Time of Daughters I

by Sherwood Smith

  Danet’s letter made its way to the rest of the jarlans.

  When the Jarlan of Telyer Hesea received it, she took a day or two to think it over, then one morning summoned her children to her study, where she read out the letter.

  Her second son, Barend, (the one Danet thought was a girl named Chelis) looked up at the last.

  Little disturbed his tranquility. “That doesn’t sound like we’re being accused of deceit,” he said. Unlike his distant cousin in Marthdavan, who had been making trouble about being denied what sounded like prime fun that every other second son in the kingdom got to have, Barend was glad he’d never been forced to go to the academy. He loathed morning drill, and skipped it as often as he dared. “If they want a girl to come along, and Colt doesn’t want to go, you’ve only to offer Cousin Chelis in my place.”

  “I’m not that worried about your cousin standing in for you in the betrothal treaty. The fact that all these years have gone by without any of the trouble that has always beset the Olavayirs gives me to hope that the gunvaer will forgive our deceit, if she even finds out. As for this summons, it appears that all the jarlans, and not just me, are being summoned to the royal city. This is a first,” the jarlan added, for despite her words, her tone betrayed uncertainty. “Since there is no real alternative short of leaving the country at the gallop, of course I must go.”

  She paused and regarded her niece, whom the Riders had nicknamed Colt when she was barely three. The girl stood straight before her, her fine dark hair pulled up high into a boy’s horsetail, her coat the Rider’s gray, her sash worn at her hips as the boys did, not round her waist. She stood with her booted feet planted solidly, hands behind her back, the way the Riders waited at attention when receiving orders.

  In contrast, Barend lounged peacefully by the table, where he could watch the passing clouds out of the window, and try to define the exact shades in the light as it passed the edge, then hid behind the mass of gray, then emerged again into golden brightness. He contemplated measuring where the sun must be to thread gold through the subtleties of other colors.

  Carleas was so used to her son’s wandering attention that she gave him no heed now. Her concern at this moment was Colt. “I know you don’t want to ride with the girls to the games come summer,” she began slowly.

  Colt flattened her hand and struck it away. “I don’t ride with them the rest of the year. It would throw us all off our gait.”

  Carleas approached her idea tentatively. “Ever since I was a child, we’ve ignored the government as much as possible, as we could do little about it, short of uprisings. Mathren Olavayir made it fairly clear what would happen to those,” she added.

  Colt stood impassively, and Barend gazed out the window. Mathren was just a name to them both, Carleas could see that much.

  So Carleas left that subject, and got right to her plan. “I thought about taking you with me, Colt. Because there’s a rumor from at least three sources I trust that the gunvaer is summoning us to talk about starting the queen’s training again.” She tapped a letter on her desk. “I know you wanted to go to the academy....”

  “But queen’s training would be more of what the girls do, right?” Colt stated.

  And here was the crux of the matter. Carleas said, “I know the Riders accept you as one of them—”

  “Because I am one,” Colt stated, her heavy brows like Carleas’s own drawing down. She had the same domed forehead Carleas’s sister had had, and Colt’s expressions so often brought her sharply to mind, bringing up all the old grief. “I’m a Rider,” Colt said. “I’m a boy to them. To me.”

  Carleas gazed at her, then shot a puzzled glance at her son, who just a week ago had been wearing that flowing gown from overseas, his hair hanging down his back, as he walked around in a circle up in the sun room.

  She said in a bewildered tone, “Are we at fault here, for causing you two to trade places?”

  Barend looked up at that, his usually vague gaze suddenly acute. “Fault?” he repeated.

  Colt braced her shoulders back, her chin jerking up, a boy’s gesture, and entirely unconscious. “Why’s there ‘fault’ here? Who did anything wrong?”

  The jarlan’s glance toward Barend caused him to say, “Did it bother you, my wearing that Colendi silk? I told everyone, I wanted the feel of it, the move of it so I can get the folds right in my design.”

  Colt turned her palm up. “You know how he is, when he designs a new tapestry.”

  Carleas let out a slow breath. Yes, it was ill-advised to think that a single cause lay behind the paths her two had taken. In truth, Barend had never done anything but the basic lessons in self-defense training, and that with an attitude of weary endurance, even when he was seven years old. His life was entirely bound up in color and design, pattern and texture, and had been since he could hold a chalk in his chubby fist. No surprise. The Cassads tended toward artists. Colt had from the earliest age wanted to ride with the Riders, and the swap had been so easy that—Carleas saw now—she had never raised a question about its very ease. She and the jarl had just been vaguely grateful that the deception had been so simple. Unlike it had been for their connections in Marthdavan.

  Carleas laid aside the question of the royal city. “Colt. Would you say that you are a boy inside your skin, but given the wrong form?”

  Colt shrugged sharply. “Mostly, I don’t think about it at all. Unless someone starts in with how I ought to start running with the girls, I should braid my hair, get a robe.” She made a face. “Just because everyone else does. In truth, wearing a robe makes me feel naked. I don’t even know why it’s the way it is, that only boys wear coats—”

  Barend’s mild voice interjected here, “I can tell you that.”

  “I don’t care,” Colt said impatiently, but at the twin looks of quiet reproach the jarlan and Barend turned her way, her tone became less combative. “But I’ll listen.”

  “The Marlovans have no drawings from the old days,” Barend said with the assurance of one who had spent a great deal of time looking. “But the Iascans did. Especially our family. All in the old archives, the really old ones, at Telyer Tower. When the Marlovans left the Venn, everyone wore coats. It’s always winter up there, or so the ballads say. The Marolo-Venn moved south to the warmer lands and they turned to robes in summer. When the Marlovans invaded the Iascans, everything changed fast, as near as I can tell, including trying armor, though it interfered with fast riding, and so, during summer campaigns, they stayed with robes, but for winter brought out their old Venn coats....”

  Colt suppressed a sigh, already bored, but the jarlan listened to what she already knew with as much of an air of interest as she could project, as her son seldom spoke even this much. Most of the time his mind seemed to be somewhere else, which was another Cassad trait. At least, she thought gratefully as he described various types of clothing tried in the days when Marlovans first took to life in castles, he lost himself in tapestries and weaving instead of the world of ghosts.

  “...and many later ballads say that the first Montreivayir king stabbed Savarend Montredavan-An in the back. But in fact, he cut his throat from behind, and the jarls knew it, though the king wouldn’t let that be written in the archives. His jarls took to sitting in wingchairs, so they couldn’t be attacked from the back, and many began putting that little band of steel in the high collar of their coats, the way we have it now. According to the drawings these were really high collars, almost to the ears. You couldn’t get a knife past steel. And the king knew why, but he could say nothing. But everyone liked the coats with the high collar so the habit stayed, and since you can’t put a collar on a cotton-linen robe, much less a collar with steel in it, the coats required heavier construction.” He indicated the seams on himself.

  Carleas thanked her son, and said, “I remember Great-Aunt Lissanre Dei always saying that there is a story behind every fashion.” She turned to her daughter. “As for our previous subject. You probably don’t remember
Great-Aunt Ndara, on the Danold side.”

  When Colt shrugged again, Carleas said, “She was born a boy. Said from a child she was a girl. The Danolds offered to send her—when she was a him, you understand—to Sartor, where they have mages that can emulate what shapeshifters can apparently do without much effort. Only it takes time, it’s apparently painful, as you are forcing change within your body, which takes time for healing even when there is no weapon involved. And it’s expensive. Though the Deis in Sartor can well afford it. Anyway, the Danolds, I was told, wanted her, when still him, to wait until age twenty, because young people’s minds so often change. As soon as that twentieth Name Day came off he went, and came back Ndara, but said that the transformation was the worse because they’d waited so long, for all the physical changes that had to be undone. They should have sent Ndara earlier.”

  Both were paying attention now.

  Carleas said, “So, is this something you want, Colt? Because you have a much closer claim to the Sartoran branch of the Dei family than the Danolds, through me and your mother. We could find a way to share the cost.”

  Colt glanced down her male-clad body—his body when he rode in the sun and wind as a fellow Rider—as though seeing what wasn’t there, or evaluating what was. “I don’t know...I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “Outlander mages do a lot more things than we Marlovans are aware of, apparently. I could write to my Dei cousins today, if this is something you want,” Carleas said. “You still wouldn’t be able to go to the academy, as you’d return at, or older, than the age of the seniors.”

  Colt’s brow furrowed thoughtfully. “I’d be away a long time?”

  “I believe at least a year. There’s the healing and adjustment. We can find more out.”

  “I’ll think about that,” Colt said, but the aggrieved look returned. “I wish you’d asked when I was five or six. No, don’t speak. I know you’ll say I was too young. I didn’t even think about those things then. I was glad because Cousin Inda let me do sword with the rest of the boys. But the academy, why is it a man’s life? We shouldn’t have to go to Sartor to grow a prick. I mean...what if somebody, like, oh, Cousin Chelis, who likes being a girl, wanted to go to the academy, and she was as good as any boy?”

  The jarlan met Colt’s gaze somewhat helplessly. She had grown up knowing that the Cassads could be odd, and her son becoming a tapestry artist—an art customarily belonging to the women, and in some places jealously guarded—didn’t disturb her. Colt was half-Dei, a family for all its faults usually known for practicality as well as ambition, but she also was half-Noth, and nobody ever equated the Noths with anything but stolidity, strength, and steadiness.

  Colt snorted, glanced Barend’s way, and suddenly recollected a story he’d told her after one of his delvings in the family archives. “I wish I was Yxubarec. They just think whatever form they want to be.”

  Barend blinked, his usually serene brow puckering with mild disapprobation. “They mimic forms. Then they usually kill the person they mimicked.”

  “Exactly.” Carleas brought up her palm in a ward. “Child, aside from their evil practices, they aren’t truly human. They just take human form as a game. Male or female, it means nothing to them.”

  “I don’t see that being human is much to brag on,” Colt stated, then sighed. “Thanks, Ma. I know you mean well. Let me think on it.”

  “Do. And if you choose to ride into the royal city with me next Convocation, when women are called for the first time, then that would be fine, too.”

  THIRTEEN

  Despite the alterations reported above, it was said by many later that this next two years saw everything begin to change.

  Change is a constant; though one summer follows the next, each summer could not have occurred but for the events in the previous. Incidents that snag at memory take on importance, and later, when the surrounding days are forgotten, might seem isolated. More subtle variations in the daily routine sink into the deep waters of our minds, whence they might furnish the stuff of dreams, but otherwise remain unremembered.

  One change that was remarkable only for how unremarkable it was considered at the time: when Lineas reached sixteen, the same age as the princess, she was officially made Bun’s royal runner.

  Because we can never see the importance of events except in hindsight, I think it’s interesting to observe that no one in the royal castle outside of Lineas herself regarded her appointment as an event of note.

  It was a dreary day in winter, everyone’s breath clouding as Mnar and Lineas—the latter self-conscious in her new dark blue runner’s robe—walked together down to the royal floor below, and then to the princess’s rooms. There, the castle runners who usually dealt with the royal children’s things stood in a row, waiting, aware that the gunvaer was expected at any moment. The princess was there as well, for once almost still, which she rarely was unless asleep. Her merry eyes in her round face, and her short upper lip, made her look more like a rabbit than ever as she regarded Mnar and Lineas solemnly.

  Danet had been alerted by Sage, her third runner, that all were assembled, so she set aside her own work and walked past her sons’ closed doors to her daughter’s rooms.

  Danet said, “Lineas, welcome.” She turned to the runners lined against the wall. “Your chain of command now goes directly from Hadand-Edli....” At this rare mention of her given name, poor Bunny jumped, her eyes blinking rapidly. “...to Lineas, and to you.”

  The castle runners saluted, and at a wave of Danet’s hand, filed out the door. Mnar followed; everything she had to say had been said already.

  Danet turned to Lineas and her daughter, and said with such fondness that there was no sting whatever in her customarily acerb voice, “Bunny, you might be a thoughtless creature at times, but you show responsibility when it matters. So consider said the lecture about giving no orders that you wouldn’t want Lineas to have to bring to me. She’s trained to be loyal to you, but you must repay that loyalty by earning it. Lineas, I give the care of my daughter into your hands. Serve, defend, and protect her.”

  “I will,” Lineas said, hand to heart.

  Danet went out, utterly unaware of the tension in the room going with her, commensurate with the respect everyone held for her. In her mind, she was still Mother Farendavan’s dutiful daughter, of no particular looks or smarts or talent, trained to her duty.

  Alone, the two girls turned to one another. They scarcely drew breath before the clatter of boot heels approached, and the two princes appeared in the open door.

  Lineas’s gaze went straight to Connar, who was, if possible, even more beautiful seen up close than glimpsed down the hall, or across a courtyard.

  “There you are, royal runner,” Noddy said, his deepening voice still very much an adolescent honk. “Heyo, Bun, never thought it’d be you, first one of us to get a personal runner.”

  Connar was thinking just as well he didn’t have to deal with an extra pair of eyes shadowing him, but he wasn’t going to say that. “Good, someone we can send to get us a jug of bristic of our own,” he joked.

  Lineas suppressed the shiver ringing through her nerves at the sound of Connar’s voice. It was so unlike any other voice, slightly husky, but it sounded somehow like music. Though she’d never heard him sing.

  With her mother’s admonition echoing in her ears, Bun said firmly, “No, you won’t. She’s mine-mine-mine. You get your own bristic. I hate that stuff anyway.”

  The boys laughed and clattered out again, Lineas fading from their minds within five steps out the door. Not so for poor Lineas, still enjoying the intensity of her secret love; that brief moment when eyes met eyes, forgotten in five heartbeats by him, from her earned a page and a half of description and speculation in her journal that night.

  So Lineas’s bright red hair was seen even more often on the royal floor, which no one remarked except Lineas herself. She poured out her feelings in pages and pages of minute, deeply coded journaling with t
he tireless ardency peculiar to the age of sixteen.

  Connar’s own passion was reserved for hard winters of exercise in his own room, and for readings of battles in records passed to him by Hauth. These records had been hoarded in the dolphin-clan of the Olavayirs, brought out by Mathren Olavayir for training Nighthawk Company. These papers had been rescued and preserved by Hauth when the company broke up in bloody violence after Thad tried to take command by having all naysayers flogged—and ended up dead himself, having never realized that his own authority had vanished the day Mathren dropped to the stone floor in Evred’s tower, felled by Jarend Olavayir’s fist.

  This treasured sheaf of papers contained not only records of Olavayir dolphin-clan heroes, but—valued most of all—One-Eyed Cama Tyavayir’s reminiscences of his academy days and the battles after, as recorded by one of his sons.

  A small portion of the papers was about Inda-Harskialdna, who was only in the academy two seasons. Most of the academy stories were Cama One-Eye’s memories of Evred-Harvaldar’s academy wargame wins and losses, usually against the equally famous Whipstick Noth, father of all three present branches of the Noth family. Cama insisted that Inda’s plans lay at the root of these academy battle games.

  The latter half of the memoir described Cama One-Eye’s governing of the lawless north in the days after the Venn invasion, interspersed with conversations with someone known only as Fox, who described Inda’s battles at sea. Initially, Connar skimmed these sea battles with little interest, as they were mostly about ships, maritime customs, and foreign kings. His attention was reserved entirely for the wargame accounts, each with a name that began with “Inda.” Inda’s River Defense. Inda’s Two Hill Flank Decoy. Inda’s whirtler arrow signals.

  Most of those academy sites still existed, and many even had the same names. What Connar picked up in poring over these accounts was that terrain was important, and so, on wintry days between snow storms, when he and Noddy went riding, he explored those sites as closely as he could, without ever telling Noddy why he chose this or that destination.