This eleven-year-old girl is definitely gonna try her best! 

She sneaks out of the palace before sunrise, in inconspicuous clothing she traded one of the cook's children for, and makes her way to the temple without a soul realizing she's gone.

There's a tent with all the goods they were offering in the smaller towns, plus oil paints and glass beads and lipstick and porcelain dishware and someone doing sketches of anyone who asks.

A friendly magician named Mreta tells her that everything's available for a story.

She tells them she's here for her aunt, the court poet of Scandinavia, who is tragically occupied with a very fussy infant today. So she'll pick up something for herself and something for her aunt, if that's all right.

She tells them that her mother and her aunt were kidnapped from Mercia twelve years ago, by the last emperor, and then brought here to the emperor's palace to be concubines.

"Oh," Mreta says, "Sofia wanted your aunt to talk to Amoli, over there. Maybe she can come back to the palace with you and tap the baby in case the baby's sick?"

Hmmm. If they come back trying to heal a sick baby then maybe her aunt will be able to talk to them in private for a bit, and if she doesn't want to do that her aunt can probably get them to leave in a timely manner. Though she'll have a heck of a time getting back into the palace with an adult.

"Sure! Only maybe come back in an hour or so, so I can let her know you're coming. Just tell the people at the gate that Saga sent for you."

"Okay! You can go ahead and pick something out, if you'd like."

"OK!"

She wants one of the magic boxes, but she wants to make sure she gets the best ones, have they got anything besides health and crops and warmth and sleeping well? Though maybe her aunt would appreciate sleeping well, with the baby and stuff.

"That's all we have today, but we'll have more tomorrow if you come back. We change everything we sell so that people will visit us often."

One box of sleeping well it is, then. And a watch, she's not gonna be the only kid in town without a watch.

"See you soon!"

"See you!"

She'll just run back to the palace, then. She's fast enough and it's early enough that no one but the cook has noticed her absence, and she just figures she was busy doing something other than raiding the kitchen on this particular morning.

Amoli comes by an hour later claiming Saga sent her to heal a sick baby.

Well if Saga sent her.

The guards wave her in and, oh, there's one of the princesses in respectable princess attire, does she know this about a sick baby? Yes? Perhaps she could just send them up to the relevant set of chambers, then.

Vigdis leads Amoli up to Catherine's chambers, where there's a baby that actually appears fairly chill, insofar as it's possible to get emotional valence from tiny babies.

Amoli taps the baby anyway. "Hi," she says to Catherine. "I'm sorry I missed the performance last night, everyone said you were very impressive."

"Everyone is very kind."

"What an adorable baby, how old are they?"

"Two months. Her name is Ragna."

"Awww. Is she your first?"

"The fifth born alive."

"I'm so sorry. I know someone on the waiting list to get a baby back who they lost at birth, it's very hard."

" - I'm sorry?"

"We can resurrect people, but not as fast as they die, so there's a waiting list. The wait is usually less than a month for a person with young children, or a person who otherwise can't live their life just as well if they come back to it in a few decades, but it's longer for anyone who can."

"...I see."

"Your gods must be way stronger than ours."

"We're trying to end all of the bad things happening anywhere. It's very hard, so it's good we have all of forever."