Sem drove until his head was nodding over the reins. When I took them from his hands, he started slightly. Then he clambered into the back of the cart and fell asleep next to his mother. Despite an uncertain road and our wobbly wheel, I drove on until dawn and beyond. As the light crept across the sky behind me, I glanced back often, fearing pursuit. By noon, when we had seen no one, I began to hope. I stopped only twice that day, to water the horse. We shared some bread as we rattled along but I insisted that we push on until it was too dark to negotiate the rutted road.
We spoke little, Amzil and I. There seemed too much to say, and most of it was not what we’d want to discuss before the children. I was pleased when she climbed up to sit on the cart seat beside me, and even more pleased when she timidly put her hand on my arm. I glanced over at her.
“I loved you the way you were,” she said quietly. She still had a smudge of smoke down the side of her cheek.
I had to grin. “Well, I hope the change hasn’t put you off.”
She laughed. “No. But—there’s so much I don’t understand. I know, from what the missus—Epiny—told me that this must be, well, the way you used to be. And she’s told me about the magic and all. But still—”
“I am going to tell you everything,” I promised her. “Every bit of it.”
Then we drove on in silence. I winced as I imagined explaining Olikea and Likari to her. Then, even though my heart sank with dread, I resolved that she would have the full truth. She’d either accept and forgive what I had done, with the understanding that Soldier’s Boy had motivated much of it, or she wouldn’t. But from now on, I wasn’t going to live with pretense of any kind.
As we drove, Kara told the other children a highly colored tale of her adventure and how she had rescued Amzil and me. Sem mocked her; they squabbled; Amzil scolded them and then gave them some cold biscuits to keep them occupied. After that, the children gabbled to one another, and then argued over who would sit where. Amzil matter-of-factly tore up her apron to bandage Kara’s leg and her own legs. Kara drove for a time when Amzil insisted on bandaging my feet as well. I’d been afraid to take the boots off to see how much damage there was. When I did, I felt queasy and it was all I could do to clench my teeth and only groan as Amzil loathingly drew the limp little pink roots out of my feet. Kara watched in horrified fascination, all the while telling Sem, “See, I told you so. You didn’t believe me about that string monster, did you, but see, it stuck strings right into Nevare’s feet.”
“Mr. Bur,” Amzil corrected her daughter and, “Burvelle, actually,” I told Amzil.
She gave me a questioning look. “I’m not going to hide who I am from them,” I told her.
She looked down at the rag that was the remnant of her apron. She folded it carefully. “I’m not sure if I know who you really are.”
I laughed. “Neither am I. But I think we’ll have plenty of time to find out.”
The first night we stopped, I drove the cart carefully off the road and behind a thicket. That evening Sem and I hunted with my sling, but not successfully, for my feet were exceedingly painful. It was just as well we didn’t get anything. We’d have had to eat it raw, for we didn’t dare light a fire. We ate a small, cold meal and then bedded the children down in the back of the cart. The older two fell asleep almost instantly, but little Dia wailed at the dark open sky overhead and the strangeness of it all. As I listened to her thin, woeful voice rising to the distant stars, I almost wanted to join in. Amzil walked her, pacing slowly around the cart, humming, until finally exhaustion won and Dia slept. She tucked Dia in between her brother and sister and then came to stand beside me. She hugged herself in the darkness and asked me the same question I’d been pondering most of the day. “Now what do we do? Where do we go?”
“Far away from Gettys,” I said, striving to sound optimistic and certain. “To a new life.” Very gently I took her in my arms. She turned her face up to mine and I finally kissed her as I’d always longed to, a slow, sweet kiss with her body fitted against my own. She deepened the kiss, and I felt as if we were spinning at the center of something wonderful and deep, something I’d never truly known before this moment. Then she took her mouth from mine and leaned her head against my chest.
“Amzil,” I said, thinking I needed no other words.
But she spoke. “You’ve saved me. More than once. You’ve a right to me now, I suppose. But Nevare—” She hesitated, and that pause was ice down my back. “Nevare, I’ve changed since the Lieutenant and Missus Epiny took me in. I can’t just get by in this life. You may not think so, after what you’ve seen of me, but my mother raised me to be what she was, a respectable woman. Not nobility, like you, no, nothing so grand. But respectable.” Her voice was narrowing, squeezed by tears. “And that’s how I want to raise my daughter. I want Kara to see herself as a woman that deserves, well, deserves to be married to the man she beds. Deserves his respect.” She lifted her hand between us to rub the tears from her face. “However foolish that might seem to you.” Her voice went lower, inviting me to share the bitter joke. “A murderess and a whore wanting to make her daughter think she’s a respectable woman.”
I took a deep and difficult breath. “We’re starting a new life, Amzil. I think we should do our best to start it right.” With a groan, I released her. “I want you, very badly. But I will not claim that from you as if it were a debt you had to pay. Nor do I want you to come to me unaware of who I am. I know that I love you. But you need to know who I am. It will not be easy for me to wait. But I will.” I leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “And we are still fleeing for our lives. Tonight, we must get what sleep we can.”
Although I slept little that night, my dreams were the sweetest they had ever been. And before the dawn, I rousted everyone out for another long day’s travel.
On the second evening that we camped, we settled for the night in a brushy hollow away from the road’s edge. Amzil wanted to boil some water and wash out our injuries, but I was not certain of the wisdom of starting a fire. “If they were looking for us, they’d have found us by now,” she said irritably. “Men on horseback could have overtaken us easily. My feet hurt, and I know yours must. What good does it do us to flee if an infection kills us anyway? If they were going to catch us, they would have by now.”
“It depends on how bad the fire was,” I countered. “They may at first assume that you perished there. And then, when they start tearing down the charred ruins, discover that we didn’t. And send a patrol to hunt us down.”
She gave an impatient sigh. “We took the horse and cart. My children are not in town. Anyone who wants to know, knows that we left town. If they wanted us, they’d have us. I think fire is more important than stealth right now.”
She won, but I gathered the very driest wood and kindling that I could find for her, and insisted that we keep the fire small and smokeless. Yet I was grateful when she boiled water for tea as well. There is something about a hot drink that can put heart back into a man. Just as I began to relax, a slight sound turned my head. An immense croaker bird settled heavily into a nearby tree. I stared at it, waiting, but the ugly thing only whetted its beak on a branch and looked down at us. Amzil and the children paid it no mind. Sem was begging his mother to make hearth cakes like she used to cook, and Amzil was considering our supplies to see if it were possible. I sat and stared at the bird of ill omen. I thought of Spink’s words and, like him, longed to return to a life in which a bird was always only a bird.
“Good evening, Nevare.”
I turned my head slowly. I’d already recognized the voice. Tiber had come up on us as quietly as a stalking panther. He stood at the edge of our camp, looking at us. Kara gave a little shriek when he spoke. Amzil froze where she was, with the pot just lifted off the fire so that she could pour more water on the tea leaves.
“Good evening, Tiber,” I said in resignation.
I think he realized that Amzil was more of a threat than I was. “Evening, ma’am,” he said with a respectful nod to her. He smiled disarmingly and asked, “Could I beg a cup of that tea from you? It smells very welcoming.”
Amzil looked at me. I nodded slowly. Tiber approached our small fire carefully, like a stray cat moving into unfamiliar territory. He smiled at me, nodded to the children, and then hunkered down to accept the cup of tea that Amzil gingerly offered him. He seemed disinclined to speak immediately but I could not stand the suspense. I asked him directly, “What brings you out this way?”
He smiled. “Well, you know, Nevare. I’m a scout. I’m scouting.”
“For what?” I knew scouts had various duties, usually defined by whom the commander was. Buel Hitch had been sent on errands to fetch smoked fish, but also to keep a watch on how many Specks were in the area and to watch for signs of highwaymen working the road. Most often, scouts kept in touch with the indigenous populations and acted as liaison with them. Buel had spoken to me of such duties. It was likely that when he’d died, Tiber had inherited them.
“Well, you’d mentioned you’d been attacked and robbed, so I thought I would ride this stretch of road and see what I could see. I’m pleased to tell you I’ve found no signs of robbers or thieves. Whoever attacked you must be long gone. But that’s not my only errand.”
He blew on his hot mug of tea. I waited. “Gettys is in a bit of a stir. The commander is in the infirmary. The doctor says he probably had some sort of a seizure. His mind hasn’t been clear since then. No one was surprised. He’s seemed a bit erratic the last few months. Poor fellow’s on bed rest now, and Captain Gorling has stepped up to command.” He took a sip of tea and nodded to himself. “I like him. He’s not as excitable as Thayer, except when his wife gets to him. He leads the men instead of driving them. The men seem relieved. The very same night the Captain fell ill, we had a bit of a fire in the old jail. Burned through some beams, and the whole building collapsed into the cells below.” He glanced at me and away, glanced up at the croaker bird and then came back to me.
“But how about you?” he asked sociably. “I thought you were going to stay around Gettys for a while. I even dropped by Lieutenant Kester’s house, same night we had all that excitement. I thought I’d visit and see if you might want to hear about being a scout for the regiment. We’re short on scouts right now. In fact, there’s only one. Me. We lost one of our best scouts last summer in the plague.” He paused and looked at me carefully over the rim of his cup as he drank more tea. I said nothing.
“Fellow name of Buel Hitch,” Tiber went on. “He was before your time at the Academy. You wouldn’t have known him there. He was ‘invited to leave’ when I was just a first year, for pretty much the same reasons I was invited to go be a scout, somewhere else. The man couldn’t tolerate bullies. Hitch wasn’t meant to be a standard-issue officer, but he was a man’s man when things got tough. Knew who his friends were. He saved me from a couple of bad mistakes when I first got to Gettys. And stories! The fellow could tell stories all day, craziest tales you ever heard, mostly about the Specks and their magic. He’d make them seem real. Too bad he’s gone now. I think you’d have liked him. I know he’d have liked you.”
The children had fallen silent. Dia and Kara both crept closer to their mother. Amzil put her arms around them. Sem was in the wagon, unobtrusively looking for something. When he stood up, my sling dangled from his hand and he was breathing carefully through his open mouth.
I was still and silent, the mouse frozen by the watchful cat’s stare. Tiber drank off the last of his tea and set the mug down with a regretful sigh. “Well, folks, I have to be on my way. Thanks for a pleasant pause, but I’ve got a job to do. You watch out for those highwaymen, Burvelle. Oh, and I should warn you. When I left town, there was a rumor about some escaped criminal. Said to be dangerous. I’m supposed to be looking for her right now.”
“Really?” I managed to say.
“Really.” He stood up slowly. “So far, not a sign of her. But you be careful.” He lifted his arms over his head, stretched, and then said, “Oh, pardon me, ma’am. Sometimes a scout just gets used to doing things his own way so much that he forgets how people expect him to behave. But that’s what Hitch said he liked best about this duty. Making his own decisions.” He swung his gaze slowly to Sem. “You a good shot with that thing? There’s a place, just down the hill from here, where it opens out into a little meadow. Bet you could get a nice summer rabbit there. But use a smaller rock than the one you’ve got there. That’s big enough to knock a man cold.” He smiled at the boy in a friendly way, and Sem returned him a sickly grin. I thought to myself that Buel had taught Tiber well. Tiber gave the boy a slow wink and then turned to me. “Well, you take care, Nevare. Nice little family you got here.”
“Thank you,” I said reflexively.
“Good evening, ma’am,” he said to Amzil, and doffed his hat briefly, a courtesy that surprised her. He turned and walked away as softly as he had come. Uphill of us, I heard his horse give a soft nicker. Just before he vanished into the surrounding brush, he turned back. “Funny thing, Nevare!” he called back. “I still can’t stand a bully.” Then he turned and walked away.
We stared after him for a time in silence. Sem hopped down off the wagon and came toward me, sling in one hand, stone in the other. “I thought—” he began quietly.
“I know. I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Oh, thank the good god you didn’t,” Amzil said fervently.
In the bush, the croaker bird suddenly rattled all its pinions. I stared at him. He cawed raucously and then cocked his head at me. “I think that balances nicely,” he said. In a smirking voice he added, “And it was interesting to be the good god for a change. Farewell, Nevare.” He lifted his wings wide, launched awkwardly, caught himself, and then ponderously flapped his way to a higher altitude. He circled overhead once and then flew east.
“Save your stone, Sem,” Amzil advised her son. “That’s a carrion bird. We don’t eat them.”
“He was out of my range anyway. What an ugly bird.”
I’d been the only one to hear his words.
That was the last time a god ever spoke to me. And I haven’t felt the touch of the magic since then. But being freed of the unnatural didn’t mean that life became suddenly easy for us. In fact, the next month was very hard. The weather stayed mild, but food was short and the journey uncomfortable. When we went through Dead Town, it was late in the evening. Not a light showed anywhere. Amzil was very quiet for a time. Dia didn’t seem to recognize the place. As we went past the collapse of their old cabin, Kara asked quietly, “Is this where we’re going?”
“No,” Amzil replied. “Anywhere but here.”
And we did not stop.
I lost count of how many ways I found to keep the cart from falling apart. As time went by and we left Gettys farther and farther behind, we began to stop earlier in the evening. Sem and I hunted meat for the pot or caught fish in the river when we came to it. We did not eat well, but we didn’t starve. I told Amzil my tale, in bits, as we sat by the fire in the evenings after the children were asleep. Much of it was not easy for her to hear. But she listened and she accepted it as truth. Then she told me her own tale and it was enlightening to me to hear of the young seamstress who had married the daring and handsome thief. She’d never liked her husband’s trade, but he was what his father had been before him, just as the good god decreed. And they had been happy there, in their own way, in Old Thares before the city guard caught him one night. And I felt a bit ashamed that it was hard for me to hear of her happy times. But I listened and accepted that that was who she had been.
We married in a small town named Darth. The priest was a young one who had vowed himself to a year of wandering and service. We wed in the courtyard of an inn. Amzil wore wildflowers in her hair. The proprietor of the inn was a widower and a romantic who spread a wedding meal for us and offered us two free rooms. His daughter sang for us and all the inn patrons enjoyed the festivities and wished us well. They backed up their good wishes with a wedding basket full of coins, two chickens, and a kitten. Kara observed that we now had everything we could possibly need.
And much later that night, as I was dozing with Amzil in my arms, she asked me softly, “Is this how you imagined your wedding night?”
I thought of the protracted torture of Rosse’s wedding, the endless preparations and fuss, and said, “No. This is much better. This has been perfect.”
And that, we both felt, truly began our lives together. We left the town as an established household, with Kara holding the kitten in her lap and the two tethered chickens clucking to themselves in one corner of the cart’s bed. We went north, and without quite knowing how we decided it, ended up in a very small town named Thicket, not far from the citadel at Mendy. Unlike Gettys, Thicket’s population had settled there willingly, attracted by gentle land and rich soil. The small farms looked prosperous. Thicket had lost some population to the gold rush to the Midlands, but most of the well-established folk had stayed.
The town was actually glad to see a new family arrive. Amzil quickly found work as a seamstress, and worked longer hours and brought in more money than I did. A local stockman who raised cattle to supply Mendy with meat and leather was glad to let me exchange labor for rent on a cottage. In the evenings, Sem and I walked to a nearby creek to hunt or fish. As often as not, we took Dia with us, for while Kara was old enough to help her mother with the simpler sewing, Dia was still a thread-tangler.
At night, when our candles were too dim a light for good workmanship with her needle, Amzil and I sat near our hearth and talked. In many ways, we scarcely knew each other, but I never doubted our compatibility. I played simple games with the children and tried to continue the education that Epiny had begun with them. Sem did not like his letters, but quickly saw the use of numbers. Kara read and did her sums but spent most of her time learning embroidery stitches from her mother. Beyond those basics, I told them stories from the history of Gernia, and the boy loved those, especially the ones about famous battles, the bloodier the better. The night that he rose from listening to tales to go off to bed and exclaimed, “When I am old enough, I shall be a soldier, and win fame and fortune on the battlefield,” my heart suddenly smote me.
“Well, what do you expect?” Amzil asked me later as we prepared for bed. “When it is the only sort of story you tell him? You make it sound so exciting that I’ll be surprised if Dia and Kara don’t try to enlist as well.” She said the words with humor, but I suddenly perceived a lack in my life. The tales I told the boy were the ones I had best loved when I was that age. Buel Hitch had perhaps been wrong. Soldiering might have been the only future that was ever offered to me, but that did not mean that it had not been my dream as well.
I lay awake that night after Amzil slept and considered my life. We were thriving. If Amzil continued to have as much work, we’d soon have enough saved to find a little place of our own, and then I could start to really build something. I lacked for nothing. I had a woman who loved me for who I was, and three fine children. Sem was as smart as a whip, Kara would soon be as skillful with a needle as her mother was, and Dia was everyone’s sweet little despot. What more could I ask for that the good god had not already given me?
And yet, I was not as content as I should have been. There was an empty spot inside me, and I wondered at nights if it were because Soldier’s Boy had taken some essential part of me or because of some shallowness in myself. I threw myself more earnestly into my work, repairing and improving the little house we rented until even the landlord commented that it didn’t look like the same place.
Several times Amzil reminded me that I had promised to write to Epiny. There was no mail or courier service out of Thicket, and I had neither pen nor ink, I would remind her. But one day close to the end of summer, she abruptly declared that I had procrastinated long enough and that it was cruel of me to leave my cousin and my sister wondering what had become of us. Besides, she wished to see a larger town, and there were things she needed that the small store in Thicket didn’t carry. So we loaded the children into the repaired cart, hitched up our nag, and made the trek to Mendy.
Mendy was a serious citadel, three times the size of Gettys. A prosperous little town surrounded it, a place of straight streets and tidy buildings with a bustling population. I found a letter-writer’s stall without difficulty, and bought paper and ink and pen from the proprietor. I composed letters to both Epiny and Yaril, begging forgiveness both for the delay and for the brevity with which I updated them. I also asked each to write to the other with my news, in case either of my posts went astray. I paid the substantial post fee for each letter, and made sure that the owner of the shop knew I’d be returning in a month to check for a reply. “Likely it will come faster than that, young man. We’ve got a good service now between here and Franner’s Bend, and they send out regular deliveries from there,” he assured me.
That business tended to, I went to meet my family. Amzil had told me she would be visiting a large dry-goods store that we had seen, and there I found her, Dia in her arms, driving a hard bargain with the harried man behind the counter. She was buying fabric and notions, as well as a number of minor household goods we’d been unable to obtain in Thicket.
When she noticed me watching, it seemed to give her more energy for the bargaining, and shortly after that, she’d reduced the poor man to compliance. That finished, she collected Kara, who was lovingly surveying a display of sugarplums, and declared she was ready to go.
“Where’s Sem?” I asked her.
“Oh, he saw the sentries changing, and nothing would do but he had to stand and gawk at them. No doubt he’s still there.”
I took the heavy basket she carried on one arm and she claimed the other. Dia filled her other arm and Kara trailed after us as we walked to the cart. “Do you know, there are only two dressmakers in this town, and one is so expensive that only the wives of the officers can afford her services?” Amzil told me in a hushed voice. “I visited the other’s shop, and while he sews a fine seam, he doesn’t really have an eye for how he puts his dresses together at all. Fancy a yellow dress, with red cuffs and collar! And that’s what he had in the window. Nevare, if we saved a bit more and moved here, and if Kara practiced her embroidery stitches a bit more, we could do quite well here. Quite well indeed.”
I scarcely heard her. A mounted troop of cavalla came up the street behind us, returning to the citadel from some mission. I turned to watch them come. The men had weathered faces, and their uniforms were dusty, but they rode as cavalla should, and their proud horses, however weary they might be, held up their heads and trotted in ranks as they came. Their colors floated over them, a small banner held aloft only by the wind of their passage. I watched them pass, a boy’s imagined future come to life. A young lieutenant led them, and just behind him came his sergeant, a husky man with long drooping moustaches and a permanent squint. At the end of their line, with them and yet apart, came a scout. With a lurch of my heart, I recognized him. More than a decade of years had been added to his face since I’d seen him stand up for himself and his daughter at Franner’s Bend. As he passed, he glanced my way. I suppose I was staring, for he gave me a nod and touched his hat to Amzil before he rode past, following the troops. I felt as if hooks dragged at my heart as I watched them go by. There, but for strange luck and stranger fortune, went I.
“Look at Sem,” Amzil said softly. I followed her gaze to the boy who stood, awestruck, by the side of the road. His face shone as he looked up at the passing troops and his mouth was ajar. I saw the last rank of horsemen grinning at the small boy’s worship. The trooper closest to him snapped him a salute as he passed and Sem gave a wiggle of joy. “He looks just like you,” Amzil added, startling me from my reverie.
“Who? That trooper?”
“No. Sem. Staring with his heart in his eyes.” She gave a small sigh. “You’ll have to temper the tales you tell him, Nevare. Or somehow make him understand that only a soldier’s son can become a soldier.”
“That’s not always true,” I replied, thinking of Sergeant Duril. “One of the best soldiers I ever knew was really the son of a cobbler.”
“You’re the son of a soldier,” Amzil said quietly.
“And now I’m a hired hand for a cattleman,” I said without rancor.
“But you shouldn’t be,” she said.
I made a sound of dismissal and gave a shrug. Her grip tightened on my arm as we walked. “Do you think I never heard Epiny and Spink talk about you, and how much you dreamed of a career? They often spoke of what it would be like if you could come back, clear your name, and serve alongside Spink. I don’t think they could imagine you doing anything else except being a cavalla officer.”
“That’s gone,” I said.
“Why? Why couldn’t you enlist here? Use your real name; you’ve never signed up with it before. I don’t think you’d be a common soldier for long. You might not be an officer, at first, but even if you never rose to the rank you were born to, you’d still be what you’d dreamed of being.”
“Amzil—”
“Don’t you think I know how important that is?”
“I’ll think about it,” I said quietly. And truthfully, for I knew I could not help but think about it. We collected Sem and headed back to Thicket. The ride home was quiet, the children asleep in the cart bed while I was caught in my own thoughts.
Two nights later, at dinner, Amzil abruptly asked me, “What holds you back from doing it?”
“Fear,” I said shortly.
We both noticed the children listening to us, and let the conversation die. But later that night, as we nestled together, Amzil asked without preamble, “Fear of what?”
I sighed. “When my father first disowned me, he was very angry. And very thorough. He sent out letters to the commanders of various forts, letting them know he had taken his name away from me.”
“You still managed to enlist at Gettys.”
“Oh, yes. He left me that, telling them that if they could give me any sort of a life as an enlisted soldier, he would countenance that. Even so, I had to use a different name. He’d forbidden me his.” I sighed again. “Amzil, I don’t want to go back to living under that shadow. I don’t want to enlist as someone’s failed, disowned son.”
She was quiet for so long that I thought she had fallen asleep. Then she said, “You’re already living as someone’s failed, disowned son.” She softened the words by putting her arms around me. “You should stop doing that,” she said quietly. And then she kissed me, and for a time I failed at nothing.
When the month had passed, I returned to Mendy to see if I had any replies to my letters. Amzil rode along, tight-lipped and fairly quivering with excitement. In her lap, she carried two paper-wrapped dresses she had sewn. She intended to show them to the dressmakers in Mendy, to see if one of them might take her into his shop as an assistant. Kara and Sem each clutched two precious pennies they might spend. Dia held hers in a tiny cloth bag Kara had sewn for her. I left them to their errands and went to the letter-writer’s shop.
He charged me threepence for holding my post for me, and I thought it an outrageous sum until he reached under his counter and brought out the stack of envelopes he had carefully tied up with string. “You’re a popular man,” he observed, and I dazedly agreed with him. I left his shop. Across the street, there was an open-air booth where a man was selling sweet tea and brown cakes. Feeling guiltily self-indulgent, I handed over one of Amzil’s hard-earned coins for a cup of tea and a cake with raisins in it. Then, my courage bolstered, I went through my stack of post. There were five fat envelopes from Epiny and two from Yaril. One of the ones from Yaril had been sent from Old Thares.
I felt a strange sense of trepidation as I turned them over in my hands. Did I want to open these things, open the door and admit the Nevare I’d been? For a moment, I considered tearing them up and tossing them to the wind. I could walk away from that Nevare just as I’d walked away from Soldier’s Boy. Amzil and I had begun something new together. Did I want to risk unsettling that? Then I decided that I already had, when I’d sent my first two letters. I sighed, carefully arranged my post by the date it had been sent, and opened the first one.
It was from Epiny, and she went on for seven closely written pages about how she had worried about me, and the conditions of chaos at Gettys on the night that we had fled and in the days since then. Tiber had indeed called on them that evening, and made her so nervous that she had scarcely been able to eat a bite of the meal she prepared. As the scout had told me, the fort was now under the command of Captain Gorling and had returned to a modicum of military stability. She and Spink were delighted to hear that Amzil and I were safe and doing well. They missed the children dreadfully, and was I keeping up with lessons for Kara and Sem? She went on for two pages about what I should be teaching them before saying she’d had several delightful letters from my sister, who had tremendously enjoyed her visit to Old Thares and was getting along famously with Epiny’s mother and sister. She closed with an admonition that I should write back immediately to let her know how we were doing, and in detail. I smiled and set it aside.
The second letter was from Yaril. She first assaulted me for leaving her in ignorance so long, and then begged me to forgive her for responding with such a short note. She was packing to go to Old Thares with Aunt Daraleen and Cousin Purissa. Uncle Sefert would be staying on at Widevale for an extended visit. He seemed to feel his presence could help his brother and that the holdings there needed a man in charge for a time, with all the new developments going on due to the gold discovery. (She trusted that Cousin Epiny had informed me of those and she wouldn’t bore me with the dull details.) Father did seem much better when Uncle Sefert was with him. Uncle Sefert suspected he had suffered a stroke that had affected his mind, but hoped that company, the conversation of his brother, and a gentle resumption of a complete life might restore him. Uncle Sefert had commended her for choosing Sergeant Duril as her overseer and promised to keep him in that capacity. Oh, and Uncle Sefert said he would be writing to me very soon, and Sergeant Duril was overjoyed to hear of my survival and Aunt Daraleen sent her very best wishes to me as well. And that was all she had time to write as she was to leave for Old Thares on the morrow and wasn’t half packed yet, and she wanted to take a goodly selection of her frocks, even if Aunt Daraleen thought them a bit provincial and wanted her to buy all new ones as soon as she reached Old Thares.
I both smiled and frowned to hear Yaril sound so giddy and girlish again. I had left her with heavy responsibilities. Belatedly I thought we should have brought our uncle into our difficulties months ago. I was glad that Yaril could have some time free of worries and that my father was in good care.
With a smile, I opened Epiny’s next letter. She missed me. Spink missed me. They both missed the children horribly. Solina missed Kara. Why had not I written back yet? Was all well? Gettys was in a state of flux again. It looked as if they would all be shifted back to Franner’s Bend to rejoin the rest of the regiment. She did not bother to tell me which regiment would be coming in to replace them. Instead, she was bubbling with the idea that Spink was very likely going to become a captain much sooner than they had expected. After several delays, the new rules of male succession had been approved by the Council of Lords and sanctioned by the priesthood of the good god. For a change, a church decision made sense to her. Now younger sons could be legitimately moved up to be heirs, for if the good god did know all, then he undoubtedly knew which heir sons would die young and had, in his wisdom, decreed that noble soldier sons could also serve as heirs. It would not affect Spink, of course, for which they were both grateful. He loved his elder brother far too much to wish to take his place. But it had affected a number of the officers in the regiment, and some of the older officers would be leaving the military to go home and assume the duty of being heirs. Spink had told her it greatly increased the chance that he would be promoted when the regiment was reunited, and oh, wasn’t the prospect of Franner’s Bend exciting? She’d be able to visit Yaril from time to time and get to know her properly. She, too, scolded me for not writing back more quickly.
The next letter was from Yaril. She wrote that she had hoped to hear from me by now. Her next sentence apologized for what was undoubtedly going to seem to me like a transgression on my dignity. She assured me that Aunt Daraleen had first come up with the idea, and that she and Purissa had merely gone along with it. At first it had seemed to Yaril no more than a prank, but she hoped that I would agree that the ends justified the means.
Aunt Daraleen had become a medium, and was currently the Queen’s favorite mystic advisor. The spirit of a Speck wisewoman spoke through Daraleen, telling the Queen many great secrets of their spirit world, and revealing to the Queen why the King’s Road had failed. Through Lady Burvelle, the secrets of the Speck ancestor trees were revealed to the Queen, as well as the spiritually enlightening properties of certain herbs and mushrooms and rich dishes. The Speck wisewoman revealed to the Queen the epic love story of how she had fallen in love with a noble soldier son, seduced him from his duty, and endeavored to have him join her forever in tree love.
My ears burned red as I realized how much of my private life Yaril had become privy to, and that my sexual escapades with Olikea and Lisana were Daraleen’s fodder with which to titillate the Queen and her court ladies. No one at court knew the true identity of the “dashing young soldier,” but that was small consolation to me. Yaril and Purissa greatly enjoyed their supporting roles as they tended to the moaning and twitching Lady Burvelle when she fell into her trances. Aunt Daraleen had hired an ambitious and very handsome young man as her secretary. He attended on her daily, writing up her revelations as chapbooks. Each was published, chapter by lurid chapter. The printers could scarcely keep up with the demand. I could read between the lines that my uncle was horrified and humiliated by his wife’s dramatics, yet Daraleen finally had everything she had longed for. She was the Queen’s favorite and a woman of great power now in Old Thares. Not only was it likely that Purissa would become engaged to the Crown Prince, but that Yaril might choose whomever she wished for a husband from among both old and new nobility.
I worked my way hastily through the remaining letters. Epiny had heard of her mother’s charlatanism and was both horrified at her antics and pleased that the King’s Road would progress no farther and that the sacred trees were now under the Queen’s own protection. Every other sentence seemed to be an apology to me that the secrets I’d entrusted to her and Spink were now the stuff of popular literature. Over and over, she assured me that the identity of the “mysterious young nobleman” was safe, and that there would be no tarnish on the Burvelle name.
Yet her letter was laced with good news as well. The Queen had proclaimed that all kaembra trees were sacred. No more would ever be cut. The Queen herself was planning to visit the “holy grove of the mystical ancients” the next summer, to see if she and her “medium” could not make direct contact with the natural spirits of the great trees. I shuddered. How gullible could the woman be? Yet at the same time, the Queen seemed very shrewd to me, for she had also decreed that to protect the Specks and their otherworldly wisdom, the Crown would now monopolize the tobacco and fur trade with the Specks and that traders who wished to deal with them must purchase a license.
I slid the last letter back into its envelope and leaned back in my chair. I contemplated the busy little town around me. A man hawking fresh bread passed me with his musical cant. A courier galloped past him and pulled his horse up sharply in front of the letter-writer’s shop, sending a plume of dust drifting. A wagon laden with a cage of squawking chickens went by in the other direction. So much life in motion, so many minor occurrences and coincidences, all intersecting in a strange and wonderful web.
I bundled my letters and stared down the dusty street, thinking that the trees of the Specks were now safe. I wondered if this was what the magic had intended all along. Had I trodden that harsh road, tripping from circumstance to coincidence to near death to serve this very end? My words had gone from my aunt’s prying eyes to the Queen’s ear. Lisana’s tree would not fall. She and Soldier’s Boy would know a tree’s life of time together. I had given a rock to an annoying boy, and triggered a gold rush and the burgeoning fortune of my family.
And here I sat, the conduit for vast changes in the world, and what did I have to show for it? I smiled sourly at the vagaries of fortune, and then gave myself a shake. Why, I had it all. My freedom. A woman who loved me. A home of my own making. I stood and stretched. Across the street, the letter-writer came out of his storefront and pointed at me. His eyes were very wide. The dusty courier said something to him and he nodded vigorously. Then he led the courier across the street to me. As I stood up, the letter-writer bowed to me. “An important man, I should have said. I should have known. Yes, sir, this is him, Lord Nevare Burvelle. I can vouch for him. I’ve received many posts for him.”
The courier gave me an insouciant grin, as unimpressed as most couriers seemed to be with their missions. “Pleased to meet you, sir. I’ve a packet for you, one to be delivered directly into your hands.” With a bow, he offered me a large fat envelope made of calfskin. It had been laced shut, and the tied laces were secured with a large blob of hard red wax. I looked at the sigil pressed into it. A spond tree. It had been so long since I had looked upon my family crest that I felt a strange rush of emotion. Whatever was within this packet, it came from my father. The world rocked around me.
“Sir? Sir?” I looked up, vaguely surprised to see the courier was still standing there. I felt as if a week had passed. “Sir, I was told that there might be a reply.”
“Not…not immediately,” I told him weakly.
He nodded, satisfied. “That’s as well. My beast and I could use a day or two of rest and food. When you want to find us, he’ll know where we are, and waiting solely upon your commission.” He tipped his head toward the letter-writer and grinned again. He turned his back on me and sauntered away to where his horse waited. At a glance from me, the letter-writer retreated and I was left alone with my packet.
The label had been addressed in what looked like my uncle’s hand. I instantly feared the worst; my father had died, and this was my notification. It took some little time before I had the courage to break the hard wax and unlace the cords. The calfskin unfolded, revealing a stack of papers. On the top was a thick ivory sheet of my father’s stationery. In a shaky hand, he had written in overly large letters, “Son. Please come home.” The signature at the bottom of the message was unintelligible. I lifted the page and stared at it for a long time before I could set it aside.
Beneath it, again on my father’s stationery, was a letter dated less than ten days ago. “My dear nephew Nevare,” the letter began in my uncle Sefert’s firm, clear strokes.
Please forgive me that it has taken me so long to communicate with you. I have delayed the sending of this letter until I was certain, both of the situation here and of your own circumstances.
Before Yaril departed for Old Thares, she confided much to me. I have also been the reluctant and unwilling receiver of a great deal of information from your journal, via my prying wife’s tattling tongue. I must apologize to you again for her breach of what I regarded as a sacred confidence. And I fear I must also rebuke you, for not taking me into your confidence long ago. As strange as your experience has been and as harsh as your father’s treatment of you was, did it never occur to you to present the matter to me, especially since it seems so tangled with my own daughter’s life? But we will save that discussion for another time, for a late evening with good tobacco and old brandy, when all of us will find it much easier to forgive the others’ transgressions.
I have been very concerned with my brother’s health and state of mind. You must know that your father’s health is failing him. As his elder brother, I find it painful to see the younger sibling that I expected to outlive me in such a state of decline. I have had three doctors in to see him, but they have offered me little hope. My own treatments of him with Bitter Springs water showed some promise, until his most recent stroke three days ago. My lad, I fear that he will never be the man he was and that soon he will no longer be capable of running his own affairs. Your Sergeant Duril has proven to be very capable as an overseer, but you cannot leave the family fortunes in the hands of a hired man and your young sister for too long. So, it is time you ended your wild adventure and came home. Not only your family duty demands this of you, but also the laws of your king.
By now, I am sure you will have heard of the recent rulings on the uniformity of succession by birth order, a clarification by the priests of the good god’s scriptures about the foresight of the good god. I am also sure you must realize your new position. You are expected, of course, to serve as your father’s soldier son during his lifetime, but you are also expected to stand ready to assume your duties as his heir son upon his death or whenever he becomes incapable of managing his own affairs. I fear that that hour may soon be upon you. As the closest male offspring in our family’s line of descent, you in time will also inherit my title and estates. But not for some time yet, your fond uncle is selfish enough to hope. I will also tell you plainly that when that time comes, I hope you will find it in your heart to provide well for your aunt. As difficult a woman as she has sometimes been, she is still the mother of my children and I would wish her respected as such.
In that regard, both Epiny and Yaril have informed me that there is a woman in your life. When I dared to ask if she was of good family and capable of being a loyal wife to you, I received a sermon from Epiny, several pages long, about the right of a man or woman to choose a lifelong mate without regard to such silly things as parental approval. I suppose I must be content that your choice has met with your cousin’s discerning approval. According to Epiny, you have chosen well indeed and I will look forward to meeting this illustrious person who apparently can meet any need of yours that Epiny can foresee you ever having.
Enclosed you will find sufficient letters of credit and cash for you and your family to make the journey back to us. Epiny has insisted to me that it is only right that a commission be purchased for you, and has made a very strong case for you to join Spink’s regiment, pointing out that as it is currently stationed at Franner’s Bend, you could frequently be at home and near your father. Your father has expressed to me his fond hopes that you will, instead, wish to serve your king under the standard of his old regiment. And I have indulged myself by writing to Epiny a three-page sermon in which I have waxed eloquent about the right of a young man to choose the regiment that he wishes to join.
As you can see, we have much to discuss. I will look forward to receiving your response via the courier I have dispatched to Mendy.
With great fondness,
Your uncle,
Lord Sefert Burvelle of the West
I sat for some time in stunned silence. I looked into the packet and found, as my uncle had promised, a letter of credit for a substantial amount, and beneath it, cash carefully packaged in an oilcloth bundle. I hefted it in my hand without opening it. I did not need to. I knew it contained more money than I’d ever held in my life. With shaking hands, I returned it to the calfskin folder. I put the letters back in as well, in the exact order they’d arrived, as if I were carefully restoring a grave I’d disturbed. My heart had begun to thunder in my ears. It was only when I tried to lace the packet shut again and could not that I realized how badly my hands were trembling.
I checked my pockets to see if I had enough coins to buy a second cup of tea. Barely, and for a moment I chided myself for being a spendthrift. Then I laughed aloud, called the serving girl over and asked her to bring me another cup of tea. I glanced up to see Amzil and the children trudging down the street toward me. I hastily amended the order, telling her to bring a pot of tea and half a dozen of the brown rolls with raisins.
Amzil swept up to me in a flurry of skirts and chattering children. Her smile was brimming with good news. She plopped Dia into my lap, and as she sat down, she said with satisfaction, “Our troubles are over. He was very impressed with my work, and said I could start as an assistant at his shop within the week! At twice the rate I’ve been making in Thicket! Now tell me, Nevare, could there be better news than that?”
“Perhaps there could, my dear,” I told her. “Just perhaps.”