“If you three weren’t fighting what we used to be, I wouldn’t think twice about it!” cried Sandry, furious. “But no, you fear I’ll discover something naughty in your minds. Or silly. Or ugly. It’s like the three of you went off to have your adventures and then you come home and blame me because we’re all different! I want us to be what we were, and all you care about is that travel broadened you!” To her disgust she realized she was weeping as she shouted her resentments. “Forgive me for wanting my family back!” Before she disgraced herself even further, she kicked her horse into a gallop and pelted headlong up the hill to Landreg Castle.
On their return Sandry retreated to her rooms. As they waited for the bell to call them to the dining hall, it was left to Tris to tell Briar and Daja what had happened that day.
Daja nodded when Tris told them about Sandry’s last outburst. “She mentioned that to me, back home,” she admitted.
“But she said when we left she didn’t mind,” Briar complained. They had gathered in his chambers, watching as he put together a blemish cure for Ambros’s oldest daughter. He spoke to his sisters as if he were doing nothing else, but his hands were sure as he added a drop of this and two drops of that to the contents of a small bowl. “She told us to stop being silly and grab the chance when it was
offered.”
“What else could she say?” Daja wanted to know. “If you’ve forgotten, she hates to distress people.”
“That wasn’t apparent today,” Tris murmured, watching the flames in Briar’s hearth. “She left those kidnappers in plenty of distress. And she certainly gave us the rough edge of her tongue, coming back. I can’t recall ever seeing her angry enough to yell.”
“She hates being treated like a thing,” Daja reminded them. “She always hated it when people looked at her and saw a noble girl, not a human being. And she’s been running Duke’s Citadel since a few months after we were all gone. It must be hard, going from mistress of a castle and adviser to a nation’s ruler to someone who’s supposed to go where she’s bid and do as she’s told.”
“If she doesn’t like it, let her sign it over to Ambros,” Briar suggested, wiping off the slender reeds he used as droppers. “Sign it all over and go home.”
“I think it’s a matter of pride,” Tris remarked slowly. “She hates being treated like a noble, except when she wants to act like one. Like today. She was happy enough with the villagers and everything. It was when those idiots tried to make her into a prize that she got all on her dignity. If she gives up these estates now, it will be like she’s been forced to surrender what’s rightly hers out of fear.”
“She’ll think she’s shirking,” added Daja. “She already thinks it, with all the things that didn’t get done because they had to pay so much out to her, and because of people like Gudruny.”
“No, it’s not that she’s afraid to shirk, though Lakik knows she hates that,” Briar told them, pouring his cure into a small glass bottle. “She’s got the bit between her teeth now. It’s how she always gets, when someone says she has to do anything she thinks challenges her rights. Remember when I stole my shakkan and Crane and his people were chasing me?” He reached out and stroked the tree, which he kept nearby whenever he was working. “There she was, all of ten and no bigger than an itch, standing in front of the house and telling Crane and his students she forbade them to come onto her ground.” He shook his head with an admiring grin. “Nothing between her and them but a flimsy old wooden fence and gate, and there she was, telling them they weren’t allowed to pass.”
Daja chuckled. “Or the time she said she wanted me to sit at table with her, and the other nobles balked, and she pulled rank on them. She was that strong-willed even eight years ago.”
“Then she must hate all this,” said a soft voice from the doorway. The door had been open, but they had thought everyone else had gone downstairs. Now Rizu leaned against the frame, her arms crossed over her full bosom. Her large, dark eyes were filled with pity. “Noble girls don’t usually get to dictate the terms of their lives in the empire. I was wondering how she’d come by the regal manner. I suppose it was losing her parents that made her grow up so fast?”
The three looked at one another. Tris shrugged, then Briar, indicating Daja could decide what to tell the older woman. Briar thought it would be all right to trust Rizu a little. He’d noticed she listened more than she gossiped, and she hardly ever said a hurtful word. Briar liked her, for all that he felt she was unavailable to the likes of him. Since she was always friendly, he knew it wasn’t that she had problems with his being a commoner or a mage. He just wasn’t her type. That was fine with Briar. Caidy, with her sly eyes and her habit of touching his arm, or his shoulder, or his chest, was far more intriguing.
“Well, her parents traveled a great deal, you know that,” Daja replied to Rizu’s question. “She was with adults more than children, and her parents could be a little…”
“Distracted,” Briar supplied, writing down instructions for the use of his blemish cure.
“That,” agreed Daja. “And once Niko, who found us four, once he saw we had magic, we were spending more time among adults, and with each other. Then there was the earthquake, and the pirates.”
“Forest fire,” added Tris softly. “Plague. His Grace’s heart attack.”