Free Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George

the doorway lead?
    She stood and fingered the cloak until a bird soaring by one of the open windows startled her. She made up her mind.
    “All right, I’ll do it. I trust you,” she announced to the empty room.
    Celie put on the cloak, which fit as though it had been made for her. She tried to see if it made her invisible, but it didn’t. Or maybe she could see herself, but no one else could. The one odd thing was that it seemed to muffle any noises she made. Her feet were completely silent, there was no rustling from her gown or swish as her hair brushed her shoulders, and even her breathing seemed to be soundless now. She pulled up the hood to hide her light-colored hair, and made her way through the new entrance, down a long, winding staircase, to whatever it was the Castle wanted her to see.
    The passage ended in a blank wall with a narrow horizontal opening cut into it—a peephole—at the level of Celie’s eyes. She peered through, and could see a faint mesh on the other side of the wall. She reckoned that she was looking through a tapestry of some kind, but which one? There was no one in the room, and it wasn’t anywhere she recognized.
    It was a large room, and very impersonal. There was a round table and some high-backed chairs, tapestries on the walls, and a few small tables in the corners of the room holding candles and books and other odds and ends. Was it a new room for one of the guests? She couldn’t be sure. She tried to see if any of the books were in Vhervhish, or Grathian, but they were too far away, or turned so that she couldn’t read the covers.
    Then the door opposite her peephole opened, and men in black robes began to file in, led by the Emissary. The Council! She was spying on the Council’s privy chamber! Even Celie’s father hadn’t been allowed in the Council’s privy chamber, and he was the king! Her heart began to pound, and she was glad that the cloak she wore muffled the noise.
    She was even more grateful for the muffling cloak when Prince Khelsh entered the room, and a gasp escaped her lips before she could stop it. What was Khelsh doing there? She pressed her face as close to the wall as she could without smashing her nose, and stared through the peephole, angry and nervous and frightened at the same time.
    Khelsh closed the door behind him and gestured for the Councilors to sit, acting for all the world as though he were their ruler. Celie gritted her teeth, and tried to keep quiet.
    “Now you sit,” said Khelsh roughly.
    “Yes, thank you,” the Emissary said crisply. “I agree with Prince Khelsh: let us get right to business!” He made it sound as if Khelsh’s harshly accented words had been the height of courtesy. “We need to sign the agreement making His Highness the fourteenth member of the Royal Council of Sleyne, and thus a regent to Prince Rolf.”
    Just then the entire Castle seemed to shudder, and Celie put her palms flat on the wall in front of her, trying to soothe it despite her own anxiety.
    “Shouldn’t we inform His Highness first?” It was Lord Sefton, and Celie wondered if he might prove to be an ally.
    “My dear Sefton,” the Emissary said. “We are talking treason. Of course we aren’t going to inform Prince Rolf. He’ll find out after the coronation, when he has his first meeting with the full Council.”
    “But it’s not really treason,” Sefton protested. “Not when we’re only trying to help Rolf rule as best he can.”
    Prince Khelsh and the Emissary exchanged looks, and laughed.
    “That is quite enough merriment,” the Emissary snapped. He had an expression of great distaste on his face. “Everyone, sign the agreement so that we can continue with the rest of our business.”
    “The other agreement?” Prince Khelsh’s expression was cold. “You must sign also.”
    “For that we will need Prince Rolf’s signature, once he is king,” Lord Feen said.
    “You did not say this before.” Prince Khelsh’s neck began to swell as