The Chronicler doesn’t think anything of you, said her practical side. You’re nothing but a diversion, and not a very welcome one at that.
Leta ground her teeth against that thought and forced a timid smile. “I’m here for my reading lesson, Chronicler,” she said.
“So you are,” said he. “Come and sit, m’lady.”
He slid off his stool and cleared Alistair’s place at the table. He muttered something unpleasant that Leta could not hear as he tested the strength of the spine on the volume from which Alistair had been reading. Satisfied that it wasn’t permanently ruined, but no less irked, he replaced it on the shelf and searched for another book for his new pupil.
Leta took a seat in Alistair’s chair and waited quietly with her hands folded until he placed the selected volume before her.
“Please turn to page ten,” he said, returning to his stool.
“Um.” Leta licked her lips nervously as she flipped to the appropriate passage. “Are you not having me copy?”
The Chronicler shook his head. “We are going to practice another side of the chronicler’s art today.”
He seemed to expect a reply. Leta nodded but kept her mouth shut.
“Can you not guess what that is?” the Chronicler asked, his voice a little sharp.
She shook her head.
“Thinking.” He punctuated the word with a pound of his fist upon his desk. “I want you to think today. You will read that piece before you and then, rather than copy it out, you will tell me its meaning.”
They looked at each other across the dimness of the chamber. Warm afternoon light poured through the windows, falling on the Chronicler’s hair and turning it gold, falling on Leta’s face and turning it white beneath her barbet and veils.
The Chronicler said, “Do you understand?”
“I understand, Chronicler.”
With a wave of his hand, he indicated for her to proceed. Leta picked up the parchment, frowning as she studied the words. Slowly, some of them came to her, like a camouflaged deer in a thicket becoming more visible as she stared. She recognized words here and there, then whole phrases. The rest she could fill in from memory, for she had known this simple rhyme from the time she was in her cradle.
She both read and recited:
“The king will find his way
To the sword beneath the floor.
The night will flame again
When the Smallman finds the door.
“The dark won’t hide the Path
When you near the House of Light.
Sometimes you have to run away
To win the final fight.”
Another silence. Leta glanced up at the Chronicler, wondering if he would scold her for reciting much of the piece rather than reading it. She knew he could tell the difference; he always spotted any faking or guesswork on her part. But he sat with his arms crossed, watching her, saying nothing, allowing the silence to dominate everything until Leta thought she might suffocate in it.
“Well?” he said at last.
“Well?” she replied quietly.
“What does it mean?”
Leta looked at the page again. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a nursery rhyme. For children.”
“Why should that make it meaningless?”
She felt stupid. Insipid little thing, her inner voice whispered, and no rebellious counter offered itself. “It’s just a story,” she said. “About the Smallman, who they say will find the lost House of Lights and . . . and battle a great evil.”
“And who is the Smallman?” asked the Chronicler.
“I don’t know. Probably the child for whom this rhyme was originally written. Or someone from another tale I don’t recall.”
Another silence. Leta felt her limbs shaking with pent-up frustration, shame, anger she dared not express. She wanted to tear the page in two, to fling it from her, to run from the library and never return. She had never felt more foolish or useless. Daughter of an earl, intended for marriage to a man who scorned her, for childbirth, for death, for dullness worse than death. Tears stung her eyes, and her heart beat a furious pulse. She opened her mouth to say something she hadn’t yet thought out, something cutting.
But the Chronicler’s voice broke the silence. “What have they been telling you?”
Leta started and looked up at him, saw the expression on his face, and quickly looked away again. Her own anger melted in sudden trembling. “I beg your pardon?” she whispered.
“What have they been telling you?” he repeated.
“About what, Chronicler?”
“About yourself.” His voice was like a wasp’s sting, swift but leaving behind a lingering pain. “What have they convinced you that you are?”
Leta opened her mouth, but no words came. Her whole body felt colder than the river’s icy flow.
“Let me guess,” the Chronicler persisted. “They’ve told you that you have no mind. That you are less than a man because your body is not shaped like his.”