“I don’t believe you!” I yelled at her. “You are an ignorant servant!” That’s what Mama always said when one of the servants told her something she didn’t like. “Papa loves me more than anybody. He’d never hurt me.” I turned away from her so I couldn’t see her tell me anything else, but she took me by the shoulders and marched me all the way through the castle to a room near the northwest tower. It was a girl’s bedchamber. Everything was tidy and clean, but it smelled closed up, like no one had lived there for a long time. Dolls and little carved horses sat on a shelf, and books and writing things lay on a desk. On the wall was a painting of four people: a man, a woman, a boy, and a girl. I couldn’t understand why Lucy was showing me that room, until I caught sight of myself in the looking glass that hung next to the picture. The boy in the picture could have been me, and the woman in the picture looked a lot like the portrait of Grandmama that hung in the music room.
“Is that boy Papa?”
Lucy nodded, and then pointed to the little girl in the picture and to the room we were in.
“That must be Papa’s sister, Seriana, and this is her room.”
Lucy nodded again. No one ever talked about Papa’s sister. Whenever she was mentioned, people looked upset and clamped their lips tight. I’d thought she must be dead and that it made people sad to think of her. That gave me a terrible idea. “Lucy, did someone kill Seriana for making the soldiers march?” Lucy started to cry again and bobbed her head. I didn’t ask her to explain any more, and I didn’t ask her who had done the killing. I just let her hold me for a long time and told her I really didn’t mean it when I called her ignorant. She showed me that she understood.
Only after Lady Verally came to live with us when I was seven did I learn that it wasn’t Papa’s sister that had been killed, but her baby, and that Papa had done it. I learned that the things I could do were called sorcery and that sorcery was the most evil thing in the world. Seriana’s husband had been burned alive for doing it. I didn’t feel wicked when I made the soldiers march around, or when I made the cats stay out of my room when they made me sneeze, or when I made the sharp thorns fall off the draggle bushes when I went exploring in the hills, but I knew that what Lady Verally said had to be true, because Papa would never kill anyone who wasn’t wicked.
So Lucy hadn’t been exactly right in what she told me. Some things were just too hard for her to explain in her signs and pictures. Probably she thought I was too little to understand, but she got me scared, which is what she was trying to do. From that first day she watched everything I did even closer than before. She taught me to stay away from anyone who might guess that I could do such wicked things, and how I always would have to think about everything I did and everything I said so they would never know the truth about me. I certainly couldn’t stay around Papa any more. I figured that if he could see the wickedness in a little baby, then he would be able to see it in me, too. Lucy didn’t think I was wicked, but she was not near so wise as Papa.
After that night in the library, I only felt safe when I was with Lucy. When Mama said it was time for Lucy to be sent away, because I needed a tutor rather than a nurse, I planned to run away to wherever they would send Lucy. I should have known she would find a way to stay with me. Lucy was my best friend in the whole world.
I couldn’t believe it when Seriana-Seri, she said to call her-came to live with us. Lady Verally said she’d heard that Seri had killed Papa, and that she was a witch and had stolen Mama’s senses, though everyone knew Mama didn’t have much sense to steal. I didn’t see how I was going to keep my secret if Seri was around. She would be used to sorcery and would see it in me even easier than Papa. The first time I met her, she went right to the soldiers in the library. That scared me, even though I didn’t know who she was. I wondered if she could tell what I’d done with them. So I decided that I had to get rid of her right away. Lady Verally said that Seri had come to Comigor for revenge, and I was certain that when she found out about me, she would make sure I was burned like her husband was.
But all that thinking was at first, before I started watching her. She wasn’t at all like I expected. When she told me about Papa dying… well, it didn’t sound like she hated him, even though she must have thought I was a stupid five-year-old, who couldn’t guess she was leaving out a lot of the truth. She worked hard and treated everyone with respect, even the servants and Mama. She didn’t seem vengeful, and she knew all sorts of interesting things about the weather and history and making things, and especially about Comigor. Even though I didn’t dare trust Seri, I started to wonder if maybe Lady Verally had the story wrong.
When Lucy heard that Seri had come to stay at Comigor, she was almost as scared as the night I made the soldiers march. I asked her if she thought Seri was come to kill me for revenge or if she would tell King Evard and have me burned if she found out about me. Lucy just let me know over and over that I must stay away from Seri. When I talked about Seri, she would start to cry, so I couldn’t ask all the things I wanted. And so, as the weeks passed, I didn’t tell Lucy that I had come to think that Seri might actually be a good person to have as a friend. Seri might not think I was so evil as everyone else would. Maybe she had loved her wicked husband and her wicked baby like Lucy loved me, even though they were evil and deserved to be killed. Then came the day before Covenant Day, when I found out how I’d been fooled.
I had given up watching Seri all the time. She knew about the spyholes and always guessed when I was around, though she didn’t seem to mind very much. One day when we were both up on the secret tower, she had told me that there were only a few places in the castle where there were no spyholes: Papa’s study, some of the bedchambers, the guard towers, the small reception room, the banquet kitchen, and the locked garden that had been Grandmama’s. I thought it might be fun to see if I could make spyholes for those places. Then there would be something I knew about the castle that Seri didn’t. Some of the places were too hard, and I decided I oughtn’t spy on the bedchambers, but I got up every night when everyone was asleep and worked on the others.
On the morning before Covenant Day I got up while it was still dark to work on the spyhole in the reception room. But I got sleepy and decided to go back to bed. Before I reached my room, Seri came down the stairs, bundled up in her cloak like she was going outside. I thought that was strange, as it was still at least an hour before dawn and she always took her walks in the afternoons. I followed her down to Grandmama’s garden, and used my new spyhole to watch her. For a long time it wasn’t interesting at all. She just walked up and down the paths, but she looked excited, and at every sound she would jump and look behind her.
Just at dawn, I started feeling hot and prickly all over, like the sun was coming up inside of me instead of in the sky. Then, even stranger than that, two people walked right out of the sunrise. There wasn’t a gate or a door, or any place they could have been hiding. They wore white robes, and it was clear Seri had been expecting them. She sat down with one of them, an older man that looked wild and strange. A lot of what they said I didn’t understand, but some things-the important things-I did.
Seri said, “I’d never endanger either one of you. I’m only here because I came upon an opportunity to repay my brother for all that happened.”