Sherwood Smith Quote

She won’t rat out on us. Let me talk to her, and she’ll see reason.I’d give her some time before you attempt it, came the wry answer.She usually doesn’t stay mad long, Bran said carelessly.Again habit urged me to move. I knew to stay made me a spy-ears, which no one over the age of four is excused in being, yet I didn’t move. I move. So I stood there and listened--and thus proved the old proverb about eavesdroppers getting what they deserve.Shevraeth said, I’m very much afraid it’s my fault. We met under the worst of circumstances, and we seem to have misunderstood one another to a lethal degree.Bran said, No, if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s ours--my parents’ and mine. You have to realize our mother saw Tlanth as a haven from her Court life. All she had to do was potter around her garden and play her harp. I don’t think Mel even knows Mother spent a few years at Erev-li-Erval, learning Kheras in the Court of the Empress. Mel scarcely talked before she started hearing stories on the immoral, rotten, lying Court decorations. Mama liked seeing her running wild with Oria and the village brats. Then Mama was killed, and Papa mostly lived shut in his tower, brooding over the past. He didn’t seem to know what to do with Mel. She couldn’t read or write, wouldn’t even sit still indoors--all summer she would disappear for a week at a time, roaming in the hills. I think she knows more about the ways of the Hill Folk than she does about what actually happens at Court. Anyhow, I taught her her letters just a year or so ago, mostly as an excuse to get away from my books. She liked it well enough, except there isn’t much to read up there anymore, beyond what Papa thought I ought to know for preparing a war.I see. Yet you’ve told me she shared in the command of your rebels.Bran laughed again. That’s because after she learned to read, Mel learned figuring, on her own, and took it over.You mean, she took charge of your business affairs?Such as they were, yes. Taxes, all that. It’s why I told her she had half the title. She could’ve had the title, and the leadership, for all of me, except we promised Papa when he died that we’d go it together. And working toward the war--it was easier when we did it together. She turned it into a game, though I think she saw it as real before I did. He sighed. Well, I know she did. Curst traps prove it.Your family was reputed to have a good library.Until Papa burned it, after Mama died. Everything gone, and neither of us knowing what we’d lost. Or, I knew and didn’t care, but Mel didn’t even know. Curse it, her maid is sister to the blacksmith. Julen’s never been paid, but sees to Mel because she’s sorry for her.There has been, I take it, little contact with family, then?Papa had no family left in this part of the world. As for Mama’s royal cousins, when they moved north to Cheras al Kherval, my parents lost touch, and I never did see any reason to try…I slipped away then, raging against my brother and the Marquis, against Julen for pitying me when I’d thought she was my friend, against nosy listeners such as myself…against Papa, and Galdran, and war, and Galdran again, against the Empress and every courtier ever born.I sat in the room they’d given me and glared into the roaring fire, angry with the entire universe.