Chapter 5
The black uniform pinches at the waist. I am still working the buckle on my boot when Malda appears at my door, her gray coil of hair tight as a fist, her expression tighter.
Yesterday she walked me through every corridor of the manor, listing the children’s routine without pausing for breath. This morning she picks up where she left off.
“They’re dressed for the day. Their play clothes are in the cedar chest, not the wardrobe. Laundry goes in the basket by the door, never on the floor.”
I follow her, noting as many details as I can. Storage, schedule, meals. Which days tutors come. Playtime and bedtime.
Outside the playroom, she stops. “You won’t see much of the lady. Don’t let the lord’s friendliness make you forget your position. Simply curtsy and keep quiet around him. Bring any issues or questions directly to me.”
It’s like she read my mind. Norville’s friendliness made me hopeful that I might be able to ask him right away.
Malda opens the door. Three brown-haired children look up from the floor.
Bowan, the oldest at nine, stands when we enter, puffing out his chest. Ana, seven, is mid-sentence and doesn’t stop despite our arrival.
Elva, the youngest at five, sits cross-legged with a doll clutched in both hands, watching me with eyes of vivid violet, brighter even than her father’s.
As Malda covers a few more details, the children grow restless. One strand of pulled hair turns into shrieking, then chasing, then fighting. But by the time Malda leaves, the two little ones have fallen in line to commands from the oldest, participating in some unknown game.
I sit in the corner with my hands clasped, trying to contend with the fact that I signed up for this. I haven’t spent unchaperoned time with children since I was one myself.
But I have to do well here. As tempting as it is to go straight to Norville’s office, I can’t just march in and ask for a prophecy.
I’ll be thrown out so fast, I might be able to run and catch the ferry in the next port.
Prophecies are delvarian currency. Even as a princess, I never received one, although that was mostly due to the implied insult to my father if I ever questioned the future he had planned for me.
I have to try to figure out if Norville is the sort of lord who might be generous with his powers or tempted by my gold.
And if not, I need to be patient. Malda mentioned they are hosting a Somnus ball here in three weeks.
The autumn equinox is Delvara’s high holiday.
The ball will give me the perfect time to find some purple-eyed lord or lady to read my threads.
For now, I just have to hold onto this position and the roof over my head that comes with it. After a few minutes, I relax a little. The children continue playing as if I’m not even here.
This isn’t so bad. I can sit in a corner for three weeks.
As if she heard my contented thought, the youngest one throws her head back and wails. “I’m hungry!”
“It’s breakfast time,” the middle one echoes.
“You were supposed to take us a while ago,” the oldest says, addressing me in a nasal tone. “Our last governess was never late.”
“Right.” I stand so fast my chair nearly tips. “Breakfast.”
Breakfast is a disaster. I start eating before they are all served, which gets an immediate correction from Bowan. Ana uses the tablecloth instead of her napkin for half the meal before I notice, and Elva pours most of her porridge into her lap.
“You’re supposed to feed it to her,” Bowan says, far too late to be helpful. “Now it’s garden hour.”
I’ve barely gotten in a bite. I check the clock on the wall and put down my spoon. “Right. Garden. Let’s go.”
The garden is walled, overgrown at the edges. While the children dig for worms, I crouch by a row of plants I don’t know. My lobell bushes struggle under direct sunlight; I wonder how my seeds would do in this patch of dirt. My bushes are probably dead by now, bloomed and broken on the balcony.
A rising wail draws my attention.
Maybe I should have applied to be a gardener. At least plants don’t move, and I’ve cared for some before. It’s my last undisturbed thought as Elva’s wail turns into a shriek.
The children command me through the rest of the day, scolding me when I take them to the wrong room or miss the hour for music time.
By evening, I feel more like a child being led by other children than a governess.
I have never been responsible for anyone but myself, and even that came with the help of maids, attendants, and Seran.
I return to my rooms exhausted. My feet ache. My voice is hoarse. My skirts are dirty with something Elva smeared on them. I remove my uniform and fall back on the bed, only to wince. The mattress is like granite.
Then again, after a week on the river, I’m grateful to have a bed, and a private room that doesn’t rock with the current.
The fear has quieted. I can still feel it, wrapped around my heart, stuck like sinew to my ribs, but it’s dormant, at least for now. I’m away from the palace, with no easy trail for my father to follow.
With even a thought of home, it wakes up, vibrating with the certainty that something bad is waiting for me there. I did the right thing, leaving. But I’m eager to find my way back to a life more like the one I’m used to.
Three weeks. It’s just three weeks until the Somnus ball.
It quickly becomes clear this is going to be the longest three weeks of my life.
I help the children dress and eat, and try to keep them on schedule.
There are multiple slips, with spills and screaming fights and an entire art lesson missed.
Each night I collapse in my room, certain I have never used more of my voice, mind, or body in my life.
But I do enjoy the children’s company. They order me around a fair amount, but it’s also helpful; they seem to know how I fit into their world, even though I feel I’ll be exposed as a fraud at any moment.
I learn in bits and pieces that they’ve had multiple governesses, so perhaps they’re just used to explaining things to changing faces.
It surprises me when they do what I say.
They meet my eyes and speak to me joyfully in their little high-pitched voices, and tug on my hands eagerly to show me things they like.
It’s loud, compared to daily life alone in the Sunrise Palace.
And it’s guileless, compared to the events with my family or other courtiers. It’s…unexpected.
Even though I repeatedly fail as a governess, I focus on the one strength I do have: my education. I supplement their lessons with history and sums and courtly manners.
I listen in quietly as a tutor spends a morning on the end of the Incarnial Wars, giving what I think is a generous account of how the delvarians helped put my grandfather on the throne.
It’s interesting to hear what children in other provinces are taught.
This tutor makes it sound like the provinces wanted Illio crowned, and the emperor was happy to give them governance of their own lands in return.
I never met my grandfather, but my father doesn’t send his daughters to marry in distant lands because he is satisfied with those treaties.
While sons are kept close and married to mortal women to produce ignarian heirs to the throne, daughters are sent away to marry divinial lords as high up in each province as possible, with the hopes that they will have ignarian children who will one day rule there.
We princesses are the expansion play, our wombs the only way around the treaties.
Of course, the provinces know better than to give up too much through marriage. So far, my sisters have only received offers from third or fourth sons and cousins in the provincial successions.
The moment the tutor closes his books and departs, the children start play-acting what they heard, dividing up the room into nine provinces.
“I’m Emperor Belzas,” Bowan says, taking Ignos at the center. “You all can have land, but no matter what, I’m still in charge. Portia, you get Vernys, because I like you.”
I dutifully step into my flameward land of life and growing things, outlined in blocks.
“Ana, you get Marithos, because you smell like fish.”
That earns him a stuck-out tongue. If Bowan isn’t careful, Ana will bite him. I’ve seen her do it. But she stomps over to the land of water and swimming things, playing along.
Elva holds up her doll. “Delvos!” she calls.
“No, Elva. We all live in Delvos. No one gets Delvos. You get…Arastos. You get the bad land, over there.”
Elva pulls the doll against her chest. “I don’t want Arastos.”
“You have to.” He gives a little sneer. “Arastos is evil.”
Elva’s chin wobbles. “I’m not evil.”
“Arastos isn’t evil,” I step in, before that wobble turns into a wail. “They just chose the mortal side in the wars. And their land is darker and colder, but it’s not bad.” The wobble isn’t stopping. I deflect: “Do you know why there were wars in the first place?”
Ana pipes in. “Because…because the mortal kings wouldn’t listen to the gods?”
I shake my head. “Not quite. It’s because no one could agree what the gods wanted.
The gods made this world. They made the mountains, rivers, and air.
But they existed outside it, and they didn’t have bodies, or mouths, like you and me.
So Delvara had to talk to the mortals in their dreams. Delvara’s the reason we know the gods existed at all. ”
Two pairs of dusty purple eyes and one pair of bright ones fix on me. I can tell they like stories about their own goddess the most.