Free Palace of Lies by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Madame Bisset.
    In the palace, when I had grown most panicky and despairing, I’d taken to skulking through the secret passageways, listening secretly at hidden doors.
    You’re already hidden now. So pay attention. Listen.
    For a while there seemed to be nothing to hear but vendors plying their wares. Then I started noticing an occasional undercurrent of whispers.
    â€œGet your fresh-baked bread here! Fresh bread!”
    â€œâ€”burned to the ground—”
    â€œGrapes! Pears!”
    â€œâ€”heard nobody found out until—”
    â€œWalnuts! Almonds!”
    Why isn’t anybody talking about what happened to the princesses? I wondered.
    Or were they talking about it, and I just missed every reference?
    It was incredibly frustrating to catch only bits and pieces of the conversations around me.
    And then we evidently left the marketplace behind, because the voices of the shouting vendors faded. Now it was quiet enough that I could hear the older boy breathing beside me.
    It was strange to listen so intently to another human being breathe. I had never done that before. It was too . . . personal. Private. I felt like I had back when Cecilia and Harper first came to the castle, and I’d watched them without their knowing it. That was when I believed that I was the one and only true princess of Suala, and they were impudent interlopers—perhaps even treasonous interlopers. I’d trapped them in my tower, which I thought was the onlysafe thing to do. And yet, listening to them talk, I felt like I was doing something wrong, in a way that I never worried about when I eavesdropped on the various royal advisers and ministers.
    Older raggedy boy was starting to breathe hard. He was probably carrying the bulk of my weight. They’d probably been walking for nearly an hour since they’d left Madame Bisset behind.
    â€œYou’re going to wear yourself out,” I started to say, because I’d learned at the palace that sometimes you could get people to do what you wanted by convincing them you only had their selfish interests at heart.
    But at the same time, the little boy started giggling.
    â€œDid you see her face when I touched that blood?” he asked.
    â€œShush, Herk,” the older boy said. “I know it looks like there’s nobody around, but, remember, sometimes the walls have ears.”
    â€œFraidy-cat Tog-dog,” the younger boy mocked—Herk? Was his name Herk? I guessed that was probably right. I wasn’t sure what to pull out as the older boy’s name. Surely his parents hadn’t named him “Dog.” “I’m just talking about the blood I told that lady about. It’s not like the walls are going to hear anything I didn’t tell her straight out. Was she half-blind? I thought she was never going to see it.”
    â€œThe likes of her, they’re not used to seeing things like blood,” the older boy countered. “They’re not like us. They pretend messy things don’t exist.”
    â€œBlood, pee, poo, guts . . . We’ve seen it all, haven’t we, Tog?” Herk crowed.
    I felt slightly queasy. Were people even allowed to say words like that on a public street? Hadn’t someone in the palace passed a law against it?
    I made myself focus on the fact that the younger boy must have just revealed the older boy’s name: Tog. It had to be Tog.
    â€œBut, by pointing out the blood, you could have made that lady think you were the one who put it there,” Tog said. “Like you were trying too hard to make her see it.”
    Tog’s smart, I thought, and this surprised me. Cecilia and Harper had looked a lot like ragamuffins too when they arrived at the palace just over a month ago, but Cecilia had been screaming, “I’m the true princess! I’m the true princess!” pretty much the whole time.
    Tog and Herk had seemed perfectly fine with Madame Bisset