“Is it wrong?” I asked, concerned.
“No, not at all. Just not the way a Fae would have done it.” I felt uneasy and a little anxious.
“How would a Fae have done it?” I asked, hoping that I was hitting the right note of humility and eagerness to learn. Because, after all, this was not just one of the Fae, this was the Fae who had taken the Royal Family literally under her wings, and the last thing I wanted to do was displease her.
She smiled, much to my relief. “Well, it would depend on the Fae. A Dark Fae would just have blasted them into dust. Someone like Domna would make them feel her irritation, and they’d leave on their own. But a Fae would not have separated a piece of her magic for them to feast on because we conserve our magic whenever possible.”
“Oh.” I considered that.
“Magic is food for us, as it is for those butterflies,” she replied. “Or rather, the energy that is transformed into magic is food for us.”
“And you don’t waste food,” I said solemnly.
She smiled again. “So show me a way you could have sent them on their way without frightening them and wasting magic.”
I thought about this as a few of the butterflies that had missed their chance at the feast drifted back over to me hopefully. Poor little things. My heart wanted to feed them, but I had my instructions.
Then it occurred to me; I must be putting off some sort of magical scent, luring them the way flowers lured butterflies in my own garden. So I concentrated again and closed the power up like a flower furling its petals for the night. When I opened my eyes again, the butterflies were drifting off elsewhere in slightly baffled confusion. And Brianna nodded with approval.
We didn’t do anything more exciting than that for the rest of the afternoon. Where today’s lesson with Sir Delacar had been the very rudiments of quarterstaff work, today’s lesson with Brianna was the very rudiments of magic. How to call it up and close it down, and a very little bit of how to direct it. Nothing complicated—but a great deal of repetitive practice. When she dismissed me for the day, I felt sore inside in the same way that all my muscles had felt sore after this morning. My mind was very tired, and that place in my chest where the power came from ached vaguely.
I opened the door in Brianna’s kingdom—that was how I thought of it—all on my own and found myself in the palace garden again. From the position of the sun, it was probably very near suppertime, and I was starving.
At least I wouldn’t have to change or bathe.
I made my way to the Great Hall, where the servants were just starting to lay the table for dinner. For working people, lunch was the big meal of the day, and supper—the word literally came from the word “soup”—was generally soup and bread and butter and perhaps some fruit or vegetables in spring, summer, and fall, or fruit and cheese in winter. When Father was alive, we had kept the common custom since we seldom had much to do with the Court. Perhaps once or twice in a week, Father and Mama would take dinner with the Court, and I’d eat in the kitchen with our few servants. But since Mama and I had come to live in the palace, I’d had to get used to eating this big long meal at the end of the day.
And it was a long meal. Seven or eight courses on an ordinary night, ten to twelve on special occasions, and as many as twenty for a great state affair. And for a great state affair, each one of those courses might have multiple dishes. All that food generally made me feel overstuffed even when I was careful not to eat too much, and serving it took a long, long time. The dinner after Aurora’s christening was supposed to have been one of those, but virtually everyone had fled in the wake of the Dark Fae’s attack, so we would probably be eating the various foodstuffs in some form or another for the next three days at least. Even though a lot of it had already gone to the poor.
It was a good thing that old Gerrold, the palace wizard, had renewed the preservation spell on the pantry just before we started making the food for the feast. If he hadn’t, Papa being Papa, he probably would have declared a feast for the whole town below the palace to keep it all from going to waste.
Sure enough, when the rest of the Court and the palace staff had gathered, the very first course was the clear broth that had been intended to start off Aurora’s christening feast.
Halfway through dinner, I was starting to nod off, but I shook myself awake long enough to finish. I even managed to make polite conversation with the other people near me at the high table, but being young meant that I was mostly supposed to listen to what they had to say and nod in the right places. I was pretty good at that; Belinda’s lessons on Court manners had stuck even if nothing else much did. As soon as the plates were cleared and the benches and tables pushed back for the evening’s entertainment, I excused myself and headed for my room using that private stair behind the dais.
Belinda started to follow me, but I waved her back. “I undressed myself for years; I’m perfectly capable of doing it now,” I said, making sure to soften my tone so she wouldn’t take it as being snappish or pert. “You enjoy the minstrels.” I knew she loved music and dancing, and I didn’t want to deprive her of either. I don’t hate Belinda; I’m actually rather fond of her. When she’s not trying to stuff me into some sort of mold or trying to curtail my reading on the grounds it will “make me look bookish,” she’s a decent governess. She knows Court manners better than most and the proper way to address anyone of any station; she can sew as well as a seamstress; and she is as good a housekeeper as Mama. She’s even conversant in managing the land of a manor house.
She swayed back and forth indecisively. “If you’re sure…”
“I’m sure,” I replied, and winced. “Right now, all I want is bed.” And before she could lodge any further objections, I started up the stairs.
I think maybe if I had been older, she might have come anyway. Suspicious that I was having a rendezvous with someone I shouldn’t and all that. Belinda had the most suspicious mind I’d ever seen when it came to people having meetings with people they shouldn’t. Then again, that is part of her job—to keep the young lady in her charge from getting herself into trouble thanks to a too-romantic mind. But so far, I hadn’t had any suitors at all, suitable or unsuitable, and Belinda didn’t know about Giles’s being my friend because she never came down to the kitchen. So she didn’t have any suspicions on that subject, and I was allowed to go up to my room in peace, undress in peace, and fall straight into bed in peace.
Thank heavens.
“How did you know what the breast bandage was for?” I asked Elle a couple of days later.
She grinned and pulled her mass of curls up into a loose knot on the top of her head. “Archery. It’s ever so much easier to shoot with everything flattened down a bit. Back home, I practiced every day.”
“I should have taken up archery,” Anna grumbled. “My mother might actually have allowed it.” She glanced over at me. “You know what that’s like; you have that bear of a governess. The only reason I was allowed to join the Companions was because the King ordered it.”
I looked around at the five of them, all of us resting after the first round of our workout. “How did you all get picked, anyway?”