Adrift between the sink and the table, he chewed his lip. There was no good reason to tarry any longer. Besides, he needed those carrots and beans.

Stupidly nervous, he went outside. When he didn’t find his sister skulking amongst the vegetables, for a handful of heartbeats he felt a vast relief. And then he breathed out a resigned sigh and went looking for her.

The schoolmaster’s cottage had a duck pond, right at the bottom of the garden. Fringed with rushes and drooping fenna trees, home to deep-voiced green frogs and water newts and one solitary drake, a rickety old wooden bench invited taradiddlers to stay a while and twiddle their thumbs in repose.

That was where he found his sister, on the bench beside the still, deep pond, kept company by the drake who swam round and round.

“That’s me, you know,” Barl said, as he hesitantly approached. “I’m that stupid old duck. Swimming and swimming, going nowhere at all.”

“I’ve often thought you walk like a duck,” he said, and stopped at the other end of the bench.

Her face was mostly turned away from him. What he could see of her mouth twisted in a brief, wry smile. “Ha ha.”

Whatever he’d expected to find, it wasn’t this. Not Barl subdued and sorrowful, all the fight drained out of her. Every other time she’d stormed away from a position, or been dismissed, he’d found her feisty and spoiling for a brangle, fired up to defend herself and justify her actions.

But this time? This time, for the first time, she looked… defeated.

“I’m roasting herbed chicken for supper,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything else. Because all the hot words he’d had for her were cold now, and too unkind.

She shrugged, listless. “That sounds nice.”

“I’ve come out to pick beans and baby carrots. Want to help?”

“Not really.”

“Barl.” Feeling defeated himself, he sank to the other end of the bench. It wobbled a little then steadied under his weight. He kept meaning to fix it, but always forgot. “I’m sorry. But perhaps it’s not too late. Whatever’s gone wrong, I’m sure it can be put right. Even if you were right, perhaps if you swallowed your pride, just this once, if you begged Arndel for another chance—or if it was Lady Grie who upset you, enough that you lost your temper and—well, I’m sure if you explained about artistic temperaments, then—only you shouldn’t give up so easily, you really shouldn’t.”

“Remmie—” Barl was staring at him. “What are you talking about?”

He stared back. “What am I—what do you think I’m talking about?”

“You think I’ve been dismissed again? Or that I’ve flounced off in high dudgeon after some imagined slight?”