Time of Daughters I

by Sherwood Smith

  Danet could see how tired the elderly jarlan was, and rose, thanking her.

  They had agreed to her idea. It was a good idea, but what would inviting girls for the competition lead to?

  As she walked downstairs, she wondered if it was time to bring up the queen’s training again, though a stab of guilt made her pause. She had fallen out of the habit of morning riding and shooting drill after she’d recovered from Bun’s birth. The constant demand of work, the lack of time...she went out to ride, mostly to exercise Firefly, but the truth was, Mother would be disgusted with her. She wasn’t even certain which trunk held her old bow.

  But that didn’t mean other women, who had the time, and the skill, and the desire, couldn’t be part of kingdom defense.

  She fell asleep during a mental redesign of the castle, and after she woke and bathed, she sent a runner across to Arrow.

  He showed up shortly after, his hair still wet, like hers. “What is it? I’ve got to get over to—”

  She forestalled him before he could launch into a long ramble about his day. “I want to send out an order, so the jarl families can start planning. Most of my betrothals are beginning to reach our boys’ age. Within a very few years they’re bound to be interested in who they are to marry. I think the girls ought to come to the royal city, say for the Victory Day competitions. Then the girls can either return home, or perhaps go for a visit with their betrothed’s family to see their future home. Get to know each other.”

  “To stay?”

  “That’s up to them. Stay, or return home again. I want them all first meeting each other around fifteen or sixteen, which you know is generally when interest starts. Get used to each other.”

  Arrow propped his hands on his hips, which were still as skinny as when they first met. But as he stared down at the stone floor in thought, she saw that his hair had begun to thin around his temples. When had that happened? He wasn’t even forty yet!

  He looked up. “I don’t know. Girls! I have enough randy teens to deal with.”

  “Girls used to be in the Games, during Inda-Harskialdna’s day,” she reminded him. “We don’t have to hold the defense game, since many girls aren’t trained in castle defense the way it was in our great-great-grandmothers’ time. Let’s invite the girls to compete in riding and shooting exhibitions. You know they’re good. Maybe it’ll make the boys try harder.”

  Arrow gave her a peculiar look.

  “What?” she asked.

  He wiped his hands over his face. “I take it you also knew that my father’s summer game ride and shoot was won by Calamity Senelaec and her cousins, dressed as boys.”

  “What?”

  They stared at one another, she in shock, and he surprised to see her surprise.

  The sense of his words hit Danet, bringing up scattered memories of that week. Calamity again! “I didn’t know,” Danet said slowly. “They were there, I remember that! Calamity and Fuss helped me with Noddy. I always thought they came to watch the boys.”

  “Knuckles Marlovayir figured it out,” Arrow said, laughing. “He told me at last Convocation. You know it was his first, his da having handed off the jarlate. I thought you knew! Kept mum for Calamity’s sake.”

  “How did he figure it out?” Danet asked as she struggled inwardly with a fresh flare of those emotions she’d thought conquered.

  “That feud they’ve got going, the Marlovayirs and Senelaecs. What with all the back and forth, they all knew each other by sight. He didn’t see Wolf at that ride and shoot. But he recognized Wolf and the Senelaec riders in all the other competitions. Then on the last day, out came the strange riders again, and shot the Marlovayirs out of the wargame when everyone else was riding around in the dust yelling at each other, Wolf included. Knuckles saw them up close—thought at first they were a bunch of scrubs, then figured out they were girls. Now he’s the jarl, it’s more’n ten years later, and he admits it was funny, though he’d never tell Wolf that, of course.” His eyes narrowed. “You say you didn’t know, yet you want girls in the games. Is this a covert plan to get girls in the academy?”

  “Why not?” Danet retorted.

  “I want them defending their own borders,” he said. “Especially if I have to call for the men.”

  “Against?”

  “I don’t know! If the Venn come back. If those northern shits come back down the Pass for a second try.” He wrinkled his forehead. “Would I have to start all over again, trying to figure out how run women riders?”

  She snorted. “Not if you think of them all as warriors. And you would, if they trained here.”

  Arrow rubbed his hands over his face and up over his head, then dropped them. “Send out your order. Let’s see how they all do with the Victory Day competitions. We’ll go from there.”

  He left, and Danet stayed where she was, knowing it was unreasonable to be angry with Calamity all over again, this time for the girls’ ruse at the wargame when they were all young. In no way had that been aimed at her—they hadn’t even met yet.

  Still, the feeling of betrayal would not go away. She decided not to write to her—or to any of the Senelaecs. She’d send a scribe-written decree to Calamity, as well as to all the other jarlans, inviting girls to the Victory Day competition. The question of reviving the queen’s training could wait: first, take a look at what sort of training the various jarlans’ daughters received. Or, supposed daughters.

  “Over to you, Calamity,” she whispered under her breath.

  SEVEN

  Summer at last gave way to autumn, and then winter, which closed in everyone except hardy runners crossing the kingdom back and forth.

  Correspondence was fitful, arriving between storms and frosts. Danet didn’t expect to hear any reactions to her new order until spring, excepting possibly the closer jarlates. There were both verbal messages and letters acknowledging the invitation, including from the Senelaecs, and that came from the jarlan’s hand. Danet read that with conflicted feelings: she could not, of course, know why Calamity hadn’t written back, and it was too easy to ascribe negative emotions to her because Danet felt wronged. She threw the letter into the fire and forced herself to turn to the ongoing river of work.

  Early spring brought a larger spate of letters, everything as expected—except for one.

  She took the letter into her chamber and sat down, contemplating the sealed paper. She knew almost nothing of Linden-Fareas Algaravayir. What she did know was that in the past several generations—since the Olavayirs had inherited the throne—the much-reduced lands that had produced the famous Inda-Harskialdna were now generally known as Algaravayir.

  “Iofre” was the last of the Old Iascan titles, meaning female holder of a principality. Back in the Iascan days, Choreid Elgaer had been a principality, Mother had said when she taught Danet the map. It and the Cassadas lands were the only ones the Marlovans had acquired by marriage instead of war. Choreid Elgaer had kept its old name when a Marlovan captain, Algara, married its princess. He’d added vayir to his name along with the rest of the early jarls.

  But now there was no Adaluin, or prince. The last male Algaravayir had gone to Sartor to live, that much Danet knew. Arrow had insisted that Danet arrange a betrothal for Noddy with one of the twin girls born to the Iofre.

  Danet-Gunvaer:

  I write to you to assure you in part of my acceptance of your decree about betrothed daughters coming to the royal city at sixteen to meet their future husbands.

  I see the reasoning, and agree. I am heartened by your sensible compromise between sending full-grown strangers into a new land, expecting to fit in, and the cruelty of the old two-year-old tradition.

  But this order, coming now, causes me to reflect on the fact that the next few years are unlikely to see material change in my daughters. I know that Hadand (firstborn by moments) has been honored as your choice for Nadran-Sierlaef, and that Noren is intended to go north to the Yvanavayirs.

  But I believe it would be better for Noren to
come to the royal city instead of her sister. And also, I would prefer to find one of Hadand’s cousins for the Yvanavayir boy, as I believe she will be better remaining at home.

  I apologize for this disruption of your plans, but hope that the change can be made while none of the young people involved have met, and have no expectations other than a name.

  Linden-Fareas Algaravayir

  Danet read the letter through twice, then summoned her First Runner, Loret, and handed her the letter. “What do you make of this? Don’t you come from that area?”

  Loret bent her head over the letter. She was stocky and brown, unremarkable to look at until she got outside at the shooting range. Those shoulders and arms enabled her to shoot as far as many men.

  Loret looked up, pale eyes solemn. “The Iofre says what she means.”

  Danet sighed inwardly. “Isn’t one of those twins deaf?”

  “Noren,” Loret said.

  “Who knows Hand-speech among you?”

  “Shen is the best,” Loret said. “We all know some, but we’re not expert, as we don’t have any deaf runners at present. Though one of the fledglings has a deaf mother, and is equally fluent in Hand.”

  Shen, Danet’s Second Runner, was Danet’s liaison with the guilds and the few foreign contacts—she knew more languages than any of the other runners, and they all learned several.

  “The boys—no, all of us—are going to have to begin learning Hand, if Noren comes to us instead of the other sister. But,” Danet said, thinking sourly of Calamity and the false Ranet. “I want to know why the switch. What’s wrong with the other twin? I wish I could go investigate myself. You really don’t know more?”

  Loret’s gaze blanked, then she said, “I’ve been here in the royal city since I was ten. I’ve never seen those girls. And I can’t answer a question like that, when all I’ve heard is hearsay.”

  “Hearsay like what?” Danet asked, exasperated. Everybody gossiped...except the royal runners, who would only repeat what they’d verified themselves.

  Sure enough, Loret just turned her palm down without meeting Danet’s eyes.

  Danet scowled at the letter. Mnar had chosen both Loret and Shen. Danet found them honest, scrupulous, and good at their work. They carried out her orders exactly as she wished. Even young Sage, her new Third Runner, demonstrated a quiet maturity beyond her eighteen years.

  But that quiet maturity—that refusal to indulge in anything that might whiff of gossip—did not serve Danet now.

  She looked up. “Pass on the order to Shen, will you? It’s too bad the boys just went over to the academy, but at least Bun can start lessons in Hand-speech.”

  Loret said, “The younger Mareca boy is deaf, and the academy fourth-years are all learning Hand from Master Denold.”

  Danet tapped the letter against her fingers. Her boys had just become fifth years. To send them to join the fourth year classes would be obeyed, but the boys would regard being sent to a lower year for lessons as the deadliest of insults, she knew. Everything was life and death at that age—except real life and death, the first taken for granted, the second as remote as the stars. And they all wanted to be grown up yesterday: it was only when youth was gone that it was valued. “Tutoring,” she said finally.

  Loret touched fingers to chest and walked silently out.

  Danet dropped the letter on her desk, made herself read the last of her correspondence, then lifted her head, about to summon Sage to fetch Tesar, who by now should have had a meal and a bath.

  No. That wouldn’t do, either.

  She mulled over the questions raised by the Iofre’s letter for the rest of the day, until she came to the inescapable conclusion that she must take the royal runners’ rule to heart, and investigate herself.

  That evening, she went in search of Arrow, finding him coming back from a long day of wrangling the guilds.

  His face looked flushed as he said abruptly, “We have four excellent harbors! Five, if you count The Nob—”

  “Which I don’t,” Danet said, steadied as always by the unassailability of numbers. “It’s merely a resupply and transfer point. We get almost nothing out of it.”

  “Except preventing an army marching down the peninsula,” Arrow said. “But that has nothing to do with—” He interrupted himself mid-stride. “Why are you here? Something happened? Is it the boys?”

  “No,” she said. “Surely you’d know that before I,” she couldn’t help adding; she had scarcely seen the boys all winter, for they seemed to have reached that age when elders were anathema, preferring to stalk the garrison boys in interminable games that too often brought them back with bruises and roughened knuckles. But Arrow enjoyed hearing stories of their wins. As long as they moved together, he insisted it was good for them, leaving Danet little to say.

  “So what is it?” he asked.

  She summarized the letter and her consequent questions, then said, “I’ve decided to go to Algaravayir to see for myself what’s amiss.”

  He stopped dead, his eyes wide and suspiciously pink. Yes, he smelled like double-distilled bristic. By now she was expert at assessing him: he’d obviously stopped to drink the edge off his irritation, but he wasn’t soused. “You can’t go,” he said.

  “Are we at war?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then I don’t see why I can’t go. Don’t say gunvaers mustn’t travel. Hadand Deheldegarthe went all the way over the mountains to the Adranis and survived just fine. There is no reason why I shouldn’t ride down to Algaravayir. It’s spring. I’ll be back before the first strawberries ripen. I’ll only take Sage, so Tesar will be here if you have to send for me. Loret and Shen know my routine as well as I do, and you’re here for major decisions, and for the children.”

  Arrow scowled. “I don’t like your going.”

  “Why not? Arrow, this is Noddy’s future wife. The future gunvaer. When I asked Loret, she wouldn’t talk. Wouldn’t meet my eyes. Which means she knows something about them down there, but it’s thirdhand. I need to see and hear for myself.”

  He rolled his eyes. “All right. But only if you take an honor guard.”

  “They'd better be fast,” she warned. “I’m not going to dawdle for weeks, and come back to half a year’s worth of reports to catch up on.”

  He grinned. “I’ll pick the men. You’ll have to keep up with them.”

  She snorted.

  She and Arrow walked back together, and as Bun had not turned up by the time the watch bell rang and the runners brought up supper, they sat in Arrow’s inner room, and gave each other detailed comments on the day’s doings, Danet adding what she expected he might have to deal with during her absence.

  Bun ran in halfway through the meal, covered with dust and dog hair, and plopped down. Arrow and Danet spoke at the same time, “Go wash up!”

  Bun cast a dramatic sigh, dashed out, and returned to a covered dish, not that she ever noticed if her food was hot or cold. When she finished a running stream of commentary on how clever her animals were, Danet said, “I’m leaving in the morning for a trip south to meet Noddy’s future wife.”

  Bun dropped a rye biscuit. “I want to go too!”

  “No.” This time mother and father said it one after the other.

  Danet said, “You need to be more responsible with your studies, instead of running off to the stables whenever you think you can escape actual work.”

  “I do my work!”

  “Then why is it you cannot name all the kings and queens of this kingdom, and yet you know the name of every single dog, cat, and cow in the entire castle—not to mention all the horses, including those only here for a short time?”

  Silence fell.

  At Bun’s miserable face, she added, “In a couple of years, if she comes to visit, you might ride to meet her. If you show more responsibility....”

  Bun interrupted as soon as she heard the familiar words about responsibility, and offered passionate promises. When she saw that her
mother remained unmoved, she sighed, accepted what couldn’t be changed, and the rest of the meal passed with Bun speculating on which horses would go—which ones got along best with one another, and so forth.

  At the end of the meal she pelted out, leaving Danet to say wryly, “She’ll miss the horses more than she’ll miss me. As for the boys, they won’t even notice I’m gone.”

  Arrow flashed a grin. “They’ll notice on Restday. Though I might just let them stay over there with their friends. They keep begging me to let them stay in their barracks. Why not let ‘em. I can spend Restday with Hliss, Bun, and Andas, or go over to the garrison with Noth.”

  “Then the boys’ll hate me when I return and they have to wear House tunics again,” Danet commented.

  “Too bad,” Arrow retorted. “If I have to dress fine, they have to dress fine.”

  Danet laughed, then crossed to her rooms. She called in her runners, told them what was going to happen, and was sorting things on her desk when a knock came at the door.

  She expected Noth—and looked forward to a night with him—but when Shen opened the door, it was Mnar.

  Danet exclaimed, “I was going to talk to you in the morning, before I left. Unless there’s something I don’t know about?”

  Mnar skipped past that with the ease of old habit, and said, “I have a request.”

  “Yes?”

  “That you take Lineas.”

  “Lineas?” Danet repeated, then remembered the fox-faced little runner-in-training with the red hair, glimpsed occasionally now and then. “Why? Does she have some connection in Algaravayir?”

  “Her mother’s twin brother is Aldren Noth, one of the Algaravayir Riders, but of course Lineas has never met him. More to the point, Lineas grew up using Hand-sign as well as speaking Marlovan, as her mother is deaf. So she’ll be of help with you there. Also, if you remember, we’re training her to be either Bunny’s or the future gunvaer’s First Runner.”