“An anemone with a dandelion in a garland or wreath has almost always meant a woman who needs an act of care,” I countered. “If she is in need of an abortion, it will be too late by the time we even get to Skow. And if she wants your help—myhelp, as I am the only one qualified to provide the act of care—she could have been a tad more polite about it.”
Tessa shook her head. “She uses the anemone to indicate the code. The windflower was always the code. The dandelion was added, along with the gillyflower, later, by us, to Magda’s old system. The anemone implies she is using the code. The dandelion implies she is in a state of emergency. She is asking for our help.”
“Then why was her letter so rude?”
“The seal was broken when the soldier delivered it. Her husband is in their army, and it was brought here with their latest influx of troops. She likely wrote it with the intention that someone would read it. That’s why she used the code. She is begging for help, but she can’t come out and write that.”
“Is she even clever enough to think of that?”
My sister-in-law sighed. “You have always been so hard on her.”
“The three of you have always been so lenient,” I responded, trying to keep judgment from my manner. “Thane and Rowena and then you.”
Tessa shrugged. “I loved her so much. As I love her now. I was so grateful she did not see me as the foreigner tearing her family asunder.”
“Then why the dig about how your being with my sister was a sin?”
“Robbie,” Tessa implored, bringing her face closer to mine. “Think about it without so much resentment in you. A Perpatanian was reading that letter. We’re at war. All correspondence is being read if it is delivered by their army. I’ve already heard tell of folks worried that their sins will be too much to even join the caravan. She is saying that explicitly in the letter so that if my signing the penitents’ list comes into question, I have a letter saying a priest already approves of it. ‘Both my priest and my husband assure me of this.’ That’s what she is saying.”
“So, what, she is in a bad marriage and asks for rescue?”
Tessa frowned. “I think so. I’m going, Robbie. I swore to Rowena I would protect Adelaide. And I have failed. That was a deathbed vow.”
“She was feverish and tired. She knows you did your best?—”
“No! I avoided a row with my stepdaughter. You may have been too hard on her, but you were the only one who challenged that girl. Thane and I were both so terrified of upsetting Adelaide, of driving her away, we just agreed to the wedding.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Well, my last words to her were in anger. I doubt she wants my help.”
“She needs it.”
I grimaced. I had never told Tessa of my fight with Adelaide. A few moons after my dear sister had died of a chill in her chest, like our parents had, one of the Perpatanian soldiers had begun to court my niece. He quickly proposed marriage and that she accompany him back to Perpatane as his post in the low country was at an end. Tessa had suggested a longer betrothal, and Adelaide had practically bitten her head off. Consumed with grief, Tessa had taken back her suggestion and said Adelaide was free to do whatever she wished, thatshe loved her. And then Tessa had taken to her bed, awash in sorrow again.
I had pulled Adelaide into the small courtyard with the garden where Tessa kept a few vegetables and plants that aided in her candle-making. In a whisper, I had berated my niece for being so short with Tessa.
“Take all the ire you hold for that woman out on me. Spare her your stupidity and venom, I beg of you. I can ignore what is directed at me but not what you sling at her. You’ve no idea what it is to lose a spouse.”
Adelaide had snarled at me that she did have an idea of what it was to lose a mother, and before I could apologize—before I could explain I too was weathering the loss of her mother, my twin, that I too had lost a mother—she pushed me out of her way and stormed back into the house. Other than a smile, nod, and congratulatory greeting on her wedding day, I had said nothing else to her.
“The flower drawings are too much to ignore,” Tessa was saying, trying to catch my gaze. “I just came from showing this to Thane. I tried to explain it to him.Withoutfully explaining the flower code,” she said when I widened my eyes at her. “You know I would never betray us like that.”
“What did he say?”
“He tried to hear me out, but he says he cannot understand my concern. And then of course, he offered me whatever coin I needed to go.”
“Maybe we should just tell him the code?”
“We always said the fewer men who know, the better. I have an abiding love for Thane, I really do. But he isn’t Avery.” She hesitated, and then she said, “I’m going to Skow. Tintar retreated back to their country after Eccleston, but war has been declared. It is certain they’ll take over the border towns if Perpatane doesn’t get to them first. The four of you should come too.”
12
NOW: EXODUS
When Tessa, Fox, and I signed the penitents’ list, it was to confess our sins to a priest from Perpatane alongside an army officer who would take down our names and properties. We lined up in the church along with other penitents who had finally felt the pressure to escape Tintar. Folks from the next town over, Carver, were grateful for Sheridan’s close affiliation with King Pollux, as their own lord was a man who did not seem to revere any god but drink. Though while their sharecropping did not yield as much as ours, they did not suffer the indignities of Saint Rodwin’s faith.
In the church, I averted my gaze from the box up at the front. I had not been punished with a public boxing, having to lay in it for a day or two at a time for my sins, since I was a teenaged girl. But it still unnerved me to see it. And every tenth-day service, I managed not to look directly at it.
I heard Carver residents whisper to each other how lucky they were, and I tried not to roll my eyes. When we approached the tables set up at the front of the church and saw the men we were to report to, I tried not to smile either. Starling was standing to the side of thepews with his arms crossed, eyeing me with barely concealed ire and interest.
