The angle of the sunlight coming in through the high clerestory windows had changed; there was no longer a broad patch of sunlight on the floor.
It was starting to climb up the whitewashed wall. Not yet dinnertime, but certainly late afternoon.
"I have to get back to drilling the little ones in a bit," he continued.
"Besides, if I spend too much more time in your unchaperoned company, the rumors are going to start again, and I don't feel like dealing with them." Elspeth grimaced and wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. The last time rumors had started about a romance between her and Skif, she'd had to placate half the Council, and endure the knowing looks of half the Heralds. She wasn't sure which group was worse.
Now I know how Mother and Stepfather felt when they were my age.
Every time someone gets interested-or interesting-most of the time they're frightened off by the matchmakers. You'd think people would have more important things to worry about.
But it was too bad poor Skif had to pay the price of her rank. There ought to be something she could do about that, but right now her weary mind was not supplying the answer.
"I'll see you later, then," she said instead. "I've got a few things of MY own I'd like to do before dinner-if you're satisfied with my progress, that is." 'you're getting there," he told her, getting up with an effort, his sweat-damp hair curled even tighter. "I was making more mistakes than you were, toward the end. What's the closest weapon to your right hand?"
"The bench I'm on," she replied without thinking. "I roll off it and kick it in your direction."
"I was thinking of the shears on the floor there, but that'll do," he said with a tired chuckle. "See you at dinner?"
"Not tonight. There's some delegation from Rethwellan here to see Father. That means all meals with the Court until they're gone." She levered herself up on her elbows and smiled apologetically. "I guess they won't believe I'm not plotting against the rest of the family unless they see us all together." Skif was too polite to say anything, but they both knew why that suspicion of treason might occur to a delegation from Rethwellan. Elspeth's blood-father, a prince of Rethwellan, had plotted to overthrow his own wife and consort, Queen Selenay-and in the end, had attempted to assassinate her himself.
Not the best way to handle foreign relations...As it happened, though, no one in Rethwellan had any idea he might attempt such a thing-certainly there was no one in the royal family who had backed him. In fact, there been no love lost between him and his two brothers, and there had been no repercussions from Rethwellan at the news that he had not survived that assassination attempt. The Queen quietly accepted King Faramentha's horrified apologies and disclaimers, and there the matter had rested for many years.
But then war and the redemption of a promise made to Selenay's grandfather had brought one of those brothers, Prince Daren, to the aid of the Queen of Valdemar, and the unexpected result of that first meeting had been not only love, but a lifebonding. Rethwellan lost its Lordmartial, and Valdemar gained a co-ruler, for Daren, like Kerowyn, had been Chosen, literally on the battlefield.
Whether the bedding had followed or preceded the wedding was moot; the result had been twins, nine months to the day after the ceremony.
Which left the titular Heir, Elspeth, with two unexpected rivals for her position. Elspeth, whose father had tried to murder the Queen and steal her throne... And there were the inevitable whispers of "bad blood."
King Faram, the current king of Rethwellan and brother to both her father and stepfather, held no such doubts about her, but occasionally some of his advisors required a reminder that treason was not a heritable trait. Elspeth slipped out of her musings and stretched protesting muscles.
I wish-" she began, and stopped.
"You wish what, kitten?" Skif prompted.
"Never mind," she said, dragging herself to her feet. "It doesn't matter. I'll catch up with you tomorrow, after Council. Assuming Kerowyn doesn't have me mucking out the stables or something equally virtuous and valuable." He chuckled and left the salle, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
She cleaned up the scattered equipment from their lesson while the sweat of her exertion cooled and dried, and took herself out before her erstwhile mentor could return and find her "idle." A warm summer wind whipped her hair out of its knot at the back of her neck, and dried her sweat-soaked shirt as she left the salle door. She made a hasty check for possible watchers, trotted around the side of the salle, and didn't slow until she reached the edge of the formal gardens and the relative shelter of the tall hedges. The path she took, from the formal garden and the maze to the herb and kitchen gardens of the Palace, was one normally used only by the Palace's husbandmen. It ran along the back of a row of hedges that concealed a line of storage buildings and potting sheds. She wasn't surprised that there was no one on it, since there was nothing to recommend it but its relative isolation, a commodity in short supply at the Palace/Collegium complex.
Not the sort of route that anyone would expect to find her taking.
Nor was her destination what anyone who didn't know her well would expect. It was a simple potting shed, a nondescript little building distinguished from its fellows only by the stovepipe, a stone kiln, and the small, glazed window high up on one side. And even then, there was no reason to assume it was special; the kiln had been there for years, and had been used to fire terra-cotta pots for seedlings and winter herbs.
Which made it all the more valuable to Elspeth.
She opened the door and closed it behind her with a feeling of having dropped a tremendous weight from her shoulders. This unprepossessing kingdom was hers, and hers alone, by unspoken agreement. So long as she did not neglect her duties, no one would bother her here, not unless the situation were direst emergency.
A tiny enough kingdom; one bench in the middle with a stool beside it, one sink and hand pump, one potter's wheel, boxes of clay ready for working, shelves, and a stove to heat the place in the winter and double as a small bisque-firing kiln in the rear. But not one implement here reminded her of the Heir or the Heir's duties. This was the one place where Elspeth could be just Elspeth, and nothing more. A proper kingdom as far as she was concerned; she'd been having second thoughts about ruling anything larger for some time now.
Up on the highest shelf were the finished products-which was to say the ones, to her critical eye, worth keeping-of her own two hands. They began with her first perfectly thrown pots and bowls, ranged through more complicated projects, and ended with some of the results of her current efforts-poured-slip pieces cast from molds that had in turn been made from her own work.
The twins were going through a competitive stage at the moment=and any time one of them got something, the other had to have something just like it. But different.
If Kris got a toy horse, Lyra had to have a toy horse-same size, shape, length of tail, and equipage. But if Kris' horse was chestnut, hers had to be bay, dapple-gray, or roan. If he got a toy fort, she had to have a toy village; same size, number of buildings, number of toy inhabitants as his fort. And so on. The only thing they agreed on was toy Companions; they had to be twins, like the twins themselves.