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Ah her options

"You can wheedle Father, Arunts out a huff of displeasure "Very well But you owe reed!"

I tap my chest twice, which is the command Father has always used when he wants his soldiers, his servants, or his daughters to obey without question And when he lets us knoe have fulfilled his orders to his exacting specifications

She straightens into the stance of a soldier at attention and taps her own chest twice in answer Then she ruins theup and doith her arms raised

"Thank you, Jes Thank you! Wait until Denya finds out we get to watch the trials together and practice flirting"

She scrawls out a note to her friend and calls for a servant A boy hurries out fro His mouth is smeared with honey from a sweet bun he has sneaked off Cook’s table He’s a scamp of a boy, maybe ten years old, one of Mother’s rescues off the street My father gave him the name Monkey because Father names all our Efean servants after plants or animals But when Father is not home Mother calls him by his Efean name, Montu-en

"Run this over to Captain Osfiyos’s house at once, Monkey," declaims Amaya in her best Patron voice, all condescension and clipped-short words "Give it into the hands of the personal maidservant of Doma Denya, no one else"

"Yes, Doma" The boy takes the folded paper and dashes off I envy his freedo and loiter on his way back

As, then pauses to look at Maraya, who has gone back to reading "Merry, I don’t think your foot is cursed and Mother doesn’t either I’ her face to its prettiest "Not that Imean, but I like to save it for ti"

Maraya laughs, and so do I All my pent-up frustration spills into a river of expectation, a rush carrying ned to serve us girls appears at the curtain, looking curiously toward us as if wondering e have to laugh about, the daughters of heroic Captain Esladas and the beautiful woman he can never nals that the maidservant, whom Father named Coriander, may approach and speak

"Doh we can’t actually claiht to be addressed as Doma, for it is a term properly used only for woirls whose father is a Patron but whose Mother is emphatically a Commoner Yet inside our house Father insists the servants call us by the title "Doma Jessamy Doma Amaya Your supper is ready for you in your roolances toward the sky "Only the oracles know"

As we leave the courtyard with its bright laer for tomorrow

3

When he enty, my father left his homeland of Saro-Urok and came to the land of Efea to make his fortune The very day he arrived on the wharfs he saw a sixteen-year-old Coirl in the market and fell in love with her beauty This is not a reners say, there are n enerally young and unmarried and thus quick to fall into and out of love

What is remarkable is that my father has stayed loyal to h he is only a baker’s son, he is still considered Patron-born Patrons are people either born in the old erated from Saro to Efea any time in the last hundred years The law forbids people of Saroese ancestry fro the native people of Efea, who are called Commoners

As Father e with a Patron woman to help advance his army career It is the usual path for airls are for youthful liaisons Patron wives are for status and sons

That all he has to show for the relationship with our hters, two stillborn sons, and several es makes his loyalty all the more unusual Most Patron men would have abandoned one Co for a son Most Patron men would have sirls like Bettany and me over to the tes

But I’ the Fives during the months and years he is away from home at the wars