Time of Daughters II

by Sherwood Smith

  “They aren’t,” the boy said. “When we’ve got these many crowded in. They go wherever there’s a bed. Either next to the stable, or over at the scribblers. They always have extra beds.”

  Connar successfully translated scribblers as scribes, and bent into the hot, dry wind to head across the parade ground. The merciless sun had dipped below the castle walls at last, throwing them into silhouette against a lurid western horizon.

  At least his headache had all but subsided. Tomorrow early, he’d be back at drill, hard drill. First himself, with the best swordmaster Ventdor had, and then the rest of his command; they’d been perfunctory due to the need for speed, and these past three days they hadn’t drilled at all, sleeping outside, and chewing stale travel bread and hard cheese as they rode in the merciless heat.

  He reached the scribe house, and ducked out of the wind into a small chamber that retained the day’s heat, where he surprised a couple of scribe students in the process of lighting lamps as they complained about the weather. At Connar’s step they silenced, the younger ones with wide eyes going from his face to the gold chevron on his sleeve and back to his face.

  One pointed toward the stairs and whispered—as though he’d attack if they spoke normally—“The royal runners are upstairs.”

  Connar suppressed the urge to laugh. “Thanks.”

  Sound carried up the stairs on that wild wind, to where Lineas and Quill stood perforce around the closest doorway, where the copyist with the two candles, who had introduced herself as Ndand, did her level best to attach Quill’s notice.

  Quill longed for water, food, and escape, but had set those needs aside the moment Lineas said as they exited Ventdor’s office, “We can talk at the scribe house, where my things are.”

  Talk? About what? Probably she wanted merely a chance to exchange reports with no one listening, he’d cautioned himself, though all he could think about as Ndand nattered away was the flash of joy Lineas had expressed when she saw him.

  Desperate to get away from this scribe who would not shut up, he became aware of the youngsters downstairs going silent. Then came that single word, Thanks. Quill recognized the voice as Connar’s. He didn’t know the younger prince at all; what he’d seen from a distance during their young days was that he was tight with his brother, though he was intensely competitive with everyone else.

  Quill had been standing at Lineas’s shoulder, doing his best with the angle of his body to indicate he was ready to leave. At the sound of Connar’s voice, followed by the ring of bootheels on the stair, instinct prompted him to shift away from Lineas.

  And so when Connar stepped onto the landing, he saw Lineas and Quill standing at either side of a door, looking in at a young woman in scribe robes.

  At the sight of the prince, Ndand leaped to her feet. Or she tried to. After a long day of labor, she was tired, and a little light-headed: first this handsome royal runner appeared, followed by the black-haired, blue-eyed prince who, until then, she had only glimpsed at a tantalizing distance.

  He was looking right at her as she rose—and her thighs caught painfully under the edge of her desk, which was no more than a writing board set on two storage boxes. And so her guttering candles, a waiting lamp, and all her day’s work—plus a waiting stack of clean paper—tumbled together as the board upended, oil and hot wax, paper and flame mixing.

  In less than a heartbeat, the wind, swirling in through that window not far away, scattered all those papers, ignited them in a hundred tongues of fire. In the same instant the burning papers fluttered madly along the floor and between Connar’s and Lineas’s feet as they stamped ineffectually.

  Wind surged down the hall, lifting the burning bits of paper. Lineas batted at a flapping sheet that spun close to her head, throwing off sparks.

  Ndand stood horrified, fists to her chin, screaming, “My work!”

  At that moment the oil that had dripped down the upended table reached the floor. A sheet of flame whooshed up the tabletop, a wall of fire dividing her off from the doorway.

  Sparks showered, and smoke began filling the air.

  Connar gripped Lineas’s shoulder. “Run,” he said, turning to drag her after him.

  But when she needed to be, she was strong. She twisted out of his grip, as Quill, light-headed from lack of food and water, looked around desperately for a way to quench the growing fire.

  “We have to get Ndand out,” Lineas cried.

  Quill poked his head into the next room, then emerged again. “Mattress,” he said.

  “What?” Lineas, with no experience of dangerous fire, responded blankly as she began edging into the room to get to Ndand, who stood with fingers extended, keening in shock. Lineas recoiled hastily from the withering heat.

  Connar, veteran of countless academy fire pits, yanked her out into the hall. Then he ripped off his coat and flung it onto the blue flames burning the oil spilled on the floor. “Get back,” he said sharply.

  The coat smothered the flames enough for him to venture a few steps, but immediately dark spots appeared in the cloth, little flames eating holes in the cotton-linen. Connar gazed down at the right sleeve, where fire already distorted his commander’s arrow.

  Then Lineas screamed, “Oh, Quill, thank you!”

  Connar glanced over his shoulder at Quill, struggling to muscle a bulky mattress through the narrow doorway.

  Connar gripped one end, and with a grunt of effort gave it a yank then flung it down onto the burning coat, sending sparks whirling furiously up. The mattress smothered the burning oil, creating a mattress-wide path.

  He dashed over it, shouting at Ndand, “Move!”

  But Ndand stared in shock. Connar coughed, then shouted, “Get out!”

  Ndand’s knees buckled and she swayed.

  “Shit.” Connar booted the half-burned plank-table out of the way in a shower of sparks, lunged the last few steps, and caught her under the armpits.

  He hefted her up over his shoulder, and crossed the tiny room to where Lineas hopped about in the doorway, desperately stamping out patches of sparks. “Come on,” he ordered.

  Expecting her to follow, he bore Ndand to the landing, and thundered down the smoky stairwell stair, to where the scribe students stood about, frantically trying to cram papers and books into a basket.

  “Leave it. Move!” Connar shouted, and carried Ndand out the door, trailed by the students.

  “Go! Get someone to ring the alarm,” Connar snapped at one of them, who blinked twice, then took off at a robe-flapping run.

  Connar dropped Ndand down against a stone wall, then turned to ask Lineas if she was all right. But there was no Lineas.

  Already dark was gathering fast, made worse by smoke pouring out of the open windows above, and now a thin, ghostly streamer from all the lower windows and the doorway. Connar stood uncertainly, trying to sort Lineas from the people dashing up from both directions, milling and shouting questions at one another.

  Then the castle bell began ringing the fire alarm. By now the smoke was billowing upwards, carried on the wind. A couple of riding captains arrived at a run, and began organizing people into lines from the well to the scribe building, as stable hands and Riders arrived, buckets jiggling and clanking in their hands.

  Ndand’s shrill voice rose above all, “The prince saved me! The prince saved me!”

  Connar found himself surrounded by grateful scribes yapping questions. He peered past, frustration mounting, until he spotted two familiar figures emerging from the doorway, one tall, one small, both covered with ash, and coughing hard: Quill and Lineas. He could not believe that pair of feckless boneheads had actually gone back into that dangerous building.

  He tried to step past the circle around him but Lineas and Quill were too fast, running in the opposite direction—to the bucket brigades. Connar looked at the circle around him. Paying no attention to their yammering, he pointed and said, “They need more hands with the water!”

  The scribes—including that w
itless Ndand, still pawing him and weeping You saved me—turned as one, looking at him expectantly.

  Perforce Connar led the way. He and his trailing scribes were motioned to the third line, extending from the kitchen well, as the stable well was already crowded with people bringing up and passing along water.

  The stars gleamed brilliantly overhead when the last embers were well doused. Tired, filthy, and parched, Quill and Lineas learned from the chatter around them that when the fire happened, most of the scribe staff had gone off to the castle to eat, except for the seniors, who were closeted with Ventdor, getting orders to be written out, copied, and dispersed as soon as possible.

  Anxiety had gnawed at Quill, for he knew that his and Lineas’s check from room to room had become increasingly perfunctory as the fire spread and the air filled with smoke. He and Lineas both feared they might have missed someone who’d fainted from the thick, poisonous air, the way that blabbermouth Ndand had almost done.

  But one of the seniors made it clear that the upstairs had been empty except for Ndand, who always worked late. Spared the fear that they’d missed someone, Quill and Lineas wandered away from the scribes, light-headed with relief and exhaustion. Behind them, Ndand was still wailing about her work and declaiming that the prince had saved her by turns—and there was the evidence, Connar standing out amid all the smoke-stained grays and blues, wearing nothing more than a half-laced shirt over his riding trousers and boots.

  Quill sank tiredly down onto the summer-dry grass at the edge of the kitchen garden beside the well. The wetness from the water he’d slopped down his front in his haste to pass buckets was cool against his skin. At least he’d managed to slurp a few swallows to kill the fiery thirst.

  Lineas sank to her knees next to him, still coughing. She wiped a grimy hand across her equally grimy face, then turned his way. It was natural as breathing to turn to her, and he stilled as she leaned her forehead against his.

  “I’m so tired,” she whispered.

  Not for all the crowns and thrones the world had to offer would he dare move, or even speak, as her slim fingers slid up his arms to rest on his shoulders. She used him as a support to push herself upright, and her lips parted—and then she looked into his face. Her own, so often studied as they grew up, first out of duty, then a brotherly concern, and finally in dawning love, was as familiar as his own hands. He knew—he thought he knew—her every subtle change of expression. This one was different as her eyes searched his, her pupils so large in the darkness that they swallowed the iris entirely. He could see the reflection of the torches along the sentry wall leaping and burning in them.

  “Quill, I...” she whispered—then she leaned in again, her eyes half-closing, and softly, ever so softly, kissed him. She tasted of smoke—he was certain he did as well. “I missed you so much,” she murmured against his lips. “I know it’s stupid, but when you didn’t write back I was so afraid....” Then she yanked herself away, her face ruddy in the torchlight. “Oh! I must stink terribly—”

  Quill’s whisper was husky with sincerity. “You could fall into midden waiting for a wand and I’d still want to kiss you.”

  She laughed, and then looked up as the most unwelcome footsteps in his life approached.

  A young stable hand loomed over them, a big basket in both hands. “Anyone hungry? The cook sent around these leftover sticky-rice balls. Said to bring ‘em to the fire fighters first.”

  “Thank you!” Lineas said, up on her knees again as she took a couple of rice balls. “Oh, I’m so filthy, I need a—oh, no! I just realized, my gear bag was in the attic!” she exclaimed in dismay, her hand going to her robe, whose dark blue—unlike her shirt and trousers, face and hands—hid the smoke smudges. For a heartbeat Quill made out a couple of square shapes beneath her fingers. That had to be her golden notecase and her journal, stashed inside the inner pocket.

  Quill wanted to say she could stay with him—hesitated as he tried to figure out how to word it—and he was too late.

  One of the scribes appeared at the stable hand’s shoulder. “There you are! We’re to thank you most heartily for helping. Ndand said that you two were there to aid the prince. I’m to say that the quartermaster is setting aside some extra clothing for anyone who lost theirs, if you’ll go over to supply right away.”

  Lineas flickered a quick smile at Quill. “That would be me. I’d better go.” She trudged tiredly off.

  He sat back, determined not to move until she returned. He took three rice balls out of the basket, thanked the boy, then slowly began to eat as he watched the circle gathered around Connar, easily picked out by his ash-smudged white shirt. From the heady pungency carrying on the still, hot air, bristic had been brought out, bottles passing hand to hand. Drums rolled and rattled, and voices rose in victory songs, ragged at first, then strengthening, as they celebrated the prince as the hero of the day.

  The fire already seemed unreal, except for the evidence in ash all over Quill, and the sharp stink rising from his clothes every time he moved.

  He peered in the direction of the barracks wing, which he knew was next to supply, but there was no sign of Lineas. She was probably standing in a long line of scribes. He leaned back to rest his aching body, gazing up at the stars as the fretful wind, now somehow cool, played over him. He let his eyes drift closed....

  Not far off, Connar was intensely restless. He moved among the talking, celebrating crowd, searching for that trick of glance and smile that promised a fast, hard tumble. Here was a square-chinned, brawny armorer giving him the hot-eye, and not two paces beyond him a willowy woman in Iascan colors, clearly having walked in through the gates to gawk. She smiled and drifted his way, saying something or other.

  He let a couple of roistering Riders drift between them and moved away, knowing by now, after hundreds of encounters, that when he was in this mood, sex with some stranger would give him only the briefest release, leaving him to a restless night. His mind turned to Lineas, and he remembered her and Quill stumbling hand in hand out of that burning building.

  He whirled around, swept the space, and spotted Quill sprawled on the grass, obviously asleep. Well, that answered that question. Connar looked away—and here was Lineas fifty paces off, carrying a bundle in her arms, and looking over her shoulder with a troubled air.

  Instinct prompted him to lengthen his steps to intercept her, though surely that distraught face could not be on Connar’s account. “Lineas. Why that look? No one was hurt in that fire, though I hope they forbid that witless Ndand from using candles on a board desk.”

  “It’s not that,” she said, blinking up at him; he could not tell if the circles under her eyes were tiredness or merely grime. “It’s him.” She glanced to the side, where Manther Yvanavayir stood in apparent reverie, sun-bleached head bowed, quite alone. “It’s like everyone is afraid to talk to him. Surely they can’t blame him for what happened with his sister,” Lineas said softly.

  Manther Yvanavayir. Connar knew Ghost was still close to him; were he here, Manther wouldn’t be alone.

  Connar turned back to Lineas when she sneezed, and he exclaimed, “You’re covered in ash. What were you two doing in there, trying to get yourselves killed?”

  Her brow furrowed with surprise. “Checking to see that no one else was there.”

  And that was Lineas, always worrying about other people, whether it was a gang of worthless Bar Regren or a blabbermouth scribe. “They’d have to be idiots not to run at the first smell of smoke,” he retorted. “Of course they got out.”

  “Ndand almost didn’t,” she said soberly. “But you saved her. We had to make sure there wasn’t anyone else trapped like that.”

  There was question in her tone, in her gaze, which made him look away. This was Lineas. Sympathy was part of her nature. She’d probably even find sympathy for Manther’s shit of a sister. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, to get past a subject he already hated.

  “I’m filthy,” she protested, and held up
her bundle. “All my things burned. I meant to go to the baths. Get myself decent.”

  He looked down at himself, then became aware of the stench of his own sweat, and the grit of ash on his skin. “I’ll meet you outside the baths,” he said, and walked away.

  She glanced past him to where Quill lay, one hand loose, clearly asleep. She turned back in time to see Connar glance back at her. He was only some twenty paces away, his manner uncertain. It was that uncertainty that brought her toward the castle wing where the baths were located. The east wind had finally changed direction, chilling her skin before she got through the door to the women’s side.

  She paused at the door and glanced back once more. The foot patrol went about checking things, and shaking the sleepers awake. “Storm coming,” the voices carried across the still night air.

  She saw Quill get up, and stumble off toward the stable area. She was surprised at how sharp her disappointment that he didn’t look her way, but she breathed it out. He was probably groggy.

  There was time to finish their talk, she reminded herself.

  She entered the bath, took off her smelly clothes, and wrapped her journal and golden notecase in them. Leaving them filthy was a sure way to protect the journal and the magic case; nobody would want to touch them. Then she dunked her robe in the barrel with the magic on it, and wrung it out. But when she held it up, she was shocked to discover tiny holes all over it from sparks. Fear serried through her, bringing afterimages from the fire; she dreaded dreaming about it.

  She longed to leave the robe, but training forced her to take it, to be examined in the light for possible repair.

  After a hasty bath in the crowded pool, she dressed in the borrowed clothes and walked tiredly up to the room they had set aside for Connar; garrisons were supposed to have dedicated space for command, especially the royal family. While no one dared sleep there even when it was crowded, the space had been used for storage, and had been hastily excavated. She passed barrels of flour, and baskets of coiled of leddas-strands waiting to be woven into belts, harnesses, boots.