Brambles: A Thorn Short Story

Brambles
Copyright © 2020 by Intisar Khanani
Cover Design © 2020 by Jenny Zemanek
Published by Purple Monkey Press
All Rights Reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information, please contact booksbyintisar.com
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Names: Khanani, Intisar, author.
Title: Brambles / Intisar Khanani.
Series: Dauntless Path
Description: Cincinnati, OH: Purple Monkey Press, 2020. | Summary: Princess Alyrra betrays the court to save another, earning her family’s disdain. A few critical days turns her life into a daily fight for survival.
Identifiers: ISBN: 9781948448000
Subjects: LCSH Family--Fiction. | Fantasy fiction. | Princesses--Fiction. | Bildungsroman. | BISAC YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Fantasy / General | YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Coming of Age
Classification: PZ7.K52654 Br 2019 | DDC [Fic]--dc23


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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Acknowledgments
About the Author


“I’ve got a secret,” Valka says, stepping up beside me. We stand at the edge of the roughly cobbled courtyard before the hall, mud sticking to our boots and our cloaks flapping in the chill spring breeze.
The last of this morning’s departing carriages rolls toward the gates. Edlyna nods regally through the carriage window at us.
“Wouldn’t you like to know it?” Valka presses.
I glance around helplessly, as if someone might appear to rescue me. But of course, Valka has timed her approach perfectly: Mother has already departed with her coterie of vassals, and my brother hasn’t bothered to come at all. There are a few other nobles who have yet to leave for their lands for the summer, including Maralinde. But, along with the rest, she’s busy packing. Unlike Valka, unfortunately.
“If it’s a secret, you shouldn’t tell anyone,” I say, shifting uneasily.
“You’re such a mouse, Alyrra.” Valka gives a sweet, tinkling little laugh. The sound of it makes my skin prickle. I’ve heard that laugh enough times now to know that what she has to share will hardly be innocent.
“Come on,” she says, sliding her arm through mine and tugging me forward. Valka may be only a year older than my own twelve, but she’s also taller than me, and prettier, with her red curls and green eyes. She carries herself with the sort of authority that leaves the rest of us bobbing in her wake. You would think she was the princess, not me.
Not that I’m some sort of a grand lady. We’re a small kingdom ringed by forested mountains, mostly ignored by our much wealthier and larger neighbors who have no need for the scanty resources our land proffers. Still, our home is a worthy wood-framed structure, with a great receiving hall and two whole wings of rooms attached, as well as a tall wooden boundary wall to protect it. Though walls can’t protect from everything.
“Do you remember how that little pest Edlyna fell off her horse last week?”
I pull to a stop, staring up at Valka. “You didn’t.”
Her green eyes glint back at me, all malicious glee. “Alyrra, dear, don’t you remember how she made such a fuss about her new boots, right after I had my own commissioned? As if she was so much better than me? I couldn’t let that stand. You wouldn’t either, would you? Such arrogance! What better way to put her in her place than to cut a leather strap or two and let her fall right off her horse, pretty riding boots and all?”
“She could have been injured,” I say, a sick feeling in my stomach. I already know there’s no point in arguing; the deed is done and we both just watched Edlyna and her family depart. They won’t be back till fall, and all of this will be long past by then.
“Oh, hardly! That hostler caught her easily. What’s the use of a hostler to help you mount if they aren’t there to catch you, anyway?”
“Yes, but it was mortifying for her!” I can still remember the girl’s face, red with humiliation as she snatched herself free of the hostler.
“I know,” Valka says, beaming. “Utterly mortifying, and, really, one of the most satisfying outcomes I could have hoped for. It was just so fitting, don’t you think? And oh, how your brother laughed!”
I hunch my shoulders. He would laugh, of course. “Does he know it was you?” I ask.
“Does he know? Really, you are too precious!”
I am not precious at all. “Well?” I ask, as she tugs me forward once more, following one of the wooden hallways. “Does he?”
“How do you think the straps got cut? I could hardly do that on my own! I convinced your brother to create a distraction for me, and oh, he was so very good at it.”
“The . . . the oats?” A whole sack of oats had been spilled across the back path to the stables. I’d heard about it only because it was all my peers could talk about: how my brother discovered it and demanded the culprit be found and punished for causing such waste. As if he were a hero, standing against the delinquent behavior of servants. No one had confessed—of course they hadn’t, I realize now. He’d done it himself. But every hostler in the stable had taken a pay cut to cover the cost of the oats.
“Brilliant, wasn’t it?” Valka says.
“What was brilliant?” A voice asks from behind us.
Valka turns a bright smile on my brother, her grip loosening on my arm. I slip free and take three steps back as she says, “Oh, that little incident with the oats.”
My brother grins. At fifteen, he is taller than us both, his chest just starting to broaden but his body still a little gangly. He brushes a hand through his hair, combing