. . . selfishness and vainglory.”

  Dalliance felt a little better. He was going to need a bit of luck. He was discovering that he remembered more than he expected of what Charity had taught him; perhaps she was rubbing off on him. He straightened up and dusted off his knees from his place in the ashes before the home shrine, with its little bulbous pottery face.

  As always when it came to religion, he wasn’t sure how much of the publicly available stuff he could believe. It seemed like everything he thought would be common ground, like what the goddess looked like or if there was one of her or three, was extremely contentious. But the parts he would’ve thought more difficult—like who was to say whether or not the goddess would forgive someone—actually had a clear answer.

  The Crone absolutely did not forgive anyone.

  Admittedly, that made the process very simple. What you did, according to Charity, was pray that the goddess would snuff out your mistakes before you made them, because she wasn’t going to forgive you for them if you made them anyway. But being also the goddess of industry, she believed in trying hard, learning from mistakes, and crucially, setting out to avoid them in the first place.

  This understanding, along with the extremely sticky memory of the first time Charity had led them in prayer, formed the backbone of what felt, at least to Dalliance, like a surprisingly firm conviction. He felt he knew better than the local priest what the goddess wanted. The church priest had said something along the lines of, "foster our potential, guide our actions, and forgive our faults," which was in direct conflict with everything Charity had said. And twelve years old or not, she was going to be a [Theologian]. Whereas to become a priest, you didn’t need much at all. It was an D-Tier class, [Commentator] to [Acolyte] to [Priest], that simple. You just had to know how to read, write, and sing, and someone had been so kind as to waive that last requirement for Mr. Idles, who, like his name, was dangerously tone-deaf.

  When Whimsy walked through the door, Dalliance knew that today was going to be the day.

  “I am sorry, Whimsy. I said something stupid. I should’ve said I’m proud to be your brother.”

  She was caught off guard by that, her usual brittle defenses faltering. She smiled at him. “Who do I have to thank for that?” she teased.

  “It was a group effort,” he admitted.

  “Walk with me,” she suggested.

  Outside, the rime bells were dancing in the wind, the delicate flowers undulating like so many fairy goblets of frost. In time, the yard would be carpeted with them. That had been Cadence’s idea. The flowers smelled like petrichor when tramped on, and he had said he liked that. Anyway, it was better than chicken poop. Having turned many a shovelful of that substance into the earth for the health of the soil, Dalliance staunchly agreed with his father on this particular point. Almost anything was better than chicken poop.

  The rime bells made a faint, crystalline sound when stepped on, and it always felt a little supernatural to Dalliance, as if perhaps a bit of fairy magic lingered in them. He’d never bothered to ask Topaz; she was always very close-mouthed about such things.

  “What did you want to say?” his sister asked him at length. They were sufficiently far away from the house for talking to be relatively private. She had, he thought, expected him to reiterate something it would not be safe to be overheard saying, and in fact, that was the plan.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her. “That’s most of it. The other part is that he’s going to do it again. He said he would. It’s got to happen after the next Hunt. That’s tomorrow.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s why we’re going to get you out tonight.”

  “I told you, Dalliance,” she said, her voice sharp with old arguments. “I’m not gonna run away and be some wild girl in the forest. I have to eat. I have to do laundry. Things are different for girls.”

  “No, they’re not. I also have to eat and do laundry,” he confirmed. “No. The Temple will take you in. You can go and plead sanctuary, and he can’t take you back.”

  “Like in a chapbook?” she asked.

  “Just like in a chapbook,” he confirmed.

  She thought about it. “And I’d be raised by priestesses?”

  “Yes, I think so,” he said. “And they wouldn’t let him marry you off to anyone.”

  “No . . . that’s not quite right. I don’t want to marry anyone. Well . . . Da wouldn’t be able to just marry me off anymore. He wouldn’t be . . . I wouldn’t be his daughter,” she finished, interrupting him. “But I never was his daughter, was I?”

  “I’m sorry,” Dalliance said.

  “I suppose,” she allowed, “that was probably Mother’s doing. And she did it without me.”

  He confirmed this with a nod and dodged her playful smack.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll do it. But you have to come and get me. Don’t leave me there alone. I’d be so very afraid.”

  “I will come for you. And when I get away to the city, I’ll provide for you until you’re old enough.”

  “For what?” she demanded.

  “To get your own class.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s okay then,” she said, tilting her head. “And once I’m an [Archer], I’ll be able to take care of myself.” She paused. “That’s at Tier again. Of course, at twelve I shan’t be a very good archer.”

  “I won’t kick you out at twelve.”

  “If I stayed with Father,” she said, her voice hopeful, “I could stay until I’m wed.”

  “You can stay until you’re wed,” he confirmed.

  She smiled at him brilliantly. “We’re going to have so much fun!” she told him.

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  Abruptly, he rather doubted it.

  Tomorrow was the final day of exams. Tomorrow, she would run away.

  Which meant Dalliance had to install the box tonight. And worse: Miss Wimple's wagon would led the procession of students to school in the morning. To get Whimsy aboard unnoticed, he needed a diversion. He needed to halt the procession, to create a moment of chaos right as the wagon passed their farm.

  He picked up an axe. It was going to be a long night. He had a box to install, and a tree to cut down.

  That night, Topaz told him a story, but not a bedtime story.

  In the aftermath of their altercation, she had followed young Woebegone back to his home. There, she described a scene of domestic squalor: three generations of women, widowed or unwed, without the means to spare for the necessary repairs on a house which leaked. Three generations of women putting all their hopes in the one man left in their lives.

  And it would be midterms tomorrow. Forty percent of the grade that would determine eligibility for the King's Collegiate, for its scholarship, for access to the Academy, and the high-paying jobs to which doors were opened by an Academy education.

  "It all comes down to this," she said.

  Dalliance was silent for a long moment. "If I were betting," he said at last, "I'd say they had the wrong horse."

  "Sometimes you have to run with the one you've got," she acknowledged. "Or would you have chosen Cadence?"

  He laughed deeply, and then slept without dreaming.

  It was his mother calling, her voice carrying across the farm with that distinctive yodel he had always hated, which prompted Dalliance's emergence from the kitchen that morning, biscuit in each hand. “What do you want, Ma?” he asked, meeting her on the wrap-around porch. Each word spat biscuit crumbs, but not on purpose.

  She was nonplussed, but not distracted. “It’s important,” she said. “It’s turned out your aunt and uncles are coming. Four Rathers under one roof again.”

  Stress, in a voice already rough from a lifetime of shouting at cattle.

  Dalliance couldn’t say he was excited either. His uncle Solidarity was quite a personality, and his sister was worse. Besides, this was supposed to be the day. Sneak-sister-out day.

  Oh, no. The thought wasn't a slow dread. It was a moment of frozen clarity, an instantaneous and absolute understanding that this was a very, very bad thing.

  It’s possible to evade two pairs of eyes crossing a field, if you have some idea of where the owners of those pairs of eyes are going to be. Cadence and his brothers meant three pairs of eyes. Plus, as always, Cadence would have brought out Industry and Probity just to show his brothers how much of a boss he was, how firmly he ran his household. This was a problem. Five pairs of eyes across one field. Industry probably wouldn’t say anything, but he didn’t know about Probity.

  When he walked around the porch, he discovered he had been miscounting. His aunt on his father's side was there, which meant her husband was around somewhere. Seven pairs of eyes. His cousin smiled at him from around the corner; he’d always liked her. Eight pairs of eyes.

  Whimsy looked afraid, the center of attention on the porch, and no less.

  And then he heard the distant creak of wagon wheels. It was the school cart. It was time.

  "Whimsy," Mother said, “Have you fin—”

  "—I found the most beautiful vine of rime bells growing up the barn. Would you like to see it?" Whimsey did a masterful impression of having been excited to talk to her cousin, and not hearing her mother. Chastity Rather gave her daughter a dour look. But she had had a long day, a long series of days making canned goods, jarred goods, and dried goods, and this was her time for silent contemplation and gossip. There was no way on earth she would give up the rare opportunity to speak to adults about adult things. For once, Dalliance didn’t entirely blame her. Besides, this made things much easier.

  “That sounds lovely,” said his cousin. “Do show me.”

  He really liked his cousin. She was the heart and soul of their parties every visit, not a contentious bone in her body—not something he could say for most Rathers.

  They didn’t speak very much these days. The two had been thick as thieves when they were younger, until his Da had taken him aside and explained that cousins really ought not to fraternize too closely, lest the resulting children have weak chins. Dalliance, who had been six at the time, had completely misunderstood that entire conversation.

  Efflorescence Indulgence was a heck of a name for a slip of a girl, but for all the iniquities of her parents, she went by, simply, Flora.

  She was very disappointed to find out there were not, in fact, rime bells growing on the barn. It was, however, far away from the grown-ups.

  Dalliance had only moments to decide whether to trust her or not, and went with his gut.

  “We’re getting Whimsy to the Temple, to claim sanctuary.”

  His cousin’s eyes went as wide as saucers. “Oh, no! What did Uncle do!?”

  "Was it really that obvious to everyone but me?" Whimsy asked quietly.

  "I'm sorry," Dalliance said, "but we don't have time. I've got a box hidden under the wagon. We have to get you inside it, which means we've got to get you to the road."

  "I'll take care of Father and Uncle Cadence," Flora said, her voice a fierce whisper.

  That helped, Dalliance admitted to himself.

  "And I've got to stop the wagon and all the students, get everyone looking the other way—"

  "No, you don't," Whimsy cut in, her voice sharp and surprisingly practical. "You just have to stand between the wagon and everybody while I get up under it. It could be you and Earnest, and Flora—”

  “—she’s still got to take care of her dad. And Da."

  "Okay . . . well, you and Earnest, maybe," Whimsy acknowledged.

  It could work.

  He'd certainly put in the time. He and Earnest, armed with the unwitting loan of Industry's best carpenter saw (which would probably need a good sharpening after this), had spent the better part of an afternoon at the task. They'd found the perfect tree, an old oak leaning precariously over the school path. A deep, saw-toothed notch, cut nearly all the way through. The satisfying crack and groan as it finally gave way and fell was the sound of their plan clicking into place.

  Ideally, he’d beat the school group there, ensuring the fallen tree was the center of everyone's attention. But even if he didn't, it guaranteed one thing: a delay.

  He had made sure of it. Miss Thicket Wimple’s cart would be stopped right where he needed it.

  "Why do you have a sword?" Flora said suddenly.

  His cousin's voice, suddenly suspicious and authoritative with every one of her fifteen years, made him think of Ma.

  Dalliance fidgeted with the unfamiliar weight of the spatha at his hip, giving her the briefest answer he could manage and pivoting to a story: Da had eventually asked where he got it. All he'd said in response was, "We got in a fight, and he won't be needing it anymore." His hair got ruffled, and he was told to keep it sharp.

  His father was nuts.

  "We're going to talk about that later," Flora promised him.

  "We've got a lot to catch up on," Dalliance agreed.

  And then she was off, a sunny smile firmly in place as if it had never been otherwise, calling for "Uncle Cadence!" at the top of her musical voice.