by Guy Antibes
“My word,” Lord Griama said, as he chewed on a morsel of the meat. “Awfully good for a great boar.”
Benno blinked his eyes and stared at his plate. “This is what you killed?” Benno said.
The meat seemed a bit stringy, like a rabbit, but it tasted more like pork than he would have thought. The sauce made the meat tasty. “I like it,” Ricky said. He’d had much worse in his life.
“But you killed this thing,” Benno said.
“If one of Lord Griama’s servants killed a deer and served venison, is that any different?”
Benno took a drink of his watered wine. “I guess not.” He tasted a small portion and then lifted his eyebrows. “I guess you’re right.” He asked for a larger portion next.
Ricky’s eyes drifted to Vana. When their eyes met, Ricky looked down. He heard the girl giggle, and that made his face warm all of a sudden. He took a deep breath and raised his eyes again. “Do you come here often?”
Jac coughed.
She glanced at Jac and answered. “I used to come here quite a bit before Jac went to Paranty to your academy.”
“We were good friends, once,” Jac said, a bit hoarsely.
Mara’s cheeks reddened. Blushing made Mara look more attractive, but Lady Griama had put his Fisttian friend in an awkward position by permitting one of Jac’s old girlfriends to stay at the manor.
After a dinner filled with uncomfortable gaps, They all went to the gaming room. Lord and Lady Griama played with Jac and Vana. Ubbo looked on, glancing at the beautiful Vana quite often. Mara sat by herself, reading in a dark corner. Ricky lit a sorcerous light and set it floating so she had illumination.
“Thank you,” she said. “Did you know of her existence?”
Ricky shook his head, taking the closest chair and turning towards her with his back to the players. “I saw her for the first time just as you did. I know Jac used a girl as an excuse to break off from Loria at the academy before we arrived from Applia. I expect she was the excuse. Jac told me that their relationship was over before he started at Doubli Academy.”
Mara looked a bit more relieved. “I certainly don’t want to spend the summer competing with her,” she said.
“I’m here as a good friend, no matter what happens.”
She gave Ricky an odd look that he didn’t know how to interpret, but he didn’t see it as friendly. Vana’s arrival put a different spin on their vacation, even though it was still in its infancy. Perhaps Mara and Jac wouldn’t make it through the entire summer.
Ricky followed Mara’s eyes and turned around to see Vana approaching them. Ubbo had just taken her place at the table.
Vana smiled, and Ricky knew her smile affected him differently than it did Mara.
“Can I join you?”
Ricky turned to look at Mara, who smiled back, weakly, and nodded. Ricky shot to his feet. “Take this one,” he said before retrieving another for himself.
“Ubbo was anxious to play,” she said with a shrug.
She probably didn’t want Jac’s friend staring at her any longer, Ricky thought.
“So what is life like at Doubli Academy? I haven’t had a chance to ask Jac or Ubbo.”
Mara piped up and talked as if Ricky weren’t in the room. She looked Vana in the eye and engaged her with her story as an informant in the Applia Juvenile Home. Ricky had heard all that before, so he decided to let the two girls fight it out.
“Would you mind if I left you two? My back is bothering me a bit,” he said, looking at Mara.
She nodded and put out her hand. Ricky grasped it, and they linked.
Is it truly all right? Ricky said.
Mara looked at Vana and smiled while linking with Ricky. I have to face her some time. Telling her my story and what we’ve been through will make me stronger. She dropped her hand.
Ricky didn’t quite know what Mara meant by stronger, but he rose from his chair and found Tobia sitting outside the game room.
“Had enough for an evening?”
“It’s hard being the youngest person in the room,” Ricky said.
“The girl Vana is probably your age,” Tobia said.
“Was she Jac’s girlfriend?”
Tobia nodded his head. “Another subject for outside the manor.”
They didn’t say anything until Tobia shut the door to Ricky’s apartment.
“You are walking stiffly.”
Ricky nodded. “I think my shirt stuck to my bandages. Now, what about Vana?”
“Ah, she’s an ambitious vixen. She is very pretty, so much so that she can turn any man’s head.”
Ricky had to agree with that assessment. “The vixen part?”
“She showed up here with her father a few years ago and set herself to marry young Jac. It was before Ticco sent me down here, but I saw her enough times. The girl can get pushy, and Jac isn’t naive, at all. He finally told her to chop trees or something. The other servants heard the one-sided argument. Vana was always crafty enough to cultivate Lady Griama. Her presence indicates that she still does.”
“Mara is intimidated, I think,” Ricky said.
Tobia snorted. “Forgive me for giving my opinion, Ricky. I think Mara will handle Vana well enough. The other servants don’t think young Jac is the fickle kind. If it is over, it is over, so the other servants told me. I haven’t seen evidence to the contrary.” Tobia said. “Now let’s get that shirt off.”
Ricky winced a few times as scabs had drained and stuck to his shirt. Tobia had to work to clean Ricky’s wounds. “You might not believe it, but I think your wounds are healing nicely.” Tobia went to the washroom.
Ricky was lying on his stomach with his shirt off when he heard a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Ricky said, expecting Benno, and he rose up from the couch.
“Thank you,” Vana said as she entered the room. She looked at Ricky and arched a shapely brow. “Oh, I didn’t know you were dressing for bed in the living room.”
Ricky showed her his back.
“You have other scars,” she said, nearly touching his skin.
“I haven’t lived a placid life,” Ricky said, proud to find a use for ‘placid.’
Tobia returned and stopped when he noticed Vana in the room.
“If you will leave, I will call when I have placed a shirt on the young lord’s back.”
“Oh, I’ll just turn around,” Vana said.
Ricky rolled his eyes at Tobia. “I’ll fetch my shirt,” Ricky said and hurried upstairs. He covered himself and returned to the living room. Vana had gone.
“Is she outside?” Ricky said.
Tobia shook his head. “She said she could wait until morning. I think she found what she came for.”
“And that was?”
“To see if you were truly ailing. You made a very convincing case if I might say so,” Tobia said.
~~~
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
~
R ICKY WATCHED VANA TALK TO MARA DURING BREAKFAST. Vana spotted Ricky, and her eyes lit up. He couldn’t picture her as that excited to see him. “I brought gifts.” She presented Ricky with a dark red wool scarf trimmed with thick white thread.
“See?” Mara said holding up a wool knit dress of some kind, the same color as Ricky’s scarf.
The red was such that it didn’t clash with her hair or skin. Benno, Jac, and Ubbo hadn’t yet arrived. He felt the wool. Ricky wasn’t a clothes horse, but the wool was finer and softer than anything he had ever seen before.
“It’s special wool grown on my father’s lands. He has spent half his life breeding a certain kind of sheep that produces the wool.”
“I would think this could find a market in Sealio,” Ricky said.
Vana’s eyes grew wide. “No! Vorria is the sole recipient of this wool. Little of it is sold in Dimani.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Mara said.
“My father is very close to the Vorrian importer. He wouldn’t dream of selling our products
anywhere else. That goes for timber as well.”
Ricky didn’t understand her point. “But doesn’t Lord Griama decide where he sells the forests?”
Vana pursed her lips. “That is a point of contention.”
“Isn’t this Lord Griama’s domain?” Ricky asked.
Vana’s cheeks reddened. “I shouldn’t talk about this anymore.”
More people walked in, and Ricky found a spot to eat his breakfast farther down the table.
Ricky listened to the ebb and flow of conversation and only responded when someone asked him a question.
“Young Valian, when will you take over the duchy of Naparra?” Lord Griama asked.
Ricky shrugged. “When Duke Noacci dies? I don’t know. I’ve never visited the place, although I might have been born there. I was removed to Tossa soon after my parents died. No one has bothered to tell me the details.”
“I thought Noacci would put you in some role over the domain so when you inherit the title, you will know what is expected of you. King Courer works with Ticco every week discussing the affairs of the kingdom.”
Lord Griama’s question took Ricky out of his isolation. Everyone at the table looked at him. He had to say something. “Perhaps he will wait until my schooling is over.”
Griama nodded his head. “That makes sense. Well, if you want any pointers about running an estate, Lady Griama can help you. I leave most of the local matters to her while I am in the capital, which is most of the time.”
Ricky looked at Griama’s wife and nodded. She looked a bit strained at her husband’s comments. That, Ricky thought, indicated that she was forced into running the Griama domain by her husband.
Griama left before lunch. Ricky asked for a few moments of Lady Griama’s time.
“Do you run the domain?” Ricky said.
She smiled at Ricky, but he could see some evidence of pain in her expression. “I have hired good people to help me. Forari, Jac’s father, won’t allow me to make all the decisions. The craftsmen in the southern part of our domain do whatever they want and don’t recognize my authority.” She stopped and waved her hand. “I shouldn’t be burdening you with family affairs. You seem like such a well-grounded boy.”
Ricky raised his eyebrows at her remark. “No one has ever called me that,” Ricky said. “Jac seems to be well-grounded, too, to borrow your phrase.”
“He is and will do a better job at managing our domain than I. What do you think of Vana?” Lady Amira said.
“She is very pretty,” Ricky said. “Is her father part of the problem?”
Lady Amira nodded her head. “I had hoped a union between Jac and Vana might give him a stronger reason to open up trade…” she sighed.
“I think she is too strong for Jac,” Ricky said. “Not that Jac can’t handle a strong partner, but I don’t think he would enjoy such a thing.”
“Mara has strength. I’ve seen it as we have conversed.”
Ricky looked off for a moment. He hadn’t thought much about Mara as a girl. “She doesn’t push that strength on other people. I think she is more like you.”
Jac’s mother fluttered her eyelashes for a second. “Me? Strong?” She laughed. “Not nearly strong enough,” she said. “If my husband backed me up, I could be stronger. Now, this isn’t what you wanted to talk about.”
“Does Jac know enough about the organization of this place to tell me what I should know?”
Lady Amira nodded and laughed softly. “That was Forari putting me in my place again,” she said. “Of course Jac does. I’ve trained him more than he knows to manage the domain. Feel free to ask him anything you like. If you learn just a portion of what I’ve taught him, you will be prepared to take over Naparra. Bear in mind; duchies aren’t run by dukes. You have to have good people.”
Ricky instinctively knew that. Now he had more to talk to Jac about. He wondered how much time Vana would let Jac spend with Mara, anyway.
~
Ricky spent the next few days touring the agricultural part of the domain. He wrote down what he learned at night and now possessed a thick sheaf of notes about running a farm.
“So what about the forests?” Ricky said to Jac over a late night in the game room, going over what he had learned.
“Ask Vana,” Jac said. “Father has expressly forbidden Mother and me to deal with the south for the past few years. If you can get Vana to tell you all she knows, then enlighten me.”
That was strange. In the morning Ricky’s back felt almost normal, and he asked Vana if he could visit one of the wood craftsmen who used sorcery in making their products. She seemed pleased to say yes. Tobia brought three horses around. His horse had full saddlebags. Ricky noted his sword in the servant’s hands.
“It would be appropriate for you to be armed, Lord Valian,” Tobia said in Vana’s earshot.
“He’s right, Ricky,” Vana said as she mounted. She was much more graceful doing so than Ricky was.
“You can lead?” Ricky asked.
She laughed. “I certainly don’t want to get lost following you!” She bolted ahead.
Tobia darkened at the girl’s comment, and Ricky realized her comment wasn’t made as a joke.
They rode for two hours directly south, but in a different direction than the Griama’s hunting lodge. Ricky’s backside burned a bit. He hadn’t ridden a horse for some time, and Vana didn’t care to talk, always riding a few paces ahead of Ricky and Tobia.
“She wants to show you who is the boss,” Tobia said. “I would say that is not a trait that young Jac would have thought admirable.”
“It sure isn’t,” Ricky said. It might be something Loria Mansali might do. No wonder Jac ended their relationship. “She’s bolting on us,” Ricky said. “Do you know the way back to the manor?”
“About as well as you do.”
They both sped up. Houses began to sprout up alongside the track, and the dirt turned to cobbles as they spotted Vana up ahead, watering her horse at a fountain in the middle of a modest square.
“I won,” she said, triumphantly.
Tobia pursed his lips as he dismounted, while Ricky winced. “You had a distinct advantage,” Ricky said. “You were the only one thinking this was a race.”
“I did and do,” Vana said. “That’s the way we like it in south Dimani.”
“You make it sound like it is a domain unto itself,” Ricky said.
She gave Ricky a cat-like smile. “Let’s go to a lumber mill first,” she said.
Vana tied up her horse at a fancy hitching post, and Ricky and Tobia followed her example.
“Tie your horse over there.” Vana pointed across the square to a ramshackle hitching rack that looked like it would fall over.
Tobia took it in stride and followed, but not before Vana took off with Ricky before Tobia returned. She strolled through the village, nodding and smiling to the villagers as if she were a queen. “Is this where your father is mayor?”
Vana’s eyebrows rose. “Of course not, but it is one of his villages.”
“He owns the village?”
She made a face that seemed to mean a yes. What kind of domain did Lord Griama run? She walked down a lane, and Ricky could hear mechanical sounds along with the rushing of water. The path cleared of houses and not too much farther ahead stood a large building. A millrace ran alongside, turning a large wheel.
“A water-powered saw?” Tobia asked.
Vana ignored his question. Ricky’s guide was getting less pretty with each step.
“A water-powered saw?” Ricky repeated Tobia’s question.
“It is. My father paid quite a bit to have the equipment brought over from Vorria. They are the most advanced Kerrothian country.”
She opened the door for Ricky and let it close on Tobia, who followed them in.
A foreman came up to her. “Lady Vana. We are pleased to have you honor us with your presence.”
Ricky looked at Tobia who mouthed ‘Lady Vana?’
The f
oreman gave them a tour, but Vana looked particularly bored and didn’t make a single remark or ask a single question. Ricky knew nothing about water-powered lumber mills other than they existed. The operation of the mill was different from the one Jac had shown him. He still didn’t see any sorcerers around. The large, sharp saw blades seemed to do the job fine on their own.
The foreman took them to a drying room. “We dry our lumber in sheds for a month before exporting it to Vorria.” He picked up a dark-colored plank. “This is a slab of our hardest wood.”
Ricky ran his hand along the rough surface and felt the tight grain. So Vana’s father owned special sheep and harvested special wood. Ricky didn’t quite know what to think, but he acted interested in what the foreman had to say because he was. Did Naparra use machinery like this? Did Paranty? He asked Vana, but she didn’t know, or wouldn’t tell.
“Where do sorcerers come in?” Ricky asked.
“On the other side of the village at the furniture factory. We have others, but one of our best craftsmen likes living here,” Vana said.
Ricky thanked the foreman after Vana had already walked out of the building. “Lady Vana is spirited, isn’t she?” Ricky said.
The foreman merely nodded his head and clamped his lips together.
Water powered the furniture factory, as well. Finer-toothed saws of various shapes and articulations cut the wood to patterns the craftsman kept in drawers by each station. On the other side of the factory, Ricky saw men and women working, but there were none of the wide belts that ran equipment.
Vana led the way, as usual. “These are our sorcerers.”
Ricky listened to them hum in different pitches to create a similar spell. A thin wire held taut in a framework vibrated at high speed. Ricky thought there would be more sound, but the vibration cut through the dark hardwood as well as any knife.
He moved closer. “I am a sorcerer, and I am impressed by your work,” he said.
The sorcerer looked up with anxious eyes and glanced at Vana and back to him.
“Are you under contract?” Ricky said quietly.
The woman nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Amazing,” Ricky said. “I can’t see why Paranty doesn’t have sorcerers do this kind of work.” In his mind, he added that Paranty, for all its faults, didn’t put servants under contract that made them slaves, even if it was for an established period of time.
