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In the past week, Edwin had met with the duke twice and his grace’s chamberlain once. And he’d seen the chief knight in the retinue of the Earl of Atherton, too. Caedmon did most of the talking, of course, but Edwin made a few contributions, now and again. All in all, it felt as if they were making progress, and the Wislicshire troops would be going south to join with Keelshire and Keneshire before too much longer.
School had been busy, too, and getting busier. He had a speech he was supposed to deliver next week in Rhetoric, and at least fifty lines of Tarantellus for Classical Immani. But he didn’t particularly care about that. This was the first really spring-like Saturday of the year, and he had plans to meet up with Penny at the Crown and Gown after supper. He wasn’t exactly sure what was happening between them, or where it was going. And he didn’t like to think what would happen when, inevitably, he had to leave.
Perhaps the usurper would be defeated by the end of the summer, and he could come back here as a student again. Caedmon—or his mother—could be his regent in Formacaster. But either way, he could come back to Atherton in triumph, and Penny would be awed and impressed to discover her “Henry” was actually the king. Her father would be on the losing side of the war, of course. He might even be killed.
Edwin decided to be very noble and magnanimous about it all. “You never minded who I was,” he would tell her, “so I don’t mind who you are.”
That was all far in the future, though. For tonight, he would see her at the C&G and get a bit tipsy and have fun talking and dancing. He dressed in his best tunic and trousers, with a little velvet half-cape that he thought made him look very dashing. He was just debating whether to wear his sword or not, when Caedmon stopped by.
“I am sorry to spoil your evening,” the hillichmagnar said, “but I must ask you not to leave your dormitory.”
“What? Why not?”
Caedmon scowled. “I cannot explain everything at this moment, but suffice it to say that I have reason to think the enemy has an agent here in town.”
“What do you mean?”
“I will have to ask you to trust me. I must speak with the porters and your housemaster. I cannot reveal who you are, of course, but I will try to impress upon them that you are in danger. I shall ask them to check on your room from time to time to make sure you have not been abducted.”
Edwin took off the half-cape and sat on his bed. “This isn’t fair.”
“Few things ever are,” said Caedmon. “Pack your bags, by the way. We may need to leave in a hurry.”
“You mean tonight?” Edwin gasped.
“Most likely not. With any luck, it might be a false alarm. Only time will tell.” And with that, Caedmon left again.
Edwin slumped lower, arms crossed, glaring at the door. “‘Only time will tell’?” he grumbled. “What utter bullshit.”
The more he thought about it, the more he felt he was being very ill-used. Caedmon was doing all the important work here. Edwin was stuck at this school where he had to waste his time on stupid lessons he didn’t understand and get looked down on by people who thought they were better than him. The one single bright spot in the whole experience was meeting Penny, and now he wasn’t even going to be allowed to see her. Worse, he had no way of telling her he was confined to his room, so she would think he had stood her up. And that wasn’t right. She didn’t deserve that. Especially not if he was about to leave the school. What if he never got to see her again?
There was another knock at his door, and Morton Fairwell looked in. “Who’s that tall fellow who’s always coming by to see you?”
“A giant pain in my ass,” muttered Edwin. Then, seeing that Morton was confused, he added, “He’s...um, an old friend of the family, you could say.”
“I’m guessing he brought you bad news. You look distinctly annoyed.”
Edwin explained about how he wasn’t supposed to leave his dormitory, in spite of the fact that he was supposed to be meeting Penny at the C&G in a few minutes.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” said Morton. “Roll up a blanket in your bed so it looks like you’re in it, and then sneak out.”
“You can do that?”
“Everyone can. Everyone does. You’re not a real Atherton student until you’ve gone over the wall at least once, you know.”
With a few minutes’ work, Edwin and Morton fashioned a convincingly human figure in Edwin’s bed, using a spare blanket and some towels. Then Morton showed Edwin how to get out of Storrick Hall through the laundry room and led him off through the twilight to an ivy-covered section of the boundary wall.
“There are supposed to be iron spikes,” Morton said. “But there are places where they’ve been broken off or bent flat. This is one of the easiest spots, because you can use the ivy for handholds.”
Edwin shook Morton’s hand. In a surge of gratitude, he nearly told Morton they were cousins, but he managed to resist. As Caedmon said, it was too dangerous, even when people seemed to be on his side. Then he waved goodbye and climbed alone over the wall.
Morton was right: getting over wasn’t very hard at all. Edwin wondered why the school never bothered to replace the spikes or tear away the ivy. Perhaps they didn’t really care all that much if students broke the rules.
Penny was waiting for him at a table near the fire at the C&G. She had on a green and black silk gown with a little silver belt and a bodice that was cut much lower than usual. Most of the time, she dressed very practically and modestly, but tonight she seemed very mature and glamorous. Her blonde hair was twisted up and piled on her head with ivory combs and diamond pins, leaving her long, slim neck and her shoulders bare.
She smiled when she saw him, a really genuine smile of true affection. Like seeing him was the high point of her day. He smiled back, and then he remembered that he was going to be leaving Atherton soon, one way or another. She thought this was just another night out at a tavern. She didn’t know it might be their last night together.
Her smile faded. “Henry, is something wrong?”
He tried to pretend he was fine. If this was his last chance to spend an evening with her, then he wasn’t going to waste it being sad and moping. But he was apparently very bad at pretending to be happy when he wasn’t.
“Henry,” she said, “I can tell something is wrong. What is it?” She stood and took his arm. “Would it help if we took a walk, perhaps?”
They left the tavern and headed west down the High Street, away from the school. At first, while they were still surrounded by crowds of students and teachers, they said very little. Penny asked about his speech for Rhetoric—perhaps she thought that was what was bothering him. He assured her he wasn’t too worried about it. She asked if he needed more help with his math work. He said he was done with math for the week, and thanked her again for all the help she’d given him.
Her face fell. “But something is upsetting you. Was it something I did?”
“Oh, Earstien, no!” He took a deep breath. “I might have to leave school soon.”
“But you just arrived,” she gasped. “You’ve only been here fifty-five days.” Her face reddened. “I may, perhaps, have been keeping track. But my point is that you haven’t even been here a full term. What happened?”
“It’s my family,” he said. Then he stopped, not quite sure how to proceed.
“Have they run out of money for tuition? I might have a little something saved up from my allowance, and we could talk to the headmaster to see if....”
He wanted to kiss her. In fact, he had wanted to kiss her for some weeks now, but never quite as badly as he did in that moment. He hated the fact that he would have to lie to her. “No, they’ve got the money. But you see...um, my parents need me to, er...come help manage the estate.”
“Oh, dear,” said Penny. “Is your father not feeling well?”
“Yes. He hasn’t been well for some time.” In fact, he had been dead for six years, but from a certain point of view, it wasn’t exactly a lie.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, squeezing his arm. “Maybe you’ll be able to come back in the fall.”
“I hope so,” he said.
They turned at the cathedral and started walking south. Edwin didn’t have a firm idea where they were going, but they had taken a walk into the countryside this way a few weeks earlier, when there was still snow on the ground, and he supposed it would be nice in the moonlight. The houses grew farther apart, and they passed barns and sheds and little livestock pens on either side of the road. The fields here were newly planted, where the land ran down into a low saddle between Atherton and the slopes of the great mountains above it.
“Henry?” she said softly. “Have you ever wanted to become a knight?”
“More than anything,” he answered.
“Then...well, I don’t want to offend you, but would you like me to write to my father? I’m sure he could take you into his service. Or at least find one of his knights who needs a squire.”
This was an astonishingly generous offer, and even if Penny couldn’t speak for Duke Lukas, it was still a very noble thing to do. If Edwin really had been “Henry Harris,” then this would have been the chance of a lifetime. But there was no way he could accept.
Luckily, he was saved from having to answer when the first drops of rain fell. “Oh, no!” said Penny. “And it’s been so nice all day long. We’d better head back to town. We can find a tavern or a teahouse or something.”
They barely made it fifty feet up the lane, however, before the thunder echoed off the mountains and the rain turned into a giant, unstoppable deluge. Edwin gave Penny his half-cloak, but they were both going to be soaked through, and her dress would be ruined, if they didn’t find shelter quickly. Fortunately, there was a little garden shed at the edge of a nearby field, with wide eaves and a stack of dry firewood exactly the right height to sit on.
They sprinted under the eaves and sat down, and they quickly found the shape of the woodpile forced them together so that Penny was practically sitting in Edwin’s lap. They both giggled nervously about that, and Edwin could feel her heart beating fast against his shoulder.
“It’s such a shame,” she said, looking out at the rain. “Here it is, the last night we...well, the last night we might have together in a long time.”
Edwin was trying to ignore her low bodice, inches from his face, or the way the drops of rain glistened there. “Is your dress going to be alright?” he asked.
She lifted a foot and glanced down at the mud-splattered hem. “Probably not, but it was a gift from my Aunt Muriel. She’s always trying to get me to wear things that show off my.... Well, she wants me to wear things that look more grown-up. Let’s put it that way.”
“It’s very nice,” he said, still trying not to look at the bodice.
“You’re very kind,” she said, smiling. Then abruptly, her face fell, and she wiped her eyes. “I’m going to miss you, Henry. Promise me you’ll come back.”
He took her hand. “I will.”
“Good. I’ll hold you to that.” She leaned in and kissed him. At first she barely brushed her lips against his, but then she turned her head, mashing her mouth up against his, and when he opened his mouth a little, trying to catch a breath, she slid her tongue in.
After a minute, she pulled back and asked, “Was that alright? I’ve never done it for real before, but Corrine Ripley and I used to practice with our pillows. Do boys do that?”
“No,” he said. “But I think you’re very good at it. Clearly the practice paid off.”
They kissed again, moving closer this time. She shifted, and suddenly his hand, which had been on her shoulder, was now brushing against something rather more intimate. He pulled away, face burning.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking over at his hand, which he was holding out in the air.
“I’m...um, I’m trying to be a gentleman.”
“Oh.” She kissed him again. Then, with her cheeks very red, she said, “You know, if you wanted to be a little less of a gentleman, I wouldn’t mind.”
So he very carefully moved his hand back where it had been, and then, as they kissed, he moved it around and back, feeling the full curve of her breast. His thumb rubbed against the bare skin at the top, and she let out a little sigh.
He found the laces at the side of the bodice, and he started untying them. He thought perhaps he’d gone too far, but then she started helping. Then he was reaching in and feeling the warm, smooth skin and the weight in his palm. Penny moaned, resting her head against the shed and closing her eyes.
Then her eyes snapped open, and she grabbed his wrist.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“No, it’s not that,” she said, smiling now. “I have a brilliant idea. When you leave, let me come with you.”
“With me?”
“Yes. We can run off together.” She kissed him and took his hand, holding it to the naked part of her chest. “I love you, and if we’re together, we can do whatever we want.”
“But I’ve got to...um, go home. The family estates, remember?”
“Then I’ll go there with you.” She squeezed his hand tighter. “I want to be with you, Henry. I want to do all the things that...well, everything that I’d really like to do right now, to be honest.”
It was such a bad idea, for all sorts of reasons, but she was so beautiful and so smart and so obviously willing. She dropped his hand and reached for the laces of her dress. Oh, holy Finster. She wasn’t going to wait.
“Do you really love me?” he asked. “No matter who I am?”
“Yes.” She grinned. “I told you, Henry, I’m a republican. I don’t care about titles. I don’t care about my family. I want you, no matter who your family is.”
Her laces were coming open, and he caught a flash of pale pink thigh. He was painfully hard now, and he wanted her as badly as he’d ever wanted anything in his life. But it wouldn’t be right to do it if he didn’t tell her who he really was. And if he didn’t tell her, then how could they ever run off together? Besides, she might be pleased to find out he was a Sigor. After all, she didn’t seem to care much for her Gramiren relatives.
“Listen, there’s one thing I have to tell you,” he said, putting out a hand to stop her from opening her dress all the way. “It’s about my family.”
“What about them?” Her brow contracted slightly.
“I’m not Henry Harris, son of a knight.”
“Oh.” She shifted a bit. “Are your people...merchants then?”
“No. No, not merchants. I’m...,” he took a deep breath. “I’m Edwin Sigor. My father was King Edgar, and I’m the rightful King of Myrcia.”
Her expression was entirely unreadable. “Are you joking? This is a very poor time for a joke, Henry.” She tugged her dress closed.
“No. I’m deadly serious. And I can prove it.” By way of proof, he told her about a few of his birthday parties at Wealdan Castle—the ones she had attended years ago. He talked about the games they had played, and the presents, and the food. And as he talked, her eyes grew wider and wider, and he could see the truth dawning.
“You...you’re really Edwin,” she whispered.
He smiled. “Yes.”
With a brutal sweep of her arm, she slapped him across the face. “You complete prick!” she cried, jumping up and hastily putting her dress back together. “You worthless toad!”
He rubbed his face where she’d hit it. “Look, I know your family and mine—”
“Your family are utter monsters. They’re the absolute worst trash imaginable, and if I had my way, and we had a republic, they’d be the first people with their necks in the noose. But I don’t care about them.” She slapped him again, on the other side of the face. “How dare you feel me up under an assumed name! You’re revolting.”
“That’s exactly why I knew I had to tell you,” he said, plaintively.
She stepped out into the rain and looked back at him. “If you’d told me to begin with, I would have at least respected you. Who knows? I might have even fallen in love with you. But now....” She threw up her hands. “Go to the Void, Edwin Sigor. And take your whole fucking family with you.”
She ran off through the storm, and Edwin sat on the woodpile, wondering how things could possibly get any worse. It only took him a minute to figure out how: Penny was furious with him, and there was every reason to suspect that she would tell all her friends at Queen Freyda Hall about her unfortunate brush with a Sigor. By tomorrow afternoon, half the school would know exactly who he was. His cover was completely and irretrievably blown.
“Oh, Finster’s balls,” he said. “I’ve got to find Caedmon.”