Time of Daughters I

by Sherwood Smith

  They worked at an awkward conversation until Jarend’s wife appeared and quietly gave Jarend a hot cup that smelled like willow-bark steep.

  Camerend understood then that the patient Jarend had a headache. He’d excused himself immediately, as the wife went to tend her child yelling in another room. Then he’d gone out to hunt down the second son, and found him emerging from the baths.

  Now he was alone with the last of the four, a red-faced young woman who wouldn’t meet his eyes as she said flatly, “Little ones?”

  Camerend tried to see her expression, but she was bent over the nursing baby hidden in her robe. All he could see was the neat parting in her brown hair.

  Grimly sticking to duty, he asked, “Do you know how long you’re staying in the royal city? I ask because until Evred-Sierlaef was born, most education in the castle has involved us in some manner. Your little one there is too young for tutoring, but the other one, ah, Tanrid?”

  “You can call him Rabbit,” Danet said, glancing up warily at the husky note of strain in Camerend’s voice.

  As yet she hadn’t the life experience to name what she saw in his demeanor. His mouth had fixed in a smile meant to be polite and friendly, but she looked past that at his eyes, as her mother had taught. She didn’t recognize the lingering traces of horror, only that his forehead was taut with tension.

  On Jarend, that meant headaches. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  Startled, he met her gaze, saw only inquiry, and it was his turn to look down. Clearly his facade of calm was not as successful as he had thought. “I am,” he said. “Thank you for asking. Nothing more than a slight headache,” he lied.

  “Oh.” Her brow cleared. “Arrow’s brother gets them. Tdor Fath thinks it’s mostly when the weather changes. We have a good willow steep—but of course you have your own remedies,” she corrected quickly, blushing and dropping her gaze again, aware that she was babbling.

  He saw her remorse, but misinterpreted the cause, and got to his feet. “We can discuss the question of tutors later. If you like. Please be aware that we’re always happy to help. Our younger runners must include teaching in their training before they’re considered ready for the world. Traditionally they have offered tutoring to the castle children.”

  Once again, Danet found herself prodded beyond her tumbling emotions by curiosity—and the need to find out about Parnid, without revealing why she asked. “How is your training different from that of the garrison runners?” she asked. “Or is it secret?”

  It was very secret, so secret that they all sidestepped that question with practiced ease. “Royal runners and scribes use similar lessons,” Camerend said, sitting down again. “Most castle and jarlate runners aren’t trained in Iascan anymore, much less Old Sartoran, which are useful for those of us assigned to work in the archives. Also, a few of us are also trained in what is called the minor magics. You know, the water purity spells on barrels and buckets and baths, heat for the latter when there is no hot spring, reinforcing walls and bridges, and so forth.” The and so forth covered everything else.

  “That’s right,” she said, remembering a gray-haired royal runner visiting years ago at Farendavan. “Is it fun, doing magic?”

  “It’s like anything else. You have to work and work to get it right. It’s satisfying when you master it, as is anything else. But then it becomes routine. As I think is true for any repetitive skill. I remember our healer once remarking that after one has done the Beard Spell on the hundredth youth, it’s become habit.”

  Danet’s mind leaped to healers and their magics. And then, as always, questions proliferated like ivy vines. “A distant cousin of mine, they call her Hard Ride up north, where they see ships come in from all over, she once told me that in other kingdoms, they have healers who change the color of people’s hair.”

  She saw the quick spasm in his face when she mentioned her fourth-cousin, almost a wince. She sensed that she’d said the wrong thing, somehow, and her next question—about the chain of command for runners—dried up unspoken.

  She busied herself with shifting Noddy to the other side, which Camerend took as a signal to end this lumbering conversation and leave before he suffered any more nightmare flashes of memory.

  SEVENTEEN

  As soon as Camerend was gone, Danet let out a long breath of relief. Being around that royal runner was like drawing near a warm fire on a cold winter’s day, except she knew very well if she got any closer, she would burn herself.

  Once Noddy’s round little belly was full, he sank bonelessly into sleep. Danet put him in his crib and tiptoed out, avoiding Tesar’s brooding look. Danet knew Tesar hated child duty, but until the carts caught up, she had no one else.

  Danet headed for the grand gunvaer’s tower. The old woman sat up in her padded chair, eyes vague, but her wrinkled face lifted at an alert angle. “What have you found?”

  Danet told her.

  The old woman sank back with a long, hissing sigh.

  “What does it mean?” Danet asked.

  Hesar peered in her direction, seeing only a blur. But she could hear the genuine distress in the girl’s voice. “It means danger, first of all. You must not go back to the scribes. They’ve been cut out of administration for years. All they do is copy general reports for the archives. Now. If there are no personal dispositions for this mystery runner, but everything that person requisitions is supplied and paid for, then....” The old woman breathed harshly. “The answers lie possibly with the quartermaster, but certainly in the treasury. Someone there knows the truth.”

  Danet stared in shock. “Truth about what?” she asked faintly, feeling that horrible cold tingle you get when you fall into icy water.

  The grand gunvaer lifted trembling hands. “I’ll send a letter to young Ranor,” she finally. “Ah, if only it didn’t take weeks and weeks to get answers! But needs must. You did well, child. Continue as you are, and say nothing.”

  “Even to Tdor Fath?”

  “What can she do except worry? She has enough worry, from what they tell me. Say nothing to anyone—one thing I can assure you is, neither the regent nor especially the commander tolerate anyone questioning their orders, or venturing out of their own chain of command.”

  Danet left, hilarity streaming through her at the idea of the stolid, graying Jarlan of Olavayir being referred to as “young Ranor,” a hilarity that lasted only heartbeats before being replaced by the gnawing anxiety of questions and a vague sense of dread.

  As soon as Danet was out the door, the gunvaer dictated a letter to her runner, then sent her downstairs with instructions for the royal runners to get it as fast as possible to Ranor-Jarlan in Olavayir.

  When the runner reached the third floor, she was passed directly to Camerend and Mnar Milnari, who served as his co-chief when he was on a run.

  Mnar saluted, hand to heart—the salute for a gunvaer, acknowledging her orders—and said, “It will go out directly.”

  By the time the runner had returned to the tower, Camerend had drunk some willow-steep against a pounding headache. Grimly he removed the seal and read the letter out to Mnar, his tone flat. Mnar suspected that Camerend had slept little, if at all, since witnessing that slaughter in the Pass, which he had been unable to stop. Which even Shendan, with her years of magic studies, had been unable to stop.

  Mnar copied the gunvaer’s letter in scribe shorthand as Camerend read it. Then he resealed the letter and summoned one of their fastest runners to take it to Olavayir.

  With the gunvaer’s letter on its way, as promised, they locked the door to consider what they’d read.

  Camerend dropped down cross-legged on the floor, his back to the fire, his hair a nimbus of loose golden strands against that beating light. Mnar took one look at his distraught profile and averted her gaze as she sat a few paces away. “It’s clear from her letter that the grand gunvaer knows little more than we.”

  Camerend dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets as he conte
mplated the lack of communication between garrison, staff, and government—all by strict orders, as a matter of security. Then he looked up tiredly, bloody images from the Pass still flickering in memory, sparked by sounds, sights, maybe smells too subtle to identify.

  “Two questions,” Mnar said. “First, did Danet Olavayir say anything to you when you went to interview her? She has to have gone straight from talking to you to the gunvaer.”

  “Nothing. Mnar, the gunvaer might not understand it, but I do: Someone in this castle is supplying, and no doubt paying, what amounts to a secret battalion.”

  “Who?” Mnar spread her hands. “Why?”

  Camerend sighed, longing for sleep without nightmares. “Too many questions for anything but guessing. In any case, it can wait. Far more pressing is the fact that runners are on the way from Olavayir to the royal city with the news that the Jarl of Olavayir is dead. His heirs are here. And right behind that news will be runners to report on what happened at the Pass.”

  “We will have to be prepared to be sent in all directions,” Mnar said, sighing. “Well, we can double up some classes, and the fledglings a year from promotion can make runs in teams. Good practice.”

  She got up to refill their cups of summer steep, noting that Camerend had not touched his. So she set that cup aside and fetched out the listerblossom as she said, “In the meantime, this Danet is a superlative ferret, at least as good as our own. Who trained her?”

  Camerend spread his hands.

  “I like the look of her, from what little I could see,” Mnar commented as she dropped some treated willow into the cup and handed it to Camerend. “She looks like me—lanky and brown. Of course I’m predisposed to like her.”

  Camerend recognized an attempt to ease the tension, and forced a smile before he sipped the scalding, bitter drink. Almost immediately the pounding in his head began to lessen.

  Mnar said, “Since Shendan asked you to get close to these Olavayirs anyway, maybe you ought to find out who trained her.” She folded the copy of the gunvaer’s letter, tucked it into her golden notecase, and tapped the sigil. The letter transferred to Darchelde. “Speaking of ferrets, you do remember I just sent our best two to find Kendred. Should we call them back to pursue this matter before the bad news begins arriving?” She bit her lip, then murmured, “Do you think we ought to ask Isa to come?”

  Camerend longed to see his wife and his little son, but dared not until he could get a better grip on himself. “Better to leave her in peace,” he said wearily.

  He dropped his head, his eyelashes lowering. They were long and blonde, as they’d been when Mnar met him as a twelve-year-old fellow runner-in-training.

  She thought back to Isa’s first day in Choreid Dhelerei. In the flurry of magic transfer from Darchelde, Isa had forgotten her gloves, and she stood shivering, near panic, in one of the classrooms, having touched a handsome piece of furniture that had apparently belonged to Evred Montreivayir’s murdered aunt.

  That was how Mnar met Isa, who’d just witnessed through that touch of the chair the mystery of Ndara Cassad’s murder by her own husband, more than a century previous. For her, it was as if it had happened yesterday, as spilled blood—even years old—always intensified what she experienced. Mnar had been so startled by the sight of this vague girl with the large, haunted eyes and the thin hands held out, fingers spread lest they touch anything more, that she’d stumbled right into a door.

  Camerend said, “My understanding is that only very recent touches reveal clear details to Isa, except of course in situations of extreme emotion. When an object is layered with everyday touches she experiences a, oh, a merging of images. If there’s anything violent in those images, she can’t separate from the pain.”

  “Right, right,” Mnar said hastily, remembering how quiet and tense and inward Isa had become over her years of study, her strange abilities sharpening by the year, until Shendan took her back to the peace and quiet of Darchelde, where the rare pain embedded in stone and wood was ancient and blurred, and she could live with calm, tender Frin, who as a faithful mate gave up her life as a runner to save Isa’s sanity.

  Where Camerend visited them when he could.

  Camerend went on. “Finding the regent is our most important need now. This Parnid situation has been going on for years, so though it looms as an intriguing mystery, I don’t see any need to rush to solve it. Whereas government affairs have to be piling up that only the regent can deal with before the bad news arrives.”

  While they were talking, down in the stable courtyard, a commotion announced the arrival of the Olavayir carts at last, the runners and escort Riders talking of an enormous snowstorm that had tied them down for a week, following which a frost set in, miring them for even longer. When that had melted enough to enable them to move safely, the roads had turned to mush, slowing them even more.

  Arrow was on the other side of the castle, drilling with his Riders. Jarend was with the royal guard, as the Royal Riders had been out at lance drill. The brothers’ personal runners were seeing to laundry and the next meal, as no castle runners had been assigned to assist them. So Danet and Tdor Fath had to do the unpacking, with only the help of the exhausted travelers.

  Danet was hot and sweaty by the time all the baskets and barrels and bundles had been hauled upstairs, but she was glad to note the easing of Tdor Fath’s expression at this long-awaited arrival of their nursery staff, and Rabbit’s familiar toys.

  “Did any runners catch up with you?” she asked at length.

  Rider Nunkrad, the chief nurse, had been a lancer until a bad fall had removed him forever from riding horses. He’d taken over the nursery when Jarend was beginning to toddle, and had been in charge of Olavayir Rider captains’ children as well as the jarl family ever since.

  He smoothed back his silver hair, which had been dripping in his face, as he said, “No, but when the blizzard struck, they could have been a horse length away and we wouldn’t have seen them. We ended up so far out of the way we missed Hesea Spring entirely.”

  “Blizzard?”

  “You didn’t get the blizzard here?”

  “It must have gone straight west above us, along the river,” someone else said. “Typical—when the winds change up north, we always get the worst storms before they see anything down here in the south.”

  Uttering the usual complaints about the weather which (as usual) nobody listened to, they dispersed to their various quarters to finish unpacking and settling in.

  It was well past midnight when everything had been stowed, including the new staff, to Tdor Fath’s satisfaction. Danet looked down at her empty bed wearily, having decided early the best way to catch Parnid was to go down to the kitchens and observe the traffic from the night watch.

  But she was so tired she flopped down, shut her eyes....

  Noddy wailed before dawn, as usual, jerking Danet out of deep sleep. Disgusted with herself, she pulled on a robe and went into the nursery, to discover Noddy dry and freshly washed, while Rabbit sat quietly, reacquainting himself with his wooden blocks under the benevolent eye of Nunka. Oh, what a relief to have a nursery again!

  She took Noddy for a feeding. When he was content, she dressed and hustled down to the kitchen annex, where for the third time, she nearly collided with Camerend. She managed to sidestep, then stumbled to a halt.

  “Do you always move at full charge?” he asked with a brief smile. His eyes were still marked with tiredness.

  “I didn’t know that I was.” Danet looked at him with concern, feeling too awkward to ask if he was all right. “I guess I got in the habit at Nevree, because I was always lost, or late, till I got used to the castle. And this one is even larger.”

  She looked away from him to the slate—and there, six items from the top, was the familiar name.

  And the requisition already crossed out.

  Danet was too late. It might be another month before Parnid turned up again. She bit her lip, fighting sharp disappointment.
“It’s probably breakfast time,” she said randomly, wanting to get away to deal with her clashing emotions.

  But Camerend fell in step beside her. He asked a couple of questions about education, then about keeping records, listening with clear interest to her answers. Danet found it easy to talk about Mother and her methods, her frustration at missing Parnid dissolving—leaving her aware of the man by her side. If only unwanted attractions could be scrubbed away like a patch of dirt!

  But she’d learned early how to take a tumble from a horse and keep going. This attraction to the wrong person was just another tumble.

  That night, a letter arrived by magic transfer to Camerend’s golden notecase. It was from his wife, Isa Eris:

  My dearest Camerend, our little Senrid is well, and playing with Frin at this moment. I can see him laughing at the finger-people Frin is making as she tells a story.

  Having sustained a waking dream that left me insensate for two nights and a day, I am taking up my pen at the urging of both Shendan and of course our beloved and steadfast Frin.

  The exact recounting of dreams, as I have told you and Frin both, is never to be trusted, for the images seldom correspond with any precision to the objects of daily life—each with its burden—and so I will only mention that which I believe concerns you and the indwelling of inimical intent.

  I understand that you, as well as the others, believe that my apprehension of evil, if even real (I understand that some are skeptical of easily brandished words such as “evil”), is merely an emotional reaction to my old life there before you and Shendan brought me to my refuge here in Darchelde. I understand that at least at times you, Frin, and Mother Shendan, the closest to my heart, believe my dreams are functions of what I suffered through inadvertent touch during my days as a student there.

  This may be so. And yet, and yet.

  I dreamed I was there in the royal city, by your side. My steadfast Frin, though she slept beside me here, was not present in this dream. You were very near the thickening strands in a webwork of sharpest crystal extruded by a spider made entirely of glass.