Time of Daughters I

by Sherwood Smith

  The boys’ avid gazes locked onto the short, pear-shaped blonde girl in the silver-trimmed green robe: an actual Algaravayir! Her hands fluttered hummingbird-fast at Bunny (the latter struggling to keep up) as the two strolled at the front of the crowd.

  Most of the girls remained blithely unaware of their hidden audience. They were too busy assessing one another as potential competition in the field. Noren, however, who relied on other senses besides hearing, had been aware of the uneven shadows bumping along the roof line as they passed the back end of the stable, and guessed who they might be and why.

  “We’re being spied on, aren’t we?” she signed with considerate deliberation to Bun when she had her back firmly to the roof.

  Bunny sighed. “My brothers,” she signed back.

  Noren accepted this. She’d been prepared to be stared at and evaluated. You can’t change your ancestors.

  As soon as the queen came out, the boys retreated fast, most of them believing the queen could see through stone with those steely eyes of hers.

  Danet began with the same speech as always, conscientiously repeated in Hand, then ended, “Since there are so many of you this year, we’ll drill in a larger courtyard, which the runners will show you at dawn bells. When you get back to your barracks, the runners will have a list of the games the boys compete in. You can sign up to compete in any of them. I look forward to watching you.”

  She paused, ignoring the rising murmur of comments and questions.

  Lineas had stood nearby, translating the speech far more effectively than Danet’s stiff, studied attempt. Bunny watched with concentration. Now that there was a real person who used this language exclusively, Hand was no longer a game to be played when she was in the mood, and she regretted her lack of real practice.

  Danet dismissed the girls, except for her sons’ future wives and her daughter. When the girls came before her, Danet studied them. Noren looked well grown and capable. The Senelaec girl whom Calamity and Wolf had sent regarded her through a pair of steady, serious eyes that reminded her of Fuss. Good. However (Danet thought to herself) if that girl was any older than thirteen, she would be very surprised. Just as well that neither of the boys had expressed any interest in their future wives.

  When the girls lined up before her, hands flat to chests in salute, she said, “Since tomorrow is Restday, I’m inviting you to an early drum, to meet my sons. My daughter will bring you up and give you a tour. After the meal, you’ll be released early to join all the others in the city,” she added kindly.

  After that they were released to get settled in, and the most conscientious wanted to check on their mounts in the stable.

  The Iofre had warned Noren that she was likely to be treated as a curiosity, and so it was. At least the girls asked very little about her family and home, much less the past. Mostly they seemed to want to stand close to the future gunvaer—to be noticed themselves. They talked far more than they listened, even the ones who had to wait as their words were translated.

  The rest of the day passed swiftly, ending early as everyone was tired from their grueling rides.

  The next day, Ran watched in relief as Cousin Ranet went off with Noren Algaravayir, both dressed in their House tunics, their blonde hair brushed shining and done up in double loops high above their ears.

  The Restday drum with the royal family was awkward, but not painful, due entirely to Bunny. Arrow had resigned himself to a boring interval, as Restdays inevitably were, ever since Danet insisted on communicating only in Hand. He’d managed to master a hundred phrases or so, but there was never time for more; it seemed to him that as soon as he got a new one, an old one fell out of his head. Anyway, Noren was women’s business—and of course Noddy’s, once they were wed.

  So he sat there. As he had no idea how intimidating he appeared to the girls, his silence made all conversation an effort. The boys, much better at highly idiomatic Hand, had to concentrate on not using academy slang. Cousin Ranet, of course, knew nothing at all, but Bunny—bad as she was at the language—clearly didn’t mind the boys laughing when she made mistakes, and so she cheerfully translated for Cousin Ranet, which incidentally brought Arrow in.

  Noren had already decided not to use speech. She’d been proud of learning to say words until one of her Totha cousins told her frankly that she sounded like a goose honking. She also decided not to let on how much lip reading she was able to do. It was tough enough with new people, especially when they talked fast, or the worst of all, got up into her face, over-enunciating so much they looked like they were being tortured as she stared down the backs of their throats.

  Most of all, she didn’t want to deal with questions about her ancestors until she gained a sense of how they would take the answers.

  Which of course was the first thing they asked. “Did Inda-Harskialdna leave any weapons that were his?” Noddy asked.

  “Or written records?” Connar asked.

  “All we had of him is the tapestry we sent before,” she signed.

  Noddy grinned. “Thank you for that. It hangs in the best interview chamber. Sometimes I go in to look at it.”

  His open curiosity, and his easy acceptance of her answer, caused her incipient resentment to ease. The other prince, the beautiful one, looked disappointed, and she suspected that he wasn’t going to let it go—but she had prepared herself for that, too.

  Danet asked after her mother and father, the boys played the drums, and the girls sang, Bunny trying hard to repeat the songs in Hand, which caused some laughter. The meal ended and the youngsters were free.

  Arrow sat back, swallowed off his wine, and said, “I followed more of that than I expected.”

  Danet said dryly, “That’s because Noren was polite, and matched her tone with ours.”

  “Tone?” Arrow asked.

  “Speak. Ing. Like. This. Be. Cause. We. Are. That. Slow.”

  Arrow grimaced. “Well, looks like Bun’s taken charge there. Good. That should keep her out of the stable.”

  “Maybe,” Danet answered dryly, both parents unaware of the fact that Bun had scarcely been in the stable ever since the royal runners had been deployed to make ready.

  Bun had told Lineas she was ready to help, without stating the true reason: Quill Montredavan-An.

  SIXTEEN

  Ink tried to talk Ran out of going with the rest of them to meet the boys in the city, but the prospect of testing the ruse was just too irresistible. He loved the notion of putting something over on everybody, especially those Marlovayirs swanking about.

  As yet, no Marlovayir or Senelaec rider had addressed the other. The Marlovayir girls had endured a hard lecture by the jarlan before they left: any whisper of bad behavior and they would never go again.

  “What if the Senelaecs show up and start something?”

  “Then you defend yourselves. But you’d better be able to back your claim that it was self-defense,” she’d said.

  Ran expected to enjoy getting away with his disguise. What he didn’t expect was his gut twinging with envy when they passed into the great square and got their first glimpse of the boys on the strut in their horsetails and academy coats as they shot academy slang back and forth. To him, their lives looked like so much fun.

  He shook it off, his sense of humor steadying him. When someone started organizing singing and dancing, he volunteered to drum, which he was very good at.

  Pony sorted through the boys impatiently, looking for Ghost. Of course he ended up surrounded by flirting girls, who had also sought the most prettiest of the boys, but didn’t quite dare flirt with beautiful Connar unless he made some sign he wanted to be flirted with. But he was over with the dancers—with a big crowd watching.

  Cousin Ranet stayed close to her particular friends in the riding, feeling intimidated by all these older, taller, strangers. But as soon as the dancing began, she joined the girls, and began to relax and enjoy herself.

  Bun made her way to the biggest clump of boys standing about
. She’d spent her entire life around boys, marking no distinction between castle boys, academy boys, and her brothers. She knew who every horse belonged to, and began putting faces to names.

  Without any self-consciousness whatever, she introduced her way through the crowd until she came face to face with Rat Noth. “Oh, are you the one who belongs to Grasshopper?” she asked.

  The boys around Noth watched with interest, a couple of them exchanging the age-old signals for wagers. Rat Noth, tall, lean, broad of forehead, turned his narrow gaze on Bun, and to everyone’s surprise, he spoke. “You know Grasshopper?” Three actual words!

  “Know her! She’s one of my favorites.” Bunny went on to talk about a mare that everyone else considered cranky and notoriously skittish, taking instant exception to many humans, most other horses, and all cats, dogs, and tumbleweeds.

  Rat already knew that the horses were excellently cared for when the boys weren’t able to ride, much less get to the stable to curry their own animals. He looked right at Bunny, rather than at the ground, as she said, “Tell me, how did she get her name? I like it so much!”

  The boys wagering whether Rat would talk (and the number of words) all held their breath.

  “When she was first born. Two days old. She hopped.” Rat held out his broad, strong hand, palm to the ground, about waist height. “Like a grasshopper.”

  “I can just see it,” Bunny exclaimed, clapping her hands in delight. “Did you train her yourself? She’s a dream on the longe line, once you figure out her ways.”

  Rat stared. This girl was so easy to talk to that even the horses knew it, if Grasshopper tolerated her. His gaze dropping, he muttered, “We learned together. Got her when I was ten. Last year was the first time I brought her.”

  Three complete sentences!

  Bunny chattered on about Grasshopper’s excellent qualities, then, noticing his bright red ears and his earnest gaze on his dusty boot toes, she said, “I’ll be watching for Grasshopper in the games.” And she turned sunnily to match another horse with its rider, leaving Rat’s friends to pick up their jaws.

  Rat Noth! Talking to a girl! His particular friends muscled him off to revive him with liquid courage after his ordeal. He went willingly, though he seemed more dazed than devastated.

  Bunny breezed her way through the senior boys with sisterly friendliness, and Lineas shadowed her at an unobtrusive distance. Though Bunny was not at all what anyone would call handsome, with her round face, buck teeth, eyes set too close together so they sometimes looked crossed, framed by plank-straight brown hair that was more often messy than not, she seemed to make friends wherever she turned.

  No one had the least idea how troubled she was over the fact that the one boy she liked as a boy treated her with friendly respect, exactly as a royal runner ought to treat a princess. And she had no idea how to change that.

  Noren observed her—she observed everyone. Very aware of the stares and pointed fingers ringing outward wherever she walked, at first she regretted wearing her House tunic, except that all the girls had theirs on, having come straight from Restday drum at the barracks. But she knew that even if she wasn’t wearing the Algaravayir green and silver, she would still be pointed out. Better to get it over with.

  She didn’t regret her decision not to tell them that she could sometimes read lips. Even in the flickering light of the lanterns that enterprising tavern owners had strung out, hoping to lure the youngsters in to spend their coins, she recognized the lip shapes of Inda-Harskialdna over and over again. She didn’t want to know what question formed around that name. Returning a blank look, she told them in Hand that she didn’t understand, and moved on.

  She was ready to return to the barracks when she came up unexpectedly before a tall, broad-shouldered boy. She recognized Noddy the same moment he recognized her. He spoke, then wiped his hands down his pants and signed slowly, “Anywhere you want to see?”

  Unsurprisingly, Bunny’s Hand name was signed with bunny ears. “Bunny took me around. Thank you.”

  He wiped his hands again, and this time asked if she wanted to try the strawberry mountains up the down street. She could see in his face how hard he was working, and that he meant well. And he hadn’t said a thing about the Algaravayir family. That might come, but right now she appreciated his kindness, awkward as it was.

  They made slow, painstaking conversation until the drum beats changed. She hadn’t been watching the boys in the center circle competing against each other by doing the sword dance with cups balanced on their heads. The familiar reverberations of the girls’ falcon dance caused her to look up.

  A few girls had taken drums from some of the boys. The rhythm pounded in her bones. She glanced up, but Noddy smiled and made little motions as he said, Dance, dance! Then he blushed and wrung his hands the way people did when they didn’t have a word. He clearly didn’t have the Hand for the girls’ dances.

  She demonstrated, he repeated it, and she turned away, flanked by her two runners. Pan Totha and Holly of the bright green eyes followed obediently. She invited them to join her, and though the girls were cousins, and looked a lot alike, their expressions were so typical of each—Pan Totha sober and dutiful, Holly flashing a grin of delight, then signed a cautious, “Are we allowed?” as she stood back.

  “Just come,” Noren signed back. If the royal city people were going to shut out runners, too bad for them.

  So Holly took her hand and they broke into the circle, clasping outside hands with unknown girls as they found the circle’s rhythm. Noren loved dancing, especially when the drums were strong enough to feel through her body. She stomped, clapped, leaped, and twirled, unaware of her own easy grace, borne of years of hard work, promise of what was to come.

  Arrow looked up from the words chalked on the slate, and frowned at Danet. “Whose idea was this, letting the girls mix in with the boys? We’ve always run them separate.”

  “Mine.”

  Arrow’s brows shot upward. “You? Why?”

  “I gave the girls the opportunity to sign up for any of the boys’ regular events,” Danet said. “Instead of setting up a separate program. If they hadn’t wanted to, they wouldn’t have. Maybe I need to remind you that before us, there hasn’t been an academy for several generations. A lot of these girls and boys train together at home, then divide off according to tradition, yes, but also according to need. When there’re going to be battles requiring swords, the men go.”

  “Three girls signed up for the sword melee on horseback. Here’s one signed up for the standing sword competition.” Arrow frowned at the chalk markings. “It just says Vesea.”

  “She’s a cousin to the Tualan—”

  “Riders to the Toracas, I know, I know. Standing toe to toe, she’ll be hammered.”

  Danet said, “I’ve watched her. I don’t expect her to beat any of your biggest senior boys, but she’ll hold her own among the rest. All these other events, let them match their skills. I think it’ll be good for them all.”

  “All right.” Arrow tipped his head. “Give it a try. And if those girls look good, then find money for your queen’s training. There’s a tradition for it.”

  Danet had been thinking about little else during her rare leisure time. The problem with it, she had discovered in poring over Hadand Deheldegarthe’s old letters, was that the traditional queen’s training was for a purpose that was no longer in use. But all she said was, “We’ll talk about it afterward.”

  The day before Victory Day, all the puddles dried up and the sky cleared, leaving a beautiful day. But everyone over the age of twenty or so peered to the west, where there were no clouds, and muttered to one another that Lightning Season was striking early.

  When the sun rose the following day, it was to a brilliant blue sky, sparks igniting from every bit of metal. After breakfast, Arrow and Danet went straight to the parade ground, knowing that Andaun and the masters had rearranged the schedule.

  Usually the riding contests—the most
popular events—were last, but this day they were moved up to early morning to spare the animals the afternoon heat.

  They began with races the length of the parade ground, which the Sindan-An or Tlennen boys usually won. Interest perked up when the girls rode out with the boys, heads turning as they side-eyed one another, or stared outright.

  Headmaster Andaun dropped the flag. The moment the fluttering cloth hit the dusty ground, the horses, sidling impatiently, leaped into the gallop and bolted down the length, boys shrilling the fox yip.

  This year’s race ended with a clump, led by a Sindan-An girl a nose ahead of a Fath girl and Rat Noth on his Grasshopper. Baldy Sindan-An was neck and neck with two Tlennen cousins, boy and girl, and a Jevayir boy, with Ran and Salt Marlovayir barely a nose behind, these last two eyeing one another narrowly. Salt knew if he was caught slanging any girl, even a Senelaec, he’d catch it hot, and maybe get tossed out altogether, if she whined to the beaks. And any Senelaec would of course whine up a storm.

  As for Ran, under Ink’s watchful eye he kept his mouth shut and his face averted. But the ferocious longing to win seethed inside him.

  Boys and girls readied for the obstacle course, the most grueling of the riding events, which Rat Noth had won the past two years, and had come in second the year before that, beating out all the seniors.

  The race started in a mass, circling out beyond the academy itself, into the fallow fields at the north end of the city and back behind the garrison to the other end of the parade ground.

  By the time the dust was seen at that end, the mass had thinned. Ran was neck-and-neck with Ghost, another Fath girl, and a Sindan-An Riders’ boy, all three desperate to catch up with Rat Noth thundering ahead of them....

  And ahead of him, Noren, daughter of the Algaravayirs.

  No one could touch her. She galloped across the finish line three horse lengths ahead of Rat, to shouts of praise from the spectators, followed by the question—Who was that? The name Algaravayir, not heard in that place for many years, echoed up and down the stone benches.