“Tell him to be nice to me. So Saeldian lives here with you?”
“They’ve lived here three years,” Jubilee said. “It took them a while to accept.”
“I see.”
“What does that mean?” Jubilee asked.
Kell petted a hen, who let him reach under her for her warm, greenish-tinged eggs. “The Saeldian I knew wouldn’t do that.”
“Interesting. Does it change what you think?”
That was a trap. “I don’t know what to think yet.”
The rooster hackled up and rushed him.
“Whoa!” Kell pointed one finger and laughed theatrically. The rooster tripped, overcompensated, and crashed into a hen that chased him into a corner.
“Did you just hex my chicken?”
“No!” Kell said. “That’s for warlocks. It was just a cantrip.”
Jubilee laughed. “Come on, I’ll protect you.”
Lorzok and Verityrejoined them after they gathered eggs. They took down washing from a line docked in the mouth of a roaring stone lion maned by clusters of grapes on one side and the pale green-coated downspout of the carriage house on the other. Waxed cloth patched up a year’s wages’ worth of missing panes of glass in the windows, but every window had a garden box, and the glass-housed orange trees, carefully trained up the side of the sunniest wall, still survived.
“So owning this land makes your family one of the nobles, but your father doesn’t want to be noble?”
“He’ll accept the responsibilities, but he doesn’t like being bowed down to,” Jubilee explained. “And the place was something he could fix.”
“Your father likes to fix things, then?”
“He sees what things could become if someone cared enough,” Jubilee said. “But not necessarily how much it would really cost.”
That explained a lot. Kell managed to bite back the first thing he wanted to say. “Your father is a very kind man.”
“My father is a very wise man.”
Kell knew a parry when he heard it. “Indeed.”
Kell and Jubilee scattered dead flies for the trout living in the ornamental irrigation network that wound between the gardens that grew food and flowers side by side. Jubilee cut young lily buds while they fed the fish, pulled weeds, and plucked herbs. Kell and Lorzok carried baskets, and Verity guided them to a bright green kitchen door that opened with a squeaky greeting.
“Mum!” Jubilee said. “I brought a couple people home for dinner.”
The woman who answered to “Mum” had her back to the door. She glanced left and said, “Wisdom, can you go catch one more trout?”
A young man studying a book let his head fall back to stare at the heavy timbers that held up the kitchen’s roof. His hair was as black as Jubilee’s, but his skin was lavender, like Jubilee’s mother’s. He pushed a fine pair of silver-rimmed spectacles onto his nose and sighed. “Ma, I’m reading about principles of conjuration magic.”
The woman at the center counter laughed. “Oh, conjuration! That’s a fine reason to let guests go hungry.”
“Make it two more trout,” Jubilee said. “Mum, this is Kell Redsong and Lorzok the Seeker.”
“I took Lorzok to see the kitties,” Verity said. “He can talk to them! He told them all that they were good.”
“Lorzok is a champion at praising animals,” Kell said. “The best, really.”
Wisdom slipped a shiny silk ribbon into his book to mark his place. “Two more trout.” He let his clogs clomp on the slate floor as he stood. Saeldian had been right. Wisdom was taller than Kell but nearly Kell’s size—maybe a bit skinny, judging from the way his robes draped at the shoulder.
“Blackstaff Academy?” Kell said. “I know those robes. That’s a prestigious school. Are you good?”
