When she bypassed the throne room and started up the stairs over the banquet hall opposite, she heard the clatter and chatter of preparations below. She marched through the door and sailed into the archive, where she found a dozen scribes of various ages sitting about idly, as New Year’s Firstday was a liberty day in most of the world.
All looked startled at her entrance, then rose to their feet.
She studied each face, unaware of her own expression, which was pretty much a glare. Most of them recognized her, and remembered, vividly, the jokes they’d made at her expense the first time she came through that door.
Her eyes narrowed, and the oldest of the scribe students hastily recollected being taught the salute to a gunvaer, and snapped his palm to his chest.
Hands impacted chests. Danet waited another endless moment, studying the ruddy faces, all wary, many with the wariness, and awareness, of guilt.
“Today is a festival day,” she said, arms still crossed. “But tomorrow morning, you are going to show me everything. I want someone here and ready for a thorough tour. Someone who can answer every question.
Her hot gaze met the eyes of that tall fellow who had been so sarcastic. Her breath hissed out. “And if you still find me boring, you can always go count ships up at the Nob.”
His face blanched. Satisfaction surged in her. She bit back an impulse to lengthen the moment, but she could hear Mother’s scorn for that. Make your point, don’t belabor it, or the point gets lost in resentment.
She backed up, shut the door with a decisive click, and marched back to her new chambers, laughing under her breath in giddy exhilaration. She knew the exhilaration wouldn’t last. The kingdom was a mess, the castle was worse. Those scribes were probably cursing her roundly, back in that room. She’d given herself the rest of New Year’s Week to work through Mathren’s papers. Along with learning how to do tallies for an entire kingdom.
She couldn’t find the right way to describe her emotions, except terrifying, overwhelming, thrilling in a runaway-horse sense.
She found Arrow waiting outside her door, looking frowzy and red-eyed, smelling of drink. She couldn’t find it in herself to blame him. He had to be worrying about Mathren’s secret army, which might gallop up any day, swords waving. Then there was what to do about the massacre up north, and who knew what other problems she had no conception of, which never again could be passed along for someone else to deal with. She wouldn’t let herself hate the responsibilities that had avalanched onto them, but she knew it would be easy to give in and blame the entire world.
“Noddy’s awake,” he said.
“I figured he would be,” she replied. “I went to the scribes. Tomorrow, first thing, I’m getting a tour of the archives. All of them. Then I think we both better tackle the quartermaster, and find out what he knows.”
“I’ve already done that,” Arrow said. “Dead end—followed orders, did my job, is all he said. ‘Don’t know the runners, only the commander did, they just keep the records.’ I’ve gotten rid of him.” He stepped close, and peered down into her face. “Danet, I don’t feel any Birth Spell mysteriously coming into my head, whatever anyone says about it, and I want Noddy to have a brother. We need to make sure there’s going to be a future king, everything right and orderly.”
He could have a sister, Danet thought, but she knew what he meant: he was afraid, as she was, that Noddy would become a target. And Marlovan kings had always been men. Maybe one day there could be queens only. There certainly were elsewhere in the world, she’d heard, but she also knew that she, an accidental gunvaer, was not going to be able to change that.
“I don’t feel any magic Birth Spell either,” she said. “I think if it works at all, we both feel it. That’s the way it did for my great-grandmother, anyway.” Nobody knew how, or when, or if, the Birth Spell would come to someone who longed for children. Only that occasionally it did.
“Will you drink gerda?” Arrow asked, peering anxiously into her eyes.
“Yes,” she promised, and in spite of the emotional inundation she caught at one tiny triumph: if she was about to be pregnant again, at least she’d nabbed those cushions.
“I will not be sorry to leave the ghosts here,” the old gunvaer said, her voice quavering, as her runner helped her down the steps of her tower for the last time. “That poor boy is everywhere I look. He’s so much brighter than the others....”
Danet waited with Tdor Fath at the bottom of the stairs, hands gripping in her sleeves. When Hesar-Gunvaer reached them, Tdor indicated for Gdan to take the old woman’s other arm, and so they slowly, and safely, guided her out to the courtyard.
Danet cast a quick look upward, though the bright, almost brittle light indicated an iron-hard frost. She knew Jarend and company would travel as fast as they could while it lasted. She trailed them, trying to think of something to say, but everything was too strange, too strained.
However, the gunvaer was thinking of her. “Young Dannor,” she said, as Danet grimaced, but didn’t correct the old gunvaer. “You must reinstate the betrothal system before this kingdom tears itself apart. All of Hadand-Gunvaer Deheldegarthe’s dynastic records are in the archive, which you now have the authority to unlock. Ranor and I will fill in the last generations. You must begin keeping records now.”
Another task. Danet said, “Thank you for the advice. I’ll see to it.” She knew that Mother as well as Ranor-Jarlan would agree.
“Mount up,” Jarend said. At the prospect of returning home, he looked as happy as he ever had, even though the knife of grief still cut his heart when people saluted him as jarl.
Arrow ranged himself alongside Danet as the Riders who had chosen to return to Olavayir formed columns ahead of and behind the tent-covered cart bearing Hesar-Gunvaer. Tarvan clambered up on the cart, smiling; Jarend’s single blow to Mathren, who had terrified Tarvan since early childhood, had prompted the boy to beg to go with the new jarl. Jarend, kind of heart, had promised to find him a good place at Nevree.
Jarend’s good mood was a startling contrast to Retren Hauth riding shield. He’d chosen—to Arrow’s considerable relief—to return to Olavayir. After Sneeze reported an altercation with eagle-clan’s Riders, Arrow had forbidden them to harass Hauth further. Hauth’d been loyal to dolphin-clan, and an excellent lancer, though Arrow had always hated him for bullying Jarend. In contrast Lanrid could do no wrong in Hauth’s eyes—Lanrid’s bullying was “toughing up.”
Glad that he’d soon see Hauth’s back, Arrow smiled as Jarend stated the obvious, “Today’s the first day of the new year. And I’m going home.” Arrow knew that when Jarend told everybody what they already knew, he was making certain it was really true.
“That’s right,” Arrow said. “New Year’s Week is over, a new year has begun. And you’re the new Jarl of Olavayir, so ride out like a jarl, eh?”
Jarend raised his fist and turned it toward the gate. The cavalcade began to move, the trumpeters signaling Jarl riding, which would clear the streets to the city gate, where the trumpeters would peal again in final salute.
The brothers lifted their hands to one another, then Jarend rode through the gate, and Arrow cast a huge sigh. “I hope that’s the last we hear about ghosts,” he said as they turned back to the tower entrance. “I wish I could believe it’s all old age and her blindness. The thought of Evred watching us makes my neck crawl.”
“Me, too,” Danet said. “Though I hope she’s right about the dynastic archive. Hadand-Gunvaer’s letters were located in one of the oldest archives, under some other old trunks. I’ve had them moved to my rooms. It’s going to take time to go through them. She wrote a lot of letters, it seems.”
She was going to say more, but saw the disinterest in Arrow’s face, and shut her mouth. They both had too much to do—and Arrow was going to hold the execution of Kendred’s murderers, who Noth’s investigative team—all experienced city patrollers—had captured. Danet was relieved he hadn’t insisted on her being there.
“Did you get them all?” Danet asked.
“Three of them. Right there in the Captain’s Drum. They seemed to think I’d reward them, because I was always there with Evred. Well, they thought wrong,” Arrow said, brows twitching into an irritated line. “I told Noth to have the city patrol do surprise searches in that midden heap until they catch the last one of them. Someone’s sure to turn him in if the patrols make life miserable enough.”
He sent a quick look Danor’s way. “You want to send those scribes down to watch? As a reminder?”
“No need,” she said. “They’ve been working hard.” Mother had always said it was a mistake to threaten people obviously doing their best, even if they made mistakes, or they didn’t like you. If you have to remind them of your rank, you’ve already lost their respect, Mother had said when talking to Danet about becoming randviar, before her ride to Nevree.
“Some of them, I think they’re happy to be given real work. Mathren didn’t let them do anything but copy guild records, and general orders.”
“Right. Noth’s questions turned up nothing but more about how Mathren didn’t permit anyone to question orders. So the sooner you figure out what he was hiding, the better,” Arrow said, and Danet turned up her hand, smothering her annoyance.
Mother was right, she thought. Being reminded of your duty when you’re already working your hardest doesn’t make you work any harder.
But she kept that to herself, and they parted at the landing, he going on to the garrison and she to Mathren’s lair, where she’d spent all New Year’s Week sorting things into piles, and then listing abbreviations and symbols, and possible meanings.
All she needed was a single clue, even a date—
Then the obvious struck her. Wouldn’t the royal runners have records of letters sent out, including dates? Obviously Mathren sent his own runners, especially with the coded ones, but maybe, maybe, maybe there was a week, a day, something, when he had to use the royal runners and there would be a record up there that she could use to triage the codes between Marlovan-written dates.
She whirled around and trotted in the opposite direction, then ran up the last flight of stairs two at a time, to the third floor, where the royal runners lived and worked.
She’d only been up there twice. There was usually a royal runner within call, but it was early. Mnar’s fledglings were probably at their morning drill, and her usual assistants at breakfast.
She heard voices echoing from a room down the hall. Seeing the doors open, she headed down the unlit stone corridor toward the rooms that all faced east, and so were full of light.
Peering in, she saw Camerend Montredavan-An, who had been away all week. She hadn’t seen him ride in—but obviously he had, probably during the commotion attending Jarend’s departure. One glimpse of his distraught face as he held a tousle-haired child of two or three and she backed away, nerves stinging. Not certain why, for officially the royal runners now worked for her, and the entire castle was in principle under her rule, she did not want him or any of them to know she was there. It was the naked grief in his face, he who was always so very composed and aware.
Walking on her tiptoes so her boots wouldn’t clatter, she stepped to the stairs, and fled down even faster than she’d come up.
TWENTY-FOUR
Shendan, Jarlan of Montredavan-An, paid a rare visit to the new king and queen.
She said, “I have sent Camerend to Sartor to refresh his language studies, so—with your permission—I’m temporarily resuming my old post as chief of the royal runners. When he returns, he will supervise your translation scribes who deal with foreign affairs.”
Arrow looked at her askance, then to Danet. Both were too intimidated by the sharp-eyed old woman to ask why she’d taken it upon herself to send Camerend out of the country. But then the royal runners had their own chain of command, which it had not occurred to either Arrow or Danet to question.
Danet said firmly, “Very well. We’ll carry on as we’ve begun.”
The first days of the new reign turned into a week, and weeks into a month, then another; no army showed up at the gates. Danet finally cracked Mathren’s record book code (based with cool arrogance on the words Harvaldar Sigun, or war-king triumphant), just to discover that there was no evidence in that office of the scrupulously noted orders and reports all enticingly labeled NHC, but those telltale ashes lying in the fireplace.
There were plenty of reports not labeled NHC. Such as pages and pages of spies’ reports on secrets and weaknesses of every jarl and Rider Captain in the kingdom, including—especially—eagle-clan. After reading the malicious exaggerations written about Arrow and Jarend, and especially about their father, Danet burned those pages herself, joining their ash to the rest in that fireplace. She also decided to burn the reports labeled LH (Lanrid-Harvaldar), about Lanrid’s improvement in various military skills. Lanrid was dead, as was his brother, whose reports were full of notes about how often Sindan bucked training in favor of going off to various taverns to sing, or hear singing, and the resultant punishments. She wasn’t sure why those made her sad, but they did, and she chucked those papers hastily after the others.
She saved all the reports on the garrison and Royal Rider captains to hand off to Arrow. He could decide what to do with them.
Secret army details—there were none. Mathren must have kept all that off-site somewhere, or, given his penchant for secrecy and strict separation of chains of command, in his head. But she was not defeated. Oh, no. With access to the treasury and guild records, even given the lacunae in Mathren’s records, there were ways to find out what she wanted.
And so she got to work, without noticing how the scribes’ wary attitude metamorphosed to a grudging regard for how hard she labored, and then finally to genuine respect as their skills in turn gained her trust and confidence.
Meanwhile, Arrow, with Commander Noth’s practical and circumspect advice, was slowly reorganizing the garrison and what remained of the Royal Riders. Most of them had been dispersed, under new orders that everyone in every garrison was to rotate every two years, to break up Mathren’s coteries. It helped some when Arrow showed wavering captains the pages that Danet had uncovered about them, each bearing Mathren’s distinctive handwriting.
And so life settled into what almost might be called normal, as winter roared on.
The first stretch of relatively benign weather brought another slew of messengers. One of these was a royal runner bearing a scribe-written treaty proposal, accompanied by a personal letter addressed to Evred, from Haldren Arvandais, new king of Lorgi Idego:
My sister’s death after her massacre of the Olavayir Riders—who, I learned after the fact, had come to negotiate a marriage contract—put an end to any wishes by my family, kin, and people for war on either side of the Pass.
Our desire is for independence, and to be left in peace. If our treaty is accepted, as you’ll see in the diplomatic language, we promise to preserve all trade south as it has been. All that would change would be the Marlovan titles imposed after the Ghael Hills War, for the truth is, Idego is not truly Marlovan—though Marlovan jarl families and riders married among them. The number of us who speak both languages is vanishingly small, for to communicate, the southern-born jarl families have always had to learn the local tongue. Though we have continued our military training in the Marlovan tradition, our tactics have evolved since the days of the Venn war, as our geography is not the same as that in the south. The sea is the heart of the north shore, not the plains. Our chief trade is by ship, as well as our main defense—though you know we can fight on land if we have to.
>
For us, belonging to Marlovan Iasca there on the far side of the mountains is a heavy cost that brings little benefit. The demand for army support if the king calls would only benefit us if the Venn—who we know are magic-bound to their own land—were to come again. Whereas it takes the better part of a year for our jarls to travel south for Convocation and back, leaving the north shore without effective command for defense during that time.
If you agree to my proposed treaty, we shall send back the horses my sister captured with those of us who would rather rejoin the Marlovan kingdom, and we will also give back the six ships the Evred-Harvaldar to whom we are both related sent north to defend us. They shall be laden with goods for you to use or disperse as you see fit, as there can be no true recompense for the lives lost in Andahi Pass at my sister’s command.
Speaking now as one new king to another, I am as sorry as any human being can be over what occurred. What’s more, I believe that many who struck those blows have come to regret their actions, for there was little complaint when I broke up my sister’s force and scattered them across the north here, most to serve at harbor border garrisons, or on our own fleet, which will watch for pirates heading south as well as down the strait. I offer this promise: our fleet will regard the waters north of the Nob as our waters, and southward as yours.
The boy who sang—I am reliably told his name was Sindan Olavayir—has become a legend. Before my sister shot him he was singing the Lament of Andahi Pass, which celebrates the bravery of my foremothers, a Lament I understand is sung all over Halia on the anniversary. We share this much, and in that memory, and grief, I hope we can find our way toward peace.
Many of those who heard Sindan Olavayir say he still comes in dreams. He certainly comes in mine.
Arrow said to Danet in the privacy of her bedroom, “I’ve been having nightmares about Idego all winter. It’s not as if I even have an army I could send against them. We’re scattered more than I’d thought, with three entire companies, based at Hesea Garrison, wasted patrolling Darchelde.”
Time of Daughters I Page 24
