“Not here,” I say, a little desperately. She’s unlikely to think highly of someone who sleeps in a barn.
“Where does hesleep, Tanadelle?” she says, very softly.
Yes, of course I knew that’s what she meant, but my mother won’t like the answer. “Well,” I say. “He doesn’t have anywhere else to go, you see.”
This was entirely the wrong answer; I can see that immediately as my mother’s face turns nearly purple. She opens her mouth to speak.
“He lives in a barn,” comes a voice from above. We all turn and look up the stairs. Sasha is turning a dark green, but carries on speaking. “It is apparently very drafty, and he has to muck out stables.”
“We all call him the Barn Pirate,” Amaritha adds.
“And do these two children also belong to this…bookstore?” Mother says, turning back to me.
“Children!” one of them gasps.
“No, these are Sasha and Amaritha. Sasha’s my shop assistant and Amaritha’s the person who repainted the sign outside.” I pause. “They’re my friends.”
“And she’s my girlfriend,” Sasha adds. I peek up the stairs, and she blushes again. “And Bash is nice. Weird, but nice.”
“Thesailor,” my father suddenly announces. “That’s thesailorfrom Tandy’s letters. The one with the water curse.”
“It’s an ironic curse, actually,” Sasha, our expert in ironic curses, interjects.
“Water magic,” Bash adds, his first words. “Ironic curse, water magic.” His voice is cool, steady. You’d never know we’d been about to kiss. We had been about to kiss, hadn’t we?WouldI have kissed him, had the door not been flung open?
Mother waves a royal hand. “Meaningless unless it’s connected with Tanadelle’s curse. And I notice that you have not answered my question, Tanadelle; and so I put it to you, young man.” She turns the full force of her gaze on Bash. “Where are you sleeping?”
Bash, a man I know to have faced down a sea witch and at least two hungry sea serpents in his time, at least according to his own stories, quails ever so slightly.
My father clears his throat. “Perhaps a question best addressed in private, Clotilde, my dear,” he says, gently.
My father is the only person alive I’ve ever seen who is able to get my mother to back down a bit; this she does, clearly unwillingly. “We’ll discuss this matter later, Tanadelle,” she says.
A stay of execution is, I realize, ultimately more torturous than simply being marched to the scaffolding and put out of one’s misery.
“A barn,” I squeak out. “Upon my honor, he sleeps in a barn.”
“Barn Pirate,” someone upstairs whispers.
“Nothere,” Bash adds.
Mother sighs and looks around again. “Don’t you have anywhere to sit?” she says.
She’ll hate it, but the only alternative is the big table up on the third floor, where the Coven of Conviviality meets. “Why don’t we retire to my room?” I say. I glance first at Bash and then at the girls, huddled on the stairs. Bash gets my drift immediately, but Sasha and Amaritha look like they’re on the verge of hysterics. “Sasha,” I say, “perhaps you’d close up for us?”
“Yes,” Sasha says, sounding a little strangled. “Yeah, of course.” At my mother’s glare, she coughs and adds, “Your Majesty.”
“Now, Clotilde,” my father says, “we’re not being very polite.” He turns to the girls, and then to Bash. “Perhaps you’d care to join us?” he says, a little hopefully.
“Oh no, I should…go,” Sasha says, turning a very, very deep green. “Your Majesty.”
“Me, too,” Amaritha says. “Homework.”
“Perhaps the sailor might join us for tea,” Father says. “Always so interesting, sailors.”
“I hardly think that’s appropriate, Rothal,” Mother says. She turns a gimlet eye on me. “Unless there is some reason we should be aware of for this man to join us in your…room…to discuss yoursituation?”
The last thing I want is for Bash to be anywhere near my parents. But it certainly wouldn’t be polite to speak for him, so I take a fortifying breath and turn toward him. “Sebastian,” I say, willing him to forgo his instinct for perversity and instead make his excuses, “would you care to join us for tea?”
