Chapter 10
Chapter ten
Deyvid
“Very close,” Deyvid said encouragingly as he turned to Givencie. He added, “The emphasis goes on the second syllable, though. Ve lesara, that’s the tone you use when you’re speaking to someone of a higher rank than yourself.”
“I don’t understand tones,” she whined, a pout crossing her still-childish face.
Years in, and Deyvid still marveled at the fact that he got to watch these children grow.
It would never be like watching his own daughter grow up; he had given up on that dream a long time ago, but there was something intensely satisfying about watching Petur’s nieces and nephew grow from wide-eyed children, barely more than toddlers in Givencie’s case, into gangle-limbed adolescence.
Arven, eight years older than his youngest sister and already fairly well-versed in Deyvid’s language, looked down his nose at her.
“You’ve barely even started,” he said. “The Harrier language isn’t the only tonal language out there either.
You need to know them all if you’re going to be a real princess. ”
“Exactly,” Givencie said after sticking her tongue out.
“I’m going to be a princess. Delainie is the one who has to worry about being queen.
She should know how to use all these languages, not me.
” Then she stuck her tongue out at her brother, who, apparently forgetting he was eighteen now, stuck his out right back.
Delainie reached toward Deyvid’s hand and touched it briefly, distracting him from her siblings’ bickering. “I don’t understand all the tones either,” she whispered, a slightly panicked look in her eyes.
“Ah, well,” Deyvid said, smiling at her. “The second tone isn’t one you’ll have to use very often since you’re going to outrank almost everybody you meet. Let’s focus on the third tone. That’s the one you use toward a respectful subordinate.”
Delainie suddenly grinned at him. “So, no one in this room, then?”
Deyvid chuckled. “No. Subordinate, perhaps. Respectful? They take too much after your uncle.”
“I wish I took more after my uncle,” she confessed quietly.
Delainie was the only one of the royal children who hadn’t yet achieved a shifted state.
Deyvid could tell it bothered her, even without her saying it.
She was warier these days, stiffer and more formal with everyone, including her own parents.
Not that they were helping matters all that much by harping over and over and over on how she needed to increase her accomplishments.
“Do this. Do that. Learn this.” Her little sister was a natural when it came to shifting, with a long-legged hare already under her belt by the age of ten, and her older brother was not only a gifted shifter, but he was also the best of them when it came to things like diplomacy and weapons work.
It was a shame, Deyvid thought in the quiet of his mind, that Arven had been given away in marriage so young. He had the potential to become a great king, but he would make a great consort as well.
Of all the children, Deyvid felt the most commonality with Delainie.
Stuck in a high position that she wasn’t certain she belonged in, pulled between the desires and expectations of her parents, that she would never be able to fully meet, and those of her own heart, which spoke to her of art and music, of reading and poetry.
That was where Delainie shined the brightest, and they were precisely the things that she was least likely to get praised for.
“You’ll get it,” Deyvid promised her. “Certainly enough to get by. I don’t see there coming any call for peace talks with a Harrier nation any time soon, so this is more of a way to cover yourself than a necessity for diplomacy. And if you need help”—he smiled at her—“I’m here for you.”
She smiled back. “I know you are, Uncle Deyvid.”
None of the children used that title frequently, but whenever it came out, a subtle, special curl of warmth filled Deyvid’s heart.
He didn’t have the family he’d grown up with, but he did have a family, and that was entirely down to Petur.
The man was the love of his life, and Deyvid would never be able to thank him enough for taking it from something bleak and barren into the rich, loving manifestation that it was today.
“Hard at work warping impressionable young minds, I see,” a telltale voice called from the door.
Speaking of the incredibly annoying love of his life … Deyvid bit his tongue and let the children greet their uncle first. They were enthusiastic, naturally. An opportunity to get a break from their studies was a welcome one as far as they were concerned.
“Uncle Petur!” Givencie ran over to him, arms up, and was quickly thrown into the air.
She flew up with a shriek and landed with a laugh, never mind that at ten, most of her peers thought themselves too old for this sort of thing.
It wasn’t a question of strength on Petur’s part, and so Givencie would take advantage of her youth for as long as she could.
“Uncle Petur,” she went on as soon as he put her down. “This is so boring.”
Deyvid put his hand over his heart in mock affront, making Delainie laugh. “Boring?” he said. “My language, boring?”
“Yeah,” Arven said. “Kind of. I mean, it’s just so stern.”
“It’s logical,” Deyvid said. “Trust me. Once you get the tones down, you’ll have it. It won’t take long for the rest of it to just fall into place.”
“Ugh, I thought you were doing something fun with your Uncle Deyvid today,” Petur said with a moan of understanding. “Not languages. I have never tried to learn a tougher language, and I speak Perithounian. Not well, but I speak it.”
Deyvid switched to his native tongue. “You weren’t complaining when I whispered sweet nothings into your ear last night with this language.”
Petur grinned and responded in kind. “That was entirely due to the speaker, not the words being spoken. And anything sounds good coming from your lips, darling.” He added the last part cheekily, in a language they could all understand. The girls giggled and blushed, and Arven rolled his eyes.
“Is Mom finally gone?” he asked. “I want to work on swordplay.”
“Your father is going to be checking on you in fifteen minutes,” Petur said, and the three of them groaned.
“Yes, I know, I know. So I’m afraid weapons work is out.
In fact, you’re going to have to do without the company of your darling uncles for a time.
We’re being pulled away on a top-secret assignment. ”
“An assignment?” Arven frowned. “Is something wrong? Did you hear something from Mersaighe?”
“Nothing like that,” Petur said airily, dismissing his nephew’s entirely reasonable concerns. “Just something I’ve been concocting for a while; it really can’t be put off any longer. We’ll only be gone for a few days, I promise.”
“And when we get back,” Deyvid added, “we’ll pick up where we left off. In the meantime”—he pointed at another stack of books—“focus on mathematics.”
“Angles are hard,” Givencie whined, putting her head down on her desk. She slumped her head down onto the table and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Why do I need to know angles?”
“For so many reasons,” Petur assured her. “Just ask your brother.”
“Not that many reasons,” Arven grumbled.
Math wasn’t his strongest suit. He was good at it, but none of them had Petur’s brilliance when it came to working through numbers in their head.
It was the despair of their father, who was even better than Petur at keeping track of the books for an entire kingdom.
“It is challenging,” Petur agreed. “All the more reason for you to get to work now, so that your father has reason to think well of you when he comes and checks on you in, oh, thirteen or so minutes now. We’ll be back in a few days,” he added in a softer voice. “Before your mother gets home.”
“Good,” Delainie said firmly. “Then go, but be safe, all right?”
Deyvid smiled at her. “We will be, sweetheart.” He leaned forward and kissed her and Givencie on the foreheads. Arven politely declined a similar treatment, and then Petur was pulling him out of the royal classroom and down the hall.
“What’s the assignment?” Deyvid asked.
“Not here,” Petur said as he marched briskly down the corridor. “We have to get to the dock first.”
Deyvid frowned. “The dock? Why?”
“Because that’s where the assignment is. I’ll tell you more about it when we get there.”
“You’re being very cryptic,” Deyvid said, with more than a hint of suspicion. “Why can’t you just tell me what this is all about?”
“Because if I did that, I’d have to kill you,” Petur said easily.
“Haha, very funny. Where are you taking us?”
“Deyvid.” Petur stopped moving and turned toward him, clasping his hands in a motion that startled Deyvid with its earnestness. “Darling, love of my life and pain in my neck. Do me a favor and just shut up until we get to the dock, all right?”
The glimmer in his eyes spoke of good humor, so for once instead of fighting it, Deyvid let it be. “All right,” he said. “Lead on.”
The royal family had their own dock, of course, a private stretch of stone boardwalk where no fewer than three ships were housed at any one time.
The largest of them, Tania’s flagship, was rarely taken out, reserved only for the most formal or ceremonial occasions.
There was a large sloop as well, the one that all the children learned to sail on and that needed a crew of between five and seven people to really get it going out at sea.
The last of their personal ships was small, just twenty feet long, with a single broad sail the same color as the azure sky that stretched above them like a vast canopy.
It could be handled by two people, one in a pinch, Petur had explained when he was acquainting Deyvid with the dock for the first time, but it was easier with two.
“That’s the one you’ll learn to sail on,” he’d promised.