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ducked up the right-hand corridor and ran headlong into a girl standing on a chair.
    She screamed, but did not fall or drop the bucket she held, which sloshed alarmingly. “St. Daan in a pan! Are you blind?” she cried.
    It took me a second to catch my breath. “Excuse me,” I said.
    “You are evidently some species of oaf,” she said, sneering at me from her perch. “I suppose you can’t help it.”
    She was petite but not much younger than me. I guessed
    fifteen. Golden curls framed her face like the sun risen above her gown of sky-blue silk. She’d planted her chair before a set of double doors. She tapped her foot on the wooden seat, swirling the chunky liquid in her pail. Whatever it was, it smelled foul.
    “Take this.” She thrust the reeking bucket at me. “You may as well help. You’re tall; I can’t quite reach, even with the chair.”
    “I’m sorry, I can’t stay,” I said, recoiling from the stench. “My music teacher—”
    “That beanpole of a scholar?” she said. “He’s fine. He tripped over me, too, but we made it up and I sent him on his way.”
    I looked past her up the corridor. “Where is he?”
    She scowled and shoved the pail in my face. “He’s fine . Your assistance, oaf.”
    © 2012 Rachel Hartman
    My hands accepted the bucket over the protestations of my nose, which had caught an overpowering whiff of fish. I gazed into the brown ooze. Silver scales winked merrily in the murk; the dark buttons lurking in the depths were surely eyes. I swallowed my revulsion. “What do I do with it?”
    “‘What do I do with it, Your Highness ,’” she corrected, folding her hands in front of her stomach. Beaded birds frolicked among golden clouds on her bodice.
    I fell into my deepest curtsy, awkwardly executed thanks to the bucket in my hands. Your Highness plus her age could only equal the Queen’s granddaughter, Princess Glisselda, although I did not see how it was possible. To my knowledge, she ought to have been at a music lesson with the troubadour at this very moment.
    “Rise,” she said. “I did not catch your name.”
    “Seraphina Dombegh, Your Highness.” I straightened, holding the fishy ferment away from my body. The smell persisted, undiminished by distance.
    The princess hopped down, light as a finch. She barely came up to my shoulder. “Well, Maid Dombegh,” she said, “we are set-ting a trap for my last prospective music tutor.”
    My mouth fell open. This bucket of goo was meant for me!
    Clearly, the princess didn’t realize who I was. My voice qua-vered a little as I said, “Is there some particular problem with this tutor, that you feel the need to—”
    “Oh no,” she said breezily. “I’ve not met any of Viridius’s finalists. I despise them all equally, on principle. I sent the first 7
    © 2012 Rachel Hartman
    one—that weedy lute master—on a wild-goose chase through the cellars, ending with a special trip down the coal chute.”
    Saints in Heaven.
    I dreaded to ask but had to know: “What did you do to the troubadour?”
    Her eyes lit up; she hopped on her toes. “I’ll show you!”
    She pushed open the double doors and led me through a small study, or perhaps a schoolroom, furnished with two tables and a bookcase. A map spread on one table had been heavily annotated; pens, books, and wooden markers were scattered across it. She picked her way across to the windows, which overlooked a walled garden with a hedge maze at the far end. The princess plopped herself down on the embrasure seat and opened the casement. She patted the embroidered cushion beside her. I balanced on its edge, the bucket on my knees.
    “Observe: the plume of his silly hat,” she said, pointing. A bracelet of river pearls dangled from her little wrist.
    Indeed, I could tell where my comrade-at-musical-arms stood among the box hedges. His feather bobbed dubiously in the autumn sunshine as if he were trying to decide between two directions.
    He chose the left-hand path.