Llor drew himself up onto his tiptoes. “I’m not little. I’m ‘compact.’ Mama said so.”
“Of course,” Captain Alet said, and then ruffled the boy’s hair. Erian suppressed a sigh—Mama had spent a solid fifteen minutes trying to comb his hair this morning. On the other hand, the funerals were over, and it wasn’t like anyone cared what either of them looked like. They were just two more kids in the palace. She wondered if anyone even noticed they were here. The palace was so big . . . enormous . . . that they could have moved in to any one of the hundreds of rooms in any of the branches and not been noticed for years. “Where is your mother?” Captain Alet asked.
“Training,” Erian said.
“She trains all the time,” Llor complained. “Ooh, there it is!” He scooted ahead and then dropped to his knees and crawled behind a tapestry. He stuck his head out from beneath it. “See, there’s a little door! It goes straight down to the kitchen.”
Bending, Captain Alet lifted up the tapestry. “You found the lift. Clever boy. The kitchen staff uses this to transport food to the upper levels. It goes straight up, all the way to the Queen’s Tower, the highest point in the palace. If you pull on the rope—see, here”—she demonstrated—“it will bring up a cupboard. There’s a crank in the kitchen, but you can do it manually from any level.”
“Or you can just climb the rope down. Come on!”
Captain Alet laughed. “I can’t fit in there.”
He began scooting down. “Race you!”
Not again! “Do I have to follow him?” Erian still had raw red patches on her palms from the last time she’d chased Llor down the rope.
Captain Alet patted her shoulder. “We’ll be civilized and walk.”
They arrived at the kitchen. Captain Alet nodded to the cooks as she strode in. Erian wished she could enter a room like that—the guardswoman seemed to immediately fill a room. She hoped she could be like Captain Alet when she grew up. Her hands went to her hair, pulling it back so it would match the captain’s. She glanced at herself in the reflection of a copper pot and then dropped her hands. I look ridiculous.
On the opposite side of the kitchen, Llor was perched on a counter. “You’re slow,” he proclaimed. Erian noticed one of the cooks had wrapped a white cloth around one of Llor’s hands—he must have gotten rope burn. Serves him right, Erian thought.
At the pantry, Captain Alet helped herself to a heaping plate of pastries. She carried it over to a little table by a window and straddled a chair. “Come on. You need to refuel after such an adventure. Is this what you’ve been doing while your mother has been training?”
“Yes,” Llor said proudly. “I’m clever.”
“If she were here, she’d never let you climb through the walls like that,” Erian said. “She should be here. Llor won’t listen to me, and he’s going to get himself hurt.”
Captain Alet served the pastries onto napkins. “You can’t blame your mother for training a lot. She only wants to keep you safe.”
“She wants to be heir,” Llor reported. “She told Champion Ven she’d do it.” Plopping into a chair, Llor stuffed a pastry into his mouth. Erian sat next to him and selected one that looked like it had been dusted with cinnamon.
Captain Alet seemed to freeze. Her face paled, and she looked at Erian, as if for confirmation. See, she’s upset too! Erian thought.
“Mama changed her mind and said yes,” Erian said.
“And now she trains all the time,” Llor said, talking through a mouthful of food.
“Chew first,” Erian told Llor. To Captain Alet, she said, “And when Mama’s with us, she’s always worried.” And I’m worried about her. “She’s been having nightmares. We hear her.”
Captain Alet wasn’t eating her pastry. She was mushing bits of the flakes between her fingers and looking out the window. She looked exactly like Father did when Mama had said they were leaving. “I didn’t think she’d change her mind. I was certain . . .”
Erian had a sudden idea. “Can you talk to her? Tell her why she shouldn’t do it?” Surely Mama would listen to the guardswoman. They were friends.
“Yeah!” Llor chimed in. “Get her to change her mind back! She’d listen to you!”
“You know that no matter what she decides and what she does, your mother loves you very much,” Captain Alet said. “You are her sun and her moon.”
“Erian’s not a moon,” Llor objected.
“Yeah, well, you’re not the sun either.”
“Am too.”
She was not going to argue homonyms with him. She turned back to Captain Alet. “How can we convince her not to be an heir? I don’t want her to die!”
“I don’t want her to either. I’ll talk to her,” Captain Alet promised. “But your mother is stubborn. She knows her own mind. If I can’t convince her . . . You shouldn’t be on your own in the palace. It’s not safe. Your mother should have found someone to watch you.”
“Mama thinks we are being watched,” Erian said. “She thinks we’ve been staying in our chambers, safe and sound. She thinks we have people watching us all the time.” She shot a look at Llor. “Told you you’re going to get us in trouble.”
“Not if she doesn’t tell,” Llor insisted. “You won’t tell, Captain Alet, will you?”
Captain Alet sighed heavily. “No. But you need someone to look after you. Maybe we can find you a governess.”
“No governess!” Llor shouted, sputtering out crumbs.
“I’m too old for a governess,” Erian said.
“A guard then? I could have one assigned specifically to you,” Captain Alet said.
They’d had guards in the beginning—Champion Ven had assigned them and Mama had approved them—but those guards hadn’t come back after the spirits attacked, and Mama had been too preoccupied to notice. Erian thought maybe they were dead. A lot of people had died. “Can you be our guard?”
Llor hopped up and down in his seat. “Yes! Please, please, please! And the wolf too! He can have my dinners. And you can have my desserts. Half my desserts.”
But Captain Alet was shaking her head. “I have responsibilities.” She seemed to sag a little, as if she was even more tired than Mama, which didn’t seem possible—Captain Alet wasn’t supposed to ever be tired. She was the strongest person that Erian had ever met. “But I will see about finding a proper—”
“No!” Llor wailed.
“We’ll be fine,” Erian said. “I know someone who will watch us, if we write and ask.”
Llor cut off his wail. “Who?”
But Erian didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “I’ll take care of it. You don’t need to tell Mama anything about us. But will you please talk to her? Convince her not to be heir?”
Captain Alet nodded. “I’ll try.”
Erian bit into her pastry and thought about the letter she needed to write to Father.