Now she was sitting with her father on the south lawn at the edge of the castle walls, enjoying the sunlight and the sweet smell of lilies wafting on the summer breeze. She had told him everything by then—well, almost everything; there were one or two things she was keeping to herself—and to her surprise he had not scolded or criticized her for anything she had done. Not even for running away. Not even for trying to hide from him. Not even for worrying her mother and himself to the point of distraction.
“I’m mostly just glad you’re back,” he said when she asked if he was mad at her. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
She was both relieved and pleased. She had no desire to engage in another confrontation with him. While she had been in hiding, she had thought a lot about her attitude toward her parents and decided that it could use some improvement. So one of the first things she did on her return, once they were reassured that she was unharmed, was to tell them how sorry she was for not trying to understand better that they had only her best interests at heart. Her father responded at once by telling her he was sorry he had treated her as a child.
“I still think of you that way,” he told her. “Maybe I always will. Parents do that. We can’t help ourselves. We can’t help thinking that you need us to look after you. We can’t get used to the idea that you are growing up and need space to find your own way. We don’t like it that you might one day discover you will be just fine without us.”
“I would never be fine without you and Mother,” she had replied and hugged him so hard he thought she might break something.
Thom had come back with her, deciding that he would return to Rhyndweir as successor to his brother. This decision had more to do with his determination to change the way things were done in the Greensward than anything to do with Questor’s repeated references to destiny and fate. Ben had received him warmly and told him that he could count on the throne to support him. He had suggested that he send Questor to the Greensward to make certain the transition went smoothly. Not that he believed there would be any problem, he was quick to assure the boy. Berwyn Laphroig had not been well liked, and the people of Rhyndweir would be happy to have a new Lord. They would be especially accepting of one who seemed so willing to put the welfare of his subjects ahead of his own.
“He wants to give the land to the people,” Mistaya had told her father later. “He wants the people to feel they have a vested interest in it, something they can call their own and pass on to their children. All he wants in return is for them to agree to pay a reasonable tax to the crown. He has a plan to accomplish all this, and it is a good one. Listen.”
Her father did so, and after asking a number of questions he was inclined to agree. Perhaps Thom’s openness would provide a working model for the other Lords of the Greensward, one that would revolutionize the old practices and herald the beginning of an era of fresh cooperation between the Lords of the Greensward and their subjects.
Perhaps.
“I think Thom will become a valuable ally, Father,” Mistaya finished. “I think you’ll come to like him very much.”
She had not missed the way the boy looked at her, of course, and she knew how he felt about her. What she didn’t know was exactly how she felt about him. The two had shared a very dangerous and exhausting ordeal at Libiris, and that sort of experience had a way of bonding people. She liked Thom, but she wasn’t sure she liked him in that way—even though she couldn’t stop thinking about the way he had kissed her in that storeroom at Libiris when she was to be married to Laphroig. It still sent chills up and down her spine when she thought about it. It still made her want to try kissing him again. Someday.
She sat with her father for a long time after that without speaking, comfortable just to be together. She couldn’t remember when they had last done this, and she was almost afraid to say or do anything that might break the spell. One or the other of them was always rushing away, and time spent doing nothing, father and daughter sharing space and nothing more, was a rarity. Thinking on it, she felt a pang of regret that it might be another broad stretch of time before they would do it again.
She caught him looking at her and said, “What?”
He shook his head. “I was just thinking about how much I enjoy being with you like this. Just sitting and not saying anything or doing anything. Just …”
He trailed off, unable to finish. “I know,” she said. “You don’t have to say it. We don’t do this like we did when I was a little girl.”
“You remember, do you? I thought that maybe all that was so far in the past that you had forgotten.”
“I haven’t forgotten any of it. We would go on picnics, and I would sit next to you and watch everything you did. Mother would set things out, but I would sit with you. Sometimes you would carry me on your shoulders into the trees and pretend you were my charger.”
He grinned. “I did do that, didn’t I?”
“You did a lot for me—you and Mother both. Since coming home, I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been doing a sort of self-assessment. There might be some areas of improvement needed. What do you think?”
He arched one eyebrow at her. “You’ve got to be kidding. You don’t really expect me to answer that one, do you?”
“Not really.”
“Then don’t ask me things like that. I’m trying to walk a fine line here between parenting and friendship.”
“They’re supposed to be the same thing, aren’t they?”
“When the stars align properly, yes. But you might have noticed over the past few weeks that sometimes you have to work at it.”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “Well, I guess I did notice something of the sort.”
They were quiet again for a time, and then her father said, “What do you think you will do now, Mistaya? Now that you’ve come back home.”
She had thought of little else. “I don’t know.”
“You have a lot of options open to you. You’ve probably thought of a few that I haven’t. I’m not asking this to try to persuade you to do anything in particular. The choice is yours, and whatever you decide is fine with your mother and me. I think.”
“Thank you.”
“So do you have any ideas?”
“Some.”
“Care to talk about them with me?”
He sounded so eager, she could hardly make herself give the reply she had already decided on. “Maybe later. Can we just sit here like this for now?”
He said they could, but she thought that he would have preferred the discussion he had suggested. Trouble was, she just wasn’t ready. She didn’t know what she was going to do. She thought it might take some time to figure it out.
As it turned out, she was wrong. She went for a walk outside the castle grounds late in the afternoon, needing to stretch her legs and find space to think. She was in a meditative mood, and movement always seemed to help spur her thinking. In addition, she wanted to see if there was any sign of the G’home Gnomes, Poggwydd and Shoopdiesel. After the horse to which they were tied had galloped in terror away from a hungry Strabo, they had thought themselves doomed. The dragon had caught up to them almost immediately, but then it had refused to eat them after finding out they were G’home Gnomes. Even dragons had limits when it came to food choices, Strabo had observed archly before abandoning them to fly after tastier morsels. Eventually, Questor Thews and Abernathy had come across them on their way to Libiris, still bound and gagged astride their grazing horse. Showing considerably more compassion than others, they had released the pair and, after hearing how they had revealed Mistaya’s hiding place to Laphroig, had sent them packing, and no one had seen them since. Mistaya wouldn’t have blamed either one for refusing to have anything to do with her from that day forward and wouldn’t have lost a great deal of sleep over it, either. But she felt certain she hadn’t seen the end of them.