‘Princess, huh? That’s an interesting nickname.’
‘I know,’ I said, gulping down the rest of my drink. It burned all the way down my throat. ‘We like interesting.’

We chatted a bit about this and that. I had to force myself to laugh at their jokes at first, but a second and third round of drinks eased the effort remarkably.
‘So, in these jokes of yours,’ the man called Cuckoo eventually said, slightly hiccoughing from laughter. ‘What did you say you would do?’
‘Ah,’ I said, still bright enough to recognize that we had arrived at the tricky part, but no longer sober enough to actually care. ‘Well, we would say to each other… I’d say…Princess, since we just got from the castle, we could always tell them about the secret sister…’
I winded up telling them a story I that could barely remember the next day. Somewhere along the way I recalled feeling a string of worry, like…Was I supposed to use the secret sister theory, or had we decided against it? The liquor had made me all fuzzy and in retrospect I can say that it was only thanks to that same drink that the Cult of Charming Men, alias The Rough Rebels were not as suspicious as they should have been. It was a wonky tale, not even Millie (the only one that had remained sober) seemed to think much of it.
The weirdest thing about it was that it worked.

The following morning, I awoke with a bursting headache. Everything in the room was blurry.
Above me, Millie’s face hovered, fading in and out. I felt a cool sensation as something cold and wet was put to my brow.
‘There,’ I heard her say. ‘You’re as drunk as a sailor.’
‘Oh, don’ be silleh,’ I muttered, feeling where my head hurt. ‘Am never drunk…Ow! Did I fall on my head?’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘It was close, but we managed.’
‘Managed what? Sheesh, why must you sway so much, can’t you hold still for a sec?’ I sat straight up, causing thunderbolts to flash through my head. ‘Anyway, what happened?’
‘You were great, you totally got us in!’
‘Yay me,’ I muttered, accepting the glass of water she offered me, gulping it down within seconds. ‘I seem to recall something about a group of men and a lot of talking about some sister. That was a dream, right?’
‘Not exactly…’ She went to sit on the bed next to me. ‘I thought you had disagreed with my plan, but in the end you spilled it all out.’
‘Oh god.’ I put a hand to my head. ‘Did I tell them that you’re from New York?’
‘No, not that part.’
‘Then, did I say that you want to become princess of Archeon?’
‘You kinda failed to mention that too.’
‘And the sword?’
‘Not a word.’
‘Then what did I say?’
‘Well.’ She shifted. ‘You said that princess Merope’s hidden sibling is secretly planning to oppose her elder sister. You said that we met her and that we had promised her to help her in whichever way.’
It dazed me. ‘Why would I…What did they - How did I say we met this sibling?’
‘You told them that you are a…err, a travelling minstrel and you’d just returned from Redwood Castle, where you had encountered this girl that had told you everything.’
I buried my face in my hands. ‘This is a disaster.’
‘Well...look on the bright side! You got them drunk enough to agree to let us join their gang. That’s more than we could have hoped for!’
I moaned: ‘But I can’t even sing!’
She patted me on the shoulder. ‘I don’t think they noticed.’