[Books of Bayern 1] The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale Page B

sea of hatted and scarf-wrapped heads, faces marked with dark brows and lashes, soldiers bearing iron-tipped javelins and brightly painted shields.
    One among them had fair hair.
    She saw him before he saw her, and she quickly looked away. It was Yulan. He sat on a stone before the city wall, scanning every face carefully, his eyes squinting against the setting sun, one hand on his sword hilt.
    Ani lowered herself off her bundle and sat on the floor of the wagon. Her heart beat in her ears now, and the din of wagons and people seemed small and far away. Yulan was in the city. Ungolad and Selia must be there, too. She wondered if this meant that they had defeated Talone. That they were all dead. That there was no safety. She rubbed the tightness i n her neck and kept her head down.
    Somehow she still had to get into the palace. In Kildenree there had been days when one of the royal family would see city supplicants, and Ani was praying for the same here. If only she could get inside the palace without being recognized by Yulan and the others, she could plead her case to the king, and if he did not believe her, then the prime minister. She hoped that more than five years after visiting Kildenree, he might still recognize her face.
    The many wagons poured through the gates and lined the open expanse of the market-square. Finn's company was pushed up against the back of a three-story building facing the market. Ani set up her bedroll behind a wagon wheel and huddled there, waiting for night to hide her. Finn sat beside her and silently offered bread and cheese the others were sharing for supper.
    "Finn, can one go and talk to the king or queen, or prince?"
    "No queen anymore." He slowly chewed a bit of bread, unaware that her skin crept with cold while she waited for his response.

    "On marketday I see people line up to talk to the king."
    "That's tomorrow?"
    He nodded. They ate in silence.
    "You'll be wanting to leave early." He pointed to a slender street that left the market and led up.
    In the gray morning, Ani awoke to a market of sleepy merchants pulling wraps and blankets and wood-carved boxes out of dewy bags. She folded her blankets, nodded farewell to Finn, and started up the street.

    Not far into her walk, Ani stopped on a vacant side street and arranged the front of her head cloth at its natural place just below her hairline. She pulled the charcoal from her pocket, bent to her reflection in a curtained window, and delicately darkened her eyebrows to a dusty black. If the Kildenreans were scanning the crowds for a fair-haired girl, they might pass her over. Ani could not afford to be recognized before reaching the protection of the king. She had no doubt that, if given the chance, Ungolad would drag her off and slit her throat in private.
    The farther she walked, the more people were walking with her, some in the brightly colored, simple clothing of t h e out-towns, others in finer stuff of the city. She arrived at the palace walls just as the sun glared its upper rim over t h e city wall. There was already a queue of petitioners windi n g its way from the high palace gates through the courtyard. She stepped in behind the last person and hoped she was blending in enough not to draw the attention of the likes of Yulan.
    The line moved quickly, though it was long, and Ani soon found herself wishing she had thought to bring along a shred of breakfast from Gilsa's bag of food. The bite of hunger made her grumpy, and her thoughts grumbled, Unfair, unfair. To have to eat out of others'
    foodstuff and hope for goodness and charity, to he coinless and placeless. This palace would have been my home. She bent her neck back to stare up at the sheer height of the palace spires, each glittering with windows and a wind-nipped banner.
    She glared down at herself, leaning against the wall in travel-crumpled clothing, nearly last in a line of patient peasants, hungry, with feet aching on the soft soles of Finn's boots.
    This is not