“You still managed to enlist at Gettys.”

“Oh, yes. He left me that, telling them that if they could give me any sort of a life as an enlisted soldier, he would countenance that. Even so, I had to use a different name. He’d forbidden me his.” I sighed again. “Amzil, I don’t want to go back to living under that shadow. I don’t want to enlist as someone’s failed, disowned son.”

She was quiet for so long that I thought she had fallen asleep. Then she said, “You’re already living as someone’s failed, disowned son.” She softened the words by putting her arms around me. “You should stop doing that,” she said quietly. And then she kissed me, and for a time I failed at nothing.

When the month had passed, I returned to Mendy to see if I had any replies to my letters. Amzil rode along, tight-lipped and fairly quivering with excitement. In her lap, she carried two paper-wrapped dresses she had sewn. She intended to show them to the dressmakers in Mendy, to see if one of them might take her into his shop as an assistant. Kara and Sem each clutched two precious pennies they might spend. Dia held hers in a tiny cloth bag Kara had sewn for her. I left them to their errands and went to the letter-writer’s shop.

He charged me threepence for holding my post for me, and I thought it an outrageous sum until he reached under his counter and brought out the stack of envelopes he had carefully tied up with string. “You’re a popular man,” he observed, and I dazedly agreed with him. I left his shop. Across the street, there was an open-air booth where a man was selling sweet tea and brown cakes. Feeling guiltily self-indulgent, I handed over one of Amzil’s hard-earned coins for a cup of tea and a cake with raisins in it. Then, my courage bolstered, I went through my stack of post. There were five fat envelopes from Epiny and two from Yaril. One of the ones from Yaril had been sent from Old Thares.

I felt a strange sense of trepidation as I turned them over in my hands. Did I want to open these things, open the door and admit the Nevare I’d been? For a moment, I considered tearing them up and tossing them to the wind. I could walk away from that Nevare just as I’d walked away from Soldier’s Boy. Amzil and I had begun something new together. Did I want to risk unsettling that? Then I decided that I already had, when I’d sent my first two letters. I sighed, carefully arranged my post by the date it had been sent, and opened the first one.

It was from Epiny, and she went on for seven closely written pages about how she had worried about me, and the conditions of chaos at Gettys on the night that we had fled and in the days since then. Tiber had indeed called on them that evening, and made her so nervous that she had scarcely been able to eat a bite of the meal she prepared. As the scout had told me, the fort was now under the command of Captain Gorling and had returned to a modicum of military stability. She and Spink were delighted to hear that Amzil and I were safe and doing well. They missed the children dreadfully, and was I keeping up with lessons for Kara and Sem? She went on for two pages about what I should be teaching them before saying she’d had several delightful letters from my sister, who had tremendously enjoyed her visit to Old Thares and was getting along famously with Epiny’s mother and sister. She closed with an admonition that I should write back immediately to let her know how we were doing, and in detail. I smiled and set it aside.

The second letter was from Yaril. She first assaulted me for leaving her in ignorance so long, and then begged me to forgive her for responding with such a short note. She was packing to go to Old Thares with Aunt Daraleen and Cousin Purissa. Uncle Sefert would be staying on at Widevale for an extended visit. He seemed to feel his presence could help his brother and that the holdings there needed a man in charge for a time, with all the new developments going on due to the gold discovery. (She trusted that Cousin Epiny had informed me of those and she wouldn’t bore me with the dull details.) Father did seem much better when Uncle Sefert was with him. Uncle Sefert suspected he had suffered a stroke that had affected his mind, but hoped that company, the conversation of his brother, and a gentle resumption of a complete life might restore him. Uncle Sefert had commended her for choosing Sergeant Duril as her overseer and promised to keep him in that capacity. Oh, and Uncle Sefert said he would be writing to me very soon, and Sergeant Duril was overjoyed to hear of my survival and Aunt Daraleen sent her very best wishes to me as well. And that was all she had time to write as she was to leave for Old Thares on the morrow and wasn’t half packed yet, and she wanted to take a goodly selection of her frocks, even if Aunt Daraleen thought them a bit provincial and wanted her to buy all new ones as soon as she reached Old Thares.

I both smiled and frowned to hear Yaril sound so giddy and girlish again. I had left her with heavy responsibilities. Belatedly I thought we should have brought our uncle into our difficulties months ago. I was glad that Yaril could have some time free of worries and that my father was in good care.

With a smile, I opened Epiny’s next letter. She missed me. Spink missed me. They both missed the children horribly. Solina missed Kara. Why had not I written back yet? Was all well? Gettys was in a state of flux again. It looked as if they would all be shifted back to Franner’s Bend to rejoin the rest of the regiment. She did not bother to tell me which regiment would be coming in to replace them. Instead, she was bubbling with the idea that Spink was very likely going to become a captain much sooner than they had expected. After several delays, the new rules of male succession had been approved by the Council of Lords and sanctioned by the priesthood of the good god. For a change, a church decision made sense to her. Now younger sons could be legitimately moved up to be heirs, for if the good god did know all, then he undoubtedly knew which heir sons would die young and had, in his wisdom, decreed that noble soldier sons could also serve as heirs. It would not affect Spink, of course, for which they were both grateful. He loved his elder brother far too much to wish to take his place. But it had affected a number of the officers in the regiment, and some of the older officers would be leaving the military to go home and assume the duty of being heirs. Spink had told her it greatly increased the chance that he would be promoted when the regiment was reunited, and oh, wasn’t the prospect of Franner’s Bend exciting? She’d be able to visit Yaril from time to time and get to know her properly. She, too, scolded me for not writing back more quickly.

The next letter was from Yaril. She wrote that she had hoped to hear from me by now. Her next sentence apologized for what was undoubtedly going to seem to me like a transgression on my dignity. She assured me that Aunt Daraleen had first come up with the idea, and that she and Purissa had merely gone along with it. At first it had seemed to Yaril no more than a prank, but she hoped that I would agree that the ends justified the means.

Aunt Daraleen had become a medium, and was currently the Queen’s favorite mystic advisor. The spirit of a Speck wisewoman spoke through Daraleen, telling the Queen many great secrets of their spirit world, and revealing to the Queen why the King’s Road had failed. Through Lady Burvelle, the secrets of the Speck ancestor trees were revealed to the Queen, as well as the spiritually enlightening properties of certain herbs and mushrooms and rich dishes. The Speck wisewoman revealed to the Queen the epic love story of how she had fallen in love with a noble soldier son, seduced him from his duty, and endeavored to have him join her forever in tree love.

My ears burned red as I realized how much of my private life Yaril had become privy to, and that my sexual escapades with Olikea and Lisana were Daraleen’s fodder with which to titillate the Queen and her court ladies. No one at court knew the true identity of the “dashing young soldier,” but that was small consolation to me. Yaril and Purissa greatly enjoyed their supporting roles as they tended to the moaning and twitching Lady Burvelle when she fell into her trances. Aunt Daraleen had hired an ambitious and very handsome young man as her secretary. He attended on her daily, writing up her revelations as chapbooks. Each was published, chapter by lurid chapter. The printers could scarcely keep up with the demand. I could read between the lines that my uncle was horrified and humiliated by his wife’s dramatics, yet Daraleen finally had everything she had longed for. She was the Queen’s favorite and a woman of great power now in Old Thares. Not only was it likely that Purissa would become engaged to the Crown Prince, but that Yaril might choose whomever she wished for a husband from among both old and new nobility.