The house in Jottland where she had been born and spent her childhood had looked over a glade that was set aside for badminton. Too clearly, she recalled the last time she had ever played the game. She remembered the glistening of the rain-stricken garden as she dragged her elder brother by the sleeve with all her thirteen-year-old might. She had only hazily understood how deeply his rejection by Queen Peri had cut him. However, she had known that it could not be good for him to sit for hours in his closet, staring at coins, or at two faces in a locket. She had known that it was her task to distract Vocado and draw him out of himself.

Her brother had winced as if the birdsong gave him a toothache, and had swiped at the shuttlecock, first listlessly, then so savagely that the fronds enmeshed themselves in the strings of the racket. Tamarind had run to help him disentangle them, but he had shaken off her hand. At her feet, water was puddled in the hollows of the lawn, and her reflection had regarded her with delight and surprise.

“Look, Vocado!” She had pointed at her reflection. “I have a twin!”

A twin. Nothing could have triggered Vocado’s anguish like those innocent words. She had looked to her brother for a smile, just as his racket completed its savage swing at her face . . .

Down in the courtyard, the constable was lifting his brand away from the felon’s hand, and turning to face the judge. In the spire room one could hear no screams, feel no heat, smell no burning, but Tamarind knew that the constable would be speaking the traditional words as he displayed his handiwork to the gathering.

“A fair mark, my lord.”

G Is for Gentleman’s Agreement

G
IS FOR GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT

“Hoi!”

Mosca shifted from sleep to waking in her usual way, flinging out her fists to left and right. On this occasion, she bruised her knuckles on two close wooden walls, and was shocked into total clarity. Above her an unfamiliar set of rafters was looped with long, dusty, cobweb banners. The sound of water nearby made her think herself back in Chough for a moment. But this was the watery voice of a gentlemanly sort, each lap like the idle slap of a horsewhip against a calf.

“Hoi!”

Mosca’s head was turned to one side at an awkward angle, and her pantaloon-clad knees were hooked over a wooden footboard. Below the rafters was a single window, the gray predawn sky sliced into diamonds by the window leading. Somewhere beyond the window, someone was trying to shout under their breath.

Mosca heaved herself out of the trundle bed, and pulled the window open. Below, a woman with a fat yellow pigtail and a wide, froglike mouth was hauling her gentleman companion to his feet, her strong, plump arms around his middle.