“I’ve never . . .” Sir Lerrin shrugged. “You won’t believe me.” He set his bowl on the table. “Good tablecloth, I thank thee for a fine meal.”
The remaining food vanished, along with the bowls, tureens, platters, and silver. The cloth folded itself and settled softly on the table.
“Everything shrank!” Or so it had seemed.
“Yes. I sometimes wonder if the air is full of dots of food so small we can’t see them.”
Might there be other sorcerer-made items? A magic loom? Carpenter’s tools? Cobbler’s? Might miniature cloth and houses and shoes be drifting about us, too?
“You don’t distribute the tablecloth’s bounty to your soldiers? The Lakti would.”
“Our soldiers eat well.”
“This well?”
He looked discomfited. “Perhaps not this well.” He changed the subject. “You truly love poetry?”
I nodded.
He stood. “Here’s one by a Kyngoll poet:
“Kingdom—
Yours, mine—
Enduring, ennobling,
Above petty purpose,
By virtue victorious,
Kyngoll.”
I wished he’d recite more. What would it be like to live in a kingdom where everyone revered poetry, where I wouldn’t have to choose between being a Lakti or a Bamarre?
“You surprise me. The boy, too. I’ll remember you both. You have a friend in Sir Lerrin, Peregrine.” He seemed to startle. “Turn your head, if you please.”
Feeling uneasy, I didn’t.
He began to step around me. I moved to keep facing him.
He saw anyway. “I’d swear your hair has grown while you’ve been here!” He shook his head. “Fascinating. We’re showing off our magical tablecloth when you yourself are made of magic.”
I wondered if I might use my hair. Halina, is this why you made it grow?
He approached me. I made myself stay still. He touched a length of hair, rubbed the strands between two fingers. How dare he?
“It feels like hair. I don’t suppose you’ll explain?”
Controlling myself, I smiled a secretive smile.
He shrugged. “We’ll figure it out. Your hands, please.”
Don’t bind them!
Surprise was on my side. I shook my head and lowered my chin to my chest. Behind a cascade of hair, I opened my cloak.
“Hair, hair,” I chanted, “make your magic.” The battle spell fell over me. Time seemed to slow. With an exquisitely sensitive finger, I rubbed the pendant’s diamond sword.
He staggered back, throwing his arm across his eyes and bending double. Feeling the muscles in my arm, the power in my fingers, I pulled his thrusting dagger from the sheath at his waist. He sensed me and tried to catch my hand. I jumped away.
I might have stabbed him—but he’d recited poetry!
I slid the knife into my sheath. If I just left him, he’d come after me in a few minutes. “Hair, hair, blindness everywhere.” A rhyme for him. I ran to the buffet and picked up the wooden cat. Heavy—five pounds at least. I swung it hard against his head.
The crack sounded deafening. He fell, moaning. I hit him against his ribs, and this time he made no noise.
Don’t die, Sir Lerrin! But don’t wake up soon!
I backed away. As I passed the table, I scooped up the tablecloth and held on to the cat sculpture.
Now for the guard outside the door. I opened it.
Still shaking my hair around my chest and shoulders, I rubbed the pendant. The guard shielded his eyes and cried out. I reached for Sir Lerrin’s dagger, then raised the cat instead. Why was I sparing him? This one hadn’t recited anything.
Kyngoll-foolish, he wore no helmet. I brought the cat down twice on his head.
Footsteps.
“Hair, hair, make your magic.”
The figure lurched. As he tumbled backward down the stairs, his hood fell away and I saw his face.
I dropped the wooden cat.
Father!
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HE LANDED IN a heap.
I rushed to him, taking two steps at a time. “Father!”
“Peregrine?” He groaned, then tugged me down and hugged me. I felt his tears on my forehead.
“You came for me!”
“You’re my daughter,” he said into the top of my head, “though you may not have needed me, though you’ve blinded me.” He released me.
“Is it terrible? It will clear.”
“I’m beginning to see again. I’ll try to stand.”
I jumped up and held out my hands, but he managed on his own. He seemed to have appeared, like Halina, like the meal from the tablecloth, out of thin air. He’d risked his life and the whole Kyngoll campaign for me.
I heard muffled shouts.
“Come!” Father opened the door, and the voices became strident. “Hurry!”
I picked the tablecloth up from where I’d let it fall.
Outside, Willem sat on a horse behind a Lakti soldier. With my senses still heightened, I noted the strain in his smile and the misery in his eyes.
Two other soldiers on horseback and one riderless steed waited in the middle of the street. Father mounted, and I leaped up behind him, settling the tablecloth in my lap. He spurred his horse.
Zasha sprawled across the steps to the guildhall, her throat open and blood pooling around her shoulder and neck.
The battle spell flew out of me. I swallowed again and again to keep down my meal. Marla had lost her mother.
But Zasha would have killed Father if we hadn’t killed her.
We clattered down the street. Beyond the town our horses reached full gallop. I wondered why I hadn’t stabbed the guard. Had my Bamarre side reared up? Had it been cowardice?
When we slowed to an amble to give the horses a brief rest, Father said, “Your mother didn’t say she’d given you the pendant. You made excellent use of it.”
I smiled. “Thank you.”
The first to meet us outside the camp was Sir Noll. Willem jumped off his horse, and the two shook hands awkwardly.
But then Sir Noll grasped his son’s shoulders. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m as well as I was at battle’s end.”
I took that to mean not very well.
But Sir Noll seemed satisfied. “I’d have come for you, too, but Tove swore he’d do as well without me, and I could run the war if any—”
“Perry had already escaped.” Father dismounted, too. “My soldier girl.”
How I loved pleasing Father, being the daughter he and Lady Mother admired, being a Lakti.
We marched triumphantly through the camp, where no one seemed to be asleep.
“Noll, my daughter will stay with me tonight. I have to keep looking at her to persuade myself she’s safe.”
Sir Noll said he planned to do the same. They left.
Father guided me by my elbow, as if I were an invalid, to his tent. Inside, he sat me in his own chair and went to the coal brazier, where he added fresh coals from the scuttle.
Then he took the stool next to me. “Don’t spare me, Perry. What did they do to you?”
I grinned. “They made us endure an endless recitation of our Lakti faults.”
Father squinted at me. “I want the truth.”
I put the tablecloth on the low table in front of me. Then I stood, removed my cloak, and held out my arms, turning slowly so he could inspect me.
“Wasn’t your hair shorter last night?”
I’d forgotten! My hair now touched my waist. What to say? I was dreadful at lying. “Was it? I don’t think so.”
“Weren’t you saying something about your hair when you blinded me?”
I forced a laugh. “Lady Mother says it’s my one beauty.”
“It’s not!”
I really laughed.
He realized his mistake and laughed, too. “I mean, you have many beauties.”
“The Kyngoll were surprised at how thick it is.” I sat again. “
I pretended it’s magical. When I used the pendant, I shined it through my hair.”
“I suggest you take it off now in case your beautiful hair rubs it.”
I put it in its velvet case in the purse at my waist.
“You used it admirably. Cleverly.”
“Sir Lerrin accused the Lakti of being clever but not deep thinkers.”
“Sir Lerrin himself?”
“Is he their commander?”
“He is. What else did he accuse us of?”
I told him what I remembered. He asked a host of questions about Sir Lerrin. When I told him that the knight could recite poetry, he snorted.
“That, Perry, is why we’ll defeat them.” He added, “They were trying to learn our secrets.” He chuckled. “Clever, but not deeply thought through. Perry, love, were you frightened? They were going to kill you in the morning, I suppose.”
“They told me they don’t kill their prisoners. The woman who died outside the guild—”
“Say that again.”
“The woman—”
“Before that. They told you they don’t kill their prisoners?”
“Yes, Father.”
He stood and paced.
“What’s wrong?”
He sat again. “Never mind.” After a minute, he shrugged. “It’s nothing you can’t hear. They captured two soldiers last year. Suppose their allegiance changed . . .”
“Did they know any secrets?”
“No, but our soldiers can teach them our way of fighting, our refusal to give up. Even soldiers foolish enough to be captured are superb fighters.”
“Do you think I was foolish?”
He hesitated. “A little.”
“Did I disappoint you?”
“No. Definitely not. You’re still a child, and Willem is just out of childhood. I expect he was lost in describing his triumph and you were listening raptly.”
Something like that, except for the triumph.
“I’m proud of you. I’ve been proud of you since you toddled toward me the first day I saw you.” His smile widened with the recollection. “You fell and picked your own self up, tiny as you were.” He showed me with his thumb and forefinger, as if I had ever been an inch tall. “You’re the best child I can imagine.”
My eyes brimmed. Joy filled me, and the first peace I’d felt since before Halina showed me the vision. But, wanting more, I just said, “I’m forever disappointing Lady Mother.”
“You can’t possibly disappoint me.”
There. Nothing to worry about. I could be both a Lakti and a Bamarre. I smiled while tears streamed. Lakti smile, Bamarre tears.
Father stood me up and hugged me. “You’ve had a hard day. You can cry.” He chuckled. “I won’t tell your mother.”
I sobbed against him, and he held me until my tears stopped. He let me go then and went to the high table, where he crouched to pull the basket out. “I have more figs tucked away.”
“You said you’d love me if I were short—” My chest felt tight.
“And there are—” He looked up at me. “Darling, why short? You’re not short.”
“Or anything.” I swallowed. “Like, what if my parents were Bamarre?”
He exploded in laughter. “You’re a paragon of a Lakti! Love, you’re not a Bamarre.”
I said nothing.
He stood and took my hands. “You want to know if anything—anything!—could make me not love you.”
“Yes!”
He sighed. “Perry, I’ve never pretended to be perfect.”
“You never give yourself airs!”
“A kind interpretation.” He put the basket on the table and sat in his chair. “Doubtless there are worthy people among the Bamarre, but I couldn’t love one of them. You’ve seen how they disgust me.”
There it was.
“Can you accept that in me?” he asked.
“Of course. I love you.”
But he didn’t love me, not all of me. The ground seemed to shift and the tent to revolve. I spread my legs for balance. The world righted—or wronged—itself into a new arrangement.
“Are you well?” He was at my elbow.
I nodded. “I think it’s . . . everything.” One thing, really. I couldn’t go on as his pretend child.
“You had a thrilling evening, darling. Sometimes, after a hard battle, I think I’m fine, but then my knees buckle and I have to sit. Luckily, I found the cure.” He waited.
I tried to sound curious. “What is it?”
“Figs!” He held them out, looking eager.
How charming he was—to a Lakti.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I TOOK A fig. My mouth was so dry I could hardly chew. “Delicious.”
We shared the treats in what would once have been a companionable silence.
The seven-league boots! Which were in my tent.
After Father fell asleep I’d slip out, get the boots, don them, and go—somewhere.
Eventually, he said, “Your mother would be furious that I kept you up so late.” He smoothed the linen across his pallet. “Take it. I’ve slept on the ground before. I’m going out. I want to plan tomorrow’s battle, but I’ll be right outside the tent.”
I lay down in all my clothes. He’d expect that. The brazier coal was spent, and the air had chilled.
He knelt next to me. “My brave child.” He stood and left.
I’d always believed he loved me more than Lady Mother did. I squeezed my eyes tight to hold back the tears. They came anyway, but I kept myself from sobbing. I didn’t want him to hear, to comfort me. A river seeped out of me until I was finally empty.
Raising myself, I tied the tablecloth around my waist under my cloak, although I couldn’t leave yet, not with him right outside. How long could he stay in the cold?
Long. He was a Lakti, born and trained.
Despite myself, I slept—
—and woke when I heard movement. Groggily, I raised myself on my elbow. “Father?”
Two guards hauled me up. The tent flap had been pulled back. Father stood in the opening, and behind him, a gray predawn.
His face! The polite mask. He wiped his hands on the front of his cloak, again, again.
He knew!
“Your questions about loving you made me curious, so your maid and I had a conversation, and she told me the truth. Now give me the pendant.”
With icy fingers, I slid its pouch off my belt and dropped it into his hand. Had he hurt Annet?
He told the guards, “Regrettably, Peregrine has displeased me.”
How much had Annet told him?
I held myself in a vise of control. If he hoped to see Bamarre weakness, he would not.
“Take her to the south tower and make sure she can’t get out.”
Imprisonment! My control broke. I tried to squirm away. “Father! Don’t shut me in!”
As they bore me out, I cried, “I can’t bear it! Father, you know I can’t stand it! Please!”
For the second time, I was slung over a horse, this time by my own countrymen. The horses trotted, and too soon we reached the south tower, half a mile from camp.
I was lifted from the horse—lifted carefully, handled gently. Father hadn’t told the guards I was a Bamarre. They didn’t know if his displeasure would end and I’d be his beloved daughter again.
The tower loomed as we approached. I saw fist-sized stones cemented in place with daub; a crenellated roof with uneven, crumbling teeth; small windows near the top and nowhere else; and an iron-banded wooden door.
Terrible!
A guard unlocked the door with a huge bronze key. The hinge creaked. I smelled stone and mold.
They had to drag me in.
A guard spoke absurdly polite words. “We bid you good day, young mistress.”
They turned to leave, but I grabbed the arm of one of them. I would remember his face forever. Gray mustache, watery brown eyes, jowly cheeks like a bulldog’s.
“Take me with you, I beg of yo
u. Father doesn’t mean it. It will save you the return trip. Don’t—”
He put me aside. The door thudded shut. No light. No food. No blanket.
I crumpled into a heap.
When I returned to myself, my mind divided into a sensible self and a frenzied self, and the two began to jabber at each other.
I can escape. I should look around.
I’m trapped!
The darkness was complete.
I should pretend there are no walls. If I can’t see them, they may not be there.
If I can’t see them, they could be closing in!
Both halves shouted out loud, “Halina! Help me!” My cry echoed around and around.
I took shaky steps until I reached the wall. Moist, cold stone.
Was Father thinking of me? Changing his mind? How could he do this to someone he loved?
What had he done to Annet? Could he have killed her?
Had she given me up easily to save herself, whether that had spared her or not? How much had she told him?
I felt along the wall, reasoning, with what reason I had left, that there must be a stairway. Spider strands covered my face. At last I came, not to stairs, but to a ladder, which I didn’t have the sense to test before climbing. I went up like a crab, clinging to the rungs and the sides. Luckily, they held my weight.
Finally I reached the next story. The opening for the ladder, which continued upward, let in faint light from the story above, where the windows must be. I climbed again.
Eight windows, all barred, the bars too close together to squeeze between.
The windows weren’t glazed or even covered with oiled parchment to block the cold. Through the first window I went to, the sun was the tip of a fingernail above the horizon. A hawk flew black against the pale sky.
I ran from one window to another, leaping over gaps in the floorboards. The windows were no higher than my chest; the wooden ceiling hung only a few inches above my head. The window bars didn’t budge when I shook them.
At the last window, I beat on the bars with my fists, then banged my head on the sill. I huffed, “Be a Lakti. Be unafraid.”
Halina!
Eventually I gave up and collapsed. The light grew gradually. I lay in a pool of hair. Dust and spider threads and perhaps spiders themselves spangled the strands.
My stomach grumbled. The tablecloth!