Time of Daughters II

by Sherwood Smith

“Arrived at dawn,” Ghost said. “We were way off where we thought we were on our map—camped last night thinking we had another day of travel, woke, looked through the field glass to see that white tower sticking up. So we’re here in time for breakfast.”

  They all laughed, then Noddy said, “I was just about to get us started on double-stick drill. Work up an appetite.”

  “I can do that,” Connar said. “Lineas is waiting up at Yvana Hall to take you through that side of duty.”

  Noddy blinked, having to mentally disengage from the clear line of today’s duty, and substitute another duty, one he was uncertain about. He hated uncertainty. But he knew this was duty, too, and so he took off, leaving Connar to the heady pleasure of commanding what would soon be a full garrison.

  After a day of drill and scrapping, he mounted the stairs in that pleasant state of tiredness, thinking that he could divide them into patrols as soon as Stick Tyavayir arrived. One he’d lead himself, once he found out more about the trouble Tanrid had mentioned.

  But when he got upstairs, it was to find Noddy with that brow-furrowed expression that meant trouble right before them. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t think I can manage Yvana Hall. Alone.” Noddy studied Connar with the pleading expression Connar knew well.

  “You have Lineas,” Connar coaxed. “Surely she’ll explain everything. That’s why then sent her along, that’s her duty.”

  “I know.” Noddy opened his hand. “But she’s a runner. Can’t, what’s the word, preside.”

  “But you can.”

  “Not if I don’t understand.” Noddy’s craggy brow furrowed more, and Connar saw the little signs of the immovable rock Noddy could become when he was convinced of something.

  So he said, “Tell you what, let’s get Lineas in here to explain more. How’s that?”

  “Yes.” The furrowed brow eased. “Good idea.”

  “I can send Fish—wait. He might not know where they put her. Vana, do you know?”

  Vanadei had been quietly setting out the dishes from the supper tray. “I do. Shall I fetch her?”

  Connar opened his hand toward the door.

  Noddy stayed silent as they began eating supper. Vanadei returned when they were halfway through the meal, Lineas at his heels, both breathing fast as if they’d run all the way.

  “What can I do?” Lineas asked, turning her wide-set gaze from one to the other. “Did I not explain well?”

  Noddy swung around to face her. “You explained everything. I think I have most of it. I know I can ask when I don’t. But there’s one thing.” He turned his guileless gaze from Lineas to Connar. “I don’t, that is, I can’t preside, when I don’t really understand. What justice is.”

  That’s because there is no such thing, Connar thought, but he knew that was the sort of words you couldn’t say outright. Like calling poor, silly Bunny stupid or ugly.

  “It’s difficult to say what it is,” Lineas said slowly. “There is a good library downstairs. I’ve been reading as much as I can, since the gunvaer gave me orders to help you. It’s almost easier to say what it isn’t.” She saw from their twin frowns of perplexity that that was no help.

  She tried again. “One thing I learned from a scroll Mnar sent me with—I can share it with you, if you like—is that most of the time justice, true justice, in which everyone is satisfied, isn’t a single action. It’s more likely to be a lot of small actions and decisions.”

  Noddy’s brow cleared. “Oh,” he said. “So it’s not justice, that is, not always justice, when the king, or a prince, or a jarl, says a thing and one side is happy but the other isn’t.” He heaved a sigh. “I don’t mean where one side did a murder, or suchlike. Even then, sometimes they think they were right, do you see?”

  ‘Justice’ is what power says it is. Connar’s lip curled, and he looked down at his hands until he knew he had control of his face.

  Then Lineas startled him by saying, “I’ve also read that too often what the powerful regard as justice made at the height of emotion, especially anger, isn’t truly just, and can be regretted when the emotional tide recedes.”

  Connar knew better than to think Da, or even Andaun, had condemned him that terrible day out of anger. It was their rules that seemed mere convenience.

  Lineas said, “The scroll asks you to remember situations in your own life when someone decided against you unjustly, and then how right it felt when there was justice. Or how you felt in a situation where judgment wasn’t clear, but whoever was in charge chose on the side of mercy or generosity.” And when the brothers still looked uncertain, she recollected what Quill had written to her when she had expressed a similar uncertainty, and quoted, “All of these get remembered, but it’s the last two that build the trust that brings people to choose to follow the law.”

  Connar leaned his elbows on his knees. “Whose scroll was this? Because it seems to me that another word for generosity is giving in. Which is seen as weak.”

  Lineas couldn’t mention Quill because of the secret of magic transfer. So she made the mental shift back a step, and said, “The scroll was written by a Sartoran queen, translated by Joret Dei and sent over to Hadand-Deheldegarthe in the last century. I don’t think anyone ever thought of either of those women as weak gunvaers.”

  Noddy and Connar exchanged looks. No. Though most of the history they knew about that time pertained to the Venn War, they’d heard how Hadand-Deheldegarthe, at a younger age than any of them were now, had defended the throne against the Jarl of Yvanavayir, knives against sword. Nobody ever said a word about her being weak.

  Lineas went on. “I can share my copy, but what she said was, if you know there is a clear wrong and you give in to please someone, or because you’re afraid of what might happen if you pronounce truly, then yes, everyone will see you as weak. On both sides. Even if the favored side is full of praise. If they knew they did wrong, and they are rewarded, they were really bought off. And that isn’t justice.”

  Noddy said slowly, “So what that means is, if you’re not sure about one part of a judgment, then only decide on what you’re sure of.”

  Lineas’s lips parted. She began to say, “But that’s not what it meant.” Then she caught a sharp glance from Connar that caused her to freeze.

  Noddy’s expression eased. “I can do that.”

  “I knew it,” Connar said, clapping his brother on the shoulder, and Lineas figured he’d stopped her because she was only making things more confusing. She reminded herself that she had plenty of time to explain things more clearly.

  Over the next few months, as spring ripened into summer, Lineas was so busy helping Noddy that her letters to Quill, already shorter, arrived less frequently.

  At his end, Quill dropped everything to answer as swiftly as possible, either from the roost archive, or occasionally he endured the sharp jolt of transfer to Darchelde when the roost did not have what he thought she needed to read. He copied out quantities of information in a tiny, clear hand, to make it easier to her to read by candle light, as her rare responses invariably came very late at night.

  He and Vanadei, as offspring of royal runners, had been the only two small children brought in to be raised at the roost. The adults thought it better to give them to each other for company, so they’d shared a room until they turned fifteen. After that, though they had separate rooms, they continued to regard one another as brothers.

  When they reached the age of interest, the fact that one was drawn to his own sex and the other to the opposite enabled them (so they decided) to be sympathetic without any of the jealousies they saw in many of their peers as they all navigated the shoals of attraction and sex.

  After a week of no letters at all, Quill wrote to Vanadei to ask if Lineas was all right.

  Vanadei to Quill:

  Of course Lineas is fine, or you would have heard. I know you really want her state of mind, but I can’t tell you that with any more success than I could when we were fledglings and sh
e a fuzz. I can tell you that while the gunvaer’s reasons for her being attached to the princes seemed mysterious to us at the time, I have to salute her insight, as no one, not even Mnar, seemed to predict how good she’s been for the crown prince.

  In my five years with him, I’ve seen how much better he does when someone has the patience to answer all his questions, and listen to him work his way through the answers a piece at a time. I do that for him. You know that. But I’ve learned in watching Lineas’s endless patience, her tentative suggestions that never hurry him, her ability to go over details repeatedly the way he likes, he does better than anybody expected.

  He’s learning. I’m learning by watching him learn. But you didn’t ask about him.

  Lineas still works hard, and still has that cat habit of staring at air as if seeing things invisible to the rest of us. And while I’m certain that if I asked her what she was looking at, she would no longer pipe up that she was looking at nothing because normal people see nothing and she is very normal, it seems an insult to ask a peer I work with every day if she is well, as if she were incapable of reporting it if she weren’t.

  In short, if you want to know what’s in her head, you’ll have to ask her.

  Since Vanadei had never been to Larkadhe previous to this assignment, he didn’t perceive how the city’s attitude toward their Marlovan governors began to alter from wary distance and scrupulous politeness to cautious optimism. All he noticed was that the civilians, especially Idegans and Iascans, were gradually more forthcoming, but he ascribed that to his getting better at the local accent and idiom.

  Both Lineas and Noddy were used to laboring to figure out what everyone else seemed to know. Over meals, when Vanadei was busy with other aspects of Noddy’s life, Lineas and Noddy talked out the knottier questions brought before them as Noddy assembled his mental architecture, and Lineas struggled to comprehend what lay behind every conflict, no matter how small.

  Noddy always listened, which led them in some surprising directions, more witnesses called, more evidence assembled, even in cases considered by everyone to be minor or even minuscule. But the extra time furnished judgments that evoked the words ‘lenient’ and ‘far-sighted’ and finally ‘astute,’ after a couple of situations in which enterprising souls attempted to practice upon the formidable-looking crown prince looming in his wingback chair with the unblinking stare. Some had labeled him stupid and credulous because of his habit of slow, repetitive speech, but so far, the judgments being passed down were far from either.

  What they didn’t know was that Lineas had learned as a child to discern ill intent. When she twigged to someone wasting Yvana Hall’s time and resources with false testimony, and clarified it to Noddy, the cleaning and laundry crews gained new labor, for restitution was Noddy’s favorite sentence. He’d never liked seeing thrashings during their academy days, even the minor ones, and had still to recover from his sick horror at standing there with the entire academy watching Connar being caned bloody. He knew that flogging, the most customary punishment, was even crueler. He flatly refused to hand it out. Instead, the worst offenders found themselves repairing the road to the Pass, in all kinds of weather, including those who would much rather have dealt with the flogging, as it would at least have been faster. But Noddy remained firm: someone’s blood all over the ground was no use to anyone, whereas the treacherous road was daily becoming much easier to navigate.

  Connar heard about Noddy’s successes from runners going back and forth as he did what he loved most, riding in the wind and air at the head of a hard-trained column.

  He began his Larkadhe command in better spirits than he’d been in since he was small. Those few times the old nightmares came back he rolled out of his camp bed and rousted everyone to what was known as a night raid drill—and since he fought alongside the others, seemingly tireless even midway through the night, no one voiced any complaint. They admired the prince too much for that, an admiration bolstered by their awareness of themselves as fit, ready for action....

  And nothing happened.

  Connar’s primary goal was to lay the horse thief chieftain Jendas Yenvir by the heels. Everybody from Halivayir down to Tyavayir knew the man’s general description: tall and well made, long white hair with a dark stripe down the middle, and very pale skin that he kept shrouded, as he was part morvende, the cave dwelling people. Their skin burned in mild spring airs that no one else minded. And so he preferred to attack by night.

  Connar and his company rode back and forth along the east, dealing with the occasional small crimes or conflicts, but of Yenvir the Skunk, there was no sign.

  It was a beautiful summer, those heavy spring rains having brought all the berries and fruits to ripeness. So far north, near the belt of the world, gave them access to varieties of citrus that were much rarer in the midlands.

  As Midsummer Day approached, Connar became steadily more restless. The most they’d accomplished was intervening in a squabble over the ownership of some wandering sheep. Nothing a patrol of scouts couldn’t deal with—certainly nothing worth notice by an elite company of King’s Army, led by a prince.

  The sun, now overhead from rising to setting, brought hot weather, when everything except the bees seemed somnolent. One morning Connar woke sweaty and grimy, sick of tent living, bedrolls, and bathing in streams no longer cool. “We’re riding for Larkadhe,” he said, to the unspoken relief of many.

  Nothing had been said about Midsummer festival so far, and it had been a long time since their last liberty. The only one annoyed at the new orders was Fish. He hated castle life, but no one was asking his opinion.

  Late that day they galloped, war banners flapping, into the main courtyard at Larkadhe’s castle. Connar leaped off his steaming horse, tossed the reins to eager hands and strode inside.

  He looked impatiently around, realizing he’d forgotten where everything was in this stone warren. He remembered the white tower, and ran up the stairs. It was empty.

  He ran back down and cut along a hallway, knowing he was lost. He spotted a passing runner. “Where’s Nadran-Sierlaef?”

  The runner saluted. “Probably in the residence.” The young man cast a glance at the sunset azure in the slit window, then added reflectively, “Though he might still be over at Yvana Hall.”

  Connar followed the runner to the main staircase, and recollected where he was. He dashed to the royal suite and banged through the doors, to discover only Fish, in the midst of dealing with laundry. “Where’s everybody?”

  “Vanadei’s in the kitchen,” Fish said. “Sierlaef in Yvana Hall.”

  Connar banged out again, and had to ask someone which way to Yvana Hall. The hall itself was empty, but he saw light under a doorway on the opposite side of the vast chamber. He crossed the hall and opened the door to an antechamber containing not much more than a low table, two mats, and two walls of some sort of books.

  Noddy and Lineas sat across from each other, heads bent inward, almost touching as Lineas used her quill to point out something on one of the many pieces of paper scattered over the table between them. It was a curiously intimate moment.

  “There you are,” Connar stated, aware that he spoke louder than necessary.

  Both heads jerked up, then identical smiles lit their faces, utterly without self-consciousness. Still, Connar was unsettled at that first image, which insisted on lingering.

  He walked in, forcing his voice down. Forcing a smile. He knew his reaction was boneheaded—he and Lineas had spoken no exclusivity. “They’re keeping your supper warm down in the kitchen. Are there that many criminals lined up?”

  Lineas leaped to her feet, face lengthening in dismay. “Oh, I did not know how late it was—I don’t mean to make extra work for anyone—” Muttering disjointedly, she dashed out.

  Noddy launched into a rambling, detailed report of what he had been doing, so disjointed that even if Connar had been interested, he would have had difficulty following.

  As it was, he w
aited until Noddy paused to rethink a tangled sentence, and said easily, “Sounds as if all’s well, then.” And lest Noddy decide he wanted a crack at commanding the patrols, he added in haste, “You’re doing much better here than I ever could.”

  “It’s because of Lineas,” Noddy said. “She translates everything.”

  “Does she?” Connar was too hungry to ask why Larkadhe’s justice system didn’t demand everyone speak Marlovan, and swept Noddy off to supper.

  Lineas had run to the kitchens to beg them not to disturb themselves over her portion, but she hadn’t gotten five words out before Fish showed up, with Vanadei right behind him, wanting their respective princes’ supper.

  Lineas backed up to let them speak, then looked down in horror at herself in her creased clothes, her inky hands. Surely she smelled as terrible as she looked, and what if....

  She sped along the back routes to fetch fresh linens and her second robe, and retreated to bathe. While she plunged gratefully into the water, upstairs, Neit arrived straight from the stable, expecting to find Noddy alone.

  She stopped short on the threshold when she saw Connar sitting across from Noddy.

  Noddy looked up, his sudden smile lighting his face. “You’re back from Lindeth,” he said, stating the obvious as usual. She thought the habit one of his chief charms.

  “Back indeed,” she said. “Here’s what Nermand sent. Judging by what he told me in handing it off, nothing of moment.” She tossed a sealed letter onto Noddy’s end of the table. Ordinarily she would have dropped down beside him unasked, but because Connar was there, she waited.

  “Come, sit,” Noddy said. “Vana?”

  “I’ll bring another plate,” Vanadei said.

  “Bide, Vana,” Neit responded with a wave of her hand. “Ate on the road. Too hot for more.” She saluted Connar, saying, “What brings you back?”

  “Boredom,” Connar said, interest mildly flaring at the cool look she gave him.

  But she looked away again immediately, addressing herself to Noddy. “Entire rope walk in Lindeth is being decorated. You really ought to see the lantern sail once, if you can.”