“You have a Healer’s touch,” he said softly. His tone was nonthreatening, but I shook my head, denying his claim. I was not a Healer. I would not be accused of being one.
“Sit.” He extended his hand toward the chair I’d just vacated and pulled out the one across from it, clearly settling in for further discussion on the matter. I did as I was told, my back stiff, my hands folded demurely in my lap. I eyed him warily, and he stared back with frank curiosity.
“What is your name, Lady Corvyn? Your given name?”
I touched my throat impatiently. He knew I couldn’t respond. He seemed to have forgotten that.
“Write it.” He shoved a blank sheet of paper toward me.
I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders, indicating I could not.
“You can’t write?” his voice rose in incredulity. “How will I talk to you?”
I tugged at my ear. He could talk to me just as he was doing now. I could hear just fine.
“You can hear me, yes. But you can’t respond.”
I shrugged once more.
“What do I call you?” he asked, irritated. “I refuse to call you Milady forever.”
I picked up a piece of charcoal and the paper he’d provided, and began to sketch rapidly.
“A bird?” He was confused.
I nodded and tapped the page then pointed to my chest.
“You’re named after a bird?”
I nodded again, eagerly. I added details to the small bird, so he would recognize it.
“A lark?”
I nodded once more.
“Lark? That’s not a name,” he argued gently, almost as if he were offended on my behalf.
I lifted my eyes to his, because it was a name. It was my name.
He must have seen my affront and been amused by it, because his lips quirked infinitesimally.
“Why don’t you know how to write? You are the daughter of a nobleman. You should know how to read and write. Why did no one teach you?”
I drew my father’s face, crude but recognizable. I’d had practice drawing him. I tapped it. Tiras stared at it thoughtfully.
“Your father wouldn’t allow it?”
I nodded. I turned to the paper again and drew a quick image of myself in chains. I set the charcoal back down.
“You were a prisoner?” he guessed hesitantly.
It was the most accurate response I could give, and he understood well enough. I was still a prisoner. I nodded at his question but raised a disdainful eyebrow, spreading my arms to indicate my surroundings.
“You are still a prisoner,” he murmured, as if he’d plucked the words from my head.
I held his gaze and inclined my head, indicating that he was correct.
“But you are my prisoner now. Not your father’s. And I want you to read. And write.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully.
I pulled the paper toward myself and began to form the letters I’d been taught long ago. A, B, C, D and L for Lark. An old woman in the village had taught me L and told me my name began with that letter. My father had discovered I was being taught and sentenced her to twenty lashes in the village square. No one else had attempted to educate me after that.
“You know these?” he asked, his eyes on my ill-formed letters.
I nodded.
He took the charcoal from my hands and drew a straight line with another line laid above it. “This is a T. For Tiras.” He wrote more letters and tapped them. “Tiras.” He wrote an L and an A followed by shapes I didn’t recognize. “Lark. This is the word Lark.”
I couldn’t pull my eyes away from my name. My name! I traced it reverently.
“Practice your name. Practice my name. I will be back tomorrow to teach you more.”
I hurried to get in front of him, not wanting him to leave. He looked down at me in surprise. I grabbed his left hand in both of mine and pulled him back to the table. His hand was thick and warm and calloused and made me think of the bark on the trees near my home, but I pushed the awareness away and tapped the paper.
“I can’t teach you everything now,” he protested in surprise.
I tapped the letters I had made. A, B, C, D. I picked up the charcoal and urgently tapped the space after the D. What came next? I wanted all the letters. All the shapes. I wanted to write them all, to practice them all, so that when he came back I would recognize them.
“You want to know what follows?”
I nodded eagerly.
He took a quill from my supplies and dipped it carefully in the ink. Then using a fresh sheet of parchment, he started at A and continued on for several minutes, creating lines and squiggles and curved edges that looked both familiar and forbidden. I clapped gleefully, and he looked at me in surprise, a smile hovering around his lips. He put the quill down. I picked it up and handed it to him again, pushing it on him.
“All of them?”
I nodded so hard my jaw ached.
He laughed out loud this time, and the action made his black eyes crinkle at the edges and his lips turn up in a way that was terribly attractive and impossibly infuriating. I glared at him and tapped the paper insistently. It wasn’t funny—I wasn’t funny. He’d been given every word he needed, and every word had been stripped from me. I wanted them back. All of them.
He took the quill almost meekly, though his eyes gleamed with suppressed mirth. He continued for several more minutes, forming each letter in a strong line. I hoped he wasn’t trying to fool me with symbols that meant nothing, simply so he could laugh at me when he returned.
When he finished, he laid down the quill and sprinkled the ink with a dusting of sand from a little corked vial, setting the ink. Then he looked up at me.
“This is every letter of the alphabet. Every word in our language is made from these letters.”
I could hardly breathe. I clasped my hands against my chest to calm my heart and stared down at the beauty he’d created. Then I raised my eyes and it was my turn to smile. I couldn’t hold it in. I wanted to. I didn’t want to reveal my wonder and the thrill that coursed through my veins. But I couldn’t hold it in. So I smiled at him and did my best not to cry happy tears.
He seemed almost stunned by my joy and rose slowly. He tipped his head to the side as if he couldn’t quite figure me out. Without further comment, he turned and left the room.
I realized after the king left that I hadn’t asked about Boojohni. I was ashamed of myself and waited eagerly for the king to return, like he’d said he would so I could draw him pictures and thereby demand answers. But he didn’t return. Not the next day or the next.
My fingers grew black from practicing the characters he’d written out for me, copying them carefully. I found the letters in Lark and the letters in Tiras, but didn’t know what they were called. They were simply shapes. Lines. Symbols that were completely meaningless. But I had a plan. When Tiras came back, I would have him write out the words for every object in my room on separate pieces of paper, naming each one. Chair. Table. Floor. Bed. Candle. I would put each paper in its proper place, and I would learn the words and decipher the sounds of each letter, every combination.
But Tiras didn’t come back.
I tried to convince the maids to write the words they knew. I also showed them the picture of Boojohni, but they all shrugged and shook their heads. They didn’t know much, and I didn’t trust the one who seemed to dislike me more each day. The others called her Greta, and I got the feeling she didn’t know how to read or write any better than I did, though she wouldn’t admit it. She just stomped around and pushed me away when I tried to communicate. Then there was Kjell.