Time of Daughters II

by Sherwood Smith

  Heat flashed through him. But not through her.

  It was him again. His stare annoyed her. There was too much hunger in it.

  She opened her hand in a polite gesture and turned away, addressing the other women he hadn’t even realized were in the room, and he went away.

  Noddy’s Name Day celebration was over except for eating up the leftover tartlets when Danet received a letter from Feravayir. When Noren, Ranet, and Bunny came to her suite as they often did in the long autumn evenings, she said, “Starliss Cassad had a boy.”

  “Already?” Bunny exclaimed, not without envy.

  “She says that she and Demeos have reached a good understanding, and if she’s expected to have children, she might as well get it done now than wait. She’s Noddy’s age,” Danet reminded them. “You’re back on your feet faster at thirty than forty.”

  “Demeos is still popular,” Noren signed.

  “Very, according to other reports,” Danet said drily. “As long as he isn’t plotting, that’s fine. It seems his friends have been busy spreading the rumor that he had nothing to do with his brother’s treason—thereby also distancing themselves.” She sniffed.

  Noren commented, “Lineas says the new Feravayir guild chiefs were all elected by their members, for the first time in many years. The Nyidris had told them whom to elect, before.”

  Danet leaned over her low table and patted one of her ledgers. “What they really like down in Feravayir is paying their proper fifth tax, after years of Lavais Nyidri apparently gouging them and blaming it on us. They still haven’t caught her tax guild chief,” she muttered darkly—which Noren already knew, Ranet had only perfunctory interest, and Bunny none at all. The only thing about Feravayir that caught her attention was any discussion of when Rat would return.

  Danet intuited enough of that to shift the subject. “One thing I do know. Prices shot up and down as a result of certain guild elections being hotly contested. That had better smooth out soon, or they will be receiving some letters I’ve already begun.”

  No one had anything to add to that, but she was content with it. Everything was peaceful. She was grateful, oh yes she was.

  Peaceful but not perfect. Perfect would be a prince or two growing under her eye. Well, the young people were still young people, and it wasn’t as if there wasn’t an heir, Jarend’s grandson they called Cricket, up in Olavayir. But Danet had never laid eyes on the child. Jarend, who she remembered hated change, hadn’t wanted his only son to attend the academy, and had kept his Riders’ boys close as well. So Danet didn’t know any of the rest of the family. Tanrid’s visits at Convocation had been sporadic, and when he did attend, he spent his time with the men. When she’d asked Arrow about him, all she got was a typically vague answer, “He reminds me a lot of my brother.”

  Well, Noddy had barely reached thirty. The rest were still in the galloping twenties. She reassured herself with the comforting thought that there was plenty of time, and she knew they were doing their best.

  Which was in part true.

  Noddy could see how genuinely unhappy the subject of children made Noren when it came up, so he always changed the topic to something like expected arrivals. Bunny of course was eager for Rat’s return, and could speculate endlessly about it.

  As Ranet and Noren walked out before retiring for the night, Ranet glanced both ways along the hall before signing, “I’m sorry. Every time the gunvaer looks at me in that way, I know she’s thinking about children, and I feel guilty that it has been so easy for me.”

  Noren winced, and looked away, which was odd. She usually watched everyone. But then she signed, “I feel most sorry for Bunny. It’s cruel. She waited so long, but once she and Rat got together, they only had a few weeks before he was sent south.”

  “At least they don’t seem to want him down there permanently,” Ranet signed back.

  They parted outside the heir’s suite, Ranet walking on down to her own, across from Connar’s. For once light streamed out Connar’s open door, and she heard men’s voices, all recognizable: Noddy’s deep one, Connar’s golden one, the husky one belonging to that tall Jethren who looked at her with such hunger.

  If Jethren hadn’t been there, she might have gone inside, but she quietly slipped into her own chambers. It wasn’t that Jethren wasn’t handsome. It was that unwinking stare of his. That and the flat, almost contemptuous way he glared at Noddy made the back of her neck grip.

  She was completely unaware that he organized his day as often as he could so that he could watch when she and Noren exercised their horses, especially when—three or four times a week—they rode and shot. They were both far better than the teenage girls they taught. Either of them could have ridden with the army skirmishers if they’d chosen. Neither of them ever missed the mark, shooting right hand or left.

  He’d also tried to watch her Odni drills, until he discovered that there was a coterie of castle guards ardently fond of early morning sentry walks in the area overlooking the court below the queen’s suite. He held himself above them. Anyway, knife drills were not as hot as the sight of her riding like a bolt from a crossbow across a field, slamming arrows into targets at either side.

  He tried to catch her eye whenever they were in range of each other, but her attention never strayed his way. Well, Connar’s wife. Of course no one else would be on her mind, he believed.

  Connar took Jethren as honor guard when he rode to Ku Halir, and then to East Garrison. Connar could have sent someone, but he was restless—riding, inspection, overseeing drill were at least movement.

  Ranet resigned herself to not seeing him at all, except on Restdays, when he always came to the family gathering in the gunvaer’s chamber. He invariably sat with Noddy, and though he smiled at the girls, and let them climb all over him, Iris shrilling “Look at me! See what I can do?” as she made faces or poses, he didn’t seem to notice them any other time.

  Or Ranet herself.

  She kept her promise to herself, and stayed behind her door. He knew where she was.

  A few days later, the Restday after Noddy’s Name Day, Ranet felt Noren’s touch on her forearm as she was about to leave her chamber for the nursery down the hall in order to get the freshly bathed girls.

  Instead she backed into her room, waved her runner to fetch Iris and Little Hliss, and faced Noren, whose serious expression made her heart thump.

  “I think Connar still has feelings for Lineas,” Noren signed.

  Ranet stared back helplessly, then, “Has he told you that? Or told Noddy?”

  Noren snapped the words away with a quick gesture. “He doesn’t talk to me at all. Whatever he says or doesn’t say to Noddy stays between them. But ever since you and I spoke after Little Hliss was born, I’ve been watching him. It’s how he always scans a room when he enters.”

  “He’s looking for her? How can you tell?”

  “It’s....” Noren’s clever, sensitive hands paused, suspended in air, then fluttered quickly, “It’s something perhaps I notice, and others don’t. When he looks around a room and she isn’t there, his attention goes to whoever’s mouth is moving. But the rare times she is there—usually when she’s with Noddy, and we all gather for some reason—he....” She mimed stilling. “And his gaze goes straight to her, then he never looks her way again. Even if her mouth moves. I’ve watched. It’s consistent.”

  “Feelings...do you think he’s still in love with her, then?”

  “What does ‘in love’ really mean? Was he ever ‘in love’ with her? Didn’t you tell me once she said he wasn’t? No matter. What I see could be anything. Including hate. But there’s something there. Feelings.” Her palms flattened after the word.

  “She made a ring marriage,” Ranet said.

  “That might be the problem,” Noren replied with a sober look.

  That night, as most of the castle slept except for the night guards patrolling ceaselessly, a soot-black shape drifted along the deep shadows of the second floor.
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br />   Moonbeam went walking, always to see the targets. Keth promised him when the wrong king and all his kind were dead, the ghosts would be real again. Soon, now.

  Most often Moonbeam found his way to the king’s chambers, the most difficult to breach. He stood staring down at the snoring figure while caressing one or another of his knives, imagining where to place the first cut. How long before the second.

  Next most often, the huge rockbrain they called heir. Moonbeam would take his time with that one if he was as good a fighter as he looked.

  From time to time he slipped into the rooms where the eagle clan women slept, for they were targets, too. He didn’t know if any would give him a good fight, and Keth wanted the beautiful one. The two children, he would make it quick, slash slash, before they even woke. They were no threat. There was sweetness in a win only if there was risk.

  Back again to the king’s suite, where the true king would lie.

  Another peek, another carving scheme.

  But Keth said, not yet. Not while blame would surely point toward him. And so Moonbeam stole out again, a shade deeper than the shadows, and left them sleeping.

  SIXTEEN

  Vior Mat Cingon was not distorted by someone else’s vision into what he became, and I want to spend as little ink and time on him as I can.

  The vagaries of heredity had brought out a Venn ancestor from way back, shaping him tall and strong, with light brown hair. He was born with good looks and a good home, but a weakness for gambling and an insatiable taste for luxury caused him to run from a promising career in the Coast Patrol at the other end of the continent, leading him to be snapped up by a particularly vicious pirate who tended to run through crew faster than they could be lured to join.

  Ten years of bloody fighting on decks had hardened a lazy, lying oaf into an indifferent killer before he and a few cronies got the drop on a prize crew and landed, with the stolen ship and its booty, in a notorious harbor. As pirates tend to have long memories for those with the temerity to steal from them, he turned his back on the sea and caroused his way inland while the booty lasted.

  Three more years of bloody infighting had brought him to the captaincy of a mercenary troop that turned brigand against trade caravans when they couldn’t get hired. He’d never quite lost his taste for gambling, but he no longer trusted the chance of markers or cards: he was always on the lookout for the quickest, surest way to wealth.

  Having heard of the whispering jewel caves which yielded single gems each worth more gold than the rare dragoneye stones of the far north and far south, he and his followers had been tramping the mountains of Ghildraith, following a very old map one of his followers had killed someone to get, when they ran across Jendas Yenvir the Skunk.

  Some negotiation with steel inspired Cingon to join Yenvir—until events made it more profitable to shift loyalties to the richer prospect, Thias Elsarion. But at Tlennen Field, when it became clear that Elsarion was shortly to go the way Yenvir had, Cingon and his band deserted the field and bunked north to resume their search for the jewel cave.

  Winter and hunger brought them to a tidy little valley, sufficient unto itself. Some quick and bloody work in the quiet of the night replaced the village chief with Cingon and his band.

  From there, one valley led to the taking of another, bringing us to the present time.

  Cingon had proclaimed himself king of the mountains, but he was a king living in a stone cottage, among people who spent their entire summer getting ready for winter. The yearning for the elusive jewel cave began to seem a mirage...and meanwhile there was all that wealth in the south.

  When a party of his roving thugs captured a pair of Marlovan scouts tending to a horse that had slipped on ice and injured a leg, they elicited the fact that the blue-eyed Marlovan commander who had scythed his way through Elsarion’s force and destroyed the entire pass below Skytalon had gone down south to make more war.

  All the way south? That was practically Sartor!

  Cingon told his followers, “A little quick work, and we’re the kings of Stalgoreth. We can be in the stronghold tight before the Marlovan prince gets all the way up from the Sartoran Sea to face us.”

  Braids’ two scouts, who had been promised their lives if they cooperated in providing information, had seen no harm in lying about where Prince Connar was. They didn’t live long enough to find out what Cingon would do with the information; the thugs kept the injured horse, recognizing a prize when they saw one, but the other escaped before they could catch it.

  Cabbage Gannan’s perimeter patrol found the still-saddled scout horse grazing alongside a river, and brought it to the jarl castle. Everyone knew scouts never abandoned their horses, especially still saddled.

  Cabbage sat down straight away to compose a message—which Maddar intercepted. In the kindest way possible, she said, “You really can’t send this to Connar-Laef.”

  “Why not?” Cabbage demanded, his voice rising as his gaze shifted away. “He hates me. He’ll blame me if I do anything. But this is my jarlate, and I have a right to investigate and protect my border.”

  “Strictly speaking, that horse was found on the other side of the river that we regard as the border, but in any case, I don’t think anyone, including Connar-Laef, would argue about your rights. It’s this first part, where basically you’re saying that you know you have to report it or he’ll blame you. Please consider leaving that off entirely. The only part that matters is your patrol finding that horse, and here you are letting everyone know, just as you ought. Unless he gave you special orders at Convocation?” she amended, eyeing him.

  “Never said so much as a single word to me. Only talked to Braids. Who was to investigate,” Cabbage muttered.

  “That’s all right, then. You found a horse that had to belong to one of Braids’ scouts, and according to standing orders, you’re reporting it before you send someone to look into it.”

  Cabbage balled up the paper he had labored over, and wrote two lines: what they’d found, and that he was going to take a force to investigate, dispatching copies to Braids, and to the royal city.

  Braids, having heard the two trumpet blasts announcing an arrival at Tlen, where he was temporarily staying, left mid-conversation, hoping it wasn’t just another runner from Ku Halir. When he reached the stable yard and recognized the newcomer’s mud-splattered pennon as Cabbage Gannan’s new colors, his heart beat sharply.

  “Found a horse,” the runner said hoarsely as he dismounted, and fell against the hard-breathing animal. Braids nicked his chin up in permission, and stable hands ran to take care of the horse as two more of his people steadied the Gannan runner. “Still wearing a saddle pad. Up against the northwest corner, along the river.”

  Silence fell.

  “Damage?” Braids asked.

  The runner made a vague swipe at his own belly, saying, “Galled.”

  Which meant the horse had tried to scrape the saddle off, which had chafed its skin. “Galls weeks old,” he added.

  “Second scout?” Braids forced out the word, “Bodies?” One scout was a distant Tlennen cousin, the other Trot, who he had grown up with. She’d been promoted to scout after the Tlennen Plain battle. Neither were inexperienced—but weather was harsh in the mountains, and their experience was on the plains.

  “Searched, two days,” the runner said soberly, “Nothing. Horse could have gone a long distance.”

  They would have to assume at least one scout was dead. But by whose hand? Braids thought of those rocky hills, and wondered if it was accident. He wasn’t certain which would be worse, lying on a hillside with broken bones, or a brigand’s knife.

  Meanwhile Cabbage’s runner had drunk from the ladle thoughtfully brought, and in a less raspy voice added, “Gannan-Jarl said to tell you, he’s sending the First Lancers north.”

  Braids grimaced. “They won’t be much use in the hills.”

  “Said that. Said it’ll be a warning to anyone on the watch, but he’ll spread ev
erybody out. Searching first.”

  Braids turned to Henad Tlennen. “We’d better ride north. We’ll be a lot more effective in rocky hills than those heavy horses.”

  “All of us?” She jerked her thumb toward the stable.

  “No...Hound Company, with all the scout dogs for start. Send someone to fetch something from Trot’s and Sand’s gear, and bring it along for the dogs to sniff. We’ll send the rest of their things to their homes. If we leave by tomorrow, we can reach Cabbage in two weeks, three at the outside, with remounts. First, let’s put our fastest on the road to the royal city to report.”

  The runner eyed him uneasily. “Gannan-Jarl sent one of us to the royal city.”

  Braids clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m sure he did. We’ll send another to report our Hound Company going north. And it won’t be you. You’ve earned your liberty,” he added to the runner’s immense relief.

  Arrow had given orders that any runners bearing Senelaec crimson and black be brought to him wherever he was, and his sons notified.

  Down at the sword court, Jethren beat back Connar’s attack, swords sending up sparks. The circle watching them skidded back as Connar faded back a step, then charged at Jethren, who spun and sidestepped after shifting his sword to the left hand to beat off a furious attack.

  His eyes stung with sweat and his breath rasped in his throat, but he fought on. He had to win. Too many losses and Connar lost interest. There were very few he chose to fight with—all as strong and fast as he was, but with the precision control that kept serious wounds to a minimum as they fought full out with bare steel. There were few headier senses than a genuine win, rare as those were, but Jethren strove to beat his way inside that invisible barrier.

  As Connar backed away and wiped the sweat off his face, Jethren wondered—not for the first time—why swords. From what he’d heard, Connar had picked up a lance on his very first day of training, and had nailed the target. Maybe it was another of those deferences to his buck-toothed dolt of a brother—