It would have been nice if Freddy had been able to make it — but he wasn’t, and Clarice would not pry or act disappointed. If it had been her grandmother who had just passed on, Clarice would not have wanted to spend an afternoon doing something frivolous. Freddy would have respected that wish, so Clarice would respect Freddy’s.

She respected it so much that she had not even called at the fraternity to ask if he would come. She had seen him a few times since he had returned from his grandmother’s funeral, and she knew that false smile and sunny mien he always put on in her presence had to be wearing. She would give him a break for the afternoon, some time to grieve, or maybe only to catch up on all the studying he had been forced to miss. She could watch Kiena’s performance alone.

Clarice just wished she wasn’t thinking so much about Granny as she did so.

She was amazed, too, that the old woman whom she had only met once was already Granny in her head. Maybe it came from hearing Dannie and Freddy speak of her so often. When the time had come to put a face to the name, the only name she had for putting a face to was Granny. And she had said to call her Granny!

The old woman had been … what had she been? Larger than life, certainly. Clarice’s own grandmother had been somewhat in the same mold; certainly she had never been a “proper lady,” but her impropriety mostly came when she locked horns with her son. In public, insofar as Clarice could remember, she had always been a model of grace and poise. A somewhat outspoken model, to be sure, but a model nonetheless. Whereas the only concession Granny had made to politeness was to mention that she was old — and then go and say whatever technically rude but generally highly amusing thing she had wanted to say. Where did she get the bravery? Was it just that she had spent her store of patience, as she implied? Or was there a sort of courage that came with age?

Or had she simply been born that way?

“There you are.”

Clarice looked up and gasped, well, as well as she could gasp while trying to keep to a whisper. “Freddy!”

“You didn’t even wait for me,” Freddy replied, that worn little smile on his lips. The smile he wore when he really didn’t feel like smiling at all. He collapsed into the chair beside her. “Trying to get rid of me?”

“N-no, of course not! I just thought …”

Freddy’s eyebrows went up.

“I thought …” How on earth did one go about saying, I thought you would be too busy grieving to come to a silly concert? How did one say it, moreover, when one’s betrothed was looking at one with a tiny smile and a pair of eyes that seemed dangerously close to hurt?

Clarice finally settled for, “I didn’t think you’d be interested.”

“Not interested? In being with you?” The smile was a little less worn now, a little more teasing. Then it vanished into seriousness. “Besides, I said I’d go.”

“Well, yes,” Clarice admitted, “but that was …”

Freddy’s eyebrows rose in a mute inquiry.

“… before …” Clarice whispered.

“… Oh.”

They both stared straight ahead, neither knowing quite how to reply.

Stupid, Clarice thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid! She should have never said anything. She should have claimed that she had gone to the library to study, lost track of time or thought she had lost track of time, and run here so she wouldn’t be late for the concert. And it was all true, except for the losing track of time bit. And the running part. But Freddy would probably assume that she meant running in a metaphorical sense, anyway. Ladies simply did not run, unless the building was on fire or one happened to be Leona.

“… Clarice?” Freddy whispered.

“Yes?” Clarice replied, too quickly. Damn. She really needed to work on that.

“Granny … wouldn’t want me to, to, stop living just because she was gone.” Freddy turned to her with a faint grin. “I’ll still do the things you want me to do with you. You know. If you want.”

“Of course I want. I just didn’t want to … presume.”

“Impossible,” Freddy replied. What would be suave in other men was only sincere with him. Usually. It was still sincere … but he was trying to be suave. Which could only mean …

He was masking something. And Clarice had not the slightest idea how to get him to unmask it.

How ironic, thought Clarice, turning again to watch Kiena. She had spent too much time — far too much time — masking herself from Freddy, hiding behind any obstacle that bothered to present itself. She should have made better use of that time by getting to know him, not denying to herself that she very much liked what she was starting to know despite her own best efforts. If she had done that, she might know how to unmask Freddy now.

Or she could always just respect the fact that whatever was bothering him, he clearly did not want to talk about it. That had, after all, been her intention when she backed away, leaving him alone to grieve. If he wanted her, he would come find her.

But what had he done, if not come and found her?

“I wish –” Freddy began, and stopped.

“Wish what?” Clarice whispered.

“Noth–nothing. Nothing,” Freddy murmured.

“No …” Clarice laid her hand on the armrest of his chair, close enough for him to grasp if he wanted, far enough away for him to ignore if he didn’t. “What?”

Freddy watched her hand with the glassy eyes of a man whose thoughts were far away. His hand, however, belied his eyes by closing over her hand — and squeezing it. “It’s stupid,” Freddy mumbled, a mumble even when one took into account their voices hushed by necessity.

“No, it isn’t,” Clarice replied, not thinking.

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve never heard you say a stupid thing,” she answered.

Freddy stared at her — then he half-fell forward, one hand over his mouth, the other clutching his stomach. “What?” Clarice hissed. “What?”

“Clarice,” Freddy answered when he could finally speak again, “were you even listening to me all of freshman year? Lord! I said nothing but stupid things!”

“Well, I didn’t mean …” Clarice started, then saw the hole in front of her and the dirt-encrusted shovel in her hand. There was no use digging herself in deeper. “You might have said … silly things, but they’re not the same as stupid ones. Trust me.”

His eyebrows momentarily arched up, and he smiled half a smile. It was the half-smile that Dannie smiled all the time, and Freddy only smiled when he was feeling particularly sardonic — which was to say, practically never. Then he sighed. “Well, you’re about to.” He leaned back so far that his head thunked dully against the wall. “I wish you had … been there.”

“When your grandmother passed? Or the funeral? Or …”

“Both,” Freddy replied. “But mostly the funeral.”

Clarice only had one possible answer for that. “I wish I had been, too. I was thinking of you and praying for you, but …”

“It’s selfish,” Freddy replied, as if he had not even heard her. “You had classes. You had more important things to be –”

“I did not. If I could have managed a way to get there in time, I would have. You know that.”

Freddy shook his head. “You were where you needed to be.”

“No, I wasn’t. I should have been with you.” She reached for his hand again, this time not settling for the half-assed compromise of the armrest. Freddy let her take it. “We’re betrothed, or the next best thing to it. I –”

“Aye,” Freddy replied. “Aye. The next best thing to it.” He sighed. “Your parents didn’t come.”

“Oh, Freddy,” Clarice murmured. “I’m so sorry …”

“Why are you apologizing?” Freddy asked. “You can’t help what they — what he does.”

Clarice cringed to hear the emphasis on he — the same emphasis Clarice and her sisters had used all her life. Freddy had only met her father once and already he was using it. Was Bors really that odious?

“And your mother — at least — I think it was your mother — she sent around some fresh game from your family’s larders. That was kind of her, Clarice.”

“My mother is often kind.”

“Like her daughter,” Freddy smiled.

“Maybe they …” Clarice began. “Maybe they didn’t know when the service would be held?”

“How couldn’t they? My father …” Freddy started. He concluded with a shrug. “My father would have told your father, I’m sure.”

In other words, Richard had been sure that Bors would know about the funeral, where and when it would be. And still Bors had not come. He had probably refused to allow her mother to come, either — or, more likely, simply not told her when the funeral would be, so that she could not humiliate him by doing her duty while he did not.

“They’re never going to accept me, are they?” Freddy murmured. “Your — your family, I mean.”

“No, no!” Clarice exclaimed, or at least exclaimed as well as she could in a whisper. “My mother loves you! And so does Lynn!”

Freddy sighed. “My father was asking me about that.”

“About what?”

“How the Crown Princess and I get along. And how you and the Crown Princess get along.”

“But we all get along fine. Beautifully!” Clarice murmured, mystified.

“I know,” Freddy answered. “But I also know what it means.”

“What … would it mean?”

“That my father has given up trying to get anywhere with your father and brother.”

“… Oh.”

There was nothing else she could think to say. And all she could think to do was look again to Kiena and her playing.

Why? Clarice thought. Why can’t they just unbend and be polite to him? It was Father’s idea that we marry! If I had just met Freddy — if we had just fallen in love — but this whole thing was his idea! Or maybe it had been Richard’s idea — but did it matter? It was Bors’s idea long before it was Clarice’s. As far as Bors knew, Clarice was only wedding Freddy out of duty. The least he could do was be polite.

But no. Freddy and his family were commoners. They did not merit politeness. Or at least, they would not merit it until the papers for the betrothal were finally signed, and the last time Clarice had heard, the papers would not be signed until graduation — and they would marry within a fortnight. Her father did not approve of long betrothals, and Clarice thought she knew why. It made her want to lose her virginity with Freddy the moment the ink was put to the page, just to show her father that making a young couple wait to be betrothed was no more conducive to protecting virginity than making them wait through a long betrothal. The only problem with that plan was that it would only work if her father somehow came to know of her lost maidenhead, and that was enough to make Clarice wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night.

Well, that was one of the only problems … Clarice sighed and looked to Freddy. Truly, this was getting her nowhere.

“Freddy?” she whispered.

“Hmm?”

“Can we go?”

“I — what? I thought –”

“I think we need to talk.”

“Oh.” Freddy rose without further protest, extending a hand to help her up. How ironic, Clarice thought as they left the room, that the man her father would be so rude to showed more true politeness in ten minutes’ time than her father would know in his life.

And somehow, as soon as they were safely out of the recital hall, when Clarice meant to turn to Freddy to ask him if he wanted to go out for coffee or if he would rather go back to the sorority or the fraternity house, Freddy’s arms were around her and his lips were pressed to hers.

Clarice couldn’t even gasp — she barely had time to close her eyes, as she knew she was supposed to. And then her world was nothing but Freddy’s lips, and his arms locked around her, one hand on her waist and pressing her closer. She could barely respond, besides following every tiny movement of his lips with her own.

And then he let go.

“Oh, Lord,” he sighed, proving that lung capacity was yet another thing that Freddy had over her — Clarice was still catching her breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have –”

“Don’t be sorry,” Clarice replied. “You — you needed that.”

He smiled. “Well …”

“You needed that,” Clarice repeated, grinning a little herself, even as she blushed. “And — and I’m the one who should be sorry. My family …”

“Is beyond your control. Is beyond anybody’s control, as far as I can tell,” Freddy sighed.

“My mother does like you,” Clarice murmured. “And Lynn …”

Freddy’s eyebrows went up.

“Well, she said she sees how — how happy I am with you,” Clarice blushed, “and she says she couldn’t dislike anybody who makes me so happy.” Clarice understood. She could do nothing else than like Prince Tom — even when she had been twelve and he liked to tug on her braids when he wasn’t flirting with her sister, she had grinned and borne it, because of the way Lynn lit up when he entered the room.

“And my father seems — no offense — but he seems to think that’s more important than whatever your father might think, anyway,” Freddy shrugged. “So I don’t know why –”

“Don’t,” Clarice interrupted. She stroked Freddy’s cheek. “Don’t apologize for being — hurt. It — it hurts me, too.”

“All the more reason for me to apologize,” Freddy answered, holding her hand in his.

“Why? For bringing it up? I know how my brother treats you, Freddy. It’s not a … a wild leap to realize that my father probably treats you and your family the same way.”

“True,” Freddy murmured. “But what can we do about it?”

Clarice hung her head. “I don’t know.”

“So then we shouldn’t bring it up,” Freddy answered, “at least until we can think of a solution, because what’s the point of hurting ourselves with what we can’t change?”

Clarice looked up with a sly smile. “I hope that isn’t how you plan on dealing with cracks in the foundations of your castles, Master Ferreira.”

“Eh?”

“Just not bringing it up until you find a solution.”

“Heh,” Freddy chortled. “This isn’t a crack in the foundation. This is more …” He brought her hand down and began to swing it to and fro. “This is more like a statue that won’t quite fit in the niche we made for it.”

“Oh?”

“It’s … cosmetic,” Freddy replied in the tone of a true engineer, a man who was paid to make sure the castle or the cathedral or whatever it was stayed upright no matter what the Lord and men threw at it, a man who was most assuredly not paid to make it pretty. “It’s not our fault if the damn sculptor can’t follow directions.”

“Freddy!” Clarice gasped, and giggled.

“What — oh! Oh, I didn’t mean to –”

“It wasn’t the — the — damn,” Clarice replied, coloring a little. “I’m used to that.” Used to hearing it, if not used to saying it. One could hardly share a house with Heloise, Garnet, and Leona without swiftly becoming used to every four-letter-world under the sun. “It was comparing my father to a sculptor.”

“What’s so wrong about that?”

“Oh, you know,” Clarice shrugged. “He’s a … a man who works with his hands. My father would be appalled.”

“Rob is a sculptor.”

“I know,” Clarice replied.

“Your father wouldn’t want to be compared with Rob?”

“He doesn’t know Rob. But even if he did … no.”

Freddy sighed. “And your father is a knight and a general. If that doesn’t involve work with his hands, I don’t know what does.”

“I know.”

“I will never understand your father.”

“Nor will I,” Clarice admitted.

“Luckily that’s just cosmetic,” Freddy replied. “And luckily for us, we will be living with my family, which is much more comprehensible. My father is driven by ambition, my mother by her artistry, and –” He started, and stopped. His face fell.

And Clarice realized. He’d forgotten. For a moment, he had forgotten that his grandmother was gone. Then he had remembered.

It was better to have never forgotten in the first place.

Freddy sucked in a deep breath. “Any — anyway, I’m so–”

“Don’t,” Clarice said, again. “Don’t be sorry.”

Freddy managed a half-smile. “You know, if this is how we fight when we’re married, I daresay we’ll never resolve our quarrels at all.”

“We’re not quarreling. We’re having a conversation.” Clarice took a deep breath. “A … somewhat difficult conversation.”

“Aye,” Freddy murmured.

“But we’ll get through it.” She smiled at him. “Somehow. Together. We will get through it.”

Freddy did not answer. Instead, he seemed to lean …

And Clarice caught him, and held him close to her while he rested his head on her shoulder.

Together. Together, they would get through this.

No answer.

Well, that was … odd. Rob had been coming home from the studio for lunch every day since Granny had taken her last turn, doubly so since she passed on. He didn’t say it was to check on Dannie, because there were some things that a good husband simply refrained from saying. Particularly a good husband of Dannie. But she seemed to know it anyway, and if she didn’t always have food ready when he came in, she always called back to him.

He tried again, a little louder. “Dannie?”

No answer — but he heard something. Soft singing. She was probably trying to calm Stevie-weevie down and put him down for his afternoon nap. Rob wanted to sigh at the lost opportunity to play with his son, but all the women insisted that routine was good for babies, and Stevie-weevie’s routine had been to go down for a nap around lunchtime long before Granny had become quite so poorly. Rob could wait.

The cat padded slowly down the stairs, turned his yellow gaze onto Rob and yowled. Rob’s eyebrows went up, but he said nothing. Saying something seemed to encourage him.

Pepé (which was the cat’s name) turned a glance at him which was surely the feline equivalent of a human’s baleful glare and roll of the eyes before he padded into the kitchen. Rob watched. The cat sat next to his food dish and yowled again.

… Dannie hasn’t fed the cat?

That couldn’t be right. She’d forget to feed herself, but would always feed the cat. It was the work of a moment to hunt up a rag to clean the bowl — Pepé yowling and twining around his legs the whole time — but while Rob cleaned, he also thought.

There were some things which his normally sharp and possibly brilliant wife did not get, Rob decided, and one of them was the importance of letting oneself grieve. She’d bawled her eyes out at Granny’s bedside, and again at the funeral, but had apparently decided that that was enough open grieving. Granny, she claimed, would want her to keep going. Granny wouldn’t want her to be sad. Life was too short to do anything other than live it, and that was what Dannie was going to do.

But as Rob wanted to protest, but was not sure he could find the words — well, yes, of course Granny wouldn’t want Dannie to just stop. She wouldn’t want her to be sad. She certainly wouldn’t want her to stop living. But Granny was no fool, either. Of course Dannie would want to slow down for a while. Of course she would be sad. Of course she would grieve. Granny, Rob was sure, would know instinctively that it would be better to ride the storm and get it over with. Then one could –

Rob froze.

He heard a sob.

And not a baby’s sob, either, a common enough sound in a house with a six-month-old infant. But a sob of –

“Dannie?” Rob yelled, galloping up the stairs.

Pepé followed him to the bottom of the stairwell and yowled his protest upward. Maybe it was that which drowned out Rob’s call to Dannie. Or maybe it was Stevie’s sudden crying as well.

Rob rounded the stairwell at a run and threw open the nursery door. “Dan–”

Dannie stood in the middle of the room, holding Stevie out before her. The baby was flailing and shrieking in her arms. And Dannie was sobbing. “Stop! Please, Stevie! Just stop crying!”

Stevie wailed again. Dannie tried to bring the baby to her shoulder, but little fists could pound and deliver a punch that belied their size — Rob had discovered this through a few colicky fits already. “Stevie! Please!”

“Dannie.”

Dannie turned to him, bouncing the shrieking baby on her shoulder. “He won’t stop crying!”

Well, no, of course he wouldn’t stop crying. Mama was crying. Mama was the one who was supposed to make the crying stop, not to start her own. If Mama was crying, then something was very wrong, and what could Stevie do other than wail and wail until somebody else came to set everything right?

The worst was that Rob could piece out this much of baby-logic — but how could he explain it to Dannie without having her feel worse than she surely already did?

The gaze she turned to him was as pitiful as Stevie’s crying. “I can’t get him to calm down!”

“He’s probably just teething,” Rob lied. Well, maybe Stevie was teething. They’d not seen a tooth break through yet, but it could be any day now. That was what Rob’s mother said, and she was the best source he had.

“Still? He’s been teething since before — since before –” Dannie’s face crumpled. If only she could see herself! If only she would let herself go and let herself grieve for a while! But no. Granny wouldn’t want that. And Rob had no idea how to convince her that Granny would rather Dannie grieve than wear herself out by not grieving.

“Maybe it’s just taking a while. Give him to me?” Rob asked, holding his arms out.

Dannie nestled Stevie against her shoulder and turned away.

Wright damn it! “Dannie …” He hesitated. “You’re tired,” Rob finally settled on saying. “He’s been up the last few nights. Maybe you just need a break.”

“I don’t need to hire a girl,” Dannie muttered. Rob tried not to wince. He had indeed suggested that when Granny first became poorly. Dannie had not seemed to enjoy the thought that perhaps she could not do everything and do it with a smile.

“I’m not suggesting that. I’m just suggesting you let me try with him.” Rob shrugged. “I am his father … unless there’s something you’ve been meaning to mention.”

Dannie snorted, as he had been hoping she would. “He certainly didn’t get the freakish paleness from you …”

“You better pray he hasn’t figured out what ‘freakish’ means yet,” Rob tried to chuckle.

Did he try too hard? Not hard enough? Dannie stared at him with the glance of a stricken doe. “Oh, Lord! Do you think he –”

“Dannie! He’s six months old! Of course he doesn’t know what ‘freakish’ means yet.” He stepped up to her, rubbing Stevie’s back with one hand and not incidentally stroking Dannie’s hand as well. “And if he did know, he’d know his Mama meant it in a good way.”

Dannie managed a watery smile. “Is there a good way to mean ‘freakish’?”

“There is now.”

She smiled, then, without another word, she held Stevie out to him. Stevie cut off in mid-wail, staring through bleary blinking eyes at Rob.

“Hello, lad,” Rob grinned. Stevie blinked a couple of times before showing off his gums in his best grin. Rob brought the baby to his shoulder with a little smile. Except for a few hiccups and snuffles, Stevie was quiet.

Dannie stared blinking at him, her face fallen. “He — he just calmed right down –”

“Well, you must admit I’m a …” he started, wanting to make a joke about being a more soothing or restful Sim than Dannie was — which, he thought, was completely true anyway. But watching her face made him think better of that. “Dannie — you’re upset — about him not going to sleep, of course — and he can probably sense that, so he got upset, too. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“And you’re … not upset?” Dannie murmured, twisting her hands together like a scared girl.

Rob smiled. “I only have to deal with screaming patrons, not screaming babies. Why don’t you go get yourself cleaned up — I think Stevie drooled on your dress — and I’ll put him to bed, and then we can have some lunch?”

“Lunch!” Dannie gasped, as if the third meal of the day had completely slipped her mind — and as if this slip was a hanging offense.

“Get yourself cleaned up first,” Rob murmured. “Between you and me, I’m pretty sure whatever Sir Bors wants to commission as a wedding present for Freddy and Clarice is sufficiently horrible that I won’t mind putting it off.”

“You could lose the business …” Dannie murmured.

“Dannie, how many other sculptors are there in Albion?”

She chuckled. Then she moved to the door. But reaching it, she hesitated, looking over her shoulder at Rob and Stevie.

“Get cleaned up,” Rob repeated, because he wasn’t sure how to go about telling Dannie, Go have a good cry, you’ll feel better.

She nodded and disappeared into the corridor.

As soon as Rob heard the door to their bedroom open and shut, he sighed and whispered into Stevie’s ear, “Kiddo, between you and me, I don’t know what we’re going to do with your Mama.”

Stevie nestled against Rob’s shoulder, turning his head this way and that as if he was listening.

“She probably talks more to you than she talks to me,” he sighed. “I don’t suppose you’d care to let me know what she’s been saying?”

Stevie giggled. Rob sighed again. “Of course — you can’t talk.” He patted the baby’s back. Stevie wiggled. “I don’t suppose you’d care to learn a little early?”

Maybe Dannie was getting her grieving done when nobody was around to watch. It was — hurtful — that she didn’t trust him enough to let him it, but it sure as hell beat the alternative. He could deal with the hurt.

And then he heard it. The soft sob. And this time, there was no wailing Stevie-weevie to provoke it.

He gave Stevie one last pat, then laid him down in the crib. “Sorry, kiddo,” Rob murmured, rubbing his chubby little tummy, “but I think your Mama needs me more than you do right now.”

Stevie whimpered, but Rob was out of the nursery, the door shut behind him, before Stevie could do more than that. He would fall asleep soon enough. Babies usually did.

He hurried into the bedroom, where he found Dannie — sitting all alone, the drool-spots still on her dress, and what was much more disturbing, the tears tracking down her face.

“Rob!” she gasped, patting herself down for a handkerchief.

Rob found his and held it out to her without a word. She wiped at her eyes — not soft, ladylike dabs meant to take away the tear stains but preserve the cosmetics, but wholehearted wipes that left her sooty eyelash-black trailing over the handkerchief and cheek alike. His Dannie never did anything by halves — at least, until she looked at the handkerchief, which she would have to be washing, and murmured, “Oh, damn.”

“It’ll wash.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, it always washes off your face. And eyelashes.”

“Cloth is different. Blood washes off skin, but not always off cloth.” Dannie sniffled and started to rise. “Anyway, I should –”

“Dannie,” Rob said, stepping between Dannie and the door. She shot him a glance that could only be called beseeching.

He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He just waited.

He did not have to wait long before she broke down. “Wright damn it!” she whispered, sobbing.

Well, anger — even at herself — was better than nothing. He slipped an arm over her shoulders, still saying nothing.

“I hate it!” she gasped. “I hate feeling like this!”

Rob rubbed her shoulders with one hand smoothed her hair back with the others. Now was not the time to speak. Now was not even the time to make shushing soothing noises. Now was just the time to listen.

“It was just a stupid lullaby!” she gasped. “I can’t even sing the stupid lullaby without — without –”

Rob kissed her temple.

“Without turning into this!” Dannie snapped. “Look at me! I’m pathetic!”

Now was the time to speak. “You are not pathetic.”

“Then what am I?” Dannie sniffled. “Sobbing because of a lullaby!”

“I don’t think it’s just the lullaby.”

“Yes it is! Yes, it is!”

“Dannie,” Rob asked, gently, “what lullaby were you singing?”

“The –” She stopped. He waited.

Dannie didn’t say, “Hush, Little Baby.”

She didn’t say, “Rock-a-bye, Baby.”

She didn’t even say, “Lullaby and Goodnight.”

She just started to cry harder. “Granny’s lullaby!”

Rob pulled her to him, head resting on her shoulder.

“The one she sang to G-Georgie-porgie!” Dannie gulped. “And Freddy! And m-me!”

I know, Rob thought, but did not say anything.

“It should make me happy — her lullaby! It always used to!”

I know, Rob thought again. It was practically the only lullaby she sang to Stevie. The poor boy would probably be in school before he learned that there were other lullabies — or at least, he would have, had Granny kept going for a few more years.

“B-but now — it should still make me happy! I want to remember her!”

“But Dannie …”

“What?”

Rob sighed. “I don’t think you can start being happy again until you’re finished grieving.”

“But I –”

“No.” Rob kissed her temple. “No, Dannie, you’re not.”

“She wouldn’t –”

“She would. Dannie. Who wouldn’t be happy to be missed?”

“Not like this!”

He sighed. “Your Granny,” Rob replied, “was one of the wisest ladies I ever met. I don’t know if she’d want to see you like this. But I think she would know it was … inevitable.”

Dannie sniffled. “Granny always soldiered on.”

“Your grandmother didn’t have a choice. Hell, she didn’t have time. She had to keep a roof over her head and food on the table for her daughters. But you’ve got time. You can get help if you need it. Even if we couldn’t afford it, you know your friends would send you over a spare maid in a heartbeat if they thought it would help you out.”

“I wouldn’t want to accept charity.”

“First of all, we can afford it, so you don’t have to. Secondly — it’s not charity, Dannie, it’s love.”

Dannie’s lips quivered. “Damn it all, Rob. Why do you have to start sounding like her?”

Rob pulled his wife closer, and he whispered into her hair:

“Dannie … it’s probably one of the reasons why you fell in love with me. Why you always loved Granny. It’s because we only talk sense.”

But now … now it had been a long day for Darius, and this was only the second funeral he had attended. The other children were occupied with each other or with their cousins. Nobody would mind if he took Darius to the side, out of everybody’s way.

They had a visit to make.

“So … this is Mama?”

“Aye, son. This is where she is.”

Darius looked at the rosebush, then slowly craned his neck upward to stare at the statue that marked the grave — the statue, Joshua was suddenly realizing, that only had a hint of any garments at all. He wondered what Isabel would have said to that. He wondered if Isabel would have covered Darius’s eyes with her hand, as Joshua half had a mind to do himself. Then again, perhaps not. He had brought Isabel to the art galleries in Camford once or twice when they were courting, and she had never blushed at anything, even when Joshua had wanted to cover his own eyes, never mind those of the innocent maiden (even though he knew she was hardly innocent and, at least a few of the times they went to the galleries, no longer a maiden) beside him.

“But I thought,” Darius murmured, “that Mama was in Heaven?”

“Well, yes, she is — her spirit is. Her … her body is here.”

“Oh.” Darius’s eyebrows knit together and he looked again at the statue, then at the rosebush, then at the grass below his feet. “How come Mama doesn’t get a house?”

“A — a what?”

“A house. Like Granny.” Darius gestured to the above-ground grave that housed Maude’s mortal remains. “I think that would be …” Darius looked again at the earth over his mother. “Warmer,” he decided.

Well, Joshua had a feeling he knew why Maude had the above-ground grave: if and when Richard got that barony and control of Port Finessa — and if and when Bianca wanted her mother close when that happened — it would be easier to disinter Maude and bring her there. But that was not a reason a four-year-old would understand.

“I — I thought,” although that wasn’t quite true; Joshua had not been able to make arrangements when arrangements needed making, “that your mother would want to be closer to the trees and the birds and the flowers.” Joshua looked again at the roses. “She — she loved flowers.”

Joshua swallowed, remembering when they had both been students at Camford. Remembering the first time they had made love in that big, wide bed she had. The curtains, the bedspread, the wall-hangings — roses, all roses. He remembered when they had come back to Albion and Isabel had scoured the flower shops for a certain flower from her homeland, the boca de dragón. She never found her dragon-flower. Joshua wished he could have given one to her, just once, to make her smile.

“Papa?” Darius asked.

“Aye?”

“Why do you want to talk about Mama?”

Joshua blinked. “Why wouldn’t I want to talk about Mama?”

“Because you’re always sad when you talk about her.”

Out of the mouths of babes, indeed.

“We don’t have to talk about her if it makes you sad, Papa,” Darius continued. “I don’t mind.”

Good Lord, where to begin? “Does talking about Mama make you sad?” he asked.

Again Darius knit his brows in that puzzled or thoughtful way he had. He shook his head. “No.”

“Good. It shouldn’t make you sad.”

“But it makes you sad.”

“I …” Joshua sighed. How to explain this to a four-year-old? There was not a day that went by that he did not think of Isabel. There was scarcely a thing that happened with the children that he did not wish she was around for — either to see and be happy, as he was, or to help him figure it out. She had been laying here for a year and a half, but in a way, she was still with Joshua. And not in the sentimental way that the monks and the pious assured each other that the dead were with them always. Isabel was with him as an old battle-scar was with him. The wound had scabbed over — it had, to the layman’s eye, healed — but any wound would continue to hurt if you kept prodding it. The universe conspired to keep prodding Joshua’s old wound.

“It’s like this, Darius,” Josh continued. He could hear the soft crunch of sensible shoes on gravel behind him, but chose to ignore it. “I loved your Mama more than anything, besides you and Baby Belle. And I still miss her, every day. But … but I want to keep talking about her. Because she made me very happy — she made you very happy, too — when she was alive. And I want to feel that happy again.”

“But Grandma and Grandpa don’t get sad when they talk about her,” Darius replied. “At least, not anymore. Didn’t they love her too?”

“Yes, they did — but they didn’t … mamas and papas have a special kind of love, Darius. It’s more … intense. Grandma and Grandpa loved your Mama very much, but they couldn’t love her like that.” Thank the Lord. That’s all this family would need.

“Oh,” Darius replied. Joshua had no idea how much of that had sunk in — probably all of it. Or at least, as much as was possible for a four-year-old. Knowing Darius, he had soaked it all up, and someday, when Joshua was least expecting it, there would come a question that the boy had been mulling over and considering for days or weeks or even months.

“And it’s a good thing, too,” came a voice far too light for a funeral from behind him. “Can you imagine the family fights if everybody loved everybody like that?”

Joshua almost yelped, but thankfully restrained himself. He turned around. Cressida — Widow Tabard. In a feast-day gown — but it was probably the best she had. He knew from Rob that the Chausseurs were still finding their feet. The expense of another set of clothes for funerals was probably too much for them right now.

“Widow Tabard!” called Darius, probably happy for any distraction from the way their conversation was going. “Is Ned here?”

“Darius,” Josh murmured.

“Oh — uh,” Darius rubbed the back of his neck and stared at his feet. Joshua watched Cressida’s face. She was smiling gently, even if there was a hint of what Joshua thought of as that Ferreira half-grin, the one that concealed a great deal of mirth. However, it was probably better called the Parkinson half-grin — Lord knew it had to come from Maude, not by way of Richard.

Darius looked up with his normal nervous smile. “Hello, Widow Tabard.” He stuck his hand out nervously. “How do you do?”

“I’m doing very well, thank you, little man!” Cressida replied. Darius beamed, as he always did whenever anybody called him “little man.” “And to answer your question — no, Ned isn’t here. Your Auntie Babette is watching him.”

“So he’s with Baby Belle and Stevie-weevie?”

Cressida giggled, probably at the ridiculous nickname with which Dannie had saddled Joshua’s nephew when Rob wasn’t around to prevent it. If George, still often called Georgie-porgie at the age of fifteen, was anything to judge by, Stephan would be Stevie-weevie from cradle to grave. Joshua could only be grateful that nobody had thought to give him such a terrible pet name when he was too young to protect himself. And he had reason to be grateful to Isabel, too — Darius was not the sort of name to which one could easily attach a cringe-worthy pet name.

“Yes,” Cressida answered, “yes, he is.”

“Papa!” Darius called, eyes wide and pleading. “Papa, can we go see him after we’re done here? Can we, can we? Please?”

Joshua glanced at Cressida.

“Well,” Cressida murmured, sensing his gaze, “I know Ned would love to see his favorite friend … but that’s only if your papa thinks it’s all right.” She winked at Joshua.

“Well, Papa doesn’t have a problem with invading Auntie Babette’s new house,” Joshua replied, sending Darius into a fit of giggling. “What?” Joshua gasped. “What’s so funny about that? Think about it, son! You, me, Widow Tabard — probably her sister and her nieces and nephews — if that isn’t an invasionary force, I don’t know what is!”

Darius giggled. “Auntie Babette isn’t going to be happy!”

“All to the better!” After all, after the scrape his sister had gotten her into — and which Mark had nearly had apoplexy trying to get her out of — a little bit of annoyance was the least she had coming to her, in Joshua’s opinion.

Darius grinned and hurled himself at Joshua, hands locked around his waist. “You’re happy again, Papa.”

“Heh.” Joshua ruffled his boy’s hair, tried to keep smiling, and sent a half-panicked glance at Cressida, praying she wouldn’t — wouldn’t –

Wouldn’t what? Of all the people in this kingdom, Cressida would at least understand.

Her head cocked a little to one side, then she crouched to Darius’s level. “Darius? Have you ever met my nephew Henry and my niece Pippa?”

Darius looked up and shook his head.

“Well, Pippa is just your age –” Darius made a face, probably at the thought of a girl tagging along after him. “… and Henry is a bit older, but he’s a lot of fun. Why don’t you go down there and meet them? Tell them I sent you.”

Darius glanced at Joshua for permission; Joshua nodded. Darius grinned and skipped off down the hill.

Leaving Joshua and Cressida alone.

“Thank –” Joshua started.

“I –” Cressida began. They stared at each other. Finally Cressida began to chuckle. Joshua joined in.

“You first,” Joshua said, finally, when he could speak again.

“I just wanted to — to apologize, if that was intrusive …”

Joshua shook his head. “I was going to thank you. That — I think Darius needed that distraction.” He glanced over his shoulder, watching Darius slowly make his way over to the dark-haired boy and dark-haired girl. Poor shy little man. Thank the Lord he’d showed signs of it since he was a baby, else Joshua would be terrified that Isabel’s death had permanently shattered Darius the way it had shattered Joshua. “I … he takes it all in, you know. Everything I say. And so sometimes I don’t know when it’s too much.”

“I understand. Geoff was the same way when he was Darius’s age.” She smiled. “Still is, sometimes.”

“Oh?”

“He’s a little man, too,” Cressida sighed. “Only not quite as little. Not quite as cute, either, as your Darius — er — well, he was, when he was Darius’s age. But not anymore.”

“Darn,” Joshua sighed and shook his head, “you mean they don’t stay that adorable forever?”

Cressida giggled. “Well — maybe your Darius might. I hope he does. Geoff is too much of a … little man to be adorable.”

Joshua knit his brows, looking, for a moment, much like his son — but unlike Darius, who tended to file away most questions for later, Joshua realized the right one to ask rather quickly. “He’s convinced he has to be the man of the house, eh?”

Cressida nodded.

“Poor kid.”

“I know!” Cressida replied, fervently enough to make Joshua start. “But Blanche doesn’t agree. She thinks –” She stopped. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be boring you with our … family problems.”

Joshua snorted. “Please. I think if there are any two families that might … understand each other’s problems, it’s yours and mine.”

Cressida blinked. “You mean that?”

“Of course. Think about it!”

“No, I mean –” Cressida smiled sideways. “I meant the license to talk.”

“Oh, that!” Joshua’s exaggerated realization made Cressida giggle again. Interesting — Isabel never giggled, she always had a full-throated laugh whenever she found something funny. Making that laugh come out had been one of the chief objectives of Joshua’s life. But Cressida’s giggles, easy to coax as they were, were … not unpleasant. Not unpleasant at all.

“Aye, of course, I meant that,” Joshua replied. A bit more seriously, he added, “I wouldn’t have said that if I didn’t mean it.”

“No,” Cressida murmured, “no, you wouldn’t, would you? Anyway …” She pushed a trailing lock of blonde hair behind her ear. “Blanche … Blanche lets Geoff keep thinking he’s man of the house. She thinks it lets him feel less … powerless. Gives him a sense of control.”

“He’s — how old is he?”

“Eleven. Well, eleven and a half, he’d tell you.”

“Hmm. Seems to me that any kid young enough to take ‘halves’ seriously isn’t quite … ready to have a sense of control.”

“I agree,” Cressida sighed. “I think Blanche … well, she hates feeling powerless. So she thinks Geoff must feel the same way.” Cressida put a finger to her lower lip. “Then again … they are rather alike.”

“Maybe she knows best,” Joshua said. He had to say it — it gave him hope that he might just know what he was doing with Darius and Baby Belle. After all, it was just him, now. “After all — don’t you know best with Ned?”

“My mother and my sister know not to argue when I say I do!” Cressida laughed, and Joshua laughed with her.

“Still,” Joshua murmured after a moment’s mirth, “that must be … comforting. To always have somebody to turn to when you’re not sure.”

“You have the same thing, don’t you?” asked Cressida. “With your parents?”

“Hardly the same thing,” Joshua replied — then looked into Cressida’s blinking green eyes and realized that, yes, he had indeed said that out loud. Damn it! “It’s a different dynamic, parents and a son. I … I don’t know how …”

“‘Your son is your son until he gets a wife, but your daughter is your daughter for life’?” Cressida asked.

Joshua chuckled. “Something — something like that. I used to think that only was for younger sons, but now I know … after I married Isabel …”

“Yes,” Cressida replied. And he knew she understood.

Joshua tried to shoot her a thankful smile, but Cressida was looking at the grave — Isabel’s grave — with a slightly puzzled frown. “Isabel … that’s a Simspanish name, isn’t it?”

“Aye, it is.”

Cressida still stared at the grave, blinking. “Edward died in Simspain.”

Joshua looked at the grave too. “Isabel fled because of the Smoors. They destroyed her city — her home. Killed her father. She lost — well, almost everything.”

“Edward was fighting the Smoors.”

Good Lord, this was turning dark. Joshua looked once more at the grave, then gulped. “You know … why don’t we have a seat? There’s a bench over there …”

Cressida needed no further prodding to follow him.

There were actually a pair of benches “over there” — and when Cressida took one, Joshua took the other. To do anything else, when the ghost of Isabel — and perhaps the ghost of Edward, too — was so near, felt … wrong. He smoothed the fine weave of his tunic, wondering what to say next.

“I’m sorry,” Cressida said, sparing him that quandary. “I just –”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“We were having a nice conversation. And I …”

“You can’t help it,” Joshua replied. “I — I can’t help it either, sometimes. Something happens and there — there Isabel is. And I can’t think of anything else.”

“It’s different for you. You lost her … how old is your daughter?”

“Eighteen months.”

“Only eighteen months ago,” Cressida continued. “I’ve got another year on top of that — and that was only when I found out. Edward … Edward was gone for months before I knew about it.”

Joshua’s eyes slowly swept over to the grave, to Isabel. To have lived for months, blithely assuming she was fine, only to find out later that she had been dead and gone all that time … if ever Joshua thought the Lord Wright was cruel, it was when he contemplated fates like that. Joshua swallowed. “That time doesn’t count,” he heard himself say, too firmly for his own peace of mind.

“He’s been dead longer than my Ned has been alive. And my Ned has been my world for — forever. Yet sometimes I feel like Edward only left me yesterday. Does that even make sense?”

“Yes,” Joshua replied. And there was another cruelty: parents who did not live long enough to see their own children. He knew that Edward had not seen Ned — had Isabel had a chance to see Baby Belle? He had not been allowed into the room, and he had not had the courage to ask his mother or Widow Thatcher. He hoped yes — he didn’t want to know if the answer was no.

“How?” Cressida asked.

“Sometimes I feel the same way about Baby Belle. She’s been in my life forever — but Isabel only left me yesterday.”

Cressida managed to smile, slowly. Joshua thought he knew what she was thinking: finally, someone who understood. Neither her mother nor her sister had welcomed a child and said farewell to the spouse in such quick succession.

And speaking of the children … “How were you planning –” Joshua started, and stopped.

“How was I planning?”

“It’s … an impertinent question. But it’s not one I can ask anybody else.”

Cressida blinked. “All … right …”

“Ned can’t remember his father. How — how do you go about …?” Joshua started, praying she would understand his drift.

“… Oh …” Cressida sighed. “I used to talk about Edward to Ned when Ned was a baby. It was — sometimes it was the only thing that kept me going. But then …”

“Then?”

“John died. And now — I don’t get much alone time with Ned. We’re all so busy. I try to tell him stories at bedtime, but …” She sighed and stared at her lap.

“What?”

“It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if Ned thinks that the Papa that Geoff and Henry and Pippa talk about all the time is the same as his Papa.”

Joshua couldn’t help it — he laughed at the ensuing mental scandal. “Some family!”

Cressida’s eyes widened, but after a moment, she laughed too. “Oh, Lord! Could you imagine!”

“They’ll be brought up much like brothers and sisters, won’t they?” asked Joshua. “I mean, I imagine the line between ‘sibling’ and ‘cousin’ isn’t that thick when you’re all fighting over the same toys.”

“More like stepsiblings,” Cressida murmured. “They’ll have one parent, all of them, that they can hope to play off the other — who isn’t their parent, so no guilt there.”

“Good Lord! They’ll have the time of their life, playing on all three of you!”

“Just like your Darius and Baby Belle,” Cressida smiled.

Joshua blinked. Somehow — he had never thought of it like that. But with the grandparents, and Joshua, and no Isabel to keep order …

Good Lord, they were doomed once Baby Belle got old enough and Darius devious enough to start playing on them. It wasn’t as good as having Isabel — but perhaps Baby Belle and Darius would have some fun out of it, anyway.

“Cressida!” The call, creaky as an old gate and twice as irritating, made them both cringe. “Where did you get to? We need to go!”

“That,” Cressida sighed, “would be my mother.”

Joshua nodded. “Let me collect Darius — then we can descend on my sister.”

Cressida chortled. “Aye! That should be fun.”

“It will be. And — Cressida –”

Joshua was never certain just why he did what he did next. It was — sudden. Unplanned. It just sort of happened, his muscles acting on their own without consulting him. Perhaps Isabel had whispered the suggestion in his ear.

But whatever the reason, he found his hand near hers, took it, and raised it to his lips.

He kissed it — the briefest of pecks — but before he let it fall, he smiled at her.

“Thank you,” Joshua said. “It was nice to talk to — someone who understands.”

He stopped. It was not as if she could know that he had the Elixir of Life with him. George made a point of never mentioning his planned enterprises ahead of time, both for his pride’s sake and to avoid being yelled at ahead of time. But he needed to see her regardless.

“Granny?” he called again. “Mum? Where are you?”

No answer. Logically, however, they could only be upstairs. George checked on the precious bottle tucked up his sleeve; then he ran up the stairs with the pounding tread only a fifteen-year-old could manage.

Down the hall, around the corner, last door on the left – George threw it open and darted inside. “Granny! Mum! I –”

“George!” gasped Bianca. “What are you doing here?”

“I – I came to see Granny,” George replied. And it was the truth! Why else would he be here, if not to see Granny? “Hi, Granny.”

“Hallo, George,” she replied. As for Granny, now that he was seeing her … she shot him a wan smile and a waggle of the eyebrows, as if to ask, So, kiddo, what do you think of this new nonsense? Her eyes, however, were tired and shadowed, and her cheeks were flushed with what George guessed was a fever. She was awake and alert – but not well, not by a long shot.

Well, George would fix that.

“Mother,” Bianca said pointedly, “give me a minute with my son, will you?” She had a way of saying my son – she used the same tone with it that most Sims would use to say my wart or my tax form. Funny how Freddy never got the my son treatment. “George, out.”

“But Mum –”

“Out!”

“Listen to your mother, Georgie,” Granny wheezed. At least the wheezing was followed by a chuckle, not a cough. That was the only thing that got George out the door. That and the knowledge that she would feel better soon.

Bianca followed after him, and when George and she finally faced each other, Bianca looked more drawn and tired than usual – usual even for after Granny had gotten sick. “George, do the Emryses know you’re here?”

“They won’t be angry, Mum,” George replied. It was true, too. After nicking Elixir of Life from their secret laboratory, the fact that he snuck off to see his grandmother would be the least of his infractions.

“That’s not answering my question.”

… Damn. “Mum, they’re fine with it. They said that I could go to see her whenever I wasn’t in classes.” And they had said that. He would give it to the Professors; they had been more than accommodating, more than kind. A better Sim would probably feel sorry about taking the elixir after that – but since they had been so accommodating, so kind, they would surely understand, wouldn’t they?

“Did they give you permission for this specific time?” asked Bianca.

“They said I didn’t need to ask permission!” Also true.

Bianca watched George’s face and sighed. “Georgie, what am I going to do with you? They don’t know you’re here, do they?”

“Well …”

“George?”

“It’s not like I’m cutting class, Mum, honest! You know I wouldn’t do that!” Good Lord, he had suffered through eight years of Sister Margery’s religious classes – well, most of the time – did his mother really think he would skip class when he was learning something interesting?

Bianca narrowed her eyes at him. Then she shook her head. “Get back to school.”

“Mum!”

“George, you can’t –“

“But Freddy’s going to be here tomorrow!” It was sad, strange, and pathetic how easy it was to pitch his voice into a whine, and how hard it was to keep that whine from spilling into tears. “And you and Dad think – I heard you – and – and I just want some time with her!”

He watched his mother’s green eyes grow glassy and watery. “Oh, Georgie! You –” She ran a hand over her eyes. “You can’t just go skipping school, even if –”

George did not wait for her to finish – he barreled into her arms and hugged her as tightly as he could, instead.

Bianca yelped in surprise, but she held him in return. George rested his head on her shoulder and kept his eyes tightly closed for fear of anything leaking out.

She sighed. “When this is over,” she announced, “we are having a talk, young man. With your father.”

Funny – Freddy, George was sure, often talked with both or either of their parents, but very rarely had a talk. He also doubted if the promise or threat of Richard’s involvement in their conversations was often wielded as a weapon.

“Yes, Mum,” George murmured. He added, “You can send a message to the school if you think they’ll be worried.”

“If I think they’ll be worried. George, of course they’ll be worried.” No, not so much worried as furious, but you think that if it makes you feel better, Mum. “Still, I’ll do that.” Bianca smoothed back George’s hair. “I suppose the fact that you think of others’ wishes and convenience even after the fact is a sign of improvement and maturity.”

“You bet, Mum.”

Bianca kissed his forehead. “You go see your granny, son,” she murmured. “She’s having a good day.”

George knew the subtext of that: tomorrow might not be so good, so enjoy today while you can. He would just have to prove that wrong.

Still, he was careful enough to wait, contain his energy until Bianca was safely down the hallway, around the corner, and making her way down the stairs. Then he burst into his granny’s bedchamber, elixir held high. “Granny, guess what I’ve got!”

Maude jumped. “A penchant for startling old ladies?” she asked, and coughed.

George did his best to ignore the cough. “You’re not old!” he replied instead, flopping into the seat his mother had vacated.

Maude’s reply to that was only a look, but it spoke louder than any words: And if I buy that one, will it be oceanfront property in the Dousa Desert that you’re selling me next?

“Well … you’re not that old,” George corrected. Maude humphed and nodded, but her eyes twinkled. “Anyway, you didn’t guess!” He put the bottle onto the bedside table with a flourish. “Ta-da!”

Maude’s eyes narrowed. “That bottle looks like something your father used to bring home.”

“It does?”

“Aye. Some sort of jumbo juice from the –“ Maude paused and coughed. “Ahem! Excuse me, son. What was I was saying?”

“Some sort of jumbo juice …”

“Ah, yes! From Twikii Island.” Maude sighed in happy reminiscence. “He brought home a bottle of – well, of something, I’m not sure once. He slipped it into my tea. Made me see … oh, huge birds, black and white and ‘bought as high as my waist, dancing around me for a while there.”

“Dad played a trick on you?”

“It was a long time ago,” Maude sighed. “Before we left Glasonland. Dannie was only a baby. Or was she even born yet? I don’t remember. I do remember that your mother almost left him over it, though. Or kick him to the curb, more like, since they were both living in my house.”

“She did? Mum leave Dad?”

“Oh, yes! She was mad, George! Madder than I was. As far as she was concerned, that potion could have been anything – could have killed me, even. Except it didn’t. I had a job of a time calming her down, I did.” Maude sighed. “But then again … that’s your mother, Georgie. She’s always been the protector of the family. The one who got her claws out and defended what she had to. Sophie, she was too sweet and kind … and Pamela, well, Pamela always was more interested in defending her and hers than anybody else’s.”

“Aren’t you Aunt Pamela’s?”

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you?” Maude murmured. Her eyes went unfocused and she stared at the wall. Again she sighed. “Anyway – what did you bring for your old Granny, kiddo? If it’s the bird juice, I’m warning you, I’ll tell your mother and I can watch you face her wrath.”

“It’s better!” George answered. “It’s Elixir of Life!”

Maude gaped. Then she sat straight up.

“What?”

“… Elixir of Life?” George whispered.

“George Ferreira, how in the good Lord’s name did you get a hold of that? Wright Almighty! What did you – you didn’t go anywhere near the Orkneys, did you? Because if you did, I swear to Wright I’ll—”

“The Orkneys? What? No!” George protested. “It’s not that kind! It’s not the bad kind! It’s the good kind, the one the Emryses make!”

Maude blinked, very slowly. “You … you got the Emryses to make this for me?”

“Er …”

He should have just lied. He should have lied and been done with it. The problem was that he never lied to his Granny – never even told half-truths, as he did often with his parents. You didn’t lie to Maude. Maude would more often than not laugh at whatever you did, even if she did send you to Bianca and Richard afterward. Her child-punishing days, she swore, were over.

Apparently, she had lied.

“George, what did you do?”

“I …” He scratched the back of his neck. “I just … borrowed some …”

Maude’s eyebrows went up.

“… perhaps without strict permission …”

“George! You stole this?”

“I wouldn’t call it stealing –“

“George! Your parents – hell, I raised you better than that!”

“You always said that the rules were made to be broken, Granny!” George protested.

“Not rules like stealing, and well you—”

“When there are bigger things at stake!” George continued. “Like your life, Granny! Don’t you think your life is a little bit more important?”

Maude flopped against the pillows. “Oh, Georgie.”

“Well?” George challenged. “Isn’t it?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Not that simple? How can much simpler can it get?”

“Quite a bit – no, hear me out, Georgie. It …” Maude sighed and looked upward. “I’m sixty-eight years old. Do you know what that means?”

“That you could still have a lot of good years left in you. You’re healthy, Granny. Or at least you were healthy until you got … sick.”

Maude’s eyes slid to the elixir and rested there. “George, if you thought I had a lot of years left in me, would you be bringing that elixir here?”

“Well –” George squirmed, scratched his head, hunkered down in his chair.

“If you thought I had a lot of years left in me,” Maude repeated slowly, even patiently, “would you have brought that here?”

“You would have a lot of years left if you drank it!”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

George crossed his arms. “I don’t see why it matters. You could have a lot of years left in you.”

“Only by breaking every last law of nature and destroying the Lord Wright’s plan.”

“So?” George asked. “Anyway, how do you know that it’s not the Lord’s plan that you drink it?”

“I don’t know that, Georgie. I’ll grant it to you.” Maude nodded, slowly, in the manner of one granting a great concession. “But when you get to be my age, you learn a thing or two about the laws of nature and why they shouldn’t be broken.”

“What would you know? Granny, you’re a shopwife! You never – never – did anything with magic! Or science!”

“No-o, but I had my brother Georgie, you know,” Maude pointed out.

George’s breath sucked in through his teeth. “Did – did he –?” He didn’t know, after all, what had happened to Great-Uncle George. He’d never asked. Never even wondered. You didn’t wonder what had happened to your grandmother’s brothers and sisters – you assumed, if they weren’t obviously in evidence, that they had passed on. Because they were nearly as old or maybe even older than your grandmother, you never thought to ask how …

“Ever do something monumentally stupid that led to him getting killed? No,” replied Maude. “No, it wasn’t like that. It was more … George, you can’t let yourself go thinking that you’re better than the rest of us, that you’re entitled to break the rules that the rest of us have to live by. Maybe you can bend them a bit, but you can’t break them. You go that way, eventually you’ll end up cut off and alone.”

“Is – is that what happened to Uncle George?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Maude. “I haven’t spoken to him for almost thirty years. He went deep into the magical community – and as far as I know, he never came back out again.”

George blinked. “Because – because –?”

“He started thinking he was better than the rest of us – more. He didn’t go to the bad, I don’t think, unless that was after we lost touch. Not like Lady Morgause. But he … he hated having to live in hiding, to be a great name but a name that was only spoken of in whispers. He thought, with his talents, he could be a hero. He started to resent the rest of us for it – and by ‘the rest of us’ I don’t mean his family, Georgie, I mean everybody. Everybody who wasn’t magical. He blamed us all for keeping him down. And eventually – there was a rather explosive row over it, and he retreated into the company of people who, he said, would understand him. And that was the last I ever saw of him.” Maude sighed.

“But I thought you liked Uncle George?”

“Oh, of course I did. I still do. But liking somebody – loving them, even – doesn’t mean you have to like every last little thing they do.” Maude cast a glance at the elixir on the table. “Like now, for instance.”

“That – that goes both ways!” George answered, trying not to blubber.

Maude’s smile grew soft, gentle. “I’m sure it does, Georgie-porgie. But – try to see it from my perspective?”

“How?”

“I’m sixty-eight years old, Georgie. My husband, Alfie, he’s been gone for over thirty years. I’ve spent longer without him than I ever did with him. My children are getting older. My grandchildren are grown and leaving the nest. I’ve had a long life and a happy one, Georgie. And nobody needs me anymore –“

“We do!” George shouted. “I do! You don’t – you don’t have to –”

“No,” Maude interrupted. “No, George, you don’t need me. You want me, and believe me, I’m flattered, but you don’t need me.”

“We do! We do! We always will!”

Maude watched him, head cocked a little to one side. “Maybe that’s what you think now,” she answered, “but you don’t need any one person to help you be happy. Being happy is on you, George. It’s on each and every one of us to make our own self happy.”

“But –”

“And if you really love something, and care about it, Georgie, you have to let it go when it’s ready to go. You know that. Or at least, I know that, and I’m giving you the benefit of my experience. Holding onto something that doesn’t want to be held only leads to trouble and heartache for the holder and the hold-ee.”

“But why don’t you want to stay?” George quavered. “What’s so bad that it makes you want to go?”

“Oh, it’s nothing bad. It’s just – it’s time, Georgie. I’ve had a good life, I’ve had my share of downs, but I think I’ve had more than my share of ups. I’ve enjoyed myself. And now I’m ready for the next thing.”

“How can you say that? It’s not the next thing! It’s the last thing!”

“You don’t know that, Georgie.” If Maude had said that any less gently, George might not have hated her for it quite as much. “And even if it is the last thing – there’s no escaping it.”

“Yes, there is!”

“That’s not an escape, that’s just putting it off for a time. And you know it.”

“But it’s not fair.” If that wasn’t the whine of a six-year-old, George didn’t know what it was – but it was true!

“Fair?” Maude asked, eyebrows arching. “Fair? Who said anything about fair? And if you want to talk about fair and not fair, kiddo, I think you need to have a chat with your cousin Blanche or Cressida. Or Geoffrey, or Henry, or Pippa. Or your friend Ravenna, for that matter.”

George hung his head. “I still don’t have to like it.”

“Nobody said you do. And I don’t blame you that you don’t. And Georgie-porgie,” she patted his knee, “you don’t think I’m just going to up and abandon you, do you? If the good Lord gives us a view from Heaven, you know I’ll be watching you every waking minute.” As the probable implications of that began to sear through George’s horrified mind, Maude murmured, “Well – not every waking minute. I know what you boys are like.” She shuddered. George shuddered too.

They looked at each other and laughed, at least until Maude started to cough. George fumbled for a handkerchief to hand to her.

The horrible hacking was over by the time he found it, and Maude had settled back on the pillows. George tried to smile at her even as he sniffled. “Are – are you sure I can’t – you sure you won’t …?”

“Yes.”

George slumped. “… I still don’t get it.”

“I’m glad you don’t,” Maude answered. “You’re not sixteen, George. You shouldn’t get it. I’d be more worried if you got it than if you didn’t.”

“If you say so, Granny.”

“And I am saying so. I still know best.” Her eyes narrowed and she watched him speculatively. “However … there is something you can do for me, even if I won’t let you break the laws of nature for me.”

George perked up. Something he could do for his Granny? Something to make her happy? Something to, maybe, keep her around?

“Anything, Granny!”

“Good!” she cackled. “Because you’re not going to like this one. George … I want you to make your mother’s life easier and a little happier. I want you to get yourself a haircut. A decent one, mind.”

George’s face fell. Then – against all thought and better judgment – he smiled. “How decent is decent?”

“Let me put it like this: if your mother comes up to join me within a week or so, and if I find out that it was because of you, then I will be watching you every waking minute. Imagine what that means, my boy.”

“So … I just have to avoid giving her apoplexy?”

“You have to avoid making her more exasperated with your new haircut than with your old. You don’t have to make her happy, because I know you, but you have to make her less annoyed.”

George considered that, nodding. “All right. I can manage that. For you, Granny.”

“Good boy,” Maude sighed. “Because you know – I’ll be watching.”

It was the first three characteristics of his quest that made him excited — not merely desperate — but George figured Granny would forgive him if all went well. And if it didn’t, well, she’d never know about the attempt in the first place.

He rubbed his hands together and listened closely. Nothing, not even the squeaking of mice in the school walls, though apparently the spectral cats tended to do as well or better with mice than regular cats. Wherever the Professors Emrys were, it wasn’t here.

All to the good.

George took a deep breath and cast the spell to dematerialize and re-materialize on the floor below.

This was the part that could be fatal. The Professors had lectured him and Ravenna on the dangers of dematerializing and remateriliazing so many times he could recite the speech in his sleep. Avoid going places you cannot see – you could try to materialize in the middle of a desk or a chair or a bookcase, any of which could be fatal.

Never go someplace you are unfamiliar with — even if you cannot see your study in your house, you have a good idea where all of the furniture, walls, floors are. If you’re not familiar with the place you’re going, you could materialize into anything.

Never, never try to materialize to a high altitude or underground! It was a mistake few wizards made twice. It was a mistake few wizards survived once. Tons of crushing earth on top of you, or a hundred feet of empty sky below you, was not very forgiving.

George ignored all of that excellent advice …

And lived to tell the tale.

He pushed his hair back with one hand and looked around, after grinning like a maniac. Ha — he knew the Emryses had to have a secret workroom below the school. The only bit of guesswork had involved just how deep it was. He’d found the hollow space in the floor without much trouble. Apparently the Emryses hadn’t thought to go much deeper than the foundation. Lucky for him, that was, though he supposed it was only sensible on the part of the Emryses. Freddy jawed enough about his engineering classes for George to guess that a secret room tens of feet below the building would be hard to construct, and the building itself might have structural problems if the workroom was that deep.

Apparently even magicians had to obey the laws of engineering, or else the extra security was not worth the extra hassle.

Now George looked around him. He was in a short hallway, bright, but built of stone. It should be damp, but the stone he rubbed under one hand was bone-dry. It was illuminated by the same lamps that lit the rest of the school. It was light brighter than any candle, whiter even than the sun. It was pure starlight, captured and brought down to earth, made to light spaces much smaller than the sky.

At the end of the corridor was … a bookshelf?

George cocked his head again to listen. The stones let in no sound. There was only the steady thump-thump, thump-thump of his heart. If there was anyone beyond that bookshelf … if there was anything beyond that bookshelf.

Only one way to find out.

George came to the bookshelf and stopped. Now — how to get past it? For there had to be a way past it. The Emryses liked these fake bookshelves. Some of them could only be operated by magic, some only by knowing the right book to pull, or push, or knock over.

If it wasn’t a magic bookshelf, he could be here all day …

He cast a searching spell, one designed to find magic. Not to decode the spell, because that was another thing likely to get one killed. Just one to search for the traces of magic.

On the bookshelf itself, nothing. There was a faint hum of power from whatever was beyond it — good, there was something beyond it — but nothing from the bookshelf. So the mechanism must be mundane. Stupid, George thought. A wizard could figure out a mundane mechanism, given enough time. But a mundane — a mob, say, of ordinary people spurred on by a monk — couldn’t figure out a magical mechanism given all the time in the world. They could just take an axe to the shelf, or throw a torch at it and let the books and shelf alike burn, and beat their way through the wreckage to whatever was beyond.

George squatted and ran his fingers over the spines of the books, starting at the bottom, searching for ones that gave way to pressure, resisted pressure, felt different … anything, really. He wasn’t all that picky.

Except –

Good Lord.

Every book on the shelf was a holy book.

All right, maybe they all weren’t — but there were at least three books from the Book of Wright on this shelf alone, and every other book, even if it wasn’t a holy work, was written by a Church father or a saint. And if there was one thing that George knew about the Church, it was that the Church loved its books. Hell, it was a mortal sin to burn the Book of Wright or any of the books within it! The Abbot’s Council had actually gotten off their asses and agreed on that in 452 AR (Anno Roberti), after civil wars in Glasonland had resulted in the burning of two monasteries and countless works of sacred writ. The original monastery that St. Robert himself had burned to the ground, and with it had disappeared all three of the original copies — the ones written in the saint’s own hand — of the Book of Wright. Legends claimed that one had burned and the other two were spirited away by the monks of the abbey. The first was safe, kept under lock and key in the rebuilt abbey. The other … well, nobody knew what had happened to the other. Or nobody was telling.

As for these books, well, if there was a monk anywhere near the torch-carrying mob – and there often was — the mob would probably want him to cast away the demons before they tried to see the workroom. And he would see the books, and he would demand that they be examined before anything happened to them. That would take time. Maybe it would only be five minutes, but time was time. Brilliant, thought George, as he continued to feel for the mechanism.

Ah — there, he found it! He pulled, the bookshelf swung in, and in he went.

Then he stopped, gripped his wand, and waited.

Nothing.

George kept waiting, heart pounding. The hand holding his wand started to shake. His breathing, rapid and shallow, filled the small room.

The bookshelf shut behind him with a thud. It didn’t even have the heart to be ponderous — it was just a thud.

Nothing stubbornly continued to happen.

George moved to put his wand away. Still nothing.

No traps? NONE? Are they stupid?

He looked around, and the stardust lamps lit themselves. Blinking in the sudden light, he continued to observe. To his left –

An alchemy table! Magical, mundane — George trotted over and started to examine it.

It was only as he stared at the wonders of glassmaking, the twisted tubes and beakers, filled with liquid of doubtful origin and provenance, that George ran smack into the biggest impediment to his plan: alchemy, magical or mundane, was his worst subject.

He scratched his head. Now what?

He knew what he was looking for, at least. He knew it would be green, and he knew what it would smell like. The Professors had shown the mixture to both George and Ravenna after Lady Morgause had been arrested. They’d had whole lessons on it. But if George were the Emryses, he’d hide this mixture under layers and layers of illusions and spells. Possibly traps, too, though if the Emryses had the mind of George, George would have either been dead or in a lot of pain at least a dozen times over by now.

Maybe they would leave it hiding in plain sight? George picked up a beaker of green liquid and sniffed it cautiously. It smelled of flowers and grass clippings, wheat ripening in the sun — not the heady spicy scent of the elixir.

Where, George thought, taking a step back and surveying the shelves, can you possibly be? They have to have you … somewhere they have to have you …

Movement caught the corner of his eye. George yelped — too loudly (which was to say, within the range audible to Sim ears) — and whipped around, wand out.

There was nobody there.

George slowly lowered his wand–and saw the movement again. He turned–

A mirror!

George almost laughed. Here he was, jumping at a mirror! He must –

Wait.

That couldn’t be any mirror.

He trotted over to the fogged glass set between the bookshelves. Yes — yes, fogged glass, a faint rippling sheen to the surface, a reflection that waited a moment to catch up — he knew what this was!

A truth mirror! Ravenna had done a report on them! George stuck his hands on his hips and grinned at the mirror.

His grin slowly dropped away.

His reflection wasn’t grinning back.

Oh, it was, sort of — but it wasn’t grinning the grin George knew he had to be wearing. His grin was always wide, confident, cocky even. And why wouldn’t it be? He’d just snuck into the Emrys’s basement workroom! He had wended his way through traps and tricks! Perhaps not traps, but certainly tricks! He’d outsmarted his professors!

But his reflection wasn’t happy. It had the eyes of a sad and scared boy. The grin was slow and faltering. The eyes darted from side to side, never quite meeting George’s. There was a hint of tears in the corner of one of the eyes.

It was only when George scratched his head in puzzlement that the reflection and the body he knew he possessed began to match.

And George remembered Ravenna’s report.

Mirrors, Ravenna had said, did not reflect the truth. They reflected the light. What the light showed, they showed. What the light allowed to remain hidden, they hid. Mirrors could be manipulated. A stray hammer-hit on the silver could distort the reflection forever. Shatter a mirror and you would get a thousand crazy shards of a reflection. How could something so fragile be considered to be a reflector of truth?

So some wizard — or witches, Ravenna’s research claimed it was the Cordial sisters working in concert — had decided to craft a mirror that showed not what appeared to be there, but was there. They had succeeded. Some said the success was horrible. Some said it was the best thing they ever did.

Some said it was both.

George sighed. Well, so this was a truth mirror. So it showed that he was sad and scared and unsure. No duh! His Granny was dying — would die, if he didn’t –

A flash of green caught the edge of the mirror. George spun around, gasping.

There was nothing there. Except –

A cauldron. An ancient cauldron. One carved with runes George couldn’t begin to interpret. Shelves were built over it, shelves with bottles …

He swallowed his last gasp whole and ran behind he cauldron and shelving.

But which one was the one he needed? Could one be the elixir? There were so many potions the Emryses could be making! Love potions, hate potions, sleeping potions, luck potions, ill-luck potions, potions to give you a pick-me-up in the morning, hangover cures, wart remover –

George absently stirred the bone ladle half-submerged in the cauldron. He stared at the bottles. Which one — which one had the elixir? One of them had to — he couldn’t have gone this far just to –

He sniffed — all right, sniffled –

He smelled it. That heady, spicy scent. The one that made you feel ten times more alive just for smelling it. The one that made you sit up, eyes wide, and learn to love the world.

With a shaking hand and flaring nostrils, George reached for the nearest bottle. He sniffed it.

This had to be the stuff — it was that smell. And even in the shadows of the bottle, the verdant green winked and blinked up at him. George slowly tipped the bottle and poured a single drop onto his finger.

It sat there, trembling like a teardrop unshed. Try me, it beckoned, so green and bright. See what I can do! See what I can do for you!

If the Emryses were like George, this would be a trap. But they weren’t like George. They were like themselves. George was probably safe to try this.

He popped his finger into his mouth and sucked.

His eyes went wide. Faint — so faint — blue sparkles danced in front of him. And he could feel it — fresh, new life — coursing through him. A drop wouldn’t take away much, a few days, a week maybe. The Emryses had allowed both him and Ravenna to try a drop. He’d watched Ravenna’s face as she made her trial, her mouth popping open in a silent Oh, her eyes wide and round as her little mouth. He knew he looked the same now, and this time he knew what to expect.

He wasn’t, however, expecting the shower of soft golden light blooming in the middle of the room: a materializing wizard or witch.

Shit shit shit!

George lined up the spell of materialization in his head. He couldn’t do this nervous — that was too dangerous — and now that he had his prize spirited up his sleeve –

He just had to be fast — he cast the spell to land him in the foyer –

Not fast enough. The furious voice of Professor Merlin chased him just on the edge of hearing. “GEORGE!“

He materialized into the foyer.

“Oh!” The voice behind him gasped. “George!”

Not one of the Professors. Ravenna.

George didn’t have time for this. He spun on one heel as Ravenna trotted to him. “You never saw me, all right?”

Ravenna started. “I — what?”

“GEORGE FERREIRA! GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW!”

Ravenna stared in the direction of the voice, then gaped at George. “What did you do?”

“Nothing! Nothing wrong! It’s none of your business anyway!”

“But –”

“GEORGE!”

“Prof–” George clapped a hand over her mouth before she could get more than the first syllable out.

“Shut up! You never saw me!”

Her eyes widened, then narrowed, burned — she shoved his hand away. “George Ferr–” she hissed.

“It’s for my Granny,” George whispered, his voice creaking. Good Lord, what had possessed him to say that? She would –

Ravenna gasped.

“Shut up,” he whispered. “Shut up, don’t say anything. I don’t know why–”

“Go.”

George blinked. “Eh?”

“Go! Go, you idiot! Run!” Ravenna turned to where Professor Merlin’s voice had come. “He’s not here, Professor!” She turned back and hissed. “Go!”

George didn’t need to be told twice.

Or maybe his mother had put it into the card room so that she wouldn’t have to look at it every day. But why would she purchase anything so hideous? Maybe it had been a gift?

Whatever the statue’s origin, Will had come to a decision: when he inherited the castle (may the day be long in coming), that statue was going to be the first thing to go.

Or maybe not. He had been living here for over a year, and he had never bothered to look closely at the statue before now. It was only tonight that he had spent any time looking at it. Maybe he could go back to ignoring it tomorrow.

Tomorrow …

Tomorrow was shaping up to be either the best day or the worst day of his life.

“Will, for the love of all that is good and holy, would you stop staring at that thing? You’re giving me the creeps. Here,” Tom said, rising from the chess table, “I’m getting you a drink.”

“I don’t need another drink.”

“When was your last one?”

Last one? Will tried to cast his mind back — but all the hours, minutes and seconds since Jessie had yelped and, eyes wide, stared at the growing puddle between her feet were a blur. All Will remembered was that he had been banished down here an age ago, nobody was bringing any news, and he couldn’t even hear Jessie yelling. He was told that women in labor yelled. Why couldn’t he hear Jessie?

“Never mind. If you can’t remember, you need another,” Tom muttered.

“I’m not thirsty.”

“Did I ask if you were thirsty?” Tom clapped a hand on Will’s shoulder and led — pushed him — forward to the bar.

“I want to remember meeting my baby,” Will protested. And hopefully he would meet the little lad — or lass — soon. And pray the Lord Jessie would be all right.

“Oh, you will,” Tom murmured. “Doesn’t matter how much you’ve had to drink before, you will. Besides, with the way you’re sweating it out, I doubt any of the alcohol is even hitting you.”

“And Will,” Accolon added, “you know if you want to play, take the edge off, distract yourself, all you’ve got to do is say so.”

“No, he doesn’t!” Lancelot laughed. “Lord, Accolon, he’s about to have a baby! You can’t be taking him for all he has now!”

Accolon chortled, shuffling the cards with far more dexterity than someone whose muscles weren’t firmly attached to the bone. “The baby will have two doting grandsires to spoil it rotten. I’m not worried.”

“I am!” Lancelot replied.

“But maybe he’ll feel better if he distracts himself,” Arthur pointed out. “We can stake him, Lance. Accolon won’t dare try to fleece us.”

“Says who?” Accolon chortled.

“Says your wife,” Arthur answered.

“… Damn,” Accolon sighed. “You’re right, aren’t you?”

“You want to play?” Tom asked, nudging Will with a cold tankard. “It might help you take the edge off. You could probably even get Accolon to bow off — then you won’t have to worry about getting fleeced.”

“Rob’s just as capable of fleecing me,” Will shrugged, taking the tankard. “To say nothing of your father.”

“Yes, but Will, they won’t. I can’t make that guarantee for Accolon.”

“Did it help?” Will asked, glancing sidelong at the table. “When Lynn …?”

Will had been sitting right by Tom’s side while Lynn labored and they played cards to pass the time — but had it helped? Tom always … all that came to Will’s mind were poker metaphors. Played his cards close to his vest, had a good poker face. You never knew that something was bothering Tom unless he wanted you to know. Even when his wife was bringing his first child into the world … he was nervous, edgy, of course, jumping whenever anybody came from upstairs, but if you didn’t know what was happening, you might not have guessed that Tom was waiting to be made either the happiest or most despondent man alive.

“That depends,” Tom replied slowly, “on what you mean by ‘help.’ I have a feeling that I’ve managed to pay for most of Paschal and Chloe’s baby dresses, so I suppose I helped in that …”

Will glanced at the table. “I don’t think I need to buy their toddler … things,” Will finished, lamely.

“You’re no fun, Will!” Accolon called, proving his hearing sharper than Will would have ever guessed. Will could only shrug.

Tom clapped Will on the shoulder. “She’ll be fine, you know.”

There was only one she to whom Tom could be referring. Will watched his amber reflection in the tankard. His eyes were shadowed and his face haggard, and the sleepless nights hadn’t even started yet. “You don’t know that.”

“Of course I know that. Morgan’s with her. Do you think she’d let anything happen to Jess?”

“She might not want to –”

“Will. Not to be morbid, but she regularly reattaches limbs to a zombie. Anything that might go wrong with Jess, she could fix in her sleep. Right, Accolon?” Tom called.

“Oh, aye,” Accolon agreed. “Much harder to fix dead flesh than living. She’ll be fine, Will.”

“But it’s still taking such a long time …” Will murmured.

Tom said nothing, no reassuring words — Will’s head snapped up. “It is! It is taking longer than it should!”

“No, lad, it’s not,” Arthur rumbled. “Longer than Lynn took — aye — but not longer than it should.”

“But –”

“When she’s been at it for over a day — a whole day, from dawn to dawn,” Arthur continued, impassive, “then you’ll know it’s taking longer than it should. Then you start to worry because of just the length of time it’s taking. Before then? Before then, don’t go fretting about the time.”

“Isabel took half a night and most of a day — from dawn to sunset — for Darius,” Rob added. “I shouldn’t start worrying yet if I were you, Will.”

Yet. Will tried not to shudder. Rob’s sister-in-law Isabel had taken long with her first child … and her second baby had killed her. His fingers tightened around the tankard. To think he used to lie awake at nights, wondering if he’d be a good father — now he’d give a thousand sleepless nights just to know that he would be a father and remain a husband.

“But …” Will tried to protest, “I can’t even hear her …”

“Oh, that’s probably Morgan’s doing,” Accolon answered. “You probably don’t want to hear her.”

Yes, I do! YES I DO!

“She’s probably saying all kinds of nasty things about you just about now,” Accolon mused.

“At least she won’t have anyone egging her on,” Rob pointed out. “I’m pretty sure Granny …” He started, and fell silent, and Will remembered just what a favor Dannie was doing for Jessie, and Rob for him, being here tonight. Even on a good horse, it was an hour’s ride between Avilion and the capital. Anything could happen in two hours with a very sick old woman.

“How is she, Rob?” Tom asked, and Will was grateful, for that meant he did not have find the words.

Rob sighed and shrugged. “No worse … but no better. We think she’s waiting for Freddy to get home to see her. And maybe to give George and Dannie time to … get used to the idea.”

Will stared into his tankard. He remembered how Dannie back in Camford would talk incessantly about her grandmother, and how Freddy didn’t take much coaxing to get a story or two out of him. Will barely remembered his grandfather, but he did remember that his absence had taken a great deal of getting used to. He could not imagine what Dannie and Freddy and their younger brother were going through right now.

Or perhaps he could. Will tossed back the rest of his ale without even tasting it.

Silence, awkward and knobby-kneed rather than golden and pure, descended over the room. Even the cards made no noise as they were shuffled and dealt. The ale in Tom’s glass swirled with the roar of the sea. Chips clinked, and –

The thin, high wail of a newborn pierced the air. Will dropped his tankard.

The door to the room flew open. “Hello, boys!” Guinevere called. “Somebody here wants to meet her daddy!”

Her daddy. A girl, then. But — a healthy girl. A girl with lungs strong enough to wail when she was unhappy. A girl who was quickly calming down as Guinevere shushed her. A girl with big eyes that weren’t closed in sleep, as so many newborns’ were, but wide and trying to watch everything that went on around her.

A baby girl!

He was a daddy!

Will could only grin as he watched the baby. He didn’t notice how quickly Guinevere shut the door behind her. He didn’t see the quick little grin that flitted across her face as she did so. He only barely noticed Tom pushing him forward, and that was because Will went flying forward and nearly tripped over his tankard.

He’d been a father for not five minutes and he was already an embarrassment to his child, he knew it.

“Well?” Guinevere asked, smiling and holding the baby forward. “Come see! Ah-ah!” She glared at the grandsires, already leaping up. “The father gets first dibs!” Out of the corner of her mouth, she added, “And he’d better hurry, because I don’t know how long I can hold the grandfathers off.”

Will hurried as well as he could to get a glimpse at his daughter.

Will gulped when he got closer. He’d never seen anything more beautiful … except … “Jessie?” he croaked.

“Is absolutely fine. She did beautifully, all things considered.” When Will’s head came up from a minute examination of the tiny fingers in a panic, Guinevere sighed. “She’s fine. There were … complications, but she’s fine and she’s going to be fine.”

“Are you –”

“Morgan’s sure. That’s good enough for me, and that’s good enough for Jess.”

If it was good enough for Jess, then it would be good enough for Will.

He stroked the baby’s cheek, ignoring the hubbub behind him of congratulations and slaps on the back and demands to move to the side so they could see the baby. He deserved at least a couple of minutes. The baby’s big silver eyes followed his every moment, and Will smiled.

Silver eyes — Tom’s eyes and Arthur’s eyes, technically, but he wouldn’t think of that just now. He would think instead of Igraine’s silver eyes. The silver eyes that had charmed a king. Silver eyes charming him already. And how fitting, since she would be named for Igraine of the Silver Eyes.

“Her eyes are beautiful,” Will whispered. “Silver.”

“Silver?” Guinevere gasped, or pretended to gasp, turning the baby around and away from Will. She pushed the baby’s dress up and peeked under the napkin. “Will, forgive me — I must have gotten them mixed up. This one is the boy.”

Mixed up –

There was a sudden silence behind him.

Will could only squeak, “Boy?”

“Aye,” came a voice from the door — the Queen’s. “This one is the girl.”

Will looked at the baby in the Queen’s arms, then again at the baby in his mother’s. He looked again. And again.

There were definitely two babies. He was not imagining that.

“Will!” Tom hollered, clapping him on the back. “You dog! Twins! On the first try!”

“I –”

Twins!

“But Jess said she wasn’t having twins!” Will wailed, gaze still volleying from one twin to the other.

“Oh, poo! What did she know about it!” Guinevere laughed. “There were twins, all right!”

“See? And you were worrying for nothing! No wonder it took so long!” Tom laughed. “Two babies! You dog!”

“You already mentioned that,” Will muttered.

“It deserves mentioning again!”

“Welcome to the club!” Lancelot laughed, clapping Will on exactly that same spot in the back where Tom had been clapping him all night. “Doesn’t it feel great?”

Great? If great was a mix of shock and sudden terror — one baby was scary enough, but two? — and overwhelming relief that it had been twins, twice as dangerous as one baby, and somehow everyone was all right –

“He’ll probably feel better once the shock’s worn off,” Arthur said kindly. “If you think it’s a shock the second time around, imagine it the first time.”

“Aye, aye …”

The voices were washing over him like those in the market square: a thousand conversations, not one intelligible remark. Except for the Queen’s. “Here,” she said, pushing the girl into Will’s arms. “I think she wants to get to know her papa.”

Will almost panicked as he took her. She was so tiny! Tinier than Elise had been, that one time Tom had pressed her into his arms before she got a bit bigger and sturdier! He was going to drop her, or break her, or –

The baby snuggled and rooted in his tunic, and Will slowly brought her up to his shoulder. “Majesty –” he started, and stopped.

There was no way any mere inquiry about whether the baby — babies — had fed was going to get through this hubbub. “Hope you’re not hungry, baby,” Will whispered, bouncing her up and down. “I don’t think anybody is going to pay attention to me. You’ll have to … to sing for your own supper.”

The baby burped, but she didn’t sing, so hopefully she wasn’t hungry.

Tom, Will heard vaguely, was going on and on about his godson — apparently he had already decided that he would stand as B–as the boy’s–

Oh, no.

He had Jess had thought of names — but they hadn’t been twin names. Perhaps Tom and Jessie had gotten along fine without obviously related names … as had Galahad and Leona, but … damn it, he wanted these two to be special!

Will cleared his through. “Majesty?”

Both of their Majesties turned to him. “Will,” Alison sighed, “for heaven’s sake, it’s –”

“Er — can I go up and see Jess?” He looked at the babies. “Can we go up and see Jess?”

“No!” Lancelot wailed. “I didn’t even get a chance to hold one of them!”

Guinevere and the Queen shared glances around Will’s head. “You can hold both of them all you want in the morning,” Guinevere pronounced. “Sure, Will, come with us.”

“No! He can go, but leave the babies!” Lancelot made an ineffectual grab for the boy, and Will held more tightly to the girl.

“You’ve been eclipsed, Will!” Tom laughed.

“They’re tired, Lance. And we might as well let their parents have some time with them,” the Queen said. “Jessie barely held them all, except when she was feeding them.”

“She’s carried them for the last nine months!” Lancelot protested.

“Not the same thing!” Guinevere laughed. “Will, come on! We’d better smuggle them out before the grandfathers mount an offensive. Lance, Arthur, you can get to hold them all you want — in the morning. Will, come!”

Guinevere led the way, and Will followed, gratefully, before anybody else could protest. They made their way to the bedroom, Will trying to walk without jiggling the girl too much. It was harder than it looked.

When they got to the door, Guinevere waved him forward … and Will walked into a far calmer scene than he was expecting.

He bounced his daughter gently and looked about him. Everything had been — must have been — cleaned up. He couldn’t even detect an afterhint of coppery blood, and he was sure there would be blood. How wasn’t there?

Morgan conferred with Jessie, who, oddly, was giggling after every other word. Dannie and Lynn were deep in some conversation. Lynn saw him first. “Oh! Will! Congratulations! Two healthy babies!” Was there a shade of sadness in her eyes?

Dannie turned to him and grinned, though there was something brittle in it. “Twins!” she said in the tone of a woman thinking many, many thoughts that Will was fairly sure women were not supposed to have — not that that ever stopped them. “All right, spill. What inappropriate comments has my husband made, so I know which ones are taken?”

“Er, none, but Tom …” He bounced his daughter and looked down at her face for a hint on how to get out of this — but she stared back up at him with the wide-eyed gaze of the very young. Jessie’s eyes, he realized, his heart melting all over again. It was better than the silver-eyed daughter he had been envisioning before he realized it was a silver-eyed son he had.

“Oh, the Crown Prince has been at it? Well, hmm, how I do top that –” Dannie started, interrupted by Morgan pushing her way past both Lynn and Dannie.

“Dannie, could you take …” Morgan glanced at the baby in Will’s arms. “Er …”

“The girl,” Will filled in.

“Right. Gwen, you put yours in his crib, Dannie, take Will’s. We need a word.”

“A — word?” Will choked. As Dannie took his daughter from his arms. He glanced to Jessie, who was staring at the ceiling, and was … giggling?

“Lady Morgan?” Will whispered.

“I think you should know,” Will continued to watch Jessie as she spoke, Jessie who turned to look at her babies and kept laughing, “that there were some … complications.”

“Complications?” Will squeaked. He stared at Jessie. But she looked –

“Jess is fine,” Morgan insisted. “And so are both the babies. You have nothing to worry about.”

“But — but you said –”

Morgan gripped both his shoulders and stared into his eyes. “Will. It was her first pregnancy, and she had twins. Two babies means twice as many things that can go wrong — all of which were put right. But still. What happened … hurt, more than is normal for a baby. So I gave Jessie something to take the edge off. And it has …” Morgan glanced at Jessie, who seemed to find the bedcurtains very funny. “Side effects.”

“What — what kind of side effects?” Will whispered.

“She’ll just be giggling for a few hours, or until she drops off to sleep. Nothing to worry about. But … well, I wouldn’t try to hold any serious conversations with her just now.”

Will looked at Jessie again, who saw him looking and grinned hugely at him. “… Oh.”

“You sound disappointed?”

“I … wanted to discuss names …”

“Oh!” Morgan put one finger against her lip. “Well, you can try. You just might have to talk about it again in the morning.”

“Oh. All … all right.” Will took one hesitant step toward the bed — then reassessed his audience.

“Ladies!” Guinevere clapped her hands. “Let’s give them some privacy, shall we? And no funny business, young man!”

Will could only watch with his jaw fallen as the rest of the ladies filed out. Morgan hesitated in the doorway. “I’ll be — checking up on Jess every few hours,” she said. “You might want to sleep elsewhere tonight, Will.”

Sleep? Will wondered, but said nothing. He only waited for them to leave before he sat, hesitantly, on the edge of the bed.

“Oh!” Jessie gasped.

Will froze. “Did I — did I hurt you?”

“No.” She giggled. “I just wasn’t expecting you to join me.” She frowned — or tried to, it was hard to frown when one was starting to laugh again. “But no funny business!”

“I promise the utmost seriousness,” Will answered dryly. Jessie seemed to find that hilarious. Will glanced sidelong at the cradles — the babies barely noticed.

“… Jess?” Will asked when her laughter died down. “What about names?”

Jessie turned her head to one side. “What was wrong with Ban and Igraine?”

“They’re … they’re twins, Jess.”

Her nose wrinkled for a moment, then Jessie giggled. “Twins!” she repeated. “Can you believe it!”

“Barely,” Will admitted.

“I don’t either,” Jessie whispered in the tone of one admitting the existence of a great and secret conspiracy. It was unfortunately rather spoiled by the laughter at the end. “But I had them! We had them!”

“I think you can take most of the credit.” Will moved to stroke her stomach, but stopped. “Jess?”

“Hmm?” she asked, head tilted, her hair falling charmingly over one eye.

“You don’t … hurt, do you?”

“Oh, Will, I am feeling no pain,” Jessie laughed, and somehow Will did not find it at all difficult to believe her.

Still, he moved slowly and gingerly toward her, because even if she was feeling no pain, she might still be injured. There had been … complications. He slipped an arm around her shoulder, and she nestled against him. For a moment, all was perfect.

Jessie sighed. It was a contented sigh, but a sigh nonetheless. “So … names.”

“Names,” Will agreed. “We can make Ban and Igraine their middle names.”

“Maybe …” Jessie tapped her fingers against his knuckles. “You … have some ancestor named Corentin, don’t you?”

“… Somewhere,” Will admitted. Was a great-grandfather or a great-great-grandfather?

“And I always liked Celeste,” Jessie mused. “It means ‘of the sky.’ Or ‘heavenly.’”

“Heavenly,” Will repeated. “Kind of like her eyes.”

Jessie’s eyes narrowed. “I thought she was the one with my eyes.”

“She is.”

She giggled. But she smiled. And that smile was worth so much more than the giggle. Was it any surprise that Will had to kiss her?

And on Will’s side of the bed, in their double cradles whose origin Will would have to find out the next morning, Corentin and Celeste squirmed and kicked and made their first impressions of this strange new world.

It was happening again. And this time, she wasn’t even in the room. She was down below, while the doctor completed the examination and she tried to entertain — entertain! — Pamela and Cressida.

Then again, considering who it was upstairs being tended to, they had every right to be here that she did. She just wished she didn’t feel like a hostess now, and that she could be only a worried daughter.

Cressida, at least, knew something about helplessness. Pamela probably did, too. But for Cressida, knowing her man was miles and miles away, and there was nothing she could do to affect his fate? That he might be fighting for his life and she could do nothing to help? Richard’s voyages had been bad enough when Bianca allowed herself to worry; she couldn’t imagine being in Cressida’s position. Bianca had always had the businesses and the children and the house and everything else to worry over. What had Cressida had, other than the chores that couldn’t have changed much from her girlhood, the entertainments that had, and the baby growing inside of her, surely a source of more helplessness than relief from it?

And Pamela … well, Pamela …

Pamela had never much liked helplessness, either. She dealt with it even worse than Bianca did.

“It’s … taking a while, isn’t it?” Cressida asked, hesitantly.

Pamela snorted.

Bianca glared at her her sister’s broad back. Couldn’t she see that Cressida was looking for some reassurance, some hope? Even if Cressida was grown, married and widowed with a baby of her own, she was still Pamela’s child. Sometimes they just wanted to hear from Mum that everything was going to be all right. What kind of mother couldn’t say something so simple and make her child feel a little bit better?

Then again, maybe surprise was the wrong emotion. Certainly child-rearing was only one of the things Bianca and Pamela never could quite manage to see eye-to-eye on. She’d known that from the first time Pamela had been over for a visit after Dannie’s birth. Dannie had cried, Bianca had dropped everything and run for her — and Pamela had scolded her for spoiling the child. “A little crying won’t hurt her!”

As if Pamela could hear those thoughts and was disagreeing with them all over again, twenty-three years after their mother had told her to stop sticking her nose where it didn’t belong, she half-turned and fixed Bianca with a glance she could only interpret as baleful. But maybe it was only worried.

“Is–isn’t it, Mother?” asked Cressida again.

Pamela snorted, again. “It’s a fancy monk-doctor your aunt has hired, Cressida. No telling how long he’ll take.”

“Of course I hired the best doctor I could!” Bianca snapped. “Would you rather me get a cut-rate apothecary for Mother?”

“How much did he set you back?” Pamela asked, eyebrows raised, completely ignoring the question, as was her wont.

Bianca’s eyes narrowed. “Thanks to my hiring Brother Andy,” she replied, “I’ve been assured that the Church will be able to give good meals to five families in need.”

“Good according to whose definition?”

Does it matter? “The Church’s definition, presumably. How should I know?” Why should I care — and why should I tell you?

“I’m just saying … Bianca, you always were extravagant.”

“Extravagant?” Bianca yelped. “Me?” She was the one who had kept the finances under control after their father died and before she resolved the debts! She was the one who wouldn’t let them eat meat that whole first month!

“I remember how you used to dress Dannie. Brand-new linens for her — and those dyes! You could have just cut up some old dresses and called it a day, but no, your daughter had to have –”

“What I could afford,” Bianca snarled. “And her dresses were an investment. She’s now the dressmaker to the Crown Princess. Well worth the extra expense, I think.”

Pamela waved her hand. “You couldn’t have known that.”

“I couldn’t have known that I wouldn’t be having any more girls, either, to wear the dresses once Dannie outgrew them. I would have recouped the losses either way.”

“Extravagant!” Pamela repeated. “You could have used the baby things for Freddy and George!”

Of course she could have, and she had — those she had been able to pack with her when they sold much of what they had and moved to Albion. The ones she hadn’t been able to pack, she gave to Sophia. Sophia’s granddaughters could be wearing the dresses right now, for all either Bianca or Pamela knew. Really, where did Pamela get off?

“Mother, please,” Cressida sighed. “I don’t think now is the time to get into it with Aunt Bianca.”

Bianca could have patted the girl’s knee and grinned in gratitude, but Pamela only replied with a sniff. “We are not ‘getting into it,’ dear. We are having a discussion.”

“Consisting mostly of you bringing up things from twenty years ago and accusing Aunt Bianca of having been a fool back then. I don’t know about you, Mother, but that sounds an awful lot like ‘getting into it’ to me.”

Thank the Lord for Cressida’s lack of patience, even if Pamela’s response to it was to turn to Bianca and say, “She just doesn’t quite understand the way we communicate.”

With Cressida rolling her eyes as a chorus, Bianca replied, “I think she has a point, Pamela. This isn’t the time to be reopening old quarrels.”

Pamela sighed. “You’re only saying that because she agrees with you.”

“And what, I’m supposed to disagree with the person who takes my side?”

She really couldn’t imagine any world where she wasn’t right, could she? Bianca tried not to sigh as she watched Pamela’s face scrunch, her lips pucker, her eyes narrow as she tried to think her way out of that one. Bianca didn’t quite succeed.

Pamela flounced into the seat to Cressida’s left. It was probably a good thing; Bianca had forgotten, over these twenty years and more, just how she and her sister could fight. She was remembering, now, how the day after Pamela’s marriage, her simmering resentment over Pamela’s “abandonment” of them when they needed all hands on deck had melted away in the realization that now she could get things done without having to argue them out with her sister.

“Anyway, Cressida,” said Pamela, switching the subject as she always did when she was bested, “you shouldn’t get involved in these sorts of things. They don’t concern you.”

Cressida rolled her eyes. “Then don’t argue about them in front of me.”

“Cressida! I would hope for –”

“For what, Mother? I’m an adult. If you don’t want me to get involved in your conversation, don’t have it in front of me.”

Pamela’s mouth opened in what was either a shocked gasp or an equally shocked protest, but the creaking of the floorboards above them silenced even her. Bianca stared at the door leading to the stairs.

The floorboards creaked again.

No monk appeared at the doorway.

“Maybe it was just the maid,” Bianca murmured.

“Bianca, you let the maid come at a time like this?” Pamela gasped.

“Why not? The house doesn’t stop getting dirty just because Mother is … ill.” And since it was Maude who was ill … Maude was the one who dealt with stress by cleaning. The dust bunnies might as well gang up on Bianca and murder her in her sleep for all she paid the least bit of attention to them when she was distressed or worried.

“Ill …” Pamela started. “Bianca–”

Bianca’s glare said all she needed to say, for Pamela shut up. Or at least, she shut up on that tactic. “It’s private, Bianca!”

Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. But Bianca knew that when Richard got his barony — which couldn’t be long, now — they would have a keep, and a full-time staff of servants to help keep it up. If having privacy meant having to worry about the housework while your heart was breaking … well, privacy could go hang for all Bianca cared.

“Nobles manage to have ‘private’ moments with servants around all the time,” Cressida pointed out, oddly echoing Bianca’s thoughts. Bianca turned to her, head cocked to one side.

“We’re not nobles,” Pamela replied, waving her hand in dismissal.

“Aunt Bianca and Uncle Richard will be soon enough.”

Pamela’s eyes bugged. “Cressida! I told you –”

“Told her what?” challenging Bianca.

“Not to mention that,” smirked Cressida.

Bianca’s gaze snapped to Pamela, asking all the questions she would not put into words. She would see what Pamela said to that. If it was only superstitious dread — to name a thing made it less likely to happen — well, that would be one thing, but –

Pamela squirmed, and Bianca knew it was not superstitious dread. So there it was. After all these years, Pamela still disagreed with her and Richard for daring to turn their dreams into reality.

Pamela had been mad enough when she was told they were moving, madder when Maude decided to come with them. She had been, however, flabbergasted when Bianca had talked about the opportunity awaiting them in this new land, the fact that Richard could very well own his own ships, sell their wares for his profit in this new place. They had meant to rise, and Pamela could see that, and she could not believe it. She would never approve, of course. In Pamela’s world, men were not born “half-bastard sailors” — as she had sneeringly called Richard during their courtship — and died noblemen. But, Lord willing, Richard would.

And Lord willing, her mother would see it.

The floorboards creaked again — and when Bianca’s head whipped around, there was Brother Andy standing just beyond the archway that led to the stairs.

Bianca was up and over to him before Pamela could do more than shift in preparation for rising. “How is she?” she asked.

The monk, who had seemed to suave, calm, and confident when he came in, opened his mouth … and his facade crumbled. He tried to smile.

Bianca could only lock her jaw in place to keep it from quivering.

“Your mother told me that she is sixty-eight years old. That is a great age, you know.”

Bianca did, in fact, know that. What she did not know was why it was so important, at this juncture, to mention it. She crossed her arms over her chest and gazed levelly at Brother Andy, the same level gaze that had forced wool merchants not to cheat her, sailors to obey her as their captain’s wife, and debtors to cough up the cash.

“And … all things consider, it could be much worse. Your mother is in full possession of her faculties … she could …” He sighed. “Mistress Ferreira, I’m afraid your mother …” Brother Andy gulped and went on. “She is soon to be called home.”

Bianca’s stomach twisted into a knot. That–that was all he had to say? Soon to be called home? As if it were a good thing?

“It … it should not be much pain for her,” he continued. “She says she feels little. If she does, I have left a mixture — it should dea–dull must of it.”

“How long?” Bianca whispered.

“Eh?”

“How long does she have left?”

“I …” He shuffled from foot to foot and rubbed the back of his neck. “That sort of thing is … impossible to predict, I fear. It might be a few days … a week, a fortnight …”

“A fortnight? That’s it?” Bianca wailed — if one could wail in a whisper.

“It is plenty of time. Er — that is –” He must have seen her expression. “Mistress Ferreira, surely you would not wish your mother to suffer?”

“You said she wasn’t! Is there no hope?”

“It is best not to struggle against the inevitable,” replied Brother Andy, in a tone he probably thought was gentle. “The Lord is calling her home. She should best spend her time … preparing for the journey.”

“Preparing for the journey?” Bianca spat. Good Lord! Why had she called in a monk-doctor? Why couldn’t she have gotten a regular one? They knew how to fight for life, not prepare for death!

… Of course, the fact that there were no secular doctors in the kingdom did make securing one to tend to her mother rather difficult.

“Mistress Ferreira –”

Bianca gulped, her hands balled into fists so tight that her nails left crescents on her palms. “I can see her, correct? Or would that interfere with preparations for the journey?”

“She is sleeping now, but –”

“Very well.” She wasn’t going to let any doctor who was more defeatist monk than fighting doctor order her about in her own home! “Please — acquaint my sister and her daughter with — this. I –”

There were no words with which to complete that sentence. There was only action. The action of gently pushing past Brother Andy, of lifting her skirts and hurrying up the stairs. Of her hands trembling as one gripped the rail. Of pausing at the head of the stairs, catching her breath, gazing down the hall that had never looked longer or more shadowed and dim. Bianca closed her eyes and gulped.

She had to cling to something — anything — her anger at Brother Andy — to get her though this. There was no room, in her actions, for thought. There was no time for the reflection that perhaps Brother Andy was not merely a defeatist, but that he was skilled enough in doctoring to know when his physic would be no use … but that he was not skilled enough with patients and their families to know how to say this. There was no room for the consideration that perhaps, since Brother Andy had only graduated not half a year ago, that he had never had to hold this conversation before, and everything he had been taught and practiced in Camford might have dried up in the face of a grieving family member.

There was no room for any of this as Bianca hurried down the hall and slipped into her mother’s bedchamber.

“Mother?” Bianca whispered. Stupid to whisper, really. If Maude was only feigning sleep, she would have opened her eyes when Bianca came into the room. If Maude wasn’t, then a whisper wouldn’t wake her. And if Maude wasn’t … well, Bianca wouldn’t wake her. She needed her rest.

Bianca crept closer to the bed, listened to her mother’s heavy breathing. It was heavy, labored. One hand smoothed the counterpane, the other felt Maude’s forehead, just as Maude had done for her — just as Bianca had done for her children — just as Maude had done for Bianca’s children.

It was warm.

She knelt down, slowly, not caring what the floorboards did to the fabric over her knees. She smoothed Maude’s hair back from her brow once, twice, three times. She kept smoothing until her hand started to tremble, as did her lips, and Bianca had cover her mouth to hold back a sob.

Maude stirred.

“M–” Bianca started, and covered her mouth again. If Maude was sleeping — if the stirring was only an attempt to change position –

“Bee-Bee?” Maude whispered. She didn’t open her eyes.

“Mother?”

“That monk gone?”

“He’s downstairs, with Pamela and Cressida.”

“Likely to come back up again?”

“I … would think no.”

“Good,” Maude sighed. “That’s … very good.”

Bianca’s heart beat faster, spurred on by hope. If Maude wasn’t holding any truck with Brother Andy’s prognosis –

“Bee-Bee?”

“Yes, Mother?”

Maude took a deep breath, and sighed it out slowly. “See if Mother Julian has time to come over in the next few days, will you?”

She was holding truck with the prognosis.

Bianca gulped. “I will, Mother. I’ll get her over as — as soon as possible.”

“Oh, no need to rush.” One corner of Maude’s mouth twitched upward. “I can wait.”

Bianca slowly grinned.

“And Dannie? You’ll get her here?”

“She’ll be here today.”

“Good … I never mentioned a few tricks to her …” Maude chortled as well as she could. “Maybe I should mention them to you, too. In case things get dull with Dickie.”

“Mother!” Bianca gasped — and kicked herself — and chuckled, when she saw Maude smile. “I think Richard and I have quite a sizable arsenal of tricks, thank you very much.”

“O-oh?”

“And the last thing you need right now is for me to give you dirty thoughts,” Bianca giggled, and almost sobbed.

“Damn,” Maude sighed. “You know, they say there’s no marrying or giving in marriage up there — and you know what that means.”

“But you’ll see Papa again,” Bianca replied, hoping her voice didn’t tremble as much as her lips.

“Yes, dear, but you contemplate an eternity with Richard with no marrying and all that entails.”

“Maybe the Lord makes an exception for couples who are already married,” Bianca suggested.

“Maybe,” Maude sighed. “Maybe.” She burrowed her shoulders under the blankets. “You’ll get Dannie? And Georgie? And Freddy?”

“I’ll get Dannie. And Georgie. And a message to Freddy will go out tomorrow.”

“Good …” Maude sighed. “… Good …”

Bianca kissed her mother’s forehead. “I’ll let you rest, Mother. I’ll — I’ll be back soon. I’ll send up Pamela?”

But Maude had already slipped back into sleep.

Bianca slowly got up, softly crept from the room. As soon as she was outside the door, she hesitated for a moment, then shut it without a sound. She hurried down the stairs.

As soon as she reached the arch, Pamela and Cressida were staring at her. Cressida looked stunned still. Pamela was wearing what Bianca called her “strong face.” It looked so much more worn in than it had the last time Bianca had seen it.

“Pamela …” Bianca wiped her hands on her skirts. “Could you — could you sit with Mother for a bit? I have to — go out.”

“Go out?” Pamela gasped, and even Cressida looked surprised. “Go out now?”

“Mother wants Mother Julian. I have to make inquiries.”

“… Oh,” Pamela whispered. “Well, then, of course.”

“And,” Bianca added as she strode to the cloak rack, “I need to see Dannie and George.” She gulped. “There — are some things you have to tell someone in person.”

“V-very well,” Garnet replied — no, not merely replied, stammered. She was stammering! She never stammered!

Garnet did not quite dare to glance into the Queen’s tired, worn face. She had to keep looking forward. But if she had, she would have seen how the Queen’s brows knit in concern, how her head cocked to one side, listening for an elaboration that never came. She might have seen the Queen’s hand lifted from her skirts, only to fall again. She might have even noticed the sigh.

Whether any of that would have had an effect on her was an entirely different matter. As things stood, Garnet could only look around the room and try to sit still as her stomach tied itself into knots of knots. She could only wonder a couple of things:

Why hadn’t Morgan come along?

And why did Lamorak have to be seated halfway across the room?

Lord Pellinore was seated by his side, going on and on about some stuffy topic that nobody cared about but him. Insufferable old man — after doing everything in his power to keep her and Lamorak apart, he had the gall to be polite to her when they met! Couldn’t he just admit that he hated her and be honest about it? Why did he have to pretend that he saw her as anything but some witch’s daughter who was not good enough for his son?

He was even trying to include them all — all of them — in whatever his conversation was. Garnet wanted to vomit even more than she had when she first walked into the palace and was shown to the Queen’s sitting room. Mordred, sulking by the window, had the right tactic to take. He would doubtless burn a hole through the leaded panes with his stare, but at least he wasn’t putting up with this hypocrisy.

Why couldn’t the King just come in, lay down the law, and let Garnet go back to Morgan’s or back to Camford? Why did he have to put them through this elaborate charade? He was going to pretend, Garnet knew, that he was listening to all of them, but he was going to let Lord Pellinore have his way and advise Garnet to look elsewhere. What else could he do? Why else would he call them all here?

Clank, clank, clank — Garnet froze. Was that …?

Ambrosius slipped into the room, bowed to the Queen, and gave the rest of the room’s occupants a brief nod. Garnet’s eyes were drawn to the continual nodding of his crest. Her heart was drawn, called really, to her stomach when he spoke. “Lady Garnet, the King will see you now.”

***

“Garnet!” The King was rising from his seat before Garnet could even curtsey. “There you are. Sorry to keep you waiting, my dear, but I had to finish a bit of business first. The wait wasn’t too tedious, was it?”

“No, Majesty.”

The King, halfway out of his seat, fell back into it with a thump. He watched her with gray brows narrowed over his gray eyes. How old he had gotten! It could not have been that long ago when he was her brown-haired, laughing Uncle Arthur, who always had a sweet for her when they met … could it be? But of course it was — it had been years, years, since Garnet was of an age to be placated with a sweet. She had grown and changed. Why not he?

He was not one to be placated at all, it seemed. “Majesty?” he repeated, questioning.

Garnet could not look at him when the tiles were calling her name.

She heard something, a cross between a sniff and an equine snort, escape from him. “Never mind that. Let me have a look at you, my dear.” He brooked no argument, coming up to her and bestowing a kiss on each cheek. Then he held her at an arm’s length, brows coming together as he surveyed her face.

Once again, the tile called Garnet’s name, but she could not see them and had to rest her eyes on the King’s brocaded shoulder instead. She did not see the King’s frown, or even the way he pinched the bridge of his nose as if to ward off a headache.

“Garnet …” His voice had more of the silken fur of a child’s toy bear than the growl of the real thing. “Why don’t we sit down, honey?”

Garnet nodded, expecting to sit on one side of the great desk with the King on the other. Instead, he took her arm in his, patted her hand, and led her over to the bench by the windows. It was Garnet’s turn to fall to the sitting surface with a thump. And this time, as the King looked her up and down, she did not look away — she stared back in shock.

The King seemed at a loss for words for a moment, then he sighed. “Garnet, you’ll have to forgive me for prying into your life like this — but at the moment, I think I’m the most capable guardian you can have. Ah ah!” He lifted one hand to forestall her protest. “I don’t mean anything anything against Morgan — but, well …” He scratched his head. “Morgan,” he decided, “is the type of woman to do what she wants and damn the consequences — while I prefer a … subtler route. I think you might prefer it, too, at least in this case.”

“… I would?” Do what you want and damn the consequences — it was sounding attractive right about now — but Lamorak would never go along with it. And who was Garnet fooling? She couldn’t even handle the consequences of her mother’s wrongdoing. What would she do when faced with the consequences of her own wrongdoing?

“Believe me, you would. It’s much better to get what one wants while upsetting as few people as possible. You’ll have to live with all of them, you know. Best to let Uncle Arthur try his hand at waylaying the dragons before you go after the treasure. Now, my dear, this is the part where I begin to pry. Why do you want to marry Lamorak?”

Garnet gasped and stared. “I — I — I don’t know …”

“You don’t know?” asked the King, gently. “Is it because of his title? His lands? His –”

“No, no! None of that!”

“Then what?”

“I — I love him.” Garnet gulped and stuck her chin out. “I love him.”

Then it fell and Garnet returned to staring at the tiles. “But — but I couldn’t …”

“Couldn’t what?” the King pressed.

“Tell you … exactly why …”

He — was that a chuckle? “Garnet, believe me, you don’t get as many grey hairs in your beard — er — hair as I have without learning a few things along the way. One of those is that the heart wants what it wants, and there’s no use trying to ask it, ‘why this one and not that one?’ But surely you can tell me what it is that you like so much about him?”

Garnet blinked. Of course she could, but — where to start?

When she had first noticed him, when she was but a green girl? He’d been a fine dashing lad, then, a friend of her older brother’s, the most eligible young man in the kingdom who hadn’t already had his heart taken or his hand promised. That would be enough to set any young girl’s heart a-pittering. But there was more than that — it was the way he smiled at her, the twinkle in his eye when he looked up to find her watching him. It was the way he listened to her girlish problems, and instead of tut-tutting them and patting her head like her father, or launching solution after solution like Morgan, he seemed to indicate that he would fix them, just by his presence.

She had to say something — she might as well start with that.

“He — he listens to me,” Garnet started, “and he — he has a lot of honor, Maj–”

“Uncle Arthur will, I think, be sufficient for this conversation,” Arthur murmured with a wink.

“… Uncle Arthur,” Garnet murmured.

“Continue, dear?”

“He — he has a lot of honor, Uncle,” Garnet continued. “He …” She couldn’t tell him — not the ways Lamorak had shown his honor. He’d told her about Morgause — he need not have done that! He’d refused her whiles twice, which hopefully came from honor and not repulsion with her. “And he has a good heart, Uncle! Such a good heart. He …” He loved me, and he still loves me, even after everything that’s happened. “He’s the only one in the kingdom, I think, who is trying to make things up with my brother.”

“You’re probably right about that. So … listening, honor, a good heart … good reasons to love another, in my humble opinion. Good reasons to marry, too — and other than your mother’s … misdeeds, and your brother’s temper tantrums, I cannot think of any reason for you two not to marry, provided Lamorak feels the same way.”

“You — you can’t?”

“No,” Arthur replied. “You two are social equals; your dowry is sufficient to his rank. You have, if I so flatter myself, excellent familial connections, while Lamorak is the son and heir of one of my most valuable servants. Your marriage also introduces the possibility of magic in future generations of the Gwynedds, which you, my dear, may or may not see as a particular advantage, but which I — all right, well, more Tom than I at first, but now even I do. Again, other than your mother’s and your brother’s conduct, which you have no control over and are seeking to distance yourself from, I don’t see any objections.”

“But — but I thought –”

Arthur raised his eyebrows.

“I thought … I thought, when I came here and saw Lord Pellinore, that you would surely be on his side … I mean …”

“You mean?”

“… Those are rather large objections …”

“Hmm,” Arthur murmured. “Well, I’ll grant you that. They don’t, how, outweigh your most important family connection — at least, not in my humble opinion.”

Garnet finally giggled — which must have been what Arthur was going from all along. He grinned, stood and helped her to her feet.

“Now, my dear,” he said, embracing her, “you just leave Lord Pellinore to me. And do me a favor, won’t you, honey, and send him in when you leave?”

***

When Pellinore entered the room, Arthur was ready. Pellinore seemed to know it, too, for he stopped dead — not even bowing! — and watched his monarch with the gaze of the most practiced lawyer.

Arthur only grinned. This did not serve to calm or mollify Pellinore in the least, which was exactly what Arthur was hoping it would do.

“My liege?” Pellinore asked.

“My lord,” Arthur answered, closing the distance between them with a single step. “I am going to get right to the point — so please forgive me. What are your objections to the match between your son Lamorak and my niece Garnet?”

Pellinore smiled faintly. “So it is like that.”

Arthur narrowed his eyes. Should he ignore that, or ask, as Pellinore clearly wanted him to do? Well, there was something to be said for walking into a trap — with one’s eyes fully open, of course. “Like what?”

“‘My niece Garnet,’” Pellinore repeated. “You … have decided to make this a personal affair. Your Majesty, I swear to you, I have no objections to the young lady personally. She is all that a young lady should be, and I wish her the best. However –”

“I trust you have no objections to her family?”

“To her extended family, there are no objections that could possibly be raised.” When Arthur’s eyebrow went up, Pellinore smirked a bit and pointed out, “After all, she is not related by blood to King Vortigern. But as for her … immediate family … well, Your Majesty, can you blame me?”

That would depend entirely upon what Arthur was blaming Pellinore for. Pellinore seemed disinclined to let him in on the secret, too, so Arthur hazarded a guess. “I did not think you the type of man to object to a young lady based on the actions of her mother — especially when that young lady had nothing to do with those actions and abhors them as much as you do. More, even.”

“I am not that type of man.”

Arthur sighed. “Mordred, then.”

“He treated my daughter abominably, Majesty. You cannot expect me to want to bring him any closer to my family than I have already, regrettably, brought him.”

“Allow me to point out that he is the father of your grandchildren. You’re not getting rid of him, Pellinore. Even if the Church annuls the marriage, you’re stuck with him.”

“As I said — I do not want to bring him any closer. And you also know …”

Arthur lifted his hand. “I know. I know. You do not think he is to be trusted.”

“He is furious, Majesty. He is furious and in his rage … I do not know what he might do in his rage. I do not want my family to be the ones to find out. He believed her — I think he still believes her — innocent, you know. He will think right is on his side, no matter what he does.”

“Pray the Lord it be so.”

If that was true, then Mordred was as much Lot’s son as he was Morgause’s. Maybe Mordred had a bit of appreciation, too, for Arthur and Arthur’s justice in him. If Mordred had to think himself right to act wrongly, then he was not all Morgause’s creature. Morgause never gave a damn about right and wrong. If Mordred did, then Mordred could still be saved.

Pellinore sighed. “Majesty, you do not seem to appreciate how dangerous he could be. I understand he is your nephew, and you care for him, but –”

“But Pellinore,” Arthur interrupted, “if everybody cuts him off, then what choice will he have but to cut everyone off in turn?”

Pellinore let his head fall back, face scrunched in a grimace to the heavens. It was the closest he would come to shouting at the heavens, or at Arthur.

Arthur continued with his logic. “You know Sir Bors won’t have anything to do with him. He’s the most conservative of us, and even he couldn’t justify Morgause this time. The du Lacs? They might come around eventually, but they won’t be making any first moves. That leaves your family.”

“The family he has most wronged!”

“The family that is already his family. Look, I’m not asking you to let or force Lady Dindrane to patch things up with Mordred. Lord forbid. I am asking you to allow — not force, allow — your son to marry a woman for whom he cares a great deal, and a woman who loves him. And let me remind you that the woman in question is also my niece. If you still want no more contact with Mordred than is absolutely necessary, then fine. I won’t ask that of you. You don’t even have to invite him to the wedding if Garnet agrees. But this leaves a door open. When we’re dead and gone, Mordred has a door open.”

Pellinore sighed. “And the matter of her dowry? Mordred would be within his rights to refuse it to her.”

“I happen to know precisely what her father promised her in his will.”

“In other words, you’d pay it.”

Arthur grinned. “No law against that, as far as I know.”

“So in other words, I have very little choice.”

“You have every choice, Pellinore.”

“Then I have only one sensible choice.”

Arthur shrugged. He often thought being King was little more than limiting a man’s sensible choices to what would be most to the King’s advantage.

“Very well, then. I accept.”

“Excellent! You won’t regret it! After all …” Arthur clapped Pellinore on the shoulder. “Remember — your heir is marrying my niece, my son’s cousin. We’ll remember that, even if Mordred would prefer to forget Garnet ever existed. And speaking of Mordred … you wouldn’t mind doing your monarch a favor, would you, and sending him in after you leave?”

***

Arthur was sure to be seated at his desk when Mordred came in. Mordred bowed. “My liege.”

“Nephew. Please, have a seat.”

Mordred stood for a moment, eyes narrowed, tall and imperious in his dress uniform. Both of the Orkney siblings had worn their best, though Arthur could not help but feel that they had done so with dissimilar motives. Mordred bowed again and sat without a further word.

“When my sister came out,” he remarked carelessly, “her eyes were very bright and she only had eyes for Sir Lamorak. Now, the latter is hardly a cause for concern or notice — but the former? The former, I think, is somewhat rare on her these days.”

“It is indeed,” Arthur agreed.

They stared at each other across the desk. It was really all a question of who would fold first, which would lay his cards on the table. Whoever spoke first would lose, give the other information he could use. And Mordred wore the small smirk of a man who could sit and wait and stare all day, if that meant victory.

Arthur didn’t have all day. He also didn’t have the patience for what young men with too much time on their hands might construe as a victory. He spoke first. “I wish to speak to you about your sister’s marriage to Sir Lamorak.”

Mordred’s eyebrows arched. “I was not aware that any such marriage was planned.”

“It is her wish. It is his. Lord Pellinore is amenable to the situation.”

“If she has no dowry, will he be quite as amenable?” Mordred asked.

“She will have a dowry.”

Mordred’s eyes narrowed. “Is that an order, Majesty?”

“No. It is a statement of fact. You may choose to approve — and grant her her dowry — or not, but she will have a dowry of the amount that was granted to her by her father. Not a farthing more or less.”

Mordred sat back and surveyed Arthur with something very close to shock. “You would undermine my authority? I am her guardian, you know.”

“Technically your guardianship ended on her eighteenth birthday.”

“Technically. You know it is my right to approve her suitor.”

“It is your right to grant or withhold her dowry. I am not taking that away.”

“You are just rendering it useless.”

“Only if you choose to see it that way. I do not intend to fund her dowry if she marries a swineherd, you know. Only Sir Lamorak — or any other reasonable candidate –”

“Reasonable candidate?” Mordred exploded. “The son of the man who sentenced my mother to death! The brother of the woman who accused her! The –”

“The only man in this kingdom who would look past your mother’s crimes — she was convicted in a court of law, Mordred, and most of the kingdom will not care for much beyond that — and marry Garnet regardless.”

“Then let her marry out of the kingdom! It’s what my mother wanted!”

“But not what your father wanted.”

Mordred’s jaw opened, shut, opened again. “My liege … please do not use my father’s shade against me in this. Have you no mercy?”

“I will if you grant me no other choice, Mordred. I am doing this as much for you — and for your father’s memory — as for Garnet.”

“For me? For my father’s memory?”

“He worked hard to put your family in the position that it is, or was, before Lady Morgause … well. She is beyond my judgement now. But there is no reason why you, your sister, or your younger brother should suffer for the crimes for which she was found guilty.”

“My liege …” Mordred sneered.

“And if you persist with this feud with every family in this kingdom,” Arthur continued, “they will suffer, and you will suffer.”

“I will suffer?”

“Aren’t you suffering already?” asked Arthur.

Mordred did not look at him. Arthur could have driven the point home — mentioned the crumbling family relationships, the abandonment of friends, the wife who left him. He did not. He only waited.

“My suffering,” Mordred finally snarled, “is nothing you can relieve.”

“No. It is not. I do not pretend to understand what you are going through, Mordred. But I can tell you this much: it does not have to be this way forever. You can repair all that has been broken. It will not be easy, and it will take time –”

“And if I have no interest in cleaning up others’ messes?” Mordred snapped.

“And you do not need to do so right away. You may take your time about it. But let me tell you, Mordred … if you agree to give your sister her dowry when she marries Sir Lamorak, you will have cleaned up a great deal of the mess.”

Mordred looked away. “Will I have? And why should I care for people who would care nothing for me? Who think I am in the wrong for doing my duty as a good son should?”

“If you give your sister her dowry, they will begin to wonder if you were in the wrong.”

Mordred bowed his head. But he still had one parting shot to give. “If I was not in the wrong, then who was?”

Your MOTHER! But Arthur would not say that. “If they determine that it was not you, does it truly matter?”

“It matters,” Mordred murmured, “more than you can imagine, Majesty. But … I will think upon your suggestion. That much I promise.” He ran a finger along the desk. “I will give it my deepest … and utmost … thought.”

And with that, Arthur decided, he would be content.

For now.

“Thank you,” replied Morgan. Her tongue seemed stuck on further words. Garnet was the first houseguest she’d had since the redecoration. She really should have invited Alison over first: Alison seemed to understand some fundamental things about being a woman and taking pride in her home that Morgan had never quite gotten. Oh, Morgan understood about being proud of her home and trying to make it a happy and comfortable place, but she had never learned how to talk it up. Unfortunately, talking it up seemed to be exactly what Garnet wished for her to do.

However, Morgan couldn’t blame Garnet. There must have been a litany of things she wanted to avoid talking about, starting with the fight with her brother that had landed her here the night prior. She would need to talk about it eventually, and eventually she would want to talk about it. In the meantime, Morgan could wait.

She just wished she had something more intelligent with which to fill the silence than, “Well, honey, one day I just looked around my home and realized that if I was going to be in this keep for the foreseeable future — and the foreseeable future might well be for decades or longer — the walls and floors had darn well better be stuff I can stand to look at for that long.

“I can’t imagine how you got all this work done with the … babies,” Garnet continued. “It must have been difficult.”

Morgan looked at the babies, Pascal dozing and Chloe playing in her cradle. “Well …” she mused. “They’re not mobile yet, unless you count rolling over on their tummies and back again. Accolon and I just kept them in the nursery and made sure one of us was always in earshot.”

Lord, Morgan hoped all that Garnet meant was the general difficulty of having a baby — or two babies — and completing a major redecoration project. Even if she and Accolon did none of the work themselves, since neither of them had the expertise, the house had been a dusty mess much of the time. Morgan had needed two servanti to keep up with it all. Add two babies to that, and Morgan herself had serious cause to question her own sanity. Yes, that must have been all Garnet meant. Garnet couldn’t have possibly have meant –

“And the — workers? They didn’t …?” Garnet asked hesitantly, ducking her head so that her hair covered her face.

“Never saw the babies once,” Morgan replied, doing her best to keep the snarl from her voice. “However …”

She lifted Chloe carefully, smiling down into the night-dark eyes that smiled up at her. “I’m sure they’d love to see their big cousin.”

Morgan did not know how much she had riding on Garnet’s reaction to her babies until she turned Chloe to face Garnet. Her relief when Garnet smiled and waved at the little one washed over her like a cleansing salt bath. True, Garnet’s smile was small and her wave hesitant, but she was trying. That was all Morgan would ask for. For now.

“Which one is this?” Garnet asked, still smiling at Chloe. Chloe giggled at her and batted a small hand.

“Chloe.”

“She’s lovely.” A tentative finger brushed Chloe’s cheek. “And her skin is so soft!”

“Most babies’ skin is,” Morgan answered. “You should know that, between Nimue, Agravaine, Gawaine — have you seen Gareth yet?”

Garnet shook her head. “I think I’d be persona non grata with the Gwynedds now.”

Morgan’s eyebrows arched. “I know Pellinore can be a … stick-in-the-mud, but I doubt he’d object to you meeting your nephew. I know you and Dindrane always got on.”

“I … I hope she wouldn’t mind me coming to see him. I … I don’t know, Morgan. Mordred barely goes there at all, and Gareth is his son! And there’s Nimue and Gawaine, too!”

“Both of whom probably miss you and would love to see you.”

“Gawaine probably doesn’t remember who I am.” Garnet shook her head. “And he’s so shy, besides. The — the last time I was home, it was two days before he would let me hold him.”

“Little ones don’t stay that shy forever. Even if he doesn’t remember you right away, he’ll probably warm up to you quickly. And even if Gawaine doesn’t remember you, you know Nimue will.”

“I guess,” Garnet sighed.

Morgan frowned. “Garnet, what’s wrong?”

“… What if Dindrane doesn’t want to see me? She used to like me, before all of … everything … I don’t want …” She caught her lip between her teeth and glanced pleadingly up at Morgan.

Oh, that poor baby. What had it been like for her at Camford? The monks and nuns with their steely eyes and steelier beliefs — even among those, like the Pascalians, who tolerated witches, there could be few said to like them. They’d not discourage the students from their prejudice, either. Shaming and ostracism were such useful tools. Best to use them often and make sure they stayed sharp. The Lord only knew what they done to Garnet, and Garnet wasn’t telling.

“Besides …” Garnet murmured, shoulders hunched and cringing, ostensibly to tickle the baby, “since Lord Pellinore doesn’t think I’m good enough for his son … I don’t see why anybody else in that family would want anything to do with me.”

Chloe was laughing, and Garnet was smiling at her. But there was no smile on earth that could reach her eyes right now. Only the baby was fooled.

Morgan kissed the top of Chloe’s head and returned her to her crib without a further word. Chloe whimpered and flailed at first, then she noticed her toes and, fascinated, forgot everything else in her quest to move them and eventually suck on them.

Morgan, however, rested her hands on her hips and turned to Garnet. Without the baby to give her an excuse to smile, an icy mask had clapped over her features. Yet the mask was melting, puddling under Morgan’s gaze.

Garnet was the first to look away, but not before her expression had crumpled utterly.

“Honey …” Morgan started.

That was all it took. “I’m her daughter. I’m never going to stop being her daughter!”

“Nobody in this kingdom sees you that way,” Morgan answered. She paused. “Er, well, maybe Sir Bors does, but he doesn’t have the brains the good Lord gave to a doornail. And perhaps some of the commoners –”

“You see? You see?”

“No, no, Garnet. There are always going to be fools in this world who hate you for the things you cannot help or would not help if you could. You just have to keep your head high and march past them. And, Garnet … I can assure you, the people in this kingdom who have the most cause to cast blame, to feel hurt because of what Morgause did, do not blame you.”

“You don’t know that.”

Actually Morgan did, and she would prove it to Garnet within the hour, or so she hoped. Because of that, she could let it pass. “Maybe. But what’s more important — at least as far as the people are concerned — is that the King doesn’t blame you. Your uncle and aunt and cousins don’t blame you. And Garnet, you know damn well that they won’t stand for anybody to mistreat you. Nobody in this kingdom would dare.”

“They can’t stop people from blaming me. From … seeing me as …” Garnet bowed her head. “Anyway, the fact that I’m her daughter is enough for Lord Pellinore to decide I’m not good enough for his son.”

Alison — Alison and Lady Eilwen — had told Morgan all about that; Alison had sent a runner to Morgan to beg her to come to the palace as soon as Lady Eilwen had come to her with the story. How much, though, did Garnet know about Lord Pellinore had said? That stupid boy her niece had set her heart upon had better not have said anything to her. “Why do you say that, honey?”

“Because Lamorak tried to convince him! And — and –” Garnet choked. “He doesn’t want us to marry! He wants Lamorak to find somebody else! Lamorak wrote that he’s going to keep trying to convince him, but — but Lamorak respects his father too much to go against him, I know that!”

“Honey …”

“And it’s all because of her! All of it! I know it! Lamorak wrote that Lord Pellinore says it’s because of Mordred, but either Lamorak is lying or Lord Pellinore is!”

“Oh, Garnet.” She reached out and crushed Garnet to her, as tightly as she had held that Ravenna the night when she had finally confided the cruel trick those boys and girls at the inn had played on her. Just as Ravenna’s had, Garnet’s shoulders hitched on an unvoiced sob. Morgan rocked from side, just as she had when Ravenna was a baby who needed soothing.

In that moment, Morgan could have cheerfully raised Morgause from the grave so as to have the opportunity to throttle her back into it. What Garnet needed — what Garnet had always needed — was a mother. Morgause had deprived her of that the moment she had come out of the womb. How could she — how could any mother — do that? And how could she do that while doting on her two sons?

It had been so long since Garnet had felt that kind of hug, that kind of love, that it did not take her long to cringe away from it. Morgan let her go. “And nobody can do anything about Lord Pellinore,” Garnet whimpered.

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

Garnet shook her head. “Lamorak says he’ll keep trying, but — but — he’s never going to be able to talk his father around. I know Lamorak, and I know Lord Pellinore, and …”

And in a battle of words, sending in Lamorak is sending in the unarmed. “I wouldn’t give up hope yet.”

“Don’t say that! I don’t want to keep up false hope! I want …” She sagged, dejected. “I don’t know what I want.”

“Hmm.” Morgan tapped one finger against her chin. “I don’t suppose Arthur mentioned what he wanted to see you about?”

Garnet shook her head. “Hmm,” Morgan murmured. If Arthur hadn’t told her … then he probably had a reason. Of course, Arthur hadn’t exactly told Morgan why he sent for Garnet, but since he had been in the room when Alison and Lady Eilwen had told Morgan of Pellinore’s recalcitrance, it wasn’t too terribly hard to guess. “Well, honey, if I were you, I wouldn’t give up before I talked to Arthur. You might be able to get him on your side.”

“I don’t think he would. Uncle Arthur … he tries not to interfere, doesn’t he?”

“He might break that rule when his niece is concerned. The … the fact that your father is no longer with us makes this his business.”

“Mordred’s my guardian, though. Essentially.”

That makes it even more Arthur’s business. “Well, we’ll see. Just promise that you’ll talk to him, honey, before you give up.”

Garnet stared sullen at her, but she slowly nodded. Morgan managed a smile.

Then, just on the edge of hearing, a chime reached her. Her wards — her wards were announcing the presence of a welcome one. She’d made some improvements since Morgause’s arrest and Mordred’s rage. So now she could deduce that her … other guests were here.

Garnet deserved some warning, though, even if Morgan wasn’t planning on allowing her to avoid this meeting. “Garnet, honey … do you think you would feel a little better if you knew that … that the people who were hurt most by your mother didn’t blame you?”

“I — I don’t know. Why?”

“Because –” A knock came from the outer door. “Door’s open!” Morgan called over her shoulder. She turned back to Garnet. “Well …”

Ash Thatcher and his nephew Thorn stood warily at the arch between the vestibule and library. Thorn managed to wave.

That gasp had to come from Garnet. Ash only looked ill-at-ease after the gasp sounded. He put a hand on his nephew’s shoulder, and Morgan put a hand on her niece’s. “Garnet,” she said, as clearly and ringingly as she could muster, “I’d like you to meet Goodman Thatcher and his nephew Thorn. Goodman Thatcher, Thorn, I’d like you to meet my niece, Lady Garnet.”

“H-hello,” Garnet whispered. Her panicked eyes turned to Morgan.

“Hello, m’lady,” Ash replied, voice as slow and sure as the running of the sap in the spring. He patted Thorn’s shoulder, and Thorn, startled, jumped and piped, “Hullo, m’lady!”

Thorn was about Nimue’s age, so it did not surprise Morgan when Garnet began to smile, slowly, unsurely, but a smile all the same.

Morgan nudged Garnet forward, and had to bite back a smile when Ash did the same with Thorn. Thorn advanced much more easily, face open and curious. “Ye’re …” He pressed his lips together. “Uncle Ash said that ye’re her daughter?”

“I … yes,” Garnet replied. She stared up and down the little boy’s face, gaze flickering from one scar to the next. “I am Lady Morgause’s daughter.”

“Uncle Ash said I should say thank ye,” Thorn continued, rocking on the balls of his heels. “He said ye tried ter help me.”

“I …” Garnet sent a swift, panicked glance at Morgan. She turned to the little boy again. “I — I didn’t know what my mother had done to you. To — to anybody. But I knew … I knew she had done something bad, so I tried to stop her.”

Thorn slowly smiled. “Ye tried ter help me, an’ ye didn’t even know it was me ye were helpin’?”

“… Yes,” Garnet admitted.

“That’s right nice o’ ye, m’lady! Thank’ee!”

Ash slowly sidled around Thorn and approached Morgan. After a quick, respectful bob of the head, he murmured, “This is a better idea than I gave ye credit fer, m’lady. Thank’ee.”

“Goodman, I hope …” Morgan pursed her lips together, watching Garnet and Thorn. “I didn’t want to put pressure on you. I hope I didn’t inadvertently …”

“No, no, m’lady. Ye didn’t do nothin’ o’ the kind. I was jest a little … well, ye understand, what with everythin’ Thorn’s gone through …”

“I understand. Believe me, I understand.”

“I know,” replied Ash. “Ye said … ye said yer niece ‘as gone through a lot, too.”

“Oh, she has. Believe me … she has.”

“I know, m’lady. That’s why I said all right ter this.”

As if the little boy could read their thoughts — or more likely, had heard them speaking — he said, “Me uncle says yer mama wasn’t always that nice ter ye. Is that true?”

Ash yelped and tried to turn around, but Morgan grabbed his arm. “Wait,” she whispered. “Wait. I think this might be good for both of them.”

Garnet stood absolutely still, her eyes wide. “Yes,” she murmured, “yes, that is true.”

“That’s awful. My mama, she don’t see me much, but she’s always nice ter me when she does.”

“She — she is?”

“Oh, aye! She gives me candy an’ good stuff from her garden! It’s as good as Uncle Ash’s, too!”

“I see,” Garnet murmured. “You’re … you’re lucky to have a mother that is so kind to you, even if she doesn’t … always see you.”

“I knows I am,” Thorn answered with the blessed simplicity of a child. “Even if I don’t have a mama an’ a papa like other kids, I’m lucky ’cause me auntie an’ me uncle take such good care o’ me, an’ me mama is always right nice ter me. That’s what me Grandma Kata always says. An’! An’, ye know why else I’m lucky?” Thorn asked, dancing from foot to foot.

“No …”

“I got a puppy! Well, it’s a big doggie now! His name is Marley an’ he’s all mine! Even if Bran an’ Ginny an’ even Betony get ter play with him. But he sleeps on me bed, with me, an’ I get ter take him fer walks an’ stuff, an’ when I’m doin’ chores an’ stuff, he’s always followin’ me around! Ain’t that great?”

Garnet could only smile, slowly, her face coming into bloom as surely as the rosebuds in the spring. “I believe it is great, Thorn.”

“Do ye have a dog?” Thorn asked.

“No, the — the other girls I’m living with, we’ve decided that we won’t have any pets.”

“Oh.” Thorn only seemed deflated for a minute, though, before he asked, “Did ye ever have a dog?”

“No.”

“Oh. Why not?”

Garnet hesitated, and Morgan held her breath. “My mother,” Garnet admitted. “She … didn’t like dogs in the house.”

“Oh,” Thorn murmured. “She — she were a mean lady, weren’t she? Auntie Lyndsay says I’m not ter speak bad o’ the dead, but …”

“She was a very mean lady,” Garnet agreed.

“An’ she was mean ter ye, too,” Thorn murmured, thoughtful. “Ye said.”

Garnet’s lips parted, but for a long time, nothing came out. Then she murmured, “I did say that.”

“… Why?” he asked. “Mama’s ain’t supposed ter be mean, except when they gotta be.”

“Oh, Lord,” Morgan whispered, and Ash sent her a panicked glance.

“I … don’t know,” Garnet admitted.

“I don’t think,” Thorn continued, with the doggedness only a five-year-old possessed when trying to work something out, “I don’t think it were ’cause she ever had ter be mean ter ye. Ye’re real nice.”

“Thank — thank you, Thorn!” Garnet slowly smiled.

“But then … why was she so mean?”

“I think …” Garnet cast a glance back at Morgan. “I think — maybe — maybe there was something wrong in her head. So she couldn’t be … nice, like other Sims.”

“Ooh,” Thorn answered, as if that explained everything. “So she was a loony!”

“Thorn!” Ash yelped.

“What? If somethin’s wrong in yer head, ye’re a –”

“Yes,” Garnet said, startling both Thorn and Ash into silence. “Yes. She was a loony. She was — she was the biggest loony I ever met!”

Morgan sighed and sagged in relief. Ash glanced sidelong at her. “Was … was that what ye wanted her to … figure out?”

“Yes,” Morgan answered. “If she understands that, then maybe she’ll understand that whatever her mother did has no reflection on her.”

“But, m’lady …” Ash murmured. Morgan raised an eyebrow at him.

Ash began to pick at his nails. “Loony … sometimes runs in families, m’lady.”

“Oh, I know that,” Morgan whispered. “Believe me, I know that.”

I just pray that Garnet dodged that one.

Mordred crossed his arms and watched her. Yes, indeed, she had a lot of nerve. The King had requested a meeting with her that necessitated a return to Albion from Camford — well and good. She had asked Mordred to allow her to stay with him, and of course he had allowed it. He was not an idiot, after all, nor was he unfeeling, and the fact that Garnet had asked instead of assuming indicated that she knew how she had transgressed. Here, Mordred thought, was one bridge that he could begin to mend.

And then Garnet got here, and she practically ignored him! Avoided him! Found things to do that kept her out of his way, and when he found her, she left the room! Maybe she was avoiding him because she did not want chastisement for how she had acted when their mother. He could understand that. But she avoided Agravaine, too! What was wrong with her?

The icing on the cake was now, when Mordred had finally tracked her down, and had been standing behind her for quite five minutes. She knew he was there, he knew she knew he was there, she knew he knew she knew he was there — but still she said nothing. Deliberately ignoring him. Even Dindrane would have acknowledged his presence by now.

Yet there was nothing for it but to being the conversation himself. He coughed. “You know that could be a fire hazard.”

Garnet stiffened. Thanks to the scandalously low-cut dress she wore, Mordred could see the muscles in her back tense. Then she snorted, but her back grew no more relaxed. “Do you really think I’m that incompetent a witch?”

“That you would burn the whole keep down? No. But there are some rather rare and expensive manuscripts in here. Those might well go up in flames before you got any fire under control.”

“The fire wouldn’t get to them.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I warded the stones, dummy! The fire won’t leave the cauldron!”

“Dummy,” Mordred mused. “How mature of you, dear sister.”

“What’s it to you if I’m mature or if I’m not?”

“Oh, it’s something to me. After all, your conduct reflects on me.”

Garnet’s only answer was another snort as she measured her next ingredient in her hands.

Mordred narrowed his eyes. “And what is that supposed to mean, dearest sister?”

“Just … nothing.”

“I insist, Garnet.”

“You don’t have that right.”

“I don’t have that right? And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Mordred snapped.

“You don’t get to insist on anything from me … well,” Garnet shrugged, “anything other than decent behavior in public and in private.”

“And just when did I lose that right?”

“You never had it.”

“Maybe as just your brother I never had it, but I believe I gained it when Father died and I became your guardian.”

Garnet straightened, thoughtful, then she shrugged. “Maybe you did. But you’re not my guardian anymore. I’m eighteen.”

Mordred rolled his eyes. Good lord, was she really that foolish? “A technicality. Father left you nothing, you know — nothing but your dowry, which only goes to you only if you marry with my approval. I think that makes me, effectively, your guardian.”

“I guess.”

“So perhaps it might behoove you to be more pleasant to me?”

That did it. Garnet wheeled around. “More pleasant?”

“I believe this is the longest conversation we have had, sister, since … since Father’s passing. And you have not said a single pleasant word to me in it. Furthermore, you have studiously avoided and ignored me since returning home.”

“I’ve been trying to stay out of your way!”

Mordred almost blinked. Was that what it was? She assumed he was angry at her, so she was trying to avoid rousing his ire. She did that by avoiding him entirely. It was not, perhaps, the worst plan in the world … except for …

“And what of Agravaine?” Mordred asked.

“What about Agravaine?”

“You’ve not seen him since Father’s passing, either, and though you have done nothing to him that would make you want to stay out of his way — nothing he would understand, at any rate — and yet you spend less time with him than with me. Why is that?”

Garnet’s eyes shifted sidelong; she hunched her shoulders; her head bowed, and her arms crossed over her chest. “I’m not much for babies.”

She’s not – “Garnet!” Mordred threw his head back and guffawed. “You, who doted on Nimue and Gawaine, expect me to believe that you’re not much for babies!”

Garnet snorted and looked away. “Believe what you want; I don’t care.”

She was lying — and what was worse, she wasn’t even lying particularly well. What the hell was going on with her and Agravaine — with her and him, for that matter? He folded his arms and stared her up and down once, twice, three times. Garnet tensed more and more with each passage of his gaze. “Tell me,” he ordered, “just what the hell your problem is.”

“My problem?”

“With me,” he continued in his steeliest, calmest voice, “with Agravaine. With anything. But there is something going on, here, Garnet, something that you are not telling me — something I have every right to know as your brother and as your guardian. Now. What is it?”

“It’s none of your damn business is what it is.”

“Oh, good Lord — we’ve already gone through this. I am your –”

“I’m jealous!” Garnet shouted. “There! Happy? I’ve been jealous of Agravaine since he was born! I used to be the baby, which was all I had in this damn family, and then Agravaine came along and he was the baby! Now that I’ve admitted it, can you go back to running the estate or whatever the hell it is you do with your time and leave me alone?”

Mordred’s eyes narrowed. She was not jealous — or if she was, that wasn’t the reason why she was so carefully avoiding Agravaine. But the way she had said leave me alone, that ringing emphasis –

Mordred smirked. “So you admit something.”

“Yes! That I’m jealous! Now would you –”

“No. No, not that. You’re lying, sister, about that. It’s plausible enough — meant to throw me off the scent, but it’s a lie all the same.”

She gave herself away there; he could see the guilt flash through her eyes. Then her anger clamped over her expressions, a helmet harder than anything a mere blacksmith could produce, and she glared at him.

“So. What is it, I wonder, that you are trying to hide from me?” He stroked his chin. “You might as well tell me. You know I’ll find out eventually.”

Garnet glared at him without a word.

Mordred sighed. “Look, Garnet, despite your insistence on being … difficult, I think most of the kingdom would agree that I’ve been a good brother and guardian to you, aye? I–”

He never got to finish his planned litany of ways he had been a good brother, for Garnet stumbled back from him and shrieked, “Don’t! Don’t! You son of a bitch, don’t!”

Mordred, taken aback himself, could only stare and ask, stupidly, “Don’t what?”

“Don’t finish it! ‘I’ve been a good brother, don’t make me be a bad one’! That’s what you were going to say, aye? Aye?” Before Mordred could protest that no, that hadn’t been — exactly — what he had planned to say, Garnet shrieked, “You’re just like her!”

“Just like who?” Mordred snapped, though he could sense where this was going.

“Her! Mother!”

“The way you say it,” Mordred mused, in that utterly calm tone that Garnet, if she had half a brain under all that hair, would realize meant he had crossed over the flaming plain of anger clear into icy rage, “one would think you meant it as an insult.”

“It is! It is! She was a murderess! A bitch! A wh–” She froze, one hand clamped over her mouth, eyes wide with real fear.

“Yes,” Mordred murmured, “yes, you are quite wise to be afraid of saying that in front of me, sister. You, of all people, should know on what treacherous ground you tread.”

“She was a murderess,” Garnet whispered. “She –”

“She was not!”

“She killed Accolon!”

“Oh, for Wright’s sake!” Mordred rolled his eyes. “Her own serf! If she put her lapdog down, you wouldn’t call that murder!”

“Accolon’s not a lapdog! He’s a Sim!”

“Was a Sim. Now he’s –”

“And she would have killed me, if she got the cowplant to work!”

Mordred’s jaw fell. “What?”

“She would have killed me!” Garnet’s lip was quivering like a child’s. “If she had succeeded with that poor little boy, it would have been me next!”

“Garnet …” Was he actually listening to this? He shook his head. “Garnet, I have heard some prize delusions from your mouth, but this –”

“I am not deluded! Leona agreed with me!”

Mordred had barely re-aligned his jaw when it had cause to fall again. “You told somebody else about your — your –”

“I told my friend! Because Lord knows I don’t have a family that would help me!”

“Garnet …” Mordred ran a hand over his face. “I know not even where to begin –”

“She attacked me!”

His hand fell. “Leona?” He knew she was a tough little trollop, ready to give young Elyan a run for his money, but that she would harm another woman –

“No, not Leona! Never Leona! Mother! She attacked me the night that Dindrane and Betsy Pelles found that little boy!”

“Garnet,” Mordred snarled, “I should be very careful what I said –”

She didn’t even let him finish. “She attacked me! She thought I had Thorn! She set a servantus on me. And she — she choked me –” So deep was she in it, her voice sounded choked when she said it, and her eyes had a suspiciously glassy look. “She –”

“Is that your story, Garnet?” Mordred snapped.

She was silenced, and she nodded, her eyes still glassy. Mordred narrowed his eyes and watched her expression. Her lips trembled like a child’s, and there was something desperate in the way her eyes referred to leave his. Good Lord, it was worse than Mordred had thought. She wasn’t lying — she believed every word she said.

He took a deep, calming breath. “Who else have you told about this, Garnet?”

“Just Leona,” she whispered, sounding — pathetic in her relief. “And Morgan, of course.”

Morgan, of course. No wonder she was so firm in her belief. Leona, William du Lac’s sister — Morgan, who had hated her sister with an intensity few mortal frames could bear? They would have only encouraged her. “I see. I see.”

“And you, now.” Garnet’s lips began to twitch upward in half a smile. It was the way she used to smile whenever she had gone crying to their father over some childish slight or another and he promised to make it all better with a new doll or a pony. “And you –”

“No one else?”

The half-smile melted into honest confusion as she shook her head.

“Good. I think …” He would have to be careful, have to be gentle here. Garnet was in no condition to be handled roughly; that much was evident. “I think it would be wisest if we went to Father — no, to Brother Andy in the morning.” He wasn’t biased on their mother, and moreover, he was just out of Camford, and presumably up on the latest medical techniques.

“Brother Andy?” Garnet asked. “Why him?”

“Because he … is completely unbiased,” Mordred selected. “He never met Mother –”

“Better to be with someone who did! Mother Julian, or Father H–”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because he … is not the most unbiased person to whom to take your case.”

“My — my case?” Garnet sputtered. Then she gasped. “You think I’m crazy?”

Mordred winced. “Garnet, please do not be irrational –”

“You think I’m crazy!”

“I …” Mordred sighed. “What alternative do I have?”

“You could believe me!”

“Garnet. I knew Mother as long as — longer than! — you did. She never once raised a hand to me, or was anything other than loving and maternal. And you expect me to believe that on the very night of the date my wife and Goodwife Pelles chose for their defamation of Mother’s character, that Mother went unprovoked to Camford and attacked you? I don’t know where this idea came from, Garnet, but it is evident that we need some kind of medical professional –”

“I am not crazy! She attacked me!”

“Did she, now? Well, I would imagine that choking you, attacking you, setting a servantus on you, etc., would cause a bit of noise — be sure to wake the whole house, eh? So, what did all of your friends say when they were rudely roused from their beds?”

“Mother put a sleep spell on them! They –”

“Didn’t hear a thing,” Mordred finished for her, rolling his eyes. “Of course. You know, Garnet, if you dreamed the whole thing, they would not have heard a thing, either.”

“If I dreamed the whole thing, I wouldn’t have woken up with bruises the next morning!”

“And who saw those bruises?”

“Morgan, when I –”

“Who, other than her?”

“Nobody! The bruises were covered by my gown!”

“Ah, that was back before you started dressing like a two-farthing whore?” Mordred quipped, and regretted it instantly. The last thing he needed was to put her on the defensive about her gowns –

Garnet, however, did not start screeching at him about her taste in gowns and his presumed lack thereof. “You know what?” she murmured. “I don’t need this.” She turned and tried to walk to the door.

“Garnet! Garnet, where you going?”

“Out!”

Mordred snarled, then grabbed his hand from his sleeve and flung a ward at the door. Garnet watched the green light shoot past and coat the door in a weird green film in those few fractions of a second before it became invisible to even magical eyes. She glanced at him over her shoulder and snorted.

Then she dematerialized.

“Garnet — damn it, Garnet! Get back here!”

The gold light surrounded her, brightened, and vanished, leaving spots before Mordred’s eyes.

For a moment he hesitated. Why not just let her go? Let her go on a night fly and perhaps work off some steam? Then in the morning, they could discuss this calmly, like the rational Sim he was and the rational Sim she would be once he got her some help. Perhaps he could take her to Glasonland or Reme, or even Camford itself, which housed some of the best medical minds –

Then Mordred remembered that Garnet was not, precisely, rational, and she could go anywhere on that night fly — there were too many places she could go, too many people who would believe her and let her persist in her delusions –

He dematerialized, materializing where he thought Garnet was likely to be — the front of the keep, between the stables where the brooms were kept and the road.

Garnet was just walking along the path. She froze when she saw him.

“Garnet,” Mordred said slowly, calmly, as he would to a frightened hawk or cringing dog, “Garnet, before you go anywhere, I think we should finish discussing this.”

She sneered. “There’s nothing to discuss.”

“You are not well. You are not rational, Garnet. I do not think it wise for you to go out flying at night when you are –”

“I’m perfectly rational, Mordred. You’re the crazy one.”

“I very much doubt I am anything of the kind.”

“You still think she’s innocent, don’t you?” asked Garnet. “After all that evidence? Jessie wrote to me about the trial, you know. Dindrane and Betsy’s story convinced the King and Lord Pellinore long before it convinced a jury. Do you really think they’re crazy and you’re sane?”

“Not crazy, but biased. They both had reasons to want –”

“Uncle Arthur had reasons for wanting his sister dead?”

“They never got along!” Mordred snapped. “Father always kept Mother — Mother quiet, and calm, and happy, but with Father gone? Mother could have — could have –”

“Done something stupid? Like try to kill a little boy and –”

“Shut up! No! Just — made trouble! Arthur may tolerate witches and wizards, but he wants them quiet and well-behaved, or else working for him! And Mother — Mother and Uncle Arthur never did see eye-to-eye on certain matters! She could have pushed back the frontiers of magic, but it might require some — some sacrifices a squeamish soul would –”

“Like a four-year-old boy?”

“No! She never harmed anybody! Other than Accolon!” he groaned, before Garnet could proceed to beat that dead horse again. “She never did harm to anything or anybody other than what was hers to harm! And she might have … her researches may have — but she never would have caused harm to anybody else!”

Garnet glared at him; then, she sighed. “Mordred, if you actually believe that, you are more deluded and more crazy than you think I am.”

“I am –”

“Mordred, listen to me. I want you to take this with you when you to to sleep tonight. Who’s more likely to be right, and who’s more likely to be crazy? All the most brilliant minds in the kingdom — and even if Uncle Arthur, and Morgan, and Lord Pellinore have reasons to hate mother and want to see her dead, Sir William didn’t, and Jessie says he believed Dindrane and Betsy — and Master Ferreira must be very clever, or else he could never have come as far as he has, and Ravenna says that Mistress Emrys is very intelligent, too, and Aglovale … sometimes Aglovale is too smart by half. So who’s more likely to be wrong, Mordred? All of them, or just you?”

“I –”

Garnet did not even wait for him to respond. Instead, she did the unforgivable. She pushed past him and called her broom.

“Garnet!” Mordred shouted. “And just where to do you think you’re going?”

“Morgan’s.”

“I forbid it!”

She shot him a glance that said, clearer than mere words, Try and stop me.

“I mean it! If you ever want a dowry — if you want another penny from me for any reason, you will — Garnet, get off that broom! Garnet! I said — damn it!

“GARNET!”

But it was too late. She was gone, and Mordred had nothing left to shout at but empty air.