At night, when our candles were too dim a light for good workmanship with her needle, Amzil and I sat near our hearth and talked. In many ways, we scarcely knew each other, but I never doubted our compatibility. I played simple games with the children and tried to continue the education that Epiny had begun with them. Sem did not like his letters, but quickly saw the use of numbers. Kara read and did her sums but spent most of her time learning embroidery stitches from her mother. Beyond those basics, I told them stories from the history of Gernia, and the boy loved those, especially the ones about famous battles, the bloodier the better. The night that he rose from listening to tales to go off to bed and exclaimed, “When I am old enough, I shall be a soldier, and win fame and fortune on the battlefield,” my heart suddenly smote me.
“Well, what do you expect?” Amzil asked me later as we prepared for bed. “When it is the only sort of story you tell him? You make it sound so exciting that I’ll be surprised if Dia and Kara don’t try to enlist as well.” She said the words with humor, but I suddenly perceived a lack in my life. The tales I told the boy were the ones I had best loved when I was that age. Buel Hitch had perhaps been wrong. Soldiering might have been the only future that was ever offered to me, but that did not mean that it had not been my dream as well.
I lay awake that night after Amzil slept and considered my life. We were thriving. If Amzil continued to have as much work, we’d soon have enough saved to find a little place of our own, and then I could start to really build something. I lacked for nothing. I had a woman who loved me for who I was, and three fine children. Sem was as smart as a whip, Kara would soon be as skillful with a needle as her mother was, and Dia was everyone’s sweet little despot. What more could I ask for that the good god had not already given me?
And yet, I was not as content as I should have been. There was an empty spot inside me, and I wondered at nights if it were because Soldier’s Boy had taken some essential part of me or because of some shallowness in myself. I threw myself more earnestly into my work, repairing and improving the little house we rented until even the landlord commented that it didn’t look like the same place.
Several times Amzil reminded me that I had promised to write to Epiny. There was no mail or courier service out of Thicket, and I had neither pen nor ink, I would remind her. But one day close to the end of summer, she abruptly declared that I had procrastinated long enough and that it was cruel of me to leave my cousin and my sister wondering what had become of us. Besides, she wished to see a larger town, and there were things she needed that the small store in Thicket didn’t carry. So we loaded the children into the repaired cart, hitched up our nag, and made the trek to Mendy.
Mendy was a serious citadel, three times the size of Gettys. A prosperous little town surrounded it, a place of straight streets and tidy buildings with a bustling population. I found a letter-writer’s stall without difficulty, and bought paper and ink and pen from the proprietor. I composed letters to both Epiny and Yaril, begging forgiveness both for the delay and for the brevity with which I updated them. I also asked each to write to the other with my news, in case either of my posts went astray. I paid the substantial post fee for each letter, and made sure that the owner of the shop knew I’d be returning in a month to check for a reply. “Likely it will come faster than that, young man. We’ve got a good service now between here and Franner’s Bend, and they send out regular deliveries from there,” he assured me.
That business tended to, I went to meet my family. Amzil had told me she would be visiting a large dry-goods store that we had seen, and there I found her, Dia in her arms, driving a hard bargain with the harried man behind the counter. She was buying fabric and notions, as well as a number of minor household goods we’d been unable to obtain in Thicket.
When she noticed me watching, it seemed to give her more energy for the bargaining, and shortly after that, she’d reduced the poor man to compliance. That finished, she collected Kara, who was lovingly surveying a display of sugarplums, and declared she was ready to go.
“Where’s Sem?” I asked her.
“Oh, he saw the sentries changing, and nothing would do but he had to stand and gawk at them. No doubt he’s still there.”
I took the heavy basket she carried on one arm and she claimed the other. Dia filled her other arm and Kara trailed after us as we walked to the cart. “Do you know, there are only two dressmakers in this town, and one is so expensive that only the wives of the officers can afford her services?” Amzil told me in a hushed voice. “I visited the other’s shop, and while he sews a fine seam, he doesn’t really have an eye for how he puts his dresses together at all. Fancy a yellow dress, with red cuffs and collar! And that’s what he had in the window. Nevare, if we saved a bit more and moved here, and if Kara practiced her embroidery stitches a bit more, we could do quite well here. Quite well indeed.”