The Palace of Lost Memories

Chapter 8

All of them had lost their memory? Every single palace servant? What an absurd notion. Yet the alternative explanation was even more bizarre—that magic had created them.

"Did you all eat or drink something at the same time?" I asked. "Perhaps you consumed a poison."

"Do you know of a poison that causes memory loss?" Max asked.

"No but I'll ask my father."

"I did," Brant said. "According to him, the only thing that causes memory loss is a severe blow to the head."

Quentin tapped his forhead. "No bumps."

Brant righted his chair. "It may be worth you asking your father about poisons, Josie. I don't think he believed me."

I couldn't blame Father for that. I couldn't decide whether to believe them or not either. Yet why would they all go along with the story if it weren't true? The humorless captain didn't seem like the sort to favor trickery. "The land here is low lying. Perhaps some sort of miasmic cloud carrying an air-born poison settled in the valley and you all breathed it in."

"Have you ever heard of such a cloud?" Hammer asked. "Or of another large group of people losing their memory like this? There are almost a thousand servants living and working here."

"And it seems unlikely they would all be affected," I agreed. "Tell me what you do remember."

"Only our first names, not our last," Quentin told me.

I eyed Hammer.

"It would seem the captain's parents named him after a blunt tool," Brant said with a grudging laugh. "Fitting."

"We do not know our home," Erik told me. "I did not know about the Margin until the new servants came. They all look at me like I am animal. When I finally ask Lady Miranda's maid why, she tell me the Margin folk do not come here."

"We didn't know anything about any of the nations on The Fist Peninsula," Max said. "We didn't know its history, geography, the politics or religion. Nothing. We were as ignorant as small children."

"That must have been unnerving," I said.

"That is an understatement."

"The captain and Theodore read in the library most nights," Quentin said. "They reported back what they learned to us. Do you know, Josie, the day we met you on the hill was the first time I'd seen anyone from outside the palace. I thought you the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. Most of the maids are not as tall or elegant."

"Height and fair hair are Glancian traits," I told him.

"But not all Glancian women are as pretty as you." He blushed and looked away, missing my smile.

"You don't have a chance with her," Brant sneered, showing the gap from his missing tooth to full effect.

Ordinarily I would have bitten back at him but I didn't have the heart for it. Brant was as worried as any of these men. His bitterness was understandable.

"The Margin folk don't speak our language," I said to Erik. "Do you remember your native tongue?"

He nodded. "I speak it once and none knew what I said, so I did not do so again." He tapped his temple. "I know two ways to say things but only one way will be understood by others."

"The Margin tribes each speak a different language," I told him. "The rest of The Fist speaks a united one. I wonder how you learned it."

Quentin sighed. "We wonder about a lot of things."