Sienna Du’for's Arc

Chapter 7 of 19

Amelia tore the last of the pear in half and passed a piece over. She talked while Sienna chewed. She talked about a painter at the north guild who softened her eyes on the canvas, about a cheese seller who cheated her twice, about her brother who always found her no matter where she sat. Sienna nodded and let the small words wash the fear out of her hands. She was watching a wren in the branches above when a shadow slid onto the bricks and did not move. Amelio stepped around the wide trunk with his hands in his coat pockets. He looked at Sienna first, then at his sister. "That is Princess Sienna Du'for," he said. "Two thousand gold. The poster's in every square." Amelia did not stand. She looked at Sienna's face for one long beat, then at her brother. "No," Amelia said. "She's eating a pear." "Amelia." "I said no." They started shouting. Sienna stood up and could not think where to put her hands. Amelio stopped arguing. He stepped past his sister with his arm cocked, aiming a short blow at the side of Amelia's head. Sienna stomped her foot on the brick. "Step down," she said. The voice came out of her before she chose it, the flat court voice her tutors had drilled, the one that expected the room to obey. Amelio's boot went back a half step. His shoulders squared. His chin dropped. It was the bow of a man who had bowed to her father a hundred times, and he did it before he remembered he did not have to. He saw it on his own face and his mouth opened. Amelia hit him in the jaw with the heel of her hand. His head snapped sideways. He folded onto the bricks. Amelia shook her hand out and looked at it like it was someone else's. "He'll wake in an hour," she said. "Angry." She crouched and rolled him onto his side. Then she looked up at Sienna. "I won't say a word." Sienna's throat closed. "Why." Amelia shrugged. "You listened." She hooked her hands under her brother's arms and began dragging him toward the low wall at the edge of the grove. At the wall she stopped and looked back. "Don't be here tomorrow," she said. "He knows the tree." Then she was gone through the gap, and Sienna stood alone on the bricks with the blue flowers above her and a friend she could not keep.