She dissolved into laughter, and Valri looked over with a frown on her face. Their merriment didn’t cause her too much alarm, though, for she instantly went back to her task.
“Not anymore,” Amalie said. “I haven’t done it in years. But if I was stranded on a deserted farm and there was nothing to eat but a few old hens, I think I could still remember how to do it. If someone wrung its neck for me first.”
“I can’t imagine you ever being stranded in such a way.”
“I could make a loaf of bread, too, if the ingredients were there. After my grandmother died, I was afraid I would forget. So at night I would lie awake and repeat the recipe and the steps out loud. I’m pretty sure it would be lumpy and lopsided, but I bet we could eat it.”
He grinned. “We should go down to the kitchens someday. See if the cooks will let you bake. How can they refuse you? You’re the princess.”
She laughed. “What a good idea. Maybe we should.”
He glanced at Valri again, but the queen had pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and was staring down at it as if waiting for it to dictate the proper words. “What happened,” he asked, his voice very low, “when your mother died? How did she die?”
Immediately, Amalie’s face was very grave, but she did not look angry the subject had been broached. “Fever,” she said sadly. “One day she was fine. We had spent the day in the gardens. I remember that we laughed and laughed, but I can’t remember what was so funny. I was thirteen. She had been telling me for weeks that she would have the dressmakers in to fit me for a new wardrobe, that soon I would need to attend some small dinners and meet some of the prominent families. I was very excited about the idea. And then the next day she had a fever, and two days later she was dead.” Amalie shook her head. “It was so fast-I didn’t have time to think about it. I didn’t have time to prepare.” She lifted her dark eyes to his face; she looked as if she was exercising extreme willpower to keep from crying.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. He couldn’t think of another thing to say.
She shook her head again. “The thing is, I knew she was sick,” she said. “Two summers before, she had begun to have these pains. And she had lost weight. We didn’t go to Merrenstow that year, and we always went to Merrenstow. I knew she was sick, but I didn’t realize how sick. I didn’t realize she could die.”
“No,” he said. “It never occurred to me, either. That my parents could die. Why would they? It never crossed my mind.”
She gave him a swift, tiny smile. “Whereas I’ve always known my father could die. Since I was quite young, everyone has made it clear that I will take the throne upon his death. But when I was young, I didn’t think about it as being an occasion for grief. I imagined how solemn I would be when they put the crown on my head, and I imagined what color dress I would wear to my coronation.” Cammon laughed out loud, and her smile grew a little wider. “I imagined what it would be like to be queen, I just didn’t imagine what it would be like to lose my father. Once my mother died, I suddenly understood.”
“Are you close to your father?” he asked curiously. “It does not seem as if you spend much time with him.”
She nodded. “I love him dearly,” she said. “He’s so busy that I don’t see him much, but he usually comes by every morning or every night and spends half an hour just with me. We talk about everything. My mother’s death was such a blow to him. I think it was years before he recovered.”
Cammon couldn’t help himself; he sent one more glance in the queen’s direction. “It must have been very strange,” he said cautiously, “when he remarried. And someone so young. How soon did Valri come to the palace after your mother died?”
“Oh, she was already here,” Amalie said.
He knew that his expression was dumbfounded. “She what?”
“She had been living here about a year already. She followed them back from the Lirrens shortly after they visited there-oh, a year or so before my mother died. Valri and my mother had become close friends and my mother invited her to visit.”
Cammon’s head swiveled between Valri and Amalie. Valri was from the Lirrens? Maybe-maybe-Senneth had actually suspected such a thing once or twice, and of course the queen’s affection for the raelynx should have been an unmistakable clue. Then there was the fact that Cammon could not read her, as he could not read Ellynor; there was something impenetrable about Lirrenfolk, or perhaps that was merely the manifestation of their magic. And yet-
“Valri is from the Lirrenlands?” he repeated in a slow voice. “I don’t believe that is generally known.”
A flash of guilt crossed Amalie’s face. “I probably shouldn’t have told you, then,” she said. “Please don’t mention it to Senneth or anyone else. I don’t know that it is exactly a secret, and yet my father goes to some pains not to raise any questions about her. People already think Valri is strange, and some of them even think she’s a mystic. If they knew she was from the Lirrens as well-”
That was when it fell in place. “Of course. She said she was protecting you. She is a mystic, and she has the same kind of magic Ellynor has-the power of concealment. It is a gift of the night goddess, and she is using that power on you.”
Amalie stared at him with wide brown eyes and did not answer.
“So your mother knew she was sick,” he said slowly, piecing it together as he went. “Did she go to the Lirrenlands hoping to get well? Because there are exceptionally gifted healers across the Lireth Mountains.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“But instead of a healer, she found Valri. And the only thing your mother was more afraid of than dying was what would happen to you once she was dead. And she realized that Valri could protect you-is that it? Keep you hidden away from the king’s enemies.”
“Something like that.”
“And she persuaded Valri to come back to Ghosenhall. But that doesn’t work,” he broke off. “Ellynor told us how protective her own family is. How they would never let the women of their clans go off and marry outsiders. The Lirrenfolk don’t actually consider Baryn their king, as far as I can tell. Sow how did Valri get free of them?”
“She declared herself bahta-lo. Like your friend Ellynor,” Amalie said. “Above the clan. She said it wasn’t easy, and some of her family members have not accepted her choice, but she did it anyway.”
Cammon narrowed his eyes. “So, your mother is the one who brought her back here. Specifically to marry your father. I hear all this speculation about why your father married so soon after your mother’s death, but it was your mother’s idea all along.”
Amalie nodded. “They don’t even share quarters, my father and Valri. They are very good friends, but all they really have in common is me.”
“And Valri has been practically your only friend since your mother died,” Cammon said. “I can see why you are so close, but I think it’s been hard on both of you.”
“Valri worries about me. All the time. She never gets a rest from worrying,” Amalie said. “And there are days-oh, I just want to break free! Run through the palace gates and race through the streets of Ghosenhall, stopping to shake hands with strangers and dance with young men and pick up little girls and twirl them around. I want to-I want to see places and try exotic food and meet someone who does not bow to me because he does not know who I am. I was so happy last summer! All those balls! All those wonderful strangers! And yet, for Valri, those were the most terrifying months of her life. Because she was so afraid something would happen to me.”
“Well, something almost did happen to you, and more than once,” Cammon pointed out. “I don’t know that you’ll ever be able to go wandering through the city wholly unattended for the rest of your life.”