AT DAWN LADY Mother came to my chamber with her maid, who carried breakfast on a tray, although usually we broke our fast in the great hall. When they came in, I was standing in the middle of the room, tying my belt around my surcoat.
Lady Mother held a burlap sack and wore her usual stern expression. Somehow I had expected her to be different, though only I had changed. She put the satchel on the floor by my bed.
What would I say if I told her I knew? You ripped me from my life! Or, You saved me from my life!
The maid put the tray on my dressing table. Not enough food for Annet, who was facing the window, pinning up her hair—and who was probably as hungry as I was.
Lady Mother frowned. “Didn’t you sleep?”
I shrugged. “Not much.”
“I hope thoughts of that absurd prince didn’t keep you awake.”
I shook my head.
“Excitement, I suppose. Here. This is for you.” From the purse at her waist she removed a small velvet sack and shook out the contents in her hand.
“Oh!”
In her palm was a silver chain from which dangled a pendant—a circle of worked gold crossed by a tiny silver sword. Along the center of the sword’s blade ran a line of diamond chips.
I’d never had jewelry before. The Lakti didn’t adorn their children at all and didn’t adorn themselves very much. “Thank you.” Tired as I was, I barely held back tears.
“Don’t touch the sword.” She gave me the pendant. “I used to take this into battle.”
Careful to avoid the sword, I slipped the chain over my head. The pendant hung just below the neckline of my surcoat.
“Annet,” Lady Mother said, “look at Perry’s pendant.”
Annet turned. “It’s pretty, Lady Klausine.” She took a step toward me.
“Don’t come closer, but keep watching. Perry, run a finger quickly and softly over the sword.”
I did. A light blazed. I cried out in surprise and stopped rubbing.
“I can’t see!” Annet covered her eyes and bent double.
I gasped. Had I blinded my sister? “Will she see again?”
“Of course.”
The pendant light dimmed after about half a minute.
Lady Mother should have warned Annet, who was still bent over. We watched her. She moaned.
Lady Mother shouldn’t have done it at all. Didn’t she remember who Annet was?
She shouldn’t have done it to any Bamarre.
Annet straightened.
“Can you see?” I cried.
“Everything is blurred.”
“It lasts several minutes,” Lady Mother said. “Soon her sight will be as keen as ever.”
It had been casual cruelty. Had I failed to notice a thousand similar examples? Had I committed many myself?
Lady Mother added, “Keep the pendant safe, Perry. It’s for use in battle, not as an ornament. In battle, don’t touch it unless you must. Victory in a fair fight is best, but use it to save your life. Your fellow Lakti warriors need you.”
Had she forgotten I was ever a Bamarre? Or did she think of it constantly?
“Can it blind more than one person at once?” I asked.
“Two, if their heads are close together.”
“Where did it come from?”
“From sorcerers!” Lady Mother sounded triumphant. “In Old Lakti an apprentice sorcerer always lived at court. But they stayed behind when we left. I don’t suppose any survived.” She sat on my bed and lifted the sack onto her lap, where she worked at the strings.
I had an impulse to shine the sword light on her and run from the room. I could blind my pursuers, race to the stable, gallop across the drawbridge, and never come back.
But I didn’t move, held by feeling for Lady Mother and Annet, no matter what being a Bamarre might mean.
“Old Lakti had elves and dwarfs too, who never troubled us. There.” Lady Mother pulled out two shabby black boots. “These were a fairy gift many generations ago.” She held a boot out to me. “Don’t put it on.”
I took it. It looked big enough to accommodate both feet.
“One step in these will take you seven leagues.”
“Really?” I hugged the boot to my chest, dirty as it was. Seven leagues—twenty-one miles—in a single step! She was giving me the means of escape.
Her face softened. “They may satisfy even your desire to peregrinate.”
“Do I have to do anything to make them go? Say a spell?”
“Just step, but, like the pendant, don’t use them unless you must. And be sure of your direction and distance or you may come to mischief.”
“What mischief?”
She shrugged. “I’ve never used them. I don’t know if they’d tunnel through a mountain or scale it. They might stop with you encased in stone or drowned at the bottom of a lake.”
Oh!
She took back the boot. “Now, eat your breakfast.”
A Lakti breakfast did not coddle: coarse brown bread, hard cheese, lumpy pottage, and lukewarm almond milk. Lady Mother stood over me and watched. I ate as I’d been taught, taking small bites, chewing carefully but quickly, sipping, not slurping.
Halfway through, I swallowed and asked, “Can Annet go to her breakfast?”
Lady Mother’s eyebrows rose above their usual arch. “Annet, you have my permission to leave.”
She went, glancing worriedly at me on her way out, which reassured me that she could see.
“Ragna, would you ask my lord when he needs Perry?”
Lady Mother’s maid nodded and left, too.
“Is there something you want to say?”
I opened my mouth to say I just thought Annet would be hungry—and closed it. Lady Mother would find that suspicious. How much I had changed already!
What could I say instead? “Er . . . Is it safe to have Annet or any Bamarre with us at the camp?”
“Ah.” She nodded.
I felt the usual happiness—and felt unusually odd about it.
“We believe so. Our Bamarre servants allow more of us to fight, and we don’t let them near the battle. Any more questions?”
Taking myself by surprise, I asked, “Will you miss me?”
No nod. “What a question!” She went to my dressing table and opened the drawer where Annet kept the shears. “Your hair may get in your way. Sit.” She gestured at my dressing table.
I did, reluctantly. My hair was my one beauty. As Lady Mother had once said, I was pretty enough: square face; large, square teeth; dark eyes under level eyebrows; small, squarish nose; clear complexion; lips that could have been fuller. It was a blunt Lakti face regardless of my birth, softened by my extravagant hair.
Lady Mother had once speculated about how long my hair would grow if left uncut. “You could sleep on a mound of hair and have enough left over for a blanket.” With unusual humor, she added, “You’d be the ideal of Lakti economy.”
But when it reached my waist, she always told Annet to cut it to shoulder length, which I didn’t mind. Shoulder length was still long.
Now, however, Lady Mother lopped off a hank of hair level with my cheekbones.
I put my hand over the spot. “Do you have to?”
In the mirror I saw her look down at the hair in her hand. “I won’t have your hair endanger you.” She added softly, “I wish I were going with you, but you’ll be back in two months.” Her voice strengthened. “If you need to come home—whatever the reason—use the boots.”
I almost blurted out the truth then. Only caution held me back, but I had my answer. She’d miss me.