Maraya’s hand closes on my wrist.
In her condescending elder-sister voice she says, “Our mother refused to allow us to see it, my lord. She said it was disrespectful to think a mule would lower itself to marry a Saroese nobleman.”
He sets down the whip. “Ah! I was wondering how soon I would provoke you to address me. Maraya, is it not?”
“It is, my lord.”
“A fortunate chance you were still at the Least-Hill Inn. I went there after Captain Helias informed me General Esladas had broken our agreement and gone to see your mother. Unfortunately she had already left by the time I arrived with my soldiers.”
I’m so relieved to hear that Mother, Amaya, and Denya escaped his foul clutches that I sag into Maraya’s arms. She’s shorter than me, and looks frailer, but she’s always been able to hold up us younger girls.
“Your mother isn’t important, not with Esladas married to Queen Meno?,” he adds. “You girls are more valuable to me now. Steward Polodos is negligible but may busy himself as a clerk while he serves as a hostage whose life is dependent on your obedience.”
He cranes his neck, looking past me onto the deck.
Sailors have hoisted the barrel out of the hold and onto the deck. They wrap it with rope, burden it with anchor stones, and roll it over the side. The sea receives it with a splash.
“In old Efea, before we Saroese came,” he remarks, “it’s said that any poet who told a lie was crammed into a weighted barrel and thrown into the sea. A useful custom, don’t you think? Why, anyone might find themselves in a stone-anchored barrel dropped into the unforgiving sea. Anyone. I’m sure you understand me, Jessamy.”
My dream of swimming to shore dies a swift death as I whisper a prayer for the five souls of the poor wagon driver.
“His Gracious Majesty will figure out I’ve gone missing,” I say in my last and weakest burst of defiance.
“That’s unlikely, since he thinks you went with your mother. Even if he did discover the truth, His Gracious Majesty cannot abandon his throne to charge after you as such a character would do in a play. Do not believe the fables told to make us feel better about the harsh reality of the world we live in.”
“My mother—”
“Will believe you chose to stay with your father, or the king. Even if she does wish to find you, how can she possibly succeed? She is a Commoner, an uneducated woman with no connections or wealth. She can do nothing to me. You lost this trial before the start bell rang.”
15
Lord Father, I have come according to your command.” A grave-faced boy about the same age as Prince Temnos enters the cabin. He examines me and Maraya with interest. “Are you sure they are sisters? They don’t look anything alike except for their eyes. The tall girl reminds me a little of the handmaiden Orchid, though.”
Neartos laughs heartily. “I think not!”
“Why do you say so, Menos?” asks Lord Gargaron sharply.
“Their hands look alike.”
Maraya pinches a fold of skin at my waist to keep me quiet, not that I was about to blurt out that Orchid was the name given to Amaya when she was serving in Garon Palace in disguise as Denya’s handmaiden.
Gargaron is amused. “Their hands! An interesting comparison. One set so callused, dark, and rough; the other smooth, light, and soft.”
The boy sighs with the lovelorn intensity of a twelve-year-old lost to the first stirrings of infatuation. Amaya certainly left a trail of flotsam in her wake.
Then he points quite rudely at Maraya. “What’s wrong with her foot? It’s twisted and ugly.”
“It is a mark of the gods’ displeasure, is it not, Maraya? The Precepts say that infants bearing such deformities must be smothered at birth to keep our lineages strong.”
“In fact, my lord, no Precept says that.”
“Not one? Have you read them all?” Gargaron scoffs, his tone freighted with warning.
“I have thoroughly studied the One Hundred Sages and the Ancillary Scholars. According to the forty-fourth Precept of the third branch of the curriculum, asymmetries of form appear among animals as well as people. So it is more likely people are simply like clay bowls baked in a fire. A few will shatter, while others might develop bulges or borderline cracks but still be perfectly able to hold food.”
“A remarkable analogy that I reject, since I cannot equate people and bowls.”
“What the Precept means is that asymmetries are accidents, not divine action, and not necessarily fatal or enfeebling. The custom of killing infants with conditions like my clubfoot is therefore ordained by humans, not by the gods.”
“Even were that true, I wonder that your father, an obedient Saroese man, did not smother you according to custom.”
“I wondered that too. When I was about the same age as Lord Menos, I asked my parents about it.”
Gargaron laughs in surprise. “Did you not fear the answer?”
“Since I was alive, it meant the matter had been decided in my favor, so I could scarcely be insulted by the result, could I?”
“Go on!” cries the boy, leaning forward in rapt interest.
“I was born when my father was away on military duty. When he returned, my mother made sure to keep my legs wrapped in linen for some days and encouraged him to hold me as much as possible. Once she was sure of his affection for me, she revealed the foot.”
Gargaron shakes his head. “A remarkable ruse!”
“I am grateful to have an Efean mother who followed Efean custom in this matter, that every child is a precious life to be nurtured. Indeed, the eighty-ninth Precept of the fifth branch praises the old Efean kingdom for this trait of generosity.”
“You explain too much,” exclaims Menos with so much excitement I can see he is greatly pleased. “Just like me.”
“‘Just as I do’ is more appropriate diction for a young lord,” corrects Maraya, because she can’t help herself any more than I can help wanting to defeat people in a trial.
A pretty young woman—Denya’s replacement—enters carrying a pitcher of water and two towels folded in a basin. She assists Gargaron and his son to wash their hands as a manservant brings in a tray of food. Polodos, Maraya, and I are forced to stand in attendance, stomachs growling, while Gargaron picks through his food and drills my sister in the Precepts. Every question he asks she can answer, and twice she corrects him, not in a gloating way, of course. Polodos’s willingness to remain silent, without the least attempt to prove that he is as learned as his wife—which he isn’t—impresses me deeply. I have underestimated him.
“Doma Maraya knows more than my tutor,” says the boy. “Can’t she teach me?”