Forged in Fire (Destiny's Crucible Book 4)

by Olan Thorensen

  Maera stroked her forehead as if to brush away a regret. “You’re right. It’s part of how our lives evolve, and it’s not like my life isn’t full, with our family and all the work we do. A person can’t be blamed for wishing to keep everyone close that she cares about.

  “We knew Diera and Sistian would have to return. He has the abbey to oversee. Although he responded to Father’s request to serve as an adviser, the major crises are over. Yet I expect he’s going to find himself more involved in affairs concerning all Caedellium than he anticipates. Diera tells me the theophists throughout the island are communicating more than before. I assume it’s a side-effect of the increasing clan cooperation.”

  “Which means we’re likely to see him at least once a year, if not more,” said Yozef. “The same with Diera. I would have preferred that she be the leader of the University of Caedellium’s medicine and biology departments for all the campuses, but we’ll have to settle for her being president of the Abersford campus and dean of its medical school.”

  “So many new titles, Yozef, that no one ever heard before. Your people must have a complex society to need so many labels. I’m to be chancellor of all the campuses and Diera president of one campus. I suppose I understand the need for new titles for positions we haven’t had before, but I’m afraid I still don’t see why the head of a specific department should be called the ‘chairperson.’ What does a chair have to do with being the most senior member of a department?”

  He didn’t lie. “I have absolutely no idea why it’s called that. It just is.”

  Maera shrugged.

  “You know, Maera, on reflection, I can’t exaggerate how important the Beynom family has been for me. It was Abbot Sistian who had faith in me when he might have viewed me more cautiously, and Diera oversaw my recovery. It’s enough to make one wonder if there was a God looking after me.”

  Maera eyed her husband. She still wasn’t sure whether he believed in God, not that she doubted her own faith.

  “I don’t believe I ever told you, Yozef, but after I first met you, I wasn’t impressed. It was Diera who convinced me to give you a closer look.” Maera smiled. “Although I think it was related to your innovations. I’m sure she never had any idea how we would come together.”

  He reached out to take her hand. “Whatever the motivation, I’m glad Diera said what she did and you listened to her.”

  Yozef waved his other hand to one side. “And all I’ve introduced and accomplished comes back to Sistian and Diera helping me find a place to be accepted by most people. It could have been far different. Then there’s the two Beynom sons. Young Selmar, who was my Caedelli language tutor, and Cadwulf who helped me understand Caedelli customs, organized my records, established the first bank, and became a friend. I may miss him the most of all the Beynoms. He’s on his way to revolutionize Anyar mathematics. I showed him all I know, and he’s gone far beyond me—him and the other mathematicians on Caedellium.

  “I’m not sure why he’s so adamant to return to Abersford, but it may work out well with him chairing the department of mathematics at the small Abersford campus of the university. At least, missing two fingers won’t matter in mathematics.” The eldest Beynom son had joined the people within Orosz City as they rushed to help stem the Narthani breakthrough that threatened to collapse the defensive line. Cadwulf had survived, hundreds hadn’t, but he’d lost part of his hand to grapeshot.

  Yozef didn’t explain to Maera his earlier worry that the university mathematics department would be too isolated at Abersford or when he decided it would be for the best. With most mathematics development being in Abersford, the campus might draw less attention when he tried to introduce topics requiring advanced mathematics, such as quantum and nuclear physics, relativity, astrophysics, and quantum chemistry.

  Yozef released Maera’s hand, and a sad expression passed over his face.

  “What is it, Yozef? You’re not the best at hiding what you’re thinking, especially when we’re alone.”

  He sighed. “It’s Filtin. I never even knew he was coming to Orosz City until I saw him with the carronade battery. We never spoke, and minutes later he was dead. After Carnigan and Cadwulf, he was my closest friend and in many ways the one who was the most fun to be around. I feel a little guilty, but in a way, I’m glad Nerlin and the children are moving back to Abersford to be near her brother’s and Filtin’s families. This way I won’t be sad every time I see them.”

  “It’s no reason to feel guilty,” Maera assured him. “We all have such feelings. It’s not like you’ll ever forget him, and his family will be well cared for.”

  Yozef had set up a pension, first for Filtin’s family, then for all the families of men and women from Abersford who were killed or wounded fighting the Narthani. Culich Keelan had followed suit for the rest of Clan Keelan, and most other clans were doing the same for their people.

  Yozef changed the subject. Thinking of Filtin still brought on occasional melancholy. “I hope Ana is okay with the visitors from Moreland.”

  “As do I,” said Maera. “I know she looks forward to seeing her brother, Iwun, and aunt Glynas, but she’s uncertain about the mother. After we finish here, I’ll check on how it’s going. I don’t want her stressing too much; her baby’s due soon.”

  “It’s unbelievable chutzpah that the father and older brother wanted to reconcile once they learned the Moreland hetman line would pass through Ana,” said Yozef, scorn dripping from every syllable.

  Maera laughed. “Hutspah?”

  “Chutzpah,” repeated Yozef, correcting her pronunciations automatically before realizing he’d used a Yiddish word. “Temerity, gall. To make it worse, the first time she refused to meet with them, they came back trying to lay a guilt trip on her about loyalty to the family! Assholes.”

  “Well, it’s not as if she ever remembers being close to the two of them,” said Maera, “but the mother is the mother, a connection hard to break, no matter the history. And then there was the letter.” Gwenda Moreland had sent a letter begging forgiveness, the letter written by Aunt Glynas’s husband, because no Moreland family woman could write, except for Anarynd.

  “I think the news about Aunt Tilda was a factor. Something that hit both Anarynd and her mother hard,” said Yozef.

  Anarynd had asked Yozef to look for her aunt Tilda, taken into slavery with Anarynd during the Eywellese raid into Moreland. Despite the careful identification of Narthani slaves within Preddi Province, there was no sign of Tilda. The Narthani didn’t keep records of slaves’ original names, and Yozef regretfully told Anarynd her aunt likely was either dead or had been shipped off Caedellium before the Narthani defeat. Anarynd had thanked him and sat by herself on the veranda for two hours before coming to evening meal. Anarynd later wrote the news to Aunt Glynas, sister of both Anarynd’s mother and Aunt Tilda.

  “I’m also finding how much I miss Balwis and Wyfor, now that they’re both in Preddi,” said Yozef. “After everything that’s happened, it feels odd not to have them lurking around, watching for dangers.”

  “I confess I was uneasy about them both at first,” said Maera. “But, as I’ve heard you phrase it, they tend to grow on you. There’s certainly no question about their loyalty to you. However, while you and I might both miss them, I thank God they’re no longer needed to protect you and the rest of our family.”

  “But enough sad reflection,” said Yozef. “I . . . we . . . need to remember not everyone has left or will leave Orosz City. We still have Carnigan and Gwyned. We’ll see them regularly.”

  “I glad it’s working out for them. Both seem happy. Carnigan has a position he feels useful filling, and they have their family.”

  Carnigan, released from probation and the necessity to serve as Yozef’s bodyguard, had needed a profession. He and Gwyned wed, and a red-headed, ten-pound baby appeared five months later. Tomis Orosz approached Carnigan to serve as the head of a rehabilitation facility for miscreants and minor criminals. Carnigan’
s experience, his size and reputation, and his relationship to Yozef Kolsko gave him the gravitas that few sent to the facility would trifle with, and he flourished in the role. Stern and formidable in handling hard cases, the big man was sensitive and forgiving for those who recognized they needed help. Yozef still had not learned what Carnigan had done to be put on probation.

  “And Rhaedri,” said Yozef. “He and I manage to talk at least once a sixday.”

  Rhaedri Brison stayed in Orosz City. He refused a formal position but became a regular fixture in St. Wyan’s Abbey and continued working on his commentaries. He complained humorously to Yozef that the new ideas Yozef had introduced and the island’s sudden opening to the greater world had made him rethink some of his passages, and he needed another twenty years to finish. Since no one knew his exact age . . . who could guess?

  “I wish it hadn’t taken Brak’s death to bring Elian back to us,” said Maera.

  Both of them quietly remembered their first meetings with the elderly Abersford couple who could have been beaten down by the toils of life but who held on to their love of each other and their self-respect to perform whatever work was required as well as they could. When Brak Faughn passed, Elian remained in good health. The husband of one of her daughters was a builder who found long-term employment in constructing the new government complex, so Elian moved to Orosz City. That way she could be near her daughter’s family and have a position with the Kolsko household cooking and doing part-time child care. She missed Brak, but memories of him and being busy with family and Kolsko affairs filled her life.

  “As happens in life, we’ll meet new people who we’ll become close to,” said Maera. “Eina Saisannin and Reimo Kivalian are only two examples.”

  Reimo Kivalian stayed as a military liaison to the clans. He expanded his rushed course in military tactics and was helping plan a more formal military academy with the aid of instructors sent later from Fuomon. He and Yozef engaged in interesting and occasionally rancorous discussions on strategy and tactics. The Fuomi’s personal experience and knowledge of Anyarian military history and theory, coupled with Yozef’s memory of readings, movies, and video games, made for a synthesis with unanticipated future influence. Reimo also helped fill the role of lost Filtin, and they, along with Carnigan and Denes Vegga, became a famous foursome twice a month at the Snarling Graeko 3 pub in Orosz City.

  Eina Saisannin’s temporary role as the Fuomon ambassador to Caedellium became longer term with her family’s relocation to Caedellium, and the two families were frequent dinner companions.

  Yozef finished a last bite of a purplish melon whose taste reminded him of strawberries. “Maybe we should check how Anarynd’s making out with the evil witch . . . err . . . her mother.”

  Maera giggled. “I know that’s what Ana has called her, but let’s hope she’ll ameliorate that description.”

  The Kolsko Family

  As the months passed, change continued with the Kolskos. Anarynd gave birth and fulfilled her prediction she would have a son. What she hadn’t predicted was that she would also have a daughter, born thirty minutes before the boy. Afterward, she remembered that twins ran in her mother’s family. When naming time came, everyone again turned to Yozef. The uniqueness of Aragorn and Aeneas led people to expect more novel names, and Yozef was tickled to comply. Also, he wondered who would remember a Joseph Colsco if one day Earth and Anyar came into contact and his journals were lost. His name might be found in Anyar histories, but who would connect Yozef Kolsko with Joseph Colsco? Yet Aragorn and Aeneas already existed. By chance, someone might make a connection using all the names together, so why not add more? Thus, Anarynd’s two children became Odysius and Xena. The variation on Odysseus was too good to pass up, and he’d had a crush on Lucy Lawless, watching her reruns as he entered puberty.

  Not that the naming would likely end any time soon. Maera was pregnant again. They had already agreed to name a daughter Anid, in loving memory of Maera’s sister killed during the attack on Keelan Manor. If a son, he would be Linkun. In a frivolous moment, Yozef had considered Achilles, Aesop, and Abraham to keep using names beginning in “A,” but he had quickly quashed the thought. The movie Lincoln with Daniel Day-Lewis was one of his favorites.

  Maera gave up on finding a suitable family member to raise Dwyna Killin, the child of Aeneas’s first wet nurse, killed in the assassination attempt on Culich. The Kolsko women and friends would care for Dwyna. No one ever settled exactly who Dwyna’s new parents were, but the role seemed to rotate among Gwyned, Anarynd, Maera, Yozef, and Carnigan.

  And how did he feel about this growing family? Stressed at times because he already felt that he didn’t spend enough time with the children. Not that they lacked attention. With two mothers, friends, nurses, and other servants, the household never had a shortage of people to look after the children, just not often the father. Given all the other demands on his time, he tried to resign himself to doing the best he could.

  In addition to the children, in his heart of hearts, he still felt ambivalent about marrying Anarynd. It had seemed a rational decision at the time, and he had not resisted long against Maera’s push, but it complicated his life and feelings. There was no reason or easy avenue for him to back out. He never doubted he was fond of her—perhaps more than fond, perhaps love. But it was Maera whom he thought of first when the word wife came to mind. He did his best to treat them equally and to make them believe he valued them the same. He would never know how well he succeeded, but he believed Anarynd was content, though he never convinced himself Maera was fooled.

  Not that there weren’t obvious differences between them. Anarynd was content managing the household—more accurately, a manor or an estate—what with the three of them, the children, and a dozen groundskeepers, housekeepers, grooms, nurses, and other assorted people connected to the estate. The flighty and somewhat frivolous young woman who had been Anarynd was gone, replaced by a mature woman who found joy in life mainly restricted to her family and a small number of other friends and relatives. She resisted formal duties as the mother of the future Moreland hetman unless necessary, such as spending one month each year in Moreland Province with Odysius to help solidify his claim. If the current, childless hetman died before Odysius reached adulthood, a regent council would control the Moreland Clan, and Yozef had committed to accompanying the mother and child on the Moreland visits each year—at least, for part of the visit. The reminder that Yozef Kolsko was the boy’s father and the heir’s mother was Kolsko’s wife would do wonders to suppress any tendencies to dispute the planned succession.

  However, Anarynd decided knowing more of the island and the world was demanded of the wife of Yozef Kolsko and the future mother of Hetman Moreland. With both spouses’ help, she became the student she had never been.

  In many ways, Maera was the mirror of Anarynd. She would do her best to play the roles of mother and home keeper, but for the most part, her outside activities fueled her. Not that she wasn’t an attentive mother, but it didn’t come as naturally as with Anarynd.

  Yozef’s ambivalence was echoed elsewhere. In the time between the Battle of Moreland City and the final campaign against the Narthani, eight thousand widows were created, which, along with the normal slight excess of women over men on Anyar, meant women had a difficult time finding husbands. In addition, sixteen thousand children had become fatherless. Before returning to Abersford, Abbot Sistian Beynom took part in a meeting of Caedellium theophists. They discussed several topics, but the one that encouraged multiple marriages for the current generation resulted in what passed for an encyclical on Caedellium. Because neither the Word nor the Commentaries forbade multiple wives, the practice couldn’t be forbidden, but the theophists’ clear intent was to discourage multiple marriages once the normal man/woman ratio returned in the next generation. Yozef didn’t participate in the theophists’ meeting, although when Rhaedri Brison asked his opinion, he told the elderly theophist, and possibly the future declared S
eptarsh, that he agreed. He didn’t tell Rhaedri that he wondered what to do about the natural imbalance caused by slightly more girl babies than boys—the opposite of on Earth. He suspected that encouraging the practice in the current generation would carry over to a more tolerant view out of simple necessity.

  No formal leadership positions existed yet for women on Caedellium, but things would change over time. Yozef had let it be known—“It comes to me” was his exact phrasing—that girls had to receive the same basic education as boys, a mandate resisted by many even if it came from Yozef Kolsko. It was still ingrained in people’s minds that the primary role of a woman was in the home. Yozef knew change couldn’t happen instantly, but he could plant seeds. Schooling was one such seed. Formally making Maera an adviser with a title and her role as chancellor of the University of Caedellium was a second seed.

  Yozef appointed women as deans (a new title) to two of the three medical schools under development, including the one in Abersford with Diera Beynom as the dean, along with being president of the campus. The other medical school led by a woman was in Farkesh Province. The latter provided the most local resistance, quickly quashed by Feren Bakalacs, a hetman whom people were wise not to irritate. Yozef would also work to see opportunities open up for women’s leadership roles at more local levels.

  The Kolsko household and the Puveys were not the only source of new life. Ceinwyn bore a son. When naming day came in the newly reconsecrated Cathedral of St. Elnor in Preddi City, Balwis rose and declared the baby’s name to be Yozef Preddi. In future years, confusion would reign in many Caedellium classrooms when the teacher called on “Yozef.” There were so many boys with that first name that people commonly used both names: Yozef Preddi, Yozef Manescu, Yozef Hewell, Yozef Sildew, on and on. In some classes, in some provinces, teachers began using full names for all students.

  And those classrooms would be full for a generation. In addition to more emphasis on schooling, the number of babies conceived within six months before and after the Battle of Orosz City would require major increases in the number of teachers. Clanspeople everywhere on Caedellium had, like Ceinwyn, grasped for any shred of life with both hands before the battle and afterward.