After that, our conflict was conducted in silence. I avoided my father’s company. When my mother sought conversation with me I spoke about the academy, my teachers and friends, and my uncle’s family. Of my weight gain and my war with my father, I did not speak. When I was not with her, I rediscovered my boyhood haunts along the river. I went fishing.

I counted the days until this “holiday” would be over and I could return to the academy. My cold conflict with my father made him irritable with the entire family. Elisi retreated to her music and books. Yaril often appeared with her eyes red from weeping. My father had chastised her severely for her “shameless flirtation’ with Kase Remwar. Plainly, there had been no marriage offer between the families. As an uncommitted first son, Kase had danced, dined, and chatted with any number of eligible young maidens at Rosse’s wedding. I suspected it was simply his nature, but Yaril blamed me. I could have taken vengeance on her by telling my father that I’d seen her kiss Remwar before I’d even departed for the academy.

But even in my anger and hurt, I knew that the consequences that would fall on her would be far heavier than her foolishness merited. And keeping that secret from my father was one more bit of damage I dealt him. He thought he knew so much about his household and how to run the lives of his children? He knew us not at all.

Vanze busied himself with visiting friends in the area before departing for the seminary. I found a quiet moment to bid him farewell privately, and told him that I wished him every success. We’d already spent so much of our lives apart that I had little else to say to my younger brother. We were strangers joined only by our bloodlines.

My mother had hoped I would spend at least another week at home, but by the third day after the wedding guests departed, I was eager to leave.

She had found the leftover fabric from my original uniforms, and with great effort had managed to put eases into my trousers and jacket.

Cleaned and brushed, my uniform looked nearly as good as it ever had.

She carefully wrapped it up in heavy paper and tied it with string, cautioning me not to wear it on my journey back, but to keep it clean, so that I’d have clothing that fitted me on my first day back at my classes.

Her concern touched me. As I took the package from her, I was bracing myself to tell her that I planned to leave the next morning when one of my father’s men came up from the Landing with a larger than usual bundle of mail for him. My mother sorted through it as she always did. I watched her, waiting to have a quiet moment to speak with her.