"Some," the admittance, plain, there could be no denying how hard she found Magni's silence in those early months. "The rest was everyone else in my ears." Her nose wrinkles, unhappy with the memory, not least the meddling that they'd both endured.

"They will not, for they will grow up speaking Jarl Magni," the teasing is light, niggling over the secret language of silence Magni used. "And where you might stumble, I will be there, and where I stumble, so too will you be able to help."