Several people echoed, “Only at the point of a sword.”
Goodman Fiske, who kept the widow’s orchards and whose two daughters had been taken, said, “I keep thinking about King Einar. Does he really know about the Beneficences?”
Among the villagers, our king was much respected.
Goodman Walde said, “Is Prince Dahn fighting with only a stave, too?”
His wife said, “King Einar should talk to King Canute, monarch to monarch.”
Did I need our king in my plans, as unpleasant as he’d been to me?
Hoping the village would still follow my lead, I swore, “Freedom before I die. I will turn my efforts toward crossing the Eskerns.” For an old lady, this wouldn’t seem a far-off goal.
Now the silence lasted until Goodwife Petina, who cleaned for the widow, said, “Goodwife Nadira has a young spirit. My aching bones don’t want to face a dragon.” Petina was the oldest in the village after my seeming age.
Goodman Ornik, the shoemaker, said, “At least the Lakti don’t feast on our flesh”—he chuckled—“yet.”
Goodwife Petina added, “Crossing the Eskerns is just a saying, begging your pardon, Goodwife Nadira.”
But Goodman Meerol said, “I’d go, if we could cross.” He looked at Annet.
She nodded. “I would, too, but only if I knew Drualt was safe.”
I was stunned she’d go at all.
No one was willing to leave while the children were in Lakti hands, and many didn’t want to go, period.
Poppi announced, “Aunt Nadira told Drualt to escape to the Kyngoll.”
I added, “And to tell everyone else to do the same.”
This was greeted with consternation. The village really believed that the Kyngoll were worse than the Lakti.
Finally, Goodman Walde held up a hand. “We know Goodwife Nadira loves her family. Why did you give this advice?”
“Er . . .” How might a Bamarre learn about the Kyngoll? “In my youth . . .” What? “I was a scullery maid in King Uriel’s castle.”
Wily Mama nodded as if she knew all about it.
“Everything we think we know about the Kyngoll comes from the Lakti.” I spun a tale about overhearing Kyngoll prisoners talking before they were executed. “They said their prisoners were allowed to live. Away from the fighting, they were set free.”
Silence fell again, but this time not the quiet of the Bamarre distaste for disagreement, but the silence of thought.
After a minute, Goodwife Dyrin said, “How could I have believed the Lakti?” She recited a rhyming aphorism I’d heard before,
“Been a fool. My mistake.
Fool no more. Wide awake.”
She wept, while Goodman Walde rubbed her back, his eyes streaming, too. When she recovered, she said, “Vanz will reach the Kyngoll if anyone can.”
Everyone straggled out soon after, in a lighter mood than when they’d arrived. We had something to do, and action, as Mistress Clarra often said, cures despair. I invented a couplet and recited,
“Enraged, the placid pig turns boar
And gores the arm that wields the sword.”
Poppi sat at his sewing stool. “How will I work tomorrow without Drualt to lift my spirits? You have a plan, Aunt Nadira?”
I listed the steps I’d figured out so far. After just a few sentences, both Mama and Poppi began shaking their heads. When I proposed Annet’s role in helping me, Mama stood and paced.
But Annet nodded. When I finished, she said, “Mama, good can finally come of Lady Klausine’s theft.” She turned to me. “You were such a serious child, always learning.” She dropped her whisper to a mere breath. “Perry, I wish I’d . . .”
Wished she’d been kinder? Loved me?
She didn’t finish her sentence. “Aunt Nadira, I listened when you studied strategy. I like your plan.”
But dawn was too near to begin to spread Gavrel’s rebellion. I did have time, however, to retrieve my buried treasure. With the magic shell to keep me safe, I left and returned in half an hour.
After curtsying to Mama and Poppi, I removed the platters and the books from the sack and poured the coins on the table.
Poppi dropped a few coins into his palm.
Mama put her hand over her mouth, then lowered it, revealing a gleeful grin. “So much!”
How the Beneficences had changed her.
Poppi and Annet were smiling, too. I felt as if Lady Mother had nodded a dozen times. Good, I thought. Let them taste this and like it.
But Mama frowned. “What can we do with such wealth?”
Sounding smug, Annet said, “Some of the Lakti can be bribed.”
She knew this from Lord Tove’s castle? “No! Begging your pardon, no! Who?” I waved away the answer. “Never mind.” It didn’t matter.
“Shoni?” Poppi asked. “Don’t you think the Ships would like a gold coin? Don’t you think they’d do something or look the other way to get it?”
She thought they would. “But not the widow. She wouldn’t take a bribe.” Mama picked up the smaller book and opened it. “It’s poetry!”
“Lakti . . . poetry . . . ,” Poppi said. “The words are impossible together.”
Mama’s eyes progressed down the page. “This one is moving. Listen.
“Hilltop floats above campfire smoke.
Blink by blink, sky lightens.
Dawn rises from circling peaks.
Mounting the gray stallion, I long
For my children, who won’t remember me.”
No one moved until Annet said, “Poor Lakti soldier, feeling sorry for himself before he kills more people.”
Paging through, Mama said the poems weren’t only about war. Some reflected ordinary life, and many depicted the lovely countryside. “They make me want to go there.”
Hurray for poetry!
She closed the book. “May we see the other book, Aunt Nadira?”
I said, “I hope it’s the Account.”
Annet explained. “It’s a record that a king or a lord of the castle keeps.”
I added, “When Lord Tove wrote in his, he called himself ‘Lord Tove,’ not ‘I.’” He even took it to war with him and wrote in it daily. When it was full, it was taken to the library and a fresh Account begun.
“If this is the Account, I hope it was written after the monsters came.” I put my hand on the cover.
Annet coughed. Remembering my Bamarre manners, I gave it to Poppi, who spread it out. Mama and Annet sat on either side of him. As the youngest, I was at Mama’s side and couldn’t see it well enough to make out the words.
Poppi turned pages, then read aloud,
“Out of a company of a dozen, the two brave knights left alive dashed into the throne room. They clasped King Josef’s knees and gasped out their tale of a livid cloud that had belched forth gryphons—winged, slavering beasts—and dragons. Said Sir Ignace, one of the survivors, ‘A mist flooded the Kilkets valley through which we rode, which mist resolved into huge, nightmare creatures, hulking ogres.’ Sir Ignace covered his eyes, and his companion, Lady Selda, took up the recital: ‘Then a miracle of deception lulled our senses. The music of lutes and flutes replaced the crackling of dragon flame, the gryphons’ greedy squawks, the ogres’ inchoate roars.’”
Specters!
“‘Overhead, the heavens blued again; the gryphons were succeeded by sparrows, the dragons by hawks. I smelled roses and failed to recall that the month was November. The ogres became people to my eyes, and not merely people, but beloved comrades lost in battle, hale, in shining armor.’”
Poppi summarized what came next. The knights discovered their mistake by rushing toward their old friends. The two who lived had survived only by fleeing.
Mama said, “This is where you want us to go, Aunt Nadira?”
“The countryside is beautiful, Niece. The monsters aren’t everywhere.”
Poppi turned to a page dated a month later, which listed bodies recovered, living Lakti subjects borne aw
ay by dragons, livestock lost. The next page described the funeral of King Josef’s wife and the king’s laments. What came after, on the final sheet, written in January, was a proclamation, calling Josef’s subjects to him.
That was his mistake, I thought. As they flocked to his castle, the monsters must have picked them off. We’d have to move into our new land cautiously, step by step, establishing safe havens before moving on.
The proclamation ended with these cold words:
“Long have the Eskerns limited our ambition. Let this exodus be an opportunity, skilled as we are in subjugation, to rule again, unopposed. No matter how small the numbers who attain our new land, no matter how numerous the years that pass, no matter how kind our reception, Lakti courage will conquer the Bamarre coward.”
Annet stabbed the page with a fingertip. “‘How kind our reception.’”
I was shocked, too. They’d decided even then.
And Lord Tove might have been King Josef’s son for his closeness to that king’s beliefs.
Annet added, “Aunt Nadira, we should send them back.”
Yes!
However, after a moment’s thought I said it would be impossible to force an entire population through a narrow pass. I added, “They were the cowards for running away.” And after only a few months. They’d hardly tried. “The elves stayed, and the monsters must have hunted them, too.” Still might. “But the Lakti were afraid to fight a new kind of enemy.”
Mama closed the books, and Poppi hid the treasure in our shed, in a barrel, under layers of green tassel yarn and spare tassels. “The Lakti won’t poke in there for fear a tassel might leap out and make them Bamarre.”
The next day dawned bright and warm, as if yesterday’s rain had never been. I woke up wondering how Drualt was faring. If the soldiers kept gathering children, they wouldn’t reach the fighting for weeks. But was there enough food? Was Drualt holding his temper? Were the soldiers holding theirs?
My family’s drawn faces told me they were worrying, too.
A new fear cracked open, which I kept to myself. Would Drualt, on Lord Tove’s orders, be singled out for being my brother and sped to the battlefield?
At the Ships’, our open rebellion had to wait, because I had made the pottage before the soldiers came, and only bread and cheese would accompany it. We wouldn’t present our cooking until the midday meal.
But Goodwife Dyrin didn’t delay. As if it were winter, she built a blazing fire in the solar before the Ships descended.
His Master-ship bellowed, “Are you trying to roast us alive?”
Mama cracked the door to hear.
“Beg pardon, sir. I’ve been chilled since my son was taken. I thought you must be cold, too.”
“Don’t just stand there! Douse it!”
Goodwife Dyrin entered the kitchen, sauntered to the iron sink, and pumped water into the bucket. “I’m not finished.” She exited.
A moment later, His Master-ship cried, “You oaf! I’m soaked!”
Her Mistress-ship ran into the kitchen with the pail and thrust it at me. “Douse the fire. Dyrin is useless today.”
I curtsied and made myself look puzzled. “Mistress, begging your pardon, a pail won’t douse a fire.”
Annet let out a cheep of strangled laughter.
“Put water in it, you dolt!”
I curtsied again. “Certainly. I didn’t understand. I’ll do so now.” I pumped water, but stopped when the pail was half full. I couldn’t remember when I’d had so much fun. “Is this enough, Mistress? Begging your pardon, is it a big fire?”
“Fill it!”
I let the pail slosh over as I carried it into the steamy solar, where Goodwife Dyrin was dabbing (actually poking) His Master-ship’s wet tunic with a length of dry cloth and where the Ships’ twin boys watched wide-eyed.
After thinking better of drenching His Master-ship for the second time, I put out the blaze. As soon as I did, I curtsied to Her Mistress-ship, who’d followed me in, and escaped to the kitchen before laughing.
After we recovered, we set ourselves to our mischief. I oversalted the soup, began the roast hare too soon, and turned the pepper mill over the blackberry tart until my arm ached.
As she’d promised, Mama set aside the good carrots, onions, turnips, and cabbage for the pigs and chopped the rotten. When she finished serving breakfast, Annet prepared His Master-ship’s beloved egg-and-cheese pie, eggshells included.
Quiet reigned, except for an occasional shout wafting through the windows as the twins play-battled under the tutelage of Soldier Kassia.
Noon came. Annet had cleared and washed the breakfast crockery and reset the table. For a festive touch, she’d plucked a bunch of the daisies that edged the road and put them in a tall tumbler. I carried in the roast on its platter. Cooked to three times a turn, I’d rescued it before it blackened. Now it glistened a dark gold and made even my mouth water.
Mama and Annet followed me in, bearing the rest of the meal on trays. As we placed everything, the Ships filed in. His Master-ship wore his preprandial smile. I curtsied and exited as usual, because Her Mistress-ship said my gargoyle face spoiled her appetite.
As I passed through the vestibule, someone rapped on the door. The widow’s sharp voice cried, “Let me in! Don’t—”
I sang at the top of my voice, “Victory over the Kyngoll!” to cover whatever warning the widow had been about to issue, and continued into the kitchen. I heard Mama and Annet take up the cry and repeat it.
But His Master-ship’s outraged shout broke through our noise.
More pounding at the door followed. My heart took up the beat. Dyrin’s mishaps had been taken as Bamarre stupidity, but the meal could be nothing except deliberate.
Someone let the widow in. I wondered what Goodwife Petina had done at her house.
At a loss for what else to do, I sharpened Her Mistress-ship’s biggest knife and began chopping onions.
The kitchen door blew open. His Master-ship pushed Mama and Annet inside, and Her Mistress-ship tugged Goodwife Dyrin in by her elbow. The widow came, too, her face an exclamation point. I told myself I mustn’t use the knife, but my grip tightened on it.
His Master-ship panted with anger. “What is the meaning of this?” He leaned toward each of us in turn.
We all spoke at once, a chorus of “Beg pardon.” Then we stopped, unsure who should continue.
Not I, I thought. I was only the aunt.
Mama did, although her voice was frightened. “B-beg p-pardon. I lost my son yesterday. He may never . . .” She became truly sad. I could tell, and my throat tightened. She went on. “My mind is addled with it—”
Her Mistress-ship turned to her husband, her voice urgent. “Deegal, they may not be working in the fields, either.”
“My orchards!” The widow rushed out.
“I’ll go,” His Master-ship said. “Make them cook dinner again. Don’t let them out of your sight. See what Dyrin’s done upstairs. Make her undo it.” He followed the widow out.
I watched Her Mistress-ship’s face as she tried to decide whether to stay downstairs with us or go to Goodwife Dyrin’s domain. Finally, she called Soldier Kassia in to watch us and left the kitchen with the goodwife.
When the soldier understood what had happened, she unsheathed her sword.
At the point of a sword. How quickly that had come.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
SOLDIER KASSIA INSISTED we stay together. We cleared the dishes and dumped the dreadful meal in the pigpen behind the house. Back in the kitchen, we started an indifferent dinner for the Ships.
His Master-ship returned in two hours, his eyes bulging with outrage. We heard him storm into the solar and shout at his goodwife, as if it were her fault, that only Goodman Walde had gone to the fields, where, true to his promise, he had pulled peas and left weeds. Hardly stopping for breath, he yelled that the widow’s laborers had pruned branches from her apple trees that had been loaded with green fruit.
&nb
sp; Victory for us! Victory for the Bamarre!
When we brought in dinner, he told his wife to taste it first.
Flushing, Her Mistress-ship pronounced the meal edible but not good.
“Supervise them tomorrow, Wife. Make them make it good. I’ll write to His Majesty and tell him what we’re enduring.”
Mama coughed. “Master . . . begging your pardon . . . ask him to return our children to us. They’re your most willing workers.”
My neighbors would stop rebelling if the young people came home. I didn’t want the rebellion to end, but even more, I didn’t want Drualt to reach Lord Tove.
His Master-ship actually nodded. “I’ll petition him to return them or send soldiers, because this”—he gestured at the food, at us, at the room—“is insupportable.”
I doubted Drualt and the others would be sent back.
Annet and I were going to have another sleepless night, and Mama and Poppi probably would, too, from worrying over us. During our own (delicious) evening meal, I asked for advice about how to present our rebellion to the families I’d visit—families rather than all the Bamarre in a village, because there would be no time for everyone to gather.
Poppi squinted. “They’ll start by respecting your age, but it will be best if you don’t order anyone to do anything.”
I knew that, but I thanked him.
Annet said I should tell the revolt as a story, step by step, without rushing.
I was a terrible storyteller! I always rushed!
Mama said not to leave out how frightened I was, whether I really was or not. “Your fear will give them courage.”
I nodded, but Annet saw my confusion and said, “If they’re afraid and they know you were, too, but you rose up anyway, they’ll think they may be able to.”
Oh. I was going to say everything wrong.
Poppi said I shouldn’t forget the part about the children going to the Kyngoll. “That will offer hope.”
Mama saw my expression. “Recite a poem. You’re good at that.” She squeezed her hands together and looked at Annet. “Don’t let me lose you again.” To my surprise, she turned to me and added, “Not you, either, Aunt Nadira.”
When the village quieted in sleep, I gave one boot to Annet, along with warnings about how to use it, and I lent her the magic shell, reasoning that she was less accustomed than I to danger. We both carried a pouch of dried meat for the dogs and a few coins for the humans, if need be.