A/N: Finally! A new chapter.

Yes, after a very long hiatus, I am back…with Chapter twelve! In it, I mix vague humor with a little angst and a little bit of…er, info

And to FelSong—thanks for reminding me about the Sartor/Norsunder thing. I'm afraid I added that when I was in a hurry and couldn't remember the names of any of the countries. I fixed it, because I was reminded by your comment and then when I re-read it it bothered me to know end. I like accuracy in my stories. 

And here it is: the chapter where Elestra discovers something-or-other regarding Alaerec and her feelings…well, if you don't get it (but you're a sleuthy bunch, so you probably do), you'll figure it out.

Don't own it.

Dedicated to rubic-cube, my fiftieth reviewer!

Some Fantastic

Your tea? Has it removed your cough?
--from Ton Thé, a traditional French song

I was out of bed the next day, and walking only a candle-change after. It was refreshing and invigorating to be out of bed, especially after being in bed for so long. Ermliana and I walked around my rooms, and even down to hers, before I tired and we returned to my parlor to talk and have tea and coffee.

It was a conversation that was tainted by my father's execution, and by the fact that we had heard nothing from Alaerec for the whole day. Ermliana and I had finally convinced Jhussav that morning to attend a race or two and try to put his mind on something else, but I could hardly walk still and Ermliana refused to leave me.

"I won't let you wallow in your misery alone in bed," she told me. "I'm going to stay with you; you need a friend right now."

"But, Ermliana," I argued, "two miserable people is worse than one."

She drew me into a hug. "Hush, Lessie. A friend gives you a shoulder to cry one, but a best friend cries with you," she told me, reciting an old proverb. "So if you're miserable, I'll be miserable too, burn it!"

Eventually, our strained conversation trailed off, leaving us both in our own thoughts. Ermliana dozed for a time, exhausted by the past couple days, but I was unable to sleep after being forced to for so long.

This was all my fault.

I couldn't help but think that. After all, I was the one who had taunted Debegri a year almost a year ago; it was my fault. I had taunted him, he had told Marscopa; Marscopa killed my mother and bound me; I sent her the cloak; she cursed it; the Council of Mages came.

Perhaps Debegri's revenge had been a tad extreme, but I was the one who had caused him to seek revenge.

And two people—my parents—died because of me. I had killed my own parents. I was lower than low.

I brooded on this for the afternoon, and night fell. Ermliana left, hugging me tightly, at third-blue, and finally I cried myself to sleep in the parlor, lost in my self-pity.

"Less!"

I jerked awake the next morning, and in my sleepy haze observed a pair of sad gray eyes. "Oh, Lessie—"

"What?" I asked sleepily. "What time is it—" I rubbed my eyes, and glanced out the window to discover it was still dark.

As if on cue, the bells signaling third-white rang. I nodded. "Ah."

I turned back to the gray eyes, and realized they were connected to Alaerec. "Alec? What's wrong?"

He gathered me into a hug. "Oh, Lessie, I'm so sorry."

And I remembered what he was talking about.

The execution.

My father's execution was today.

I looked up at Alaerec, and realized his eyes were sparkling from unshed tears. Myown sight went blurry, and then there were tears streaking down my own face.

Alaerec's fingers stroked my hair. "I tried talking to him for almost all of yesterday, and I just made it worse. Now you have to go to the execution, too. Oh, Less, I don't know what I did, and I can't believe it—I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry."

I pulled away, and wiped my face. "S'all right," I snuffled, though we both knew it really wasn't. "I'll go get dressed."

I knew what the attire for executions was—not Court-wear, but not casual, either, just formal. No jewels. I never thought I'd have to use it, though.

I don't know how I did it, but somehow I was dressed, and Alaerec was leading me to Ermliana's room, where a maid dragged her out of bed, dressed, her, and told her the circumstances. She woke up right away, and then I was being supported by them. because he was too young, and I agreed fuzzily, almost drunkenly. And then we were out the noble's execution stand, and my father stood above the chopping block, and then he was on his knees in front of it.

I wobbled. I couldn't move, and I couldn't stay on my feet.

Alaerec took me in his arms and pressed my head into his doublet. I heard a thunk, and then silence, not the usual cheers.

Silence, save for the muffled sobbing of someone. And then I realized that that someone was me.

Thankfully, Alaerec took care of what little memorial arrangements there were. He managed to get the body from behind the back of Lourden, and it was burned honorably.

But nothing—not even my father's death—could prepare me for what came next.

Management.

Even though I had been Duchess of Savona for a year, I had hardly touched the management. I expected my father to live long enough to teach me it when I was a little older.

And so, after my sixteenth Name Day, Jhussav and I retreated to Tanliff-Savona and to a home I we hadn't seen since before my mother's death. The servants welcomed us with open arms and handkerchiefs and Peitar, the household manager, handed me five books he thought might be useful. "I found them in the library, your grace, and I assumed you needed help."

I looked at the titles. Management.

Common Aristocratic Household Arithmetic.

Coming Out Smiling: An Autobiography of Jenethin Savona, Seventeenth Duke of Savona. That was about a hundred fifty years ago, I figured quickly.

"That one," Peitar informed me, "Is as dull as four snoring bears as a biography, but he details the process of running Savona exactly."

I smiled, and glance at the other two books. Protecting my Brother: A biography of Sherin Savona and Grief: Its processes and stages.

"Those two I thought might be helpful as well," Peitar said.

I offered him a grateful smile, and then threw my arms around him. "Thank you!" I cried. "Thank you so very much."

Even though I read all the books within the first few days, as I sat down to the paperwork, I was utterly confused.

I held open Coming out Smiling, the most helpful book, in one hand and my pen in the other.

I first began my duties as Duke by polishing my pen with…I sighed. Next paragraph. I then took a sheet of blank paper to work figures on and set it on my blotter, next to my inkwell, which I studiously filled with cobalt blue ink.

"My stars," I muttered, even though I'd read this passage before. "Must he go through allthis?"

Four incredibly longparagraphs later, I finally got to the managing section.

I took the sheaf of papers from the villagers in Tanliff-Savona and the other villages. Pulling out the first tax form, I neatly recorded the amounts owed and paid in two columns on my blank sheet carefully set on top of my blotter, bought from Jucun Merchants in Remalna-city.

"Not so hard," I said softly. I followed Jenethin's instructions carefully, slowly going paragraph by paragraph.

What I got at the end was a load of rubbish. According to what I had done, I owed the government basically what it would cost to buy the entire country of Sartor—including people and personal belongings.

I gave up and pulled out a fresh sheet of paper.

Dear Alaerec…

My hero arrived a week and a half later in a thunderstorm, leading a mud-splattered and lamed gray mare.

Once he was clean and the horse was being taken care of, he headed towards the library. When he opened pulled back the tapestry, he found me neck-deep in papers and cursing loudly.

He burst into laughter.

I was not happy. In fact, I cried, "Shut up, Alec! I need help!" which merely made him laugh harder.

Once he had calmed down, and was suddenly back in his serene Court mask, he helped me out of the mess I was surrounded by and said, "What's the problem, Lessie?"

"I keep doing the figures, and I get an astronomical sum and I've had Jhussav do it and he gets a totally different, incredibly larger sum and I used up all the ink and I don't bloody get this!" I yelled.

Alaerec grinned at me, obviously trying not to laugh. "Relax, Lessie. Relax." He sifted through the papers, finally pulling out the list of taxes from the people in Savona and my calculations, which were always the exact same. He glanced over them once and said, "I see where you went wrong."

"What?" I asked, stunned that he had seen it so quickly.

He grabbed my left arm with his right and drug me over to him, slinging his arm around my shoulders and pointing at the paper with it. It was a harmless friendly gesture that he used often when he was pointing out something to me, yet this time my shoulders tingled where he had touched me.

"Here," he said calmly, pointing to a spot just after my sums where I was supposed to multiply the sums by a certain amount of money—the very last step. Why, I didn't know, but that was what Jenethin had written (and what it had said to do in the management book), so that's what I did.

Unfortunately, Alaerec pointed out my mistake with ease not because he was smart and skilled at this, but because I was an idiot. "You're supposed to subtract that money from the sums, not multiply by it. That money is your salary. And this—" he said, pointing to a sum I'd doodled down, not sure where it fit in, "is your brother's allowance. Since he is still a child, he receives that. This," he added, pointing to the sum at the bottom of another column that I didn't know how to fit in, "are Savona's profits for the month. First you subtract your salary and Jhussav's allowance from the taxes, and then you subtract that from the profit. The remaining sum is what Savona made for the month. It goes in Savona's account, and half of it is distributed evenly to each person in Savona at the end of the year. The other half stays in Savona's account and is used in emergencies. And, though this is frowned upon, you can occasionally take some of it out for emergencies of your own, though your salary usually covers it. But if there's a terrible storm and your castle is destroyed, you may have to use some of the money."

"Right," I said, "Extenuating circumstances only."

He smiled. "Exactly. Do you get it?"

"That's it?" I asked. "It's that easy?"

"Well, you have to remember to send in your second sum—your tax product after subtracting the Savona family allowance—to Athanarel, of course. And," he added, cuffing me gently on the head, "you have to remember to subtract, not multiply."

I hit him right back, and we laughed.

Alaerec stayed a while, helping me with the daily paperwork, the pretty simple stuff unlike monthly taxes. It was nice to have him there—and disturbing.

It was too right. I hated the paperwork, though I enjoyed going out personally to Tanliff-Savona to collect taxes and just talk with the villagers. They were wonderful people—kind and wholesome and totally devoid of Court masks.

And it was all like a vacation, being with Alaerec, and having people smile real smiles and not having to worry about gossip or Lourden or Arthal.

But Alaerec would sit next to me and help me do the tiring, easy stuff, stuff that took forever, and we would talk and laugh and he would drop the Court mask and grin. When he grinned, it was boyish and buoyant and happy, and I liked him immensely.

He really was handsome, and I liked to look at him. And then I would look away, trying not to blush, and, most of the time, succeeding.

These new feelings were disturbing. In a way, they were similar to my brief crush (when I was thirteen) on Ermliana's older brother Lestran.

But they were different, too. They weren't quite as strong—not that my crush for Lestran had ever been strong—or perhaps they were stronger, but ran deeper under the surface.

But whenever he touched me, I felt a little tingle run up my spine.

I had never felt anything like that for Alaerec before—not even when he had kissed me. I had liked the kiss, but it hadn't made me shiver all over like Alaerec touching my hand did.

And, somehow, despite my typical clumsiness and my problems with keeping a Court mask on, I kept it hidden. I had to fight down a blush often, but I succeeded every time.

There were times when I wondered, late at night, what it really was. I would run down a list of emotions, quickly and slowly crossing them off. The final one was always love, that word that struck fear into my heart.

But it wasn't love, I decided. I didn't love him. It was too shallow, too appearance focused. I had finally decided that it was a touch of lust—Alaerec was attractive—blown out of proportion by adolescence. It would blow over quickly.

Or so I had hoped.

Post-A/N: Dun-dun-dun!

Yep. Review.

Signing off,
nebulia