Time of Daughters II

by Sherwood Smith

  Quill to Lineas:

  I think in my last I told you I’d spend a few days scouting on my own, with no expectations, before I met with Lnand again.

  That was last night. She was wary as she asked why I was there in Faravayir, and added, “I assure you, between my two venues and my two flirts at the palace, I hear everything there is to be heard.”

  I told her what Thias Elsarion had said. Lnand listened with her usual care, then said, “I see Demeos and his brother at least once a week, usually at the theater. All the gossip about them is who they are seeing, what fashions they have ordered from Sartor, and what entertainment they are planning for the festival they will be giving for the entire city of Parayid in spring. If either of those two was putting together an army, surely I would catch a hint of it. How much of Mathias Elsarion’s claim do you believe?”

  I said that Thias might have been bragging, but he had no reason to outright lie.

  Lnand sat down. I was glad to see that her wariness was gone. “The only person who could lead a revolt would be Commander Noth. Who admittedly I seldom see.”

  She meant Ivandred Noth, married to Lavais Nyidri, the Jarlan of Feravayir. He commands the garrison, and comes to Convocation as the jarlan’s representative when it’s called. He’s sometimes called a jarl, and given a jarl’s fanfare. But he has not made a jarl’s vows, whereas the jarlan has been very clear that the title, and responsibilities, are hers.

  Lnand broke the silence first. “She governs. He stays out of it. His duties are defense, mostly of the harbor in recent years. When she speaks Sartoran to her followers, she calls herself a queen-in-waiting, assuming no Marlovan would ever speak a word of Sartoran. She grew up with her father’s royal aspirations.”

  I asked: “I guess the question is, how much does she govern him? Would he rebel if she told him to? I think I need to get to know him.”

  To that she admitted: “A male royal runner can get into military areas that I can’t. As for her revolting, I guess it’s time to get closer to Demeos and his brother.”

  I could see her distaste. I expect no one outside of our circle would perceive the distinction between a musician passively listening to talk in venues and deliberately setting out to spy by courting an individual for information—the more since we heard about Elsarion’s using Fareas Yvanavayir that way.

  Lnand then said, “Two can play at that game,” and I knew her thoughts ran parallel to mine.

  So that’s our next step.

  When Noren was growing up at Tenthen Castle, she could only feel the bells when she was on the walls. She had learned to observe others, whose reactions to the bells gave her the watch changes, but the occasional rings announcing special circumstances took her by surprise.

  When everyone in the girls’ court started, looking skyward toward the bell towers, expressions altered from surprise to question, then mouths and hands flapped: “Connar and Noddy sighted!”

  Noren turned to Holly, her personal runner, who seemed to know the gossip before it happened. “Find Ranet.”

  Holly grinned. “She’s already here.” Her fingers shaped the words, then whirled dramatically toward Ranet, who had jammed between a scribe and the potter’s third assistant, peering upward at the sentries on the wall: when the heir’s pennon rose, that would mean the riders were in sight.

  If the princes were home, that meant the conflict with the easterners had to be truly over. And that meant hers and Ranet’s weddings. Not in some dim future, but right away. Danet-Gunvaer had been clear about that.

  Noren waited, watching the girls in her class talking. Here and there she caught the shapes of words, even phrases. When she was certain they’d gone from expressing joy to general gossip, she clapped her hands together hard enough to sting.

  The girls closed their mouths and faced her, but eyes and hands betrayed scattered attention. She set them a difficult problem in calculating four types of trade and three of time, sure to steady them down for the remainder of the watch. Then she left the classroom, stopping when she saw Bunny at the other end of the hall, standing with her head averted, arms pressed close, hands gripping her shoulders.

  Noren covered the distance in three strides.

  Bunny looked up, her eyes unhappy. But then she smiled brightly—falsely—and signed, “Are you ready to get married? Ma and Da will insist on making a wedding out of the celebration. They want grandsons.”

  Victory fanfares pealed from tower to tower as the princes rode through the gate, banners at their backs. Everyone off-duty, and not a few who weren’t, had crowded to the city walls. People banged on baking tins and pots, shrieking and singing war ballads—though, for the first time in many generations, “Yvana Ride Thunder” was not among them.

  Standing on the castle gate, everyone at a respectful distance from them, Danet and Arrow looked down.

  “Wedding first,” Danet said firmly to Arrow, without using Hand, as Noren stood a short distance away. “Your treason trial has to wait.”

  “It’s not ‘my’ trial. There’s no getting around it,” Arrow retorted. “Especially since Yenvir is dead, and it looks like we didn’t manage to nab the other one, the Elsarion boy. I sure don’t see anyone in chains down there. All the jarls’ ire is going to fall on that damn girl. And if I don’t do something by Convocation, then every one of them will be up on his hinds legs yapping and howling.”

  “They’ll do that anyway,” Danet said, and smiled because there, riding in honor behind Gannan’s company, was Braids’ company. Danet silently counted them. Two missing. That hurt, for she knew every one of them.

  Then the princes rode beneath them, both looking up to smile at the king and queen, and it was time to go down to join Bunny and Ranet in the stable yard, to greet the boys on their triumphant return.

  Noddy looked around happily, feeling light inside his chest for the first time in weeks. Connar smiled and laughed, his emotions in turmoil. Everyone hailed them for their victory, and that felt good, but he knew that it wasn’t a true victory. Elsarion had slithered away, and Noddy had let the broken enemy lines throw down their weapons and run. To Connar, that was a stalemate.

  But there were his parents, pride in their faces as they spoke of a banquet, which had been in preparation since word had been brought of their approach.

  Connar trod up to his room, feeling odd—as if it had been ten years, not two, since he’d run downstairs to join Noddy in riding north. He caught sight of Fish at his heels, carrying his gear, and waved him off. “That can wait. Go on. Take the night. I’ll call for castle people if I want anything.”

  Fish saluted in silence, carried the bag to the alcove where he collected laundry, then ran down the back stairs and cut through various courtyards to the supply wing. He knew that his father and Uncle Retren would be waiting.

  So they were.

  The academy’s Victory Day games had been postponed a day in honor of the arrivals, so Retren Hauth had liberty as well. He sat there in the small outer chamber adjacent to the quartermaster’s office, so intense he made the room seem smaller. His one eye hit Fish with its unwinking stare.

  Fish was beyond exhausted. Emotions he couldn’t name crowded his chest and he said with increasing heat, “Yes, he was heroic. I’m sure you’ve already heard from some of those old grayheads like Toast Basna and his like that Connar is just like Mathren on the battlefield, only better. He killed one of the enemy commanders at the canter. It took two of Gannan’s lancers to finish off the other one. He loves it—everyone can see it.”

  “He’s a natural-born commander.” Hauth’s voice was husky with emotion. “I knew it. I knew it.” And, sharply, “Tell me everything. All the details.”

  Fish’s mood turned vicious. He described the battle in increasingly bloody detail—for he’d seen it all, riding with a string of remounts behind Connar through the entire battle—until he saw that nothing revolted his uncle. Hauth listened enthralled. If Connar had killed twice as many as he had—if
he had slaughtered a hundred—Uncle Retren would probably have died in ecstasy.

  As soon as he realized it, Fish summed up abruptly, “And that’s the main of it. There was more of the same, but I was far too busy at his back, and seeing to the horses and weapons. You’ll have to get the rest from someone else.”

  Hauth pushed himself up with a grunt. “So I shall. Captains and above will be in the royal hall, the rest in the garrison mess hall. That’s where I’ll get the details. I’ll go now.”

  Fish waited until he was gone, then sank heavily onto the bench his uncle had just vacated.

  “Well?” Quartermaster Pereth asked.

  “Well, what?”

  “What’s the relations between the brothers?”

  “Fine. It’s the same as it’s always been.” Fish ran his hands through his filthy hair, then dropped them to his knees. “Da, I don’t even know what to say to Uncle Retren. He only hears blood and glory, some distortion of the past, which I don’t believe anymore was even real.” He looked away, then back. “Uncle Retren wants Connar as king, just because he’s descended from a man who connived against his family—who murdered them.”

  The quartermaster snapped his hand away, dismissing Fish’s words. “Mathren understood duty above all. I saw him, after his wife died. And maybe he did kill her. But if so, he’d had a reason. He had a reason for everything he did. He loved this kingdom, and he’d loved her. I saw him sitting there grief-struck, up in his tower where nobody could see him, but I’d been sent to bring him new things because he’d burned his old clothes along with hers.” Pereth gazed into the distance, then sighed. “Bad days, those.”

  “That’s just it. They were bad. Mathren Olavayir loved an image of the kingdom that was about as real as a damn ballad, and as far as I understand it, he killed people right and left to make it real. We don’t have bad days now, because nobody is killing each other in the royal family. Likely nobody will sing ballads about Arrow-Harvaldar, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s good. It’s great. He can hang on for the next fifty years, and I’ll cheer.”

  “Son—”

  “Oh, I won’t blab about Uncle Retren, if that’s what you’re after. At least he hasn’t killed off half the family, unlike your precious Mathren.”

  Fish stalked out and headed for the baths, after which he planned to get laid or drunk, whichever gave him oblivion the fastest.

  NINETEEN

  Danet and Arrow were as successful as they were because both understood the value of compromise. She got her wedding, but he let it be known that the trial would come hard on its heels.

  Not a day had gone by without a discussion—or argument—about that trial.

  Danet surprised Arrow by demanding they not wait for the somewhat traditional New Year’s Week for the wedding, saying for his private ear, “You told the jarls in Year ‘80 they’d get five years before Convocation.”

  “I know. So?” Arrow exclaimed. “Why not marry ‘em before the jarls? Get it all over at once.”

  “I would if it was all three of our children. But that horseapple Lavais Nyidri is still making excuses. Her boy isn’t ready, he stayed too long at Sartor.”

  Arrow scowled. “That’s right. I’m so used to seeing Bun with your girls out there with the horses, I never think about that.”

  “I suspect she does, though she never complains. I don’t want her seeing her brothers marry and she’s still left out. We’ll set the boys’ wedding the week after the postponed Victory Day games, still a traditional time. And when the jarls come, you can glare at them, especially Noth from Feravayir, and hand out all your war blabber as a hint. As well as tell them that come spring, girls will be in the academy. Not that it’s real news, as the jarlans already know. But you’re saying it at Firstday oaths will make it law.”

  Arrow chuckled and rubbed his hands. “Good thinking. That’s what we’ll do.”

  Danet, always with an eye to the budget, knew by that week the academy boys would be on their way home, the number of guests severely diminished. For which the tired castle staff would be grateful.

  Hliss Farendavan had saved out the finest blue dyed cloth against this day. The boys went down the morning before the games to be sized by the stringers, then three days later, they were called down for the first fitting of their new House robes of blue, so that there would be time to affix the gold trim.

  When they came out, one of their father’s runners was waiting with a summons.

  Earlier that morning, a pair of men had ridden in through the gates along with the market carts bringing in harvest produce. Both wore unmarked coats, and though one wore a horsetail and carried a sword, he looked to the sentries like a man-at-arms riding with a runner, and so of course there was no fanfare.

  In the stable, the runner was sent to request an interview of the king, who was at that moment between tasks. Hearing the name of the arrival, he cleared his schedule with two short orders.

  And so the boys, a couple hours later, arrived at the king’s suite to see with him a vaguely familiar man half a dozen years their elder.

  “This is Eaglebeak Yvanavayir, boys,” Arrow said.

  Manther’s brother! No wonder he looked familiar. Noddy and Connar exchanged furtive looks. Manther had ripped off his chevron and fought as a Rider, a demotion entirely self-motivated. Ghost’s company had taken him in, and he’d fought extremely well—some had said he was trying to get himself killed. He’d been wounded badly, taken by Ghost Fath into Ku Halir to be cared for.

  “Tell ‘em what you told me,” Arrow said to Eaglebeak, his palm held out toward Noddy and Connar.

  Eaglebeak swallowed twice, then said to Connar, “You didn’t call for us to send our oath-numbers to reinforce you at Ku Halir. We would have.”

  “We thought it best for you to defend your borders,” Connar said easily, as Noddy stared at the blue and gold eagle rug on the floor. “We did send messengers.”

  “I know why you really didn’t call us.” Eaglebeak sounded weary. “And I don’t blame you. Manther won’t come home, though Ku Halir is filled to the rooftops with wounded. My sister dishonored our name.”

  “After,” the king interjected crisply, “you drove her out.”

  Eaglebeak held up his hands. “Don’t you think we’ve been arguing about that ever since the news came in? I blamed Chelis. Said it was women’s business.”

  “But Fareas is your family,” Noddy mumbled, almost too low to hear.

  Eaglebeak heard. He flushed, and struck his flattened hand away. “I know. Don’t think I’m not aware of my own fault here. After Ma died, I learned to avoid her, as Da always took her part.... Then he died.” Eaglebeak looked upward with red-rimmed eyes, then sighed sharply. “I thought, Chelis can handle Fareas. She’s so calm, so good, so smart. But, what we didn’t see is, Chelis never got angry as a girl. Those Cassads are...are...like a herd of lambs—Colt is a boy when riding out, and a girl with her cousins, Barend won’t even get on a horse to help his brother, but fools around with tapestries all day, an aunt talks to animals and insists they talk back. All things that might stir up any other family, but those Cassads don’t even give a bleat. They all get along. So I guess making Chelis deal with my sister was like asking a weaver to pick up a lance and charge.”

  “The word you want,” Arrow said, remembering one of his many tiring discussions with Danet, “is vindictive.”

  Eaglebeak flushed again. “Don’t you see? Chelis never had a chance to learn how to handle someone who makes you angry half a breath after coming into a room.”

  Arrow said, “You married Chelis five, six years ago, right? You should have—”

  “Da was alive. He always said, let Pony be.” Eaglebeak sighed, then his head came up, and his voice dropped with suppressed violence, “I didn’t ride here for should-have. There is no should-have with the threat of treason hanging over us.”

  Arrow said much more mildly, “All right. Get on with it.”

  “There�
��s no getting around it, is what I’m saying,” Eaglebeak replied. “ And I do see it as my fault as jarl. I’m supposed to keep the peace at home as well as all the way to the borders. The truth is, I was glad when my sister rode out. And so, in short, she did what she did. I know what happens to traitors. I feel I’m honor-bound to offer myself in her stead.”

  Noddy looked up at that, his face lengthening in horror.

  Connar turned to Arrow. “I don’t think that’s justice. Is it?”

  Eaglebeak said, “I can’t stand by and let her suffer that fate. I can’t. I’d rather take it myself. I—we can’t live down that dishonor. I’m glad I don’t have any children. My Tlen cousins are all gone, and....” His eyes closed, and glimmers of unshed tears glimmered in his eyelashes as his throat worked.

  Into the painful pause that was fast growing into an even more uncomfortable silence, Arrow said, “Go get something to eat and drink. You’ve had a long ride. Nothing is going to happen now. There’s plenty of time to talk things out, all right?”

  Eaglebeak struck his fist against his chest. The tears he couldn’t suppress slid down his lean cheeks as he walked to the door, then out. Arrow jerked his chin at the waiting runner to go with him. They’d decide where to stash him later.

  He shut the door himself, and put his shoulder blades to it. “Well, boys? What do you think? Better get some practice now. This is the kind of horseshit you have to face when you’re in this chamber.” He threw his arms wide. “The wand is in your hand.”

  Connar crossed his arms. “I don’t see the problem. I can tell you exactly how many died because of her big mouth. She’s the one who yapped, not her brother. She pays the price.”