She nodded. “Yes. All right. If there is a way, I will find it.”
“I know you would not sell out your people,” said Hafindel. “I believe your loyalties will not be swayed by this orc, no matter what it is you feel for him. I know you, mylady. You will not let me down.”
It was pointed, and Aerhril knew it was, but it had the desired effect.
The two women clutched at each other’s hands, a tight squeeze. Perhaps the embrace had been too much.
And then Hafindel left and Aerhril settled down on her bed and felt dizzy with the prospect of what lay ahead of her.
12
IT WAS THREEmonths before Aerhril’s sixteenth birthday that the letter came from her mother. She thought it was early for the train ticket, but she opened it and read the words and she did not know what to do with herself.
It had been her mistake to read it when it was delivered at the breakfast table. The servants sorted out the letters and left them in a pile next to their plates in the morning. Breakfast was almost always some kind of grain porridge, wheat or oats, with a bit of molasses or honey to go over it.
Celedin looked up at her breath of dismay, jeering at her. “What is it, yellow pale thing? Something distresses you?”
She shook her head, wordless. The letter said that she would have a place at home after her stint as a ward was over, but that the family had no money to pay for her passage, so she must make her way on her own, by any means necessary. It went on to say that the family had been forced to let go of all their servants and that there was no income but what her father managed to scrape up by selling things off, and that she might consider becoming a tutor.
Like Galadril,she thought as she read it.
Probably some other keep in the north, for they would like it if they had a fair elf to serve them, to teach their children, they would all like that very much.
Her mother apologized for not letting her know how dire the situation had become. Truly, though, there had beensigns. The last time she had been home, there had been paintings missing from the walls, there had been a number of meals with no meat, only beans and rice, and there had been the missing butler, who they said they were in the process of replacing.
Her mother said that she and her father had been certain it was all going to reverse itself, and they hadn’t wished to worry her or her sister, but that the time had come to own up to the fact that things were very bad.
“Tell me,” said Celedin.
She shook her head.
The first problem was to find some way to get a train ticket, and she could not pay for one, and she had no means of getting any money at all.
She sat there, stunned, staring into her oatmeal, thinking through anything she could sell. Why had her mother not given her some sentimental family heirloom, some priceless jewel that she hung round her neck, a handy thing to sacrifice for this exact situation? That always happened in novels.
She had nothing to sell.
“My family cannot afford to purchase a train ticket for my return to them when my wardship ends,” she said to Celedin, and she did not know why she told him, except that they would all have to know eventually.
Perhaps they would let her work here.
But there was no one to tutor, of course.
Perhaps they would know of another steward or warden in search of a tutor. Of course, she was not well educated, so what sort of tutor could she really be? What was there for a girl like her?
She thought of scrubbing floors or bearing ash buckets and a part of her recoiled at the shame of it. She could not lower herself in such a way.
“Truly?” he said. He reached across the table and snatched the letter from her hands.
She stood up. “Give that back, that is my private correspondence, and you cannot look at it.”
He was reading it, letting out laughs of delighted surprise, as she went round the table and took it back from him. He did not resist when she did, just let the letter go. He smiled up at her. “So, then, you have nowhere to go.”
“I can go home,” she said. “I only must find my own way to get there.”
“You could stay here,” he said.
She blinked at him. “What?”
