern was genuine; such a shame the rest of her wasn't.
"Say yes." I juggled faster, until they were a blur of steel.
"Ellyn, make him stop!" Someone squealed in delight and horror. What a wonderful combination that was.
"All right, fine! I'll go."
The first knife, I caught and flung at the wall, and the second and third flew as true. All three thrummed in the wall, in one tight spot. Applause exploded. "Oh, Levi, you're crazy. Levi, you tease."
I bowed and hooked Ellyn by the arm. "Come, then. An evening of merriment with your favorite jester is afoot."
Escaping palace life was not as easy for me as for the rest of the staff or the royals. At the beck and call of those in the palace, every hour of every day, I rarely had time to visit the local town and sample its many delights. In fact, the whole town was a delight. The people here didn't care who I was. They didn't demand I sing and dance, or perform for them in any way. They may even have loathed me, which was a refreshing change.
Ellyn and I strode beneath flickering streetlamps and wove through early evening revelers to get to our favored inn. Here, I often played and won at cards and pried coins from drunken fingers. I was not the palace fool here at Overlook Inn, just another man, trying to get by.
Ellyn and I joined a few familiars playing five-finger, and with the wine flowing, we eased into the evening, winning some, losing others. As time wore on and the night darkened outside, the tavern grew warm and the voices loud. When Ellyn sagged in her chair, I scooted her away from the card game and propped her at a booth, this one at the back, where it was quieter. Sliding in beside her, I topped up her cup, then my own, and we both sat back, boots up on the opposite bench.
"Why have you brought me here, Levi? Tell me the truth."
"To have some fun, why else? And to thank you for caring." Even though it had been lies.
"But I know you." She wagged a finger. "This is not that," she slurred, making it sound like thish-ish-not-thad.
I was not often the betrayed, but more often the betrayer. So learning she had Prince Rafe's ear and was in all likelihood telling him my whereabouts was a new sensation for me. "I may have an ulterior motive."
She smirked. "I knew it. Out with it then."
"Rafe."
She blinked. "The prince?"
"The very same."
"What of him?"
"Tell me about him."
She slumped back in the booth and sighed. "What do I know that you don't?"
"Indeed, what do you know that I don't?"
"Oh… I see. You're trying to talk me around in circles. I've heard that about you. Clever tongue, they say."
I laughed at that. Clever tongue, indeed. "Would I do such a thing to a friend?"
"Are we friends, though?" She sobered a little, but sipped her wine to hide it. "Because I don't know with you. All this…" She waved a hand at my face, as though unveiling a mask. "I don't know what's real."
"And I thought I couldn't be fooled." My tone shut her down. She blinked large eyes, perhaps hearing or seeing something in me she hadn't seen before. "He asked you to spy on me, didn't he?"
"Asked?" She snorted and harrumphed back in the seat, losing her smile. "A prince does not ask anything."
"You did tell him." It hurt some that she'd betray me. I'd trusted fa ew among the Court of Love, but she'd been among them. "He's been watching me through you."
"I told him… some things, yes. But it's not as though I had a choice." I picked up my cup and downed my wine, sour as it was. "How long?" "A while," she said, sulkily.
That was how he'd known so much about me when I knew nothing about him. That was about to change. "Why me?" I asked. "Why did I catch his eye?"
She chuckled. "You're you… Whose eye have you not caught?"
"No, with him, it's different. He's using me," I admitted. "And I need to know why." I had three days to know what he was planning, if anything.
"Rafe is… He's not like the rest of them."
Someone at the bar laughed loud and hard. When I looked back at Ellyn again, she was watching the men and women jest. Market farmers, most of them. Fruit and flower sellers. "How is he not like the rest of them?" I asked.
"His aides say he barely talks to them. He doesn't have a company. Sometimes he's…" She trailed off, possibly wondering too late if she'd already said too much.
"I promise not to tell," I lied. "Go on."
"I don't know if I should."
"Ellyn, this is me. We are friends, are we not?" A friendship she'd betrayed. "Trust me."
"The lords and ladies think he hides in his room, y'all think he's behind his door, like a recluse. But he's rarely there." She'd whispered that last part, as though anyone here cared where the prince was or wasn't.
"Then where is he?"
"Where else can he go, but here, in town?" she said.
No, that didn't ring true. Rafe would draw too much attention. I'd have known if he'd visited the inns and taverns. But she clearly assumed it. "Do you know why?"
"No, of course not. He doesn't tell me anything. He just… he asks about you. Maybe he comes here, like us, to drink and make merry, to be someone else?"
"He can do that at dinner every night, like his father." No, there was more to the man, more to all of this. Rafewas too clever to tell Ellyn more than he needed to. I wouldn't get anything else of use from her.
"He always asks about you, what you're like, who you spend time with."
"And what did you tell him?" "The truth, I suppose."
I chuckled and peered into my drink. "Well then, is it any wonder he hates me?"
She gave me a strange look, a look of confusion and disbelief. "He doesn't hate you, Levi—"
"No?" The remains of my bruises declared otherwise. "He is not what he appears, Ellyn. I cannot get the measure of him. He's dangerous. You should be careful around duplicitous men like him."
She blinked, then frowned and tilted her head, studying my face. "He said almost those exact words about you."
"He thinks me dangerous?" I laughed to cover the fact that he was right. "Why?"
"I don't know, precisely, just that he said…" She teased her cup, rolling its contents.
"He said what, Ellyn? You cannot leave me hanging."
"When now I've said too much… So, what's one more? He said you are 'a beautiful lie.'"
My thoughts tumbled over themselves and slammed to a halt. "'A beautiful lie'?" I echoed. "He said those words, referring to me?"
"Well, yes, so you see why I don't think he hates you, hm? In fact, I think you fascinate him. It's all that pretty. Both of you." She pulled a face. "By Dallin, I'm surrounded by hopeless, pretty men who think with their dicks and not their brains."
I chuckled and refilled my cup. The prince had surprised me again. This was becoming a theme with him.
"What…? Why do you laugh?" She giggled.
"It's as though you speak of an entirely different man to the person he's shown himself to be."
"I've worked in the palace since my twelfth year. I may not be Rafe's aide, but I know him well enough. He wasn't always so aloof and distant. Something happened, I fear, not long before you arrived and charmed your way among the court."
"Something like what?"
"The previous jester…"
"What of him?" I knew they'd had one, and he'd left, but little else. He'd been my predecessor, and the past was not my focus. The past could not be changed. But the future was always fluid.
"Oh, well. I suppose he was meant to have just left… But some of us think he may have dispatched himself."
"He what?"
She mimed drawing a blade across her throat. "Why am I just hearing about this now?"
"You never seemed that interested."
"No, because I believed he'd left." I should have loosened Ellyn's tongue with wine more often.
"Maybe he did." She shrugged.
"Wait… Don't tell me he and Rafe were… close?"