The next morning, our father called Kate and I to speak with him after breakfast.

'Your aunt and I had a talk last night,' he said. 'When I go away next time, you two will go to live with your aunt again. Only this time, you won´t come back when I come back. You two are going to stay with your aunt.'

'Why daddy?' Kate asked.

'Because you are big girls, and big girls need to go to school,' father replied.

'Why can´t we go to school here?' Kate asked.

'Because your aunt is a smart lady,' father said. 'Don´t pout girls, you will come home for the holidays.'

'When do we have to go?' I asked.

'In two weeks,' father replied.

Kate, rebellious from day one, convinced me to hide with her the day we had to leave. We chose an old armoire in an unused guest room as our hiding place. Bronwyn, who knew us quite well, found us within an hour, but even so, father was furious at the delay in everyone´s departure.

Kate sat stone faced the entire journey, despite my attempts to cheer her up.

'But it will be an adventure,' I said. 'And you like adventure Kate.'

'But we´ve already had this adventure,' Kate replied.

'Well, well, I never thought I´d see this day,' Bronwyn chuckled. 'Lucia trying to convince Kate that something is an adventure, and therefore good.'

We arrived at Aunt Achren´s near suppertime, as we had on our previous visit. We were put up in the same nursery room as before.

'Are you staying with us this time?' I asked Bronwyn.

'For a little while,' Bronwyn replied.

'How long is a little while?' I asked.

'Until your aunt decides that a little while is over,' she replied.

The next morning our aunt put us right to work. Not only were we learning the normal school subjects in the morning, like reading, writing, and arithmetic, we were only given an hour of after lunch. We were then sent to Murphy's school of dance in the city. As we later learned, Murphy had been teaching dance for almost twenty years. It was obvious however that she knew what she was doing. Aunt Achren had us signed up to learn everything that Murphy could teach. Murphy only kept us for an hour a day at first, until we had mastered the basics, and then moved to training us two hours a day. Kate and I were usually so exhausted that we did not do much for the rest of the day.

It was three weeks before Bronwyn left. Kate and I were both sorry to see her go. She had been our companion and main caregiver since mother died (except for the first 3 weeks we had lived with Aunt Achren).

'Don't cry girls, you will see her again,' Aunt Achren said to us. 'Come, you still have school this morning.'

Aunt Achren did not pay much attention to us during the day. As she told us, she had 'Queen stuff' to do, and left much of our education to tutor, or to Murphy.

A week after Bronwyn left, Aunt Achren had a ball. All of Cadiffor's nobles, many from Girona, and even some from Tel were invited. My sister and I were dressed up in our finest clothes, and allowed to stay up late for this occasion. We stayed near our aunt much of the time, as we were too shy to speak to many people.

'Go wander around a bit,' our aunt eventually told us.

And so we did. We soon found that we were not the only younger ones there. One of our cousins from Tel was there (the son of our father's younger brother). We stopped to talk with him, but before we could get a word out, we heard someone's voice saying, 'Oh, look, it is Queen Achren's other nieces.'

We looked around and found the speaker to be a girl of maybe 12 or 13.

'What's your name?' Kate asked.

'I'm Henrietta,' she said. 'Queen Achren must be forgetting to tell you things. She is my aunt too.'

'But our mom had only one sister: our aunt, and they didn´t have any brothers. How is our aunt your aunt too?' Kate asked.

'Queen Achren was married once,' Henrietta said. 'Her husband's younger brother is my father.'

I did not like the way she talked. She talked down at us, like we were much less than she. I knew that others might be smarter or know more than me, but I did not like having it rubbed in my face.

Henrietta seemed intent on keeping a close watch on my sister and me for the duration of the time we were at the ball, and took every opportunity to show how much more she knew than we did. We were glad when Narcissa found us and brought us back to our room.

'I don't like Henrietta,' Kate announced.

'I know dearie,' Narcissa said. 'But you will have to put up with her.'

'I know,' Kate said gloomily. 'Aunt Achren is her aunt too.'

'And you will be seeing her more than you like,' Narcissa finished. 'You´d better get used to the idea.'