Time of Daughters II

by Sherwood Smith

  “Then start taking the food from here,” Ryu snapped. “Do I have to think of everything?”

  Well, yes.

  Artolei gazed at him in question, and a little affront. Descendant of a grandmother picked for beauty and lack of brain, and a grandfather who had believed himself far cleverer than he actually was, Artolei was a handsome, strong, well-trained dolt. And further, Ryu knew it. He wouldn’t have trusted Artolei if he’d been smarter.

  So he relented, and said in a less truculent manner, “Slowly. So the Marlovans don’t notice. Just leave the liquor.”

  On a day of snow flurries whirled by a fretful wind, his mother and Demeos quietly followed the last of the local nobles out—watched from a rooftop by Iaeth, who passed the news on to Jugears, detailed to shadow her.

  He reported to Rat—Rat reported to Connar—and from Connar came the order to stay armed.

  “We can wear our knives, but if we all start carrying swords, they’ll get suspicious,” Rat warned. “We haven’t been drilling. If we start now, they’ll know we know.”

  Connar frowned, then flashed an unpleasant grin. After days of music being inflicted on them, what could be better? “When we go into that hall again, let’s give them the sword dance. Rat, you set up the drummers.”

  Rat uttered a husky bark of a laugh.

  Connar’s tension communicated itself through the captains as the word spread. The drunk ruse had already become a wild near-riot. This promised to be even more fun.

  In the main hall, as Artolei’s servants struggled to keep the food and drink flowing—Ryu having slipped the Nyidri servants out a handful at a time, to make certain that his new quarters, though humble, would not lack for comfort—the drums rumbled. “It’s time for us to entertain you,” Connar said, hands on hips, coat-skirts whirling.

  Artolei had been waiting for the princess to object to the swords, for weapons were never worn in the presence of the court in Sartor, but she seemed oblivious, so he dared say nothing. The galloping beat thrummed in blood and bone, an intoxicating experience for Seonrei, used to interleaved Sartoran subtleties; dread and excitement thrilled through her nerves, heightening the sense of unreality.

  Crash!

  Swords crossed on the marble floor. Heels rapped and rang and coat skirts snapped, sending the candles streaming wildly then guttering. Those were not the play swords of the theater, or the jeweled and gold-chased rapiers of the nobility, with their strict rules of dueling.

  Seonrei’s mother, as blunt in private as she was subtle in court, had said once, The rules for duels are supposed to keep men this side of civility. Always men, you’ll find—women don’t often want blood when they duel, though they might crave utter humiliation of the adversary. Something happens to men after the age of interest. Nothing will satisfy some but letting some other man’s blood. One could wish they would find a bed somewhere instead.

  Duels had seemed so very alien an idea. Barbaric, even. Though the single duel Seonrei had witnessed had not been barbaric. Instead it had been deeply disturbing as the duelists sat across from one another in the most formal of the salons, both dressed for court. One played an ancient silver flute, the other an equally old stringed tiranthe. The music had gripped the listeners with its passion until one duelist stumbled, just two notes, recovered into an eerie flight which resolved into the same passage over and over—ever since, she heard that four-note passage as I surrender—until the other at last lifted fingers from the tiranthe. The loser rose, bowed, retired from court, yet to return all these years later.

  At least they had each walked away. Seonrei became increasingly aware that if she had one of those rapiers at hand, she would dearly love to poke Lavais Nyidri hard enough to see her yelp, she was so disgusted not just by the woman abandoning them on the pretense of a trip to see the falls. It was the assumption that Seonrei was too stupid to notice the diminishing of the company to those the Nyidris disliked, or outright wanted to be rid of, along with Artolei’s hangers-on.

  The drumbeat increased, a second drum thrumming a wicked counterpoint that shot sensation deep inside her, and prickled over her flesh in what was so very close to heat. The two young men, fair and black-haired, were both so very striking, displaying strength and grace with effortless ease, the flash of their coat skirts revealing and concealing the clean lines and muscular curves of their bodies. This cadenced drumming was music—of a kind. The sword ritual was dance—of a kind. The message was simple, not at all subtle, but perhaps the more compelling for all that.

  At the end, she dropped her fan to clap her hands together, the guests marveled and commented, and a few—male and female—rose, mimicking drunkenly.

  At a glance from Connar, Rat obligingly played the drums for them, but the swords had vanished as Connar and Jethren faded into the shadows. So out came various poles and sticks as people attempted to learn—then adapt—this new style.

  Sadly, it was the first evening of real hilarity, and it didn’t last. Iaeth turned up, slipping through servants to kneel at Seonrei’s chair as she watched. “They’re attacking,” she whispered harshly, the pupils in her eyes huge and black.

  Seonrei stared, her heart thumping its own drum. Think about that later, she told herself as she breathed, “Better tell the Marlovans.”

  But Rat’s and Jethren’s scouts had already spotted the would-be assassins spreading in groups to each place Marlovans stayed. Word reached Connar, who said, “Go.”

  A short, savage shock awaited the assassins as their drunken targets sobered in a heartbeat and came at them in lethally trained teams, fighting with pent-up fury.

  Those left alive stampeded for the gate, which had already swung shut, once the signal went out that the Marlovans were fighting back. And winning.

  Seonrei knew something had happened when all the gray vanished from the colorful, silken company. When Iaeth brought back the news, Seonrei returned to her room in a fury. She knew she should take time to consider her response, but she was tired, and furious. She had not trusted Lavais Nyidri for weeks, but this wasn’t mere abandonment, it was outright betrayal.

  She settled herself, pulled out a strip of her most formal paper, and when she knew she had command over her fingers, wrote in her finest formal script:

  Lavais Nyidri, Jarlan of Feravayir:

  We Sartorans have no part of this trouble of yours. I wish to depart before it progresses further.

  Then she sat by her desk, staring down at her notecase.

  Weak blue light glowed in the arched windows when an answer came back:

  To Princess Seonrei Landis of Sartor:

  We dare not move against the Marlovans who hold you hostage.

  Seonrei wanted to kick something. No, she wanted to kick someone, and wondered with bitter humor if that made her like the Marlovans after all.

  No, it made her human. She knew that much as her thoughts whirled fruitlessly between betrayal—civilization—but then the moral act was always a choice. If it were unconscious, it would not be moral, would it?

  She wrote back.

  We both know that I am not a hostage. Once I’ve written to you, I will be detailing to the queen exactly what has been happening, including your convenient departure before your attackers attempted a wholesale slaughter. By the way, were we to die in that?

  At the other end, Demeos sat beside his mother. Neither had slept since the word came back that half those expert assassins had died, without a single Marlovan suffering so much as a broken arm.

  “Now she’s writing to the Queen of Sartor,” Demeos said uneasily. What good would it be to crown himself a prince if he could never return to Eidervaen again?

  “Don’t falter now.” Lavais turned on him fiercely, cheeks mottled. “We are committed.”

  “But what’s the queen going to do?”

  “She can scarcely send an army by magic, can she? By the time she sends ships, this will all be over. And it’s either us receiving them and graciously informing them that
our internal troubles are our own business, or if the worst happens, the Marlovans are left with the chaos. But we will be successful if you Do. Not. Falter,” she enunciated, teeth showing.

  Demeos could only think of beautiful Eidervaen, where nobody hired assassins. “But whatever happens, how can we return to Sartor?”

  “Oh, you’ve kissed Sartor goodbye,” Lavais said with pent-up venom. “Surely you’ve seen that by now? But we come out of this with the crown that is rightfully ours. Won’t it be better to rule here than shadow-kiss in third-circle there? And by the way, watch them come courting us once we’re successful. They have to marry those ugly princes and princesses off somewhere.”

  And when Demeos just looked down at his hands, she tapped a jeweled nail on Seonrei’s last note. “Anyway, just as well. It’s clear that she is much too clever. She would have been immense trouble if you had married her.”

  Lavais considered, then at last wrote back, omitting the proper heading:

  Whoever is using Princess Seonrei’s notecase, be warned, we shall seek justice if anything happens to her.

  She showed that to Demeos before sending it.

  “I don’t see what good that does, when we both know her handwriting.”

  “But others don’t. We can now go out and report that the Marlovans are attempting to use her life in trade for their demands—after they executed a bloody takeover of the Artolei palace while we were enjoying our peaceful sled ride to see the falls.”

  In a blizzard? Demeos wanted to exclaim, but he kept silent. Sometimes there was little difference between Mother and Ryu.

  So he rose, and bowed. “I’m going to retire. I think we could all use some sleep.”

  The Marlovans make a thorough search, rounding up all the servants remaining. Those among them who had the most to hide prepared to deliver their stories, until Iaeth and Fish came through, side by side, and one by one identified them—Iaeth confident that the spies would be summarily expelled through the gate.

  Fish knew better.

  The spies were searched down to the skin, then locked up.

  Seonrei had put her head on her hand, slipping into an uneasy slumber while that was going on, guarded by her own staff. She woke suddenly, her fingers entirely numb, and the side of her face wet with drool when Iaeth knocked at the door.

  “Enter.” Seonrei straightened up, her neck shooting an agonizing pain straight behind her eyeballs. She reached for her besorcelled handkerchief to wipe her face as Iaeth slipped in.

  “The Marlovan prince wants to speak to you,” Iaeth said.

  “Tell him I’ll meet him downstairs.”

  Iaeth bowed and withdrew.

  Seonrei had a private bath chamber, supplied by water from the river that could be warmed by a firestick adapted for the purpose—something common in Sartor but unknown in this kingdom, she’d discovered.

  She bathed, dressed, and upon consideration took her golden notecase and Lavais’s notes with her downstairs.

  The prince was even prettier up close, except for that flat gaze. He said, without any social nicety, “We’ve locked up the spies. We can use them if we decide to communicate—if they shoot their own people, that’s their affair.”

  He spoke slowly, in that slurry Iascan accent that Seonrei had been told was common to the north. But at least she understood most of it.

  “There is no use in communicating with Lavais,” she stated. “I’ve tried that. She’s sticking to her lies.”

  “How?” Connar asked, then saw the little pieces of paper the princess held on her palm.

  He remembered reading about magical communication in the Inda letters, and how Evred-Harvaldar had subsequently burned the means, as there was no way to guarantee they weren’t intercepted by the enemy.

  He listened as she translated the notes, and immediately understood Evred-Harvaldar’s reasoning. Even with notes clearly written by the people themselves, claims could be made of falsity, because there was no runner serving as witness. There was no trail between sender and recipient, so Lavais Nyidri could claim that he was writing those notes, or that someone else was writing by his command, and not this princess.

  Well, that sort of magic foolery was the Sartorans’ problem. He said, “They’ll be attacking soon, I expect. This palace is indefensible, but that wall out there isn’t. Not with our bows along it. But we need more arrows. We’re going through the place now, stripping out feather-stuffed cushions and pillows and the like, and gathering wood.”

  This was all beyond Seonrei. “Very well,” she said, and because she sensed that something was amiss, her gaze strayed to Iaeth.

  Iaeth said in an undervoice to Seonrei, “This is a siege situation. We should see what stores remain to us, and discuss their disposition.”

  Seonrei’s gaze shifted to Connar. Military defense was entirely out of her realm of experience. Here was another: when it came to material things, she had always had exactly what she wanted, sometimes before she even had to speak an order. She reminded herself that she could still transfer away, which bolstered her courage. She said, “We must see what stores remain, and discuss how they are to be used.”

  Connar turned his palm up, which Seonrei reminded herself was assent, before commenting, “We still have travel bread. Or, does your magic extend to meals as well as letters?”

  “It can, but only through the mages, who understand transfer magic,” Seonrei stated, then, her vocabulary giving out, she murmured to Iaeth, who said, “We could get some things sent to us after we create a Destination, but overusing such a Destination has the risk of burning out.”

  “Burning out?” Connar repeated.

  “No one truly understands how magic transfer works,” Iaeth explained at a nod from Seonrei, who found the need for explanation of everyday things oddly steadying in this atmosphere that was the very opposite of normal. “Transferring items and people is safe in very few places in the world. One or two transfers are always possible elsewhere, the smaller the better. An animal such as a horse cannot be transferred, for example. Or a wagon.”

  “Understood. We can’t use magic. The details don’t matter. What does is establishing our defense.” Connar turned his head. “Rat! Put the company quartermaster with them to inventory the food stores.”

  “Already done,” Fish spoke up from his stance against the far wall, from which he could see everyone inside, and anyone approaching through the doorway. “What they couldn’t take, they spoiled or outright destroyed.”

  “Even the fodder?”

  “No. We have that area too tightly guarded.”

  “Then it’s just us. Could be worse.” Connar’s mouth tightened as he turned back to Seonrei. “We do have some travel loaves left.”

  “As I began to say before, we’ll see what we can contrive,” Seonrei promised. “At least we have plenty of water.”

  “Do that.” On the word ‘that’ he indicated Iaeth and Seonrei as a pair—a gesture that never would have occurred in Sartor.

  Seonrei found the situation curiously exhilarating, though she was aware of an undercurrent of fear. She reminded herself that she could transfer away if she must, but instinct was strong to wait. To see if there was some way she could use her mind and skills to wrest a sense of civility and order away from the threatened chaos.

  The first order of business would be to report to the queen, carefully arrange a Destination, and then see if a royal mage would have some suggestions as to what to do about stores.

  The first attack arrived that night, as predicted. The Marlovans even predicted how it was likely to go—a noisy attack at the front gate, the major effort meant to take the back by surprise. That one was summarily dealt with in a rain of steel, an arrow to a man, before it retreated in scrambling haste.

  The attack at the gate lasted longer, until the Marlovans began sending fire arrows—thin strips of oil-soaked cloth that splattered the oil and became difficult to douse.

  That attack failed miserably as
those driven from the back pushed into those at the front. A mob of struggling, angry people who’d believed they were safe as decoys turned into a mad scramble, causing many who slipped on the icy layer beneath the snow to fall under the kicking, shoving retreat.

  Before dawn a sizable number of Ryu’s army melted away, but that still left a considerable majority, who withdrew to the nearby village to lick wounds, and Disappear those dead they’d managed to bring back. Others were left where they lay, until a healer under white flag led a small party with a wagon to collect the fallen.

  Those were gathered under the watchful eyes along the wall, arrows notched and tracking.

  A mage duly appeared at Seonrei’s invitation. Connar was there to witness the mage’s arrival in a flurry of air that brought unfamiliar scents. The mage staggered, green-faced, as Iaeth helped him into a chair and pressed listerblossom steep into his hands.

  Connar watched the man recover, his idea of investigating this magic for movement of an army vanishing at the sight of the man’s reaction. Magic really was useless for war, he thought, as Iaeth chattered rapidly in Sartoran. She led the mage off in the direction of the kitchen, and Connar signaled for drill, leaving word that extra fodder for horses should be first if the mage really could bring food by magic.

  The result of the mage’s visit, Connar discovered when they all met that night in the dining hall, was a lot of jabber about how the presence of so much water nearby interfered with how magic worked, and so they would have to make Destinations at different points around the palace and bring in single items: a bag of rice, some vegetables, a basket of eggs.

  Connar turned a meaning look toward Jethren when he realized there would be no relief here.

  Jethren sent a glance at Moonbeam, his first runner, who grinned. His hands seemed to move slightly. In an eyeblink he held two thin-bladed knives, with which—still grinning—he slit the throats of the spies, ignoring cries and pleas. Then they opened the gates into a gale long enough to carry out the bodies, leaving them for Artolei’s people to find.