by Robin Hobb
Purissa’s face lit up as if she had been promised candy. I felt slightly scandalized, but when I looked at Spink to see how he had reacted to my unruly cousin, he was grinning. He winked at Purissa, adding, “I remember that book. The retribution for sons who did not respect their elder brothers as they ought gave me several sleepless nights.”
“You can watch us play Towsers after dinner if you run off and behave yourself now,” Epiny offered.
“No. I want to play, too. Or I won’t leave now.”
Epiny sighed. “Perhaps. But only a few games!”
That bribe was enough to tip the balance. Purissa snatched the handkerchief and trotted off toward the lavender beds. As soon as she was out of sight, Epiny turned back to Spink. “Shall we continue our tour, Cadet Kester?” she asked him, sweetly formal.
“If the lady pleases, then we shall!” he replied with mock gravity, and bowed. As he straightened, he offered his arm, and she took it, laughing. They walked off down the path together. As I followed, I was beginning to feel a bit annoyed with both of them. Evening was rapidly darkening the sky and the rain was growing stronger. I suddenly recognized what was annoying me. Epiny dressed like a little girl and behaved like one in her lack of restraint and deportment. But there she was, her hand on Spink’s arm as if she were a young woman, taking advantage of Spink’s manners. Perhaps it was harsh of me, but I decided to force her to declare herself one way or the other. I caught up to them and said coolly, “Epiny, a young girl like you should really not be accepting escort from a man you’ve only met today. Give me your hand.”
I reached to move her hand from Spink’s arm to mine. I saw her bridle and thought she would resist. Then everything went strange. The moment I touched her arm, skin to skin, my vision doubled. In the most peculiar moment I’d ever experienced in my life, I saw everything around me as foreign. Epiny was not my cousin, but a young woman, unknown to me in every way. Her clothing, her stance, the way she wore her hair, the scent she wore, even her silly hat seemed outlandish and vaguely threatening. I smelled the familiar scents of the rainy garden as exotic perfumes, and Spink looked menacing to me, as if I were facing a warrior of unknown skills and customs, who might attack me with no provocation at all. Nothing had changed, and yet everything that was around me had lost every trace of familiarity. I was abruptly a stranger, standing in cold rain, gripping hard the forearm of an unknown and dangerous rival.
And Epiny? Epiny looked at me with eyes that went wide and then wider still. She leaned closer to me, a pin drawn by a magnet, her eyes locked to mine. “Who are you?” she panted as if the words took great effort. I felt something flow between us, as if she were trying to force a response from me. I gasped.
“Nevare. Nevare! Let her go, her hand is turning red! What ails you?” My friend had raised his voice and was shouting at me, I recognized dimly. Then Spink parted us, not roughly, but not gently either. He knocked my hand from Epiny’s arm, and both of us sprang back from one another, as if we had been straining to break free but only his touch had parted the cord. I let out a shuddering breath and looked aside from them, embarrassed by whatever had just happened.
“What was that?” I exclaimed, and did not know whom I asked.
But Epiny answered. “That was strange. And more than strange.” She leaned closer to me, turning her head to gaze up into my averted face. “Who are you?” she repeated her earlier question earnestly and with great passion, as if she did not recognize me at all.
At that moment a freak bolt of lightning cut across the stormy sky overhead. The brightness flashed the world to white and black, and when it was gone, my eyes held the afterimage of Epiny’s stark face staring at me. The thunder that boomed came almost immediately and rattled my bones to the marrow. For an instant I could neither hear nor see. Then the heavens opened, letting loose a drenching cold downpour and all three of us ran for the shelter of the house.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SÉANCE
As soon as we reached the house, Epiny excused herself to go change for dinner. Spink and I retired to our rooms. I hung up my damp jacket, cleaned my shoes of garden mud, and used a brush to freshen the cuffs of my trousers. Then, lacking anything else to do until dinner, I decided to explore the schoolroom. I wandered about the space where my father and uncle had taken their lessons, and wondered what it must have been like to grow up in so grand a house. I discovered my father’s initials carved into the edge of one table. Well-worn books shared shelf space with several models of siege engines and a stuffed owl. A rack held fencing foils and sabers. I was sitting at the table examining one of the siege engines when Spink entered. He looked around the room and, crossing to the window, stared out over the grounds of my uncle’s estates. He quietly asked me, “Did you think I was being too forward with your cousin, Nevare? If so, I wish to apologize, to you and to her. I did not mean to take advantage of her.”
“Advantage of her?” I laughed aloud. “Spink, man, if I were trying to protect anyone, it was you! My cousin is taking advantage of your good nature with her outrageous manners. One minute she is tooting a whistle at us like a street performer, and the next she’s claiming your arm to escort her as if she were the queen herself. No. You’ve given no offense. She is just so odd. Truth to say, she embarrasses me.”
“Embarrasses you! Nevare, there’s no need for that. I find her oddness, well, charming. I’ve never before met a girl who is so direct, so honest. She puts me at my ease. And so, I thought perhaps I had become too relaxed with her, to offer to escort her down the path without first asking your permission. I do beg pardon if I presumed too much familiarity.”
“There is no need, Spink. If anything, she is the one who presumes too much familiarity. She started calling you by your first name almost the moment she met you. I just thought to put Epiny in her place, and show her that if she behaves like a spoiled child, I intend to treat her as one. And now I will offer to beg your pardon, if I offended you with what I said to her.”
“Me, offended? No, not at all. It was just, well, you acted so strangely for a time. You gripped her arm as if you intended to hurt her, and the way she looked at you, as if she’d never seen you before—I was quite frightened, to tell you the truth. I feared you’d do an injury to one another.”
I was aghast. “Spink! You know me well enough, I think, to know that I’d never harm a girl, let alone my own cousin!”
“I do! Yes, I do, Nevare. It was just that, for a time there, you did not seem like the Nevare I know.”
“Well…It was odd. For an instant I didn’t feel like myself at all, either, in all honesty.”
And my admission of that stunned us both into an awkward silence. Spink moved away, looking everywhere except at me. He touched the books on the shelves, the much-used school table, and then wandered to the windows. He rested his hands on the sill and, looking out into the night, asked me, “Do you ever wish that you could own a home such as this? With rooms like this for your sons to learn in?”
I was a bit shocked at his words. “I never thought of it. I’m a soldier, Spink. All my sons will be soldiers. I’ll teach them what I know, as they grow, and I hope they’ll be bright enough to rise quickly through the ranks. Maybe, if one of them excels, I’ll ask my brother to speak for him and try to have him admitted to the Academy or purchase a commission for him. But, no, I don’t ever expect to own a home like this. When I’m old and can no longer serve my king, I know my brother will make me welcome on his holdings, and he’ll help arrange solid marriages for my daughters. What more could a soldier son ask?”
He turned from his contemplation of the darkening grounds and gave me a rueful smile. “You have deeper roots than I, I think. This beautiful home is your ancestral estate and you are still welcomed here. And the way you speak of Widevale makes me think that in a generation or two the house and grounds there will rival this place. But for me, the only home I recall is Bittersprings.” He smiled wryly. “I love the land there. It’s home. B
ut when your father was given his lordship, he chose lands that bordered the river, arable land and pastureland. Land that could generate the moneys to enable him to live like a noble. My mother chose with a different purpose. She chose the land that surrounded the area where my father was killed. His burial site was lost; his troops covered him hastily, for they still feared they might be overrun by the Plainsmen and did not want them to have his bones as trophies. So they buried him and hid the grave and we have never been able to discover it. But she knows it is somewhere on the land that she claimed, and says that all we build or do there is memorial to him. But the problem is, the land is not good for much else. You can’t shove a spade into it without hitting a stone, and when you remove that, you find two more stacked under it. You can hunt and you can forage there, but you can’t till a field or even graze sheep. My brother is trying hogs and goats, but they swiftly strip the land and leave only stirred rocks behind them. I do not think they are a good idea; but he is the heir, not I.”
He said this so wistfully that I had to ask, “And if the land were yours, to develop as you chose?” I felt I was tempting him to the sin of ingratitude for order, and yet I could not forbear from posing the question.
He gave a brief, bitter laugh. “Stone, Nevare. Stone is what we have. The idea first came to me when one of my father’s soldiers came to retire with us. He looked over our land and asked another fellow if we were growing rocks as a crop or for pleasure. And it came to me then, if stone is what we have, then stone is what we should prosper on. Our house, small and humble as it is, is built all of stone, and the walls between our so-called fields are of stone. I’ve heard that the king’s road building goes slowly for lack of proper stone. Well, we’ve stone in plenty.”
“Exporting stone sounds difficult. Are there roads in your region?”
He shrugged. “There could be. You asked me for my pipe dream, Nevare, not for the reality. It would take years to bring it to fruition. But my family will be there for generations so why not begin the task now?”
I had made myself uncomfortable with the discussion. All knew that a man’s career was determined by his birth order. To question it was to question the will of the good god himself. All knew the tales of what came of trying to quarrel with your fate. A son must be what he was born to be. My family was strict in the matter. It was true that some of the other noble families were less observant of the law. In one notorious case, when the House Offeri heir son died, Lord Offeri had moved each of his sons up a notch, so that the soldier became the heir, the priest the soldier, and so on. All were failures in their careers. The new “heir” was too militant with the estate’s serfs, and many of them fled the land, leaving crops to rot in the fields. The priest son did not have the constitution to endure the arduous life of a soldier, and died before he had even faced a battle. The artist forced to become a priest was too creative in his copying of scripture and nearly faced charges of heresy from the archor of his order. And so it went. The story was often told as a warning to any families considering such an extreme measure. I should not be tempting Spink or myself to pretend we would ever be anything but soldiers. I changed the subject.
“Why is your home called Bittersprings? As testament to your father’s death there?”
“Well, that is a bitter memory for my mother, but no. There are several large springs not far from our home. The water that comes to the surface there tastes terrible, but several Plainsmen tribes revere the spot and hold that people can be cured of disease or granted marvelous visions or increase their intelligence by bathing in or drinking the waters. They offer my family trade goods in exchange for being granted passage to the springs. I think it is my mother’s sole act of revenge that she will not allow any member of the folk who killed my father to visit the springs. It angers them greatly, for they say the springs are sacred and were always a truce place and open to all. To which my mother replies, ‘You changed all that when you killed my husband.’ Over the years there have been a few clashes over that, with warriors attempting to make sorties to the springs to steal water. My father’s old soldiers always repel them. They take pride in that.”
I barely heard the last few sentences. I had become aware of an odd sound. At first, I had thought it a distant birdcall from the garden, but now I realized that the soft trilling matched the cadence of breath. The door of the old schoolroom was ajar. I thought I had latched it. I crossed the room silently and pulled the door suddenly open. Epiny stood outside it, her otter whistle between her lips despite the fact that she was dressed for dinner. She grinned at me, clenching the silver toy between her teeth and letting it wheeze as she did so. “It’s time to come down to dinner,” she said around the whistle.
“Were you eavesdropping?” I asked her severely.
She spat her toy into her hand. “Not really. I was just standing outside the door listening so that I could wait for a break in the conversation to announce dinner rather than interrupting you.”
She said it so blithely that I almost believed her. Then I decided that I would follow through on my earlier resolution about my cousin. If she was going to act as if she were an errant ten-year-old, I would speak to her as such. “Epiny, listening outside of rooms for any reason is impolite. At your age, you should know better.”
She cocked her head at me. “I do know when it is rude to listen at doors, dearest cousin. And now it is time for us all to go down to dinner. Father enjoys his food and hates to have it served at less than the correct temperature. You do know, don’t you, that it is rude to keep your host waiting for his dinner?”
I could control my temper no longer. “Epiny, you are close to my age, and I know my aunt and uncle have taught you manners. Why are you acting like an ill-mannered child? Why can’t you behave as if you were a young lady?”
She smiled at me as if she had finally forced me to recognize her. “Actually, I am one year and four months younger than you are. And the moment I begin to behave as if I were some suffocatingly correct young lady, that is how my father will start to treat me. Not to mention my mother. And that will be the beginning of the end of my life. Not that I expect you to understand what I am talking about. Spink. Would you care to escort me to dinner? Or do you find me too childish and spoiled?”
“I should be glad to,” Spink declared. To my astonishment, he crossed the room with alacrity and offered Epiny his arm. He blushed as he did so and she seemed likewise ruffled. Nonetheless, she accepted his offer and they preceded me out of the room. Epiny’s long pale blue skirts rustled against the marble steps as they descended the staircase. Her hair had been brushed and simply confined to a gold lace net at the base of her neck. Spink’s back was straight as a ramrod; he was not much taller than she was. As I followed them, it struck me that they looked like a couple.
Then, abruptly, Epiny ended that illusion. She snatched her hand back from his arm, gathered up her skirts, and bustled down the stairs ahead of him, leaving Spink looking confused. I caught up with him as Epiny was disappearing into the dining room.
“Don’t mind her,” I told him. “It’s as I told you. She’s a very silly little girl at this point. My sisters went through a similar time.”
I did not add that my father’s reaction to my sisters’ flightiness had been far more severe than my uncle’s tolerance of Epiny’s eccentricity. I recalled his stern admonition to my mother: “If we do not settle them soon into a becoming and womanly calm, they will never find appropriate husbands. I am a new noble, madam, as you are aware. Some of their opportunities to rise in society they must create for themselves, and they will best do so by being sedate, tractable, and demure young women.”
“As I was,” my mother had filled in, and there was an edge to her voice, bitterness or regret, that I could not understand.
I do not think my father even heard it. “As you were, my lady, and continue to be. A fine example of all a noblewoman and wife should be.”
When we entered the dining room, Epiny was stan
ding behind her chair. My uncle was at the head of the table. Purissa waited at his left elbow. The child looked far more groomed than she had earlier. Someone had tidied her hair and put a clean pinafore on her. Spink and I rapidly took our places and I murmured an apology that we had kept my uncle waiting.
“We are short on formality at family meals, Nevare, and that is what we will enjoy this evening, for you are definitely family, and you appear to regard your friend as if he were almost a brother. I regret that your Aunt Daraleen and Cousin Hotorn cannot be here as well. He is away at his schooling, and she has been summoned to serve our queen at court for the days of the Council of Lords. They will not convene it until Firstday, but the women of the court must have at least a dozen days to be dressed for it. And so she has departed, leaving us here to get by on our own. But we shall make do here as well we can in their absence.”
With that, we took our seats and a servant entered almost immediately with the soup. The meal was the most excellent one I had had since arriving in Old Thares. The food had been cooked to be consumed by individuals rather than stirred up in vats for hundreds. The difference in taste and texture seemed marvelous after so many meals produced for the masses. I felt almost honored to be presented with a single chop cooked to my liking rather than a ladled serving of meat chunks in watery gravy. I ate well, trying to control my greed, and finished the meal with a large serving of apple pan dowdy.
Spink kept pace with me, but also managed to hold up his end of the conversation with Uncle Sefert. He expressed great admiration for my uncle’s home, and asked a number of questions about the house and the estate in general. The gist of his questions seemed to be that he wondered how long it took a noble family to establish such a grand ancestral seat. The answer seemed to be “generations.” My uncle spoke proudly of the innovations he had introduced in his lifetime, from gas piping and lights to his remodeling of the wine cellar to allow for better temperature control. Spink followed his answers with enthusiasm, and I saw my uncle warm toward him.
