Castle of Shadows by Ellen Renner Page A

the playing cards, is it? They haven’t stopped making my playing cards, have they? They wear out so quickly, and I haven’t had a new shipment for months.’
    ‘It isn’t the playing cards, Father!’ She tried again. ‘Things are bad in the Kingdom…and you need to know …there are horrible rumours about you. The papers are full of stories about Republicans and Radicals—’
    But he was once more standing with his arms folded across his chest, gazing up at his castle made of cards.
    ‘ Father! ’ This time she did not bother to whisper. A dozen card towers shivered.
    The King frowned at his daughter. For the first time in five years, he nearly looked at her. ‘Charlotte! You know the rules. If you cannot obey them you must leave.’
    ‘But the Kingdom’s in danger! You’re in danger!’ Charlie blinked back tears of frustration. ‘ Listen to me! ’
    ‘Nonsense! Alistair would have told me if anything were amiss. He has everything well in hand, as always. You are imagining things, child.’
    Her mouth dropped open. Of course! But there wasn’t time to think about it now. He was turning away. ‘Father! Please listen—’
    It was no use. The King was gone, swinging hand over hand high into the scaffolding. He didn’t look back at her. He had forgotten she was there.
     
    Charlie knew what she had to do. She didn’t bother with the servants’ stairs. She raced down the main staircase to the ground floor and pelted along the corridor. But she had forgotten that on Wednesday mornings the housekeeper supervised the cleaning of the state rooms.
    ‘Where do you think you’re going, young lady?’ Mrs O’Dair hove into sight, a battleship of black bombazine and starched linen running at full sail, her corsets creaking and groaning like ship’s tackle under strain.
    Charlie was going too fast to stop. She slid straight into the prow of the Battleship O’Dair. There was a smothering moment as the black bombazine yieldedslightly beneath the invader, then the O’Dair rebounded, and Charlie found herself flying backwards. She hit the floor with a whump! that knocked the air out of her.
    The housekeeper loomed above her. Charlie lay gasping on the floor, unable to speak, looking past the mountain range of Mrs O’Dair’s bosom, past her starched lace collar and the double chin it struggled to contain, past the beaked nose, straight into the clever dark eyes glaring down at her.
    With a sudden creaking of corsets, O’Dair leant over and, with one large square hand, plucked Charlie off the floor and dangled her for a moment, before dropping her like a mother cat discarding a kitten. ‘Well?’
    ‘Sorry, Mrs O’Dair,’ Charlie muttered.
    ‘You were running! Princesses do not run. To help you remember that fact when you are next tempted to run in the corridors, you shall have no supper tonight.’ She swept on in a rustle of starch and linen, then stopped suddenly and creaked round to spear Charlie once more with her stare. ‘What are you doing here, by the way? You have no business in this part of the Castle.’
    ‘I…I was going to the library.’ Charlie was painfully aware of her heart thumping and a drip of sweat beading down beside her left ear.
    ‘Indeed,’ the housekeeper said at last. ‘You know perfectly well that you are not allowed to choose your own books from the library. No more books for a week. Then, if you ask me, I shall select something suitable foryou. And now,’ concluded Mrs O’Dair, ‘I shall lock you in your room, where you will stay for the remainder of the day.’
     
    The key clicked in the lock. Charlie crouched beside the door and listened to the housekeeper’s corsets squeak and wheeze down the corridor. ‘ No supper! ’ they taunted. ‘ No supper tonight! ’ She ignored them. No one was going to stop her. Certainly not the O’Dair. She had known what she must do since the moment her father reminded her about Alistair Windlass.
    Not that she had forgotten him. The