Chapter Five Beauty Rest #4
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Verity popped out of the dining room and put her fists on her hips. “Everyone is late! Ma’s making paper potatoes, and I get mine first because I was here first.”
“And we’re getting ours last?” Lorzok asked. “That’s fair.”
But Verity shook her head. “Saeldian and Pa haven’t come down either.”
Serenity said, “They’re in the kitchen. Bastion’s frying the fish, and Saeldian’s fetching things for him. Sit down, boys.”
Kell hadn’t been a boy in ages, but he said, “Should I do anything first, Mrs. Righthoof?”
Serenity looked up from the potato she was slicing so thin, Kell could almost see through it. “Will you pour out water for everyone?”
Easy. Kell was filling the fourth cup when the scent of exquisitely seasoned, freshly fed trout announced Bastion’s imminent arrival, and behind him came Jubilee and Saeldian, bearing serving dishes.
“Seven-spice trout,” Bastion announced.
Verity wrinkled her nose. “Seven is too many flavors.”
“That’s why it’s good,” Saeldian said. “Maybe you’re old enough to like it now. Did you try looking at the candle and concentrating?”
“It’s too hard,” Verity said. “I can’t stop thinking thoughts.”
Saeldian set the smallest piece of fish onto Verity’s plate. “I said already, you have to forget to think thoughts.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Wisdom joked.
“Brat. Oooh, I’m Wisdom!” Saeldian said in a mocking tone. “I’m an apprentice wizard, so you’ll just have to forgive me for being right. All the time! As if—”
“As if it’s my fault!” Verity and Jubilee shouted together, full of giggles.
Saeldian grinned, until they caught sight of Kell staring at them.
“You look lovely, Jubilee,” Serenity said over the bubbling rush of those thin potatoes boiling in a small cauldron of oil. “Why do you want to go covering up how nice you look with my old hat?”
“Ma,” Jubilee said, with too much patience, “I ought to be incognito. Look at Saeldian right now.”
“Ravishing, my dear, as always,” Serenity said. “I do like that beard on you, even if you don’t look like yourself.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Righthoof.”
Serenity emptied a wire basket of freshly fried potatoes into a bowl for Verity. “And you’re not getting out that easy, Jubilee. How do you expect to make a name for yourself if you’re always hiding who you really are?”
“Even if I didn’t have to be in disguise, they won’t see who I really am, Ma! They’ll see Bastion and Serenity’s little girl—”
“That is who you are.”
“They see the legend I inherited,” Jubilee said. “Not what I earned for myself.”
“You never do anything where you can show your face, girl. Why is that?”
Bastion stirred, letting his fork scrape on his plate. “Renni.”
Saeldian had gone perfectly still. Everyone else shifted, passing plates or bowls around, but Saeldian looked like they were trying to hide in plain sight. Kell knew an old argument when he heard one, but why was Saeldian so tense about it?
“Kell,” Lorzok murmured, and Kell turned to accept a plate heaped with the most perfectly cooked spears of tall cabbage. The fish came next, and Kell regretted taking only one piece.
“It comes with the job,” Jubilee said.
“You’re going to have to explain that,” Serenity said. “What have you been doing?”
Kell glanced at Saeldian, who had speared a water lily pod with their fork, intent on not getting involved. Was he about to watch Serenity understand the truth about Saeldian?
But they set it down. “She’s worried about this one, Serenity.
Lady Tarm bought a spell gem without checking its provenance, or was deceived into thinking it was a legitimate sale.
We have to retrieve it—but it leaves Lady Tarm robbed, with probably no way to get justice against the person who swindled her. ”
Serenity Righthoof listened, but from the way her lips pursed, she didn’t like what she heard.
“Usually we’re stealing from thieves,” Jubilee said, now fortified by Saeldian’s backup. “But Lady Tarm didn’t know she was doing anything wrong. I don’t know how we help her.”
“That’s not a comforting reason for the disguise,” Serenity pointed out. “Nor a reason for all the skulking about.”
Wisdom crunched on one of his own paper potatoes. “Because they’re not hanging around the Yawning Portal looking for toe-to-toe battles, Ma. Think about the work they did breaking up that blackmailing ring. They have to be discreet. I’d like to do something that clever.”
“But people should know it was my eldest who did it,” Serenity said. “Let me boast about something in the market besides your exemplary grades.”
Kell couldn’t say anything. But he wanted to warn these kind people who had taken Saeldian in and believed that they needed the comfort of a family. The Righthoofs loved Saeldian Charmhand, and none of them had the slightest clue about the truth.
But Lorzok said, “What about the blackmailing ring?” and Serenity, beaming with pride, started the story. Saeldian ate, nodding in the right places. But he knew how Saeldian behaved when they were hiding their real feelings, and how to spot the truth in the cracks.
Saeldian was sad and putting a good face on it. But why?