POPPI, DRUALT, AND I continued putting the cottage to rights.
What were Lord Tove and Lady Mother saying to each other right now?
The snail shell!
I opened my purse. When I put the shell to my ear, I heard people in the village and soldiers in Lord Tove’s camp (Willem’s voice not among them), but I didn’t hear Lord Tove or Lady Mother, who either were silent or had moved too far away for the shell to hear.
Annet began to say something in the Ships’ house, but I pulled the shell away without listening. On top of my other offenses, I didn’t want to spy. I handed the shell to Drualt, whose face lit up when he put it to his ear, although Poppi frowned.
After listening for a few minutes, he announced that His Master-ship had pronounced the tablecloth’s desserts excellent. “His Master-ship said to Her Mistress-ship, ‘If only you could please me more often.’”
I understood Mama’s pity.
Poppi took a turn listening. Finally, he lowered the shell and said that one of Lord Tove’s soldiers had stopped at every door to promise the gold purse for information about me. “The Lakti will want it, and the others will be tempted.”
“Dyrin!” I cried.
“What about Goodwife Dyrin, begging your pardon?” Poppi said.
I described my mistakes. “That’s when my niece said I had phlegm fever.”
Drualt laughed. “Mama is quick!”
Poppi grinned. “She is.” He squinted. “I doubt Goodwife Dyrin would ever imagine that Aunt Nadira is you, but your arrival just when Perry might have come is a difficulty. And you misspeak almost every time you speak, begging your pardon.” He put the shell on his table, obviously taking possession of it.
I didn’t argue, though it was Willem’s gift and all I still had of him.
When Annet and Mama came back, Mama began my instruction in being a Bamarre. The lesson continued late into the night. Finally, when we stopped and I stretched out on my pallet, even that was wrong. The Bamarre didn’t sleep on their backs as if they were safe anywhere.
In the morning, she woke me before dawn to begin again.
“Begging your pardon,” she said, “you’ll have to stay indoors until you can do better than you did yesterday.”
My walk was wrong. “Aunt Nadira’s person is soft, but you make her angular. Think curves! And you move too fast!”
I crossed yet again from the cottage hearth to the door.
“Not so fast, if you please!” Mama said, again and again.
My posture was too stiff, my gaze too direct.
After Mama left, I practiced, because we Lakti persevered.
That evening, during our meal, Baka barked sharply.
An envelope was slid under the door, and I recognized Lady Mother’s seal. Poppi and I stood, but, realizing I should, I let him get it.
He opened it and read for only a moment. “It’s to you, Aunt Nadira.” He passed it to me.
The first word was Dearest. I couldn’t read further because I was sobbing. The parchment rattled in my shaking hand.
What sort of Lakti had I ever been if one word could undo me?
Dearest Perry,
Lord Tove no longer trusts me when it comes to you. I am convinced that if you make yourself known to him, he will imprison you forever or worse.
Behead me? Hang me?
He will accord the same treatment to your Bamarre family, as I expect they realize.
You needn’t fear he will reveal you to be a Bamarre, which would shame him, perhaps the only hazard you do not face.
If I had been a softer sort of mother, you might have come to me rather than to Willem.
She didn’t realize Lord Tove already knew when I told Willem. She thought I had gone to my friend for advice rather than to her. If I had told her as soon as Halina told me, would I still be a pretend Lakti? I didn’t know.
However, I am the sort of parent who would never thrust you from my heart. Once lodged there (which happened the first moment I saw you), you remain forever. Know that I will do everything in my power to save you.
But I understood now, as I hadn’t then, that she would have protected me, no matter my choice. I had misjudged her.
Now you must be a Bamarre, which I’d wished to spare you. I hope the family of your birth will appreciate the sterling you are made of.
Your Lady Mother
I wept again. I was made of water, not sterling!
When I finally recovered, I gave the letter to Mama and Poppi so they wouldn’t suspect me of keeping secrets.
Mama said, “Lady Klausine cooked her own pudding, and now everyone is choking on it.”
“We’re in an adventure! Thank you, Aunt Nadira.”
My darling brother!
Lady Mother and Lord Tove camped near the village for three more days. When I heard they’d rode off, I wondered if I’d ever see either of them again.
They left behind two soldiers, a young man named Joram and an older woman named Kassia, whose charge was certainly to spy on the village and especially on us.
At home we continued to whisper. I struggled to remake myself a believable Bamarre, but with scant success. I failed to apologize; I forgot to be grateful; I said straight out what I thought; I didn’t even call colors by their correct names. To my eyes, cobalt, indigo, and navy were the same dark blue.
After squinting longer than I’d ever seen, Poppi declared the effort hopeless. “Begging your pardon, Aunt Nadira, you’ll be a decade trying and still not learn.”
“You can’t give up!”
Drualt whispered, “Begging your pardon, we Bamarre don’t order each other about.”
I reminded them that Halina said I had to learn to be a Bamarre before I could free them.
Poppi said, “If we defeated the Lakti, however that might happen, we’d be the new overlords. What if we enjoyed being cruel? We’d hate that.”
They all smiled at the irony, and Drualt laughed.
But it was no better to be tyrannized than to be tyrants.
Drualt said, “Begging your pardon, Poppi, I don’t want to be a tailor when I grow up. I’d rather be free.”
Mama snapped, “You’d get yourself killed to avoid sewing a cloak?” Her voice softened. “I’m sorry, Dru.”
If most Bamarre were like my family, Halina was mad to think anyone could save them—us.
Then Mama shrugged. “Begging your pardon, Adeer. I’ll keep trying. Aunt Nadira can’t stay in the cottage forever.”
Instruction resumed. When Mama wasn’t teaching me, I observed.
She and Poppi weaved around each other as if in a courteous dance, and she often touched the shoulder or cheek of Annet and Drualt. Poppi often drew one or the other into a hug.
Only Drualt seemed troubled that I was left out. He’d come to me after a loving display and ask about swordplay, which fascinated him. Or he’d tell me a joke and laugh and laugh. I had never encountered a merrier person. Out of all that beset me, he was the one great good.
Once, he whispered, “It’s just the real Aunt Nadira they didn’t love.”
I was at the spinning wheel, the only Bamarre skill I’d mastered. It was the evening of my birthday, which no one remembered. I had turned sixteen.
He continued. “I never met her, but they say she didn’t admire anyone and nothing pleased her.”
Did I love or even like my family?
I loved Drualt without reservation.
But my parents’ constant fear grated. Annet’s resentment of me made me resentful in return. Often I longed for Willem so much I could hardly keep myself here.
Evenings were my favorite time, when I appreciated the best aspects of being a Bamarre. After Mama had given up on me for the night, Poppi and Drualt read poems aloud. The only thing I’d brought with me that pleased everyone was my book of poems.
This happy-sad verse stayed with me:
Lantern-shine, dim but kind—
No starkness in darkness—
Even I please the eye.
Outside, wind and rain,
Weather’s fitful wax and wane.
Tomorrow’s sun will reveal
What night conceals.
All we lack, regret, know,
Forgotten in lamp-oil glow.
During my restriction to the cottage, a peddler named Goodman Marko, a Bamarre, came to the village. Peddlers, in addition to selling their wares, delivered mail and carried parcels. And they provided the Bamarre villagers a rare glimpse of the wider kingdom.
I wasn’t allowed to attend the gathering in Goodwife Dyrin’s cottage to hear the news, but Drualt told me what he remembered. A blizzard had struck the north; a three-headed piglet had been born in the far east; and King Einar had survived a cold. Goodman Marko didn’t mention my disappearance.
Gradually I improved, interrupted less often, remembered the polite phrases more often, refrained (usually) from insisting I was right—even though I was.
After a month, Poppi and Mama deemed me reformed enough to leave the cottage. Mama put the word out that I’d finally recovered from phlegm fever.
Annet added, “We’ve reminded people how odd and unpleasant Aunt Nadira often was, begging your pardon.” As long as pardon was sought, Annet believed she could never be rude.
Drualt was jubilant. “Now we can free ourselves.” He saw I didn’t understand. “Us—the Bamarre.”
The evening they announced my release, Mama told Drualt and me to pick through an enormous sack of speckled beans and discard the stones and rotten beans. As we sorted, I asked Drualt if he thought himself alone in wanting to be free of Lakti rule.
He whispered promptly, “Goodwife Dyrin made straw mannequins of His Master-ship and Her Mistress-ship. Often, when she comes home, she punches them. I know from Vanz.” Vanz was Dyrin’s son.
A coward’s revenge.
Still, perhaps the goodwife’s anger could be turned into something useful. In an uprising, servants could murder their masters; tailors, like Poppi, could kill their customers.
But Mama pitied her masters. And I hadn’t killed Sir Lerrin or the Kyngoll guard. Maybe too much sympathy—not cowardice—was the Bamarre fault.
“What are you thinking, Aunt Nadira?”
“We have no weapons. No horses. No one is trained to fight but me.” I dropped my whisper even lower. “And I don’t want to kill anyone.” I was like Willem in this, after all.
“Everybody says, ‘Bamarre’s future; Bamarre’s freedom,’ and we greet each other with ‘Across the Eskerns.’ Besides, there are more of us than there are of them.”
“Here. In Gavrel. But not everywhere.”
“A good commander knows her troops.”
I was startled. “How do you know that?”
“Common sense.” He laughed. “Look, if you please! This is a funny bean. The speckles make a face.” He showed me.
Knowing my troops . . . Mama was livelier and probably cleverer than Poppi. He was more of a deliberator.
“My niece and nephew would be good at strategy,” I said. Annet would keep everybody angry, so we wouldn’t lose our purpose.
Drualt declared, “I’d lead a charge. I’d be the left flank, and you could be the right.”
I smiled. “Thank you.”
He could lead troops—in a few years.
“I’ll be the laughing general; they’ll call me the Laugher.”
I imagined Lord Tove killing him, beheading him, hanging him, running him through with his sword.
Halina, I won’t try to save the Bamarre until Drualt is old enough to protect himself in battle.
I expected her to appear or argue with me in my mind, but nothing happened.
He was watching my face. “Begging your pardon, what?”
“A wily commander bides her time.”
He nodded sagely. “I agree.”
But he didn’t drop the subject and often offered ideas. We should win over the few wealthy Bamarre, take small villages first, progress to castles of lesser nobility.
“Begging your pardon,” I’d say, “but we’re not ready.”
He set me thinking, however, and the thinking became an exercise in war craft, such as I used to work through in fun with Lord Tove.
How might a rebellion be won by untrained soldiers whose habit was submission? Our single weapon was slyness, but the Bamarre couldn’t triumph with guile alone.
Might crossing the Eskerns be more possible than overcoming the Lakti? On this side, tyrants; on that, monsters. I’d choose monsters and freedom. But the pass was guarded to keep us from leaving.
And neither could be accomplished without the will to win—and boldness. What might give them that?
Not I, who had no gift for persuasion, who could convince no one even to like me.