Time of Daughters I

by Sherwood Smith

  Danet said, “He’s in the city with the rest of the youngsters.”

  “Whooping it up,” Arrow added dryly.

  Wolf shut his eyes, his shoulders sagging.

  “We’re waiting to hear why he’s been raised as a girl. That clearly wasn’t him,” Arrow added.

  Wolf glanced up, not quite meeting either of their gazes. “Back then. We were afraid.”

  “I know.” Arrow remembered what Danet had said. “Mathren. Evred. Your aunt.”

  “Not just that. When I was small, my father often talked about the bad stories he grew up with. About the two uncles he lost in the academy when Bloody Tanrid was king.”

  “Did you think I was going to be like that?” Arrow demanded, his temper flashing to fury as he half-started up.

  Danet unceremoniously yanked him down again by the coat skirt.

  “Here’s the thing.” Wolf spread his hands. “He said his da insisted Tanrid Olavayir meant well. His idea was to train the boys to toughness, as tough as our army was when we fought the Venn back at the Pass in Inda-Harskialdna’s day. Pretty much what you said to us, right, that Midsummer Convocation? We’d be like those days again. What that meant under Bloody Tanrid was brutal endurance tests, floggings every Sixthday for defaulters. Frequent duels, everyone gathered to watch. Many were to the death, until it got out of control, feuds, masters against boys. Jarls turning up with wings ready for war, at the end.”

  Arrow grimaced. “But that was exactly the opposite of the way Inda-Harskialdna ran the academy. Didn’t I talk about the Gand record?”

  Danet spoke up here, dry and dispassionate. “You said Inda-Harskialdna a lot, but there weren’t any details, just talk about reviving our glorious past. I think what the jarls heard was a lot repeated stuff from the hero ballads and war stories.”

  Arrow swung around to scowl at her. “You’re not saying those are lies?”

  “This is what I’m saying.” Danet raised a hand. “When I was delving in the records for past oath-promises, I discovered that under the early Olavayir kings, there was an actual edict proclaimed that nobody could talk about the old days under the Montreivayirs. It seems that the first couple of Olavayir kings viewed talking about the good old days not just as criticism, but as treachery. They destroyed a lot of the old academy records—”

  “That I know. I didn’t know why.”

  “—and the second and third kings even had patrols watching the border of Choreid Elgaer until they could find an excuse to break it apart, awarding chunks of land to their own people. Which is why those freeholds are there along what used to be the eastern border. And Feravayir grabbed the south as a trade....”

  Arrow waved a hand. “I knew about the Algaravayirs’ land being broken up, but we’re far from Ran, Rana, from this boy and why he’s not in the academy.”

  Wolf ran a grimy hand over his equally grimy face. “I can tell you I grew up distrusting the royal city because all our trouble seemed to come from there. So when you talked about starting the academy, and making us as strong as the days of Inda-Harskialdna, like Dan—the gunvaer said, I was afraid it would be Bloody Tanrid all over again. Or worse, if you couldn’t hold the throne.” He added, “I know I couldn’t wake up and find myself king, and expect to hold the kingdom.”

  Arrow crossed his arms, his tone partly surly and partly defensive. “Your boy wants to come to the academy.”

  Wolf knuckled his eyes, then dropped his hands. “If he’s been around here long enough to see it, and likes what he sees, then I certainly have no objections.”

  “With that much settled, let’s get a meal into you, and you can rest,” Danet suggested, looking from one to the other. Understanding seemed to have been reached, but they still reminded her of dogs with their hackles ruffled, tails stiff. “Everything else can wait till morning.”

  “Sleep, yes,” Wolf said, his voice tired. “Bath. But I don’t think I could keep anything down. I was on the road before dawn.”

  “You haven’t eaten all day? You most definitely need a bite of something,” Danet said as she got to her feet.

  Arrow had calmed enough to recognize the anxiety in Wolf’s face. It struck him how it must have felt to arrive home after chasing horse thieves for months, to discover that Ran had ridden out with the girls. He recollected how he had felt when Andas was taken away, though he'd known his son would be perfectly safe. Wolf had surely ridden for days imagining the worst.

  The last of his resentment faded, and he said in a much milder tone, “Eat a little. Tomorrow I’ll take you over to the academy, and you can see it for yourself. Of course they’re packing to go home till next spring, but you’ll be able to get a sense of things. Much better than seeing it empty at winter Convocation.”

  Wolf’s fear had eased enough for him to become aware of the fact that he stood there alone with an unarmed king and queen while he had two throwing knives at his wrists, two in his boot tops, and a sword strapped across his back. None of which anyone had taken away.

  He, like Arrow, was little given to self-reflection, but he sensed the goodwill underlying the superficials just as Arrow recognized the anxiety of a parent.

  Wolf struck his fist to his heart belatedly, then said, “I guess you also probably could use a report on what we did out east.”

  “Tomorrow,” Arrow said as Danet opened the door. “I want to hear it all, and you can show me on the map.”

  Danet took Wolf down the hall in one direction as Bun and Noren approached from the other. They were trailed by Lineas, who on opening the door to Bun’s rooms was distracted by the ghostly scent once again, stronger than usual.

  EIGHTEEN

  Why were ghosts?

  Lineas saw the Evred one most often at the entry to the stable, though she had found out that he was killed in a tower. And he hadn’t been much of a rider, according to castle gossip. The only thing he’d liked was wine. Maybe he loved the stable when young. It was useless to speculate until she could find someone else who saw them and knew more about them, or until she could actually talk to one.

  Noren was excellent company. She got along well with Bunny, but it turned out she didn’t see ghosts. Nor did either of her runners. Lineas sighed to herself as Noren signed a good night and passed on down to the guest chamber.

  “I miss Noren already,” Bun said as Lineas shut the door. “And she’s not even gone yet.”

  “She’ll soon be back forever,” Lineas reminded her.

  “I know, and I mean to be much faster in Hand when she does. Cousin Ranet said she’s going to learn it in a year! Cousin Ranet. Isn’t that funny that everyone calls her that? They can’t all be cousins. I wonder if she’ll still be called Cousin Ranet when she comes back to marry Connar.”

  “We can practice Hand now,” Lineas signed.

  Bun wrinkled her upper lip, for she was tired after the long day, mostly spent cheering for people and horses she liked. But she complied, signing, “I wonder where Connar is, anyway? I saw Noddy with all the big boys, but I didn’t see Connar anywhere.”

  That was because Connar was prowling the perimeter of the celebration, his mood rotten.

  He’d been stared at all his life, but now he understood what those long looks meant. During the previous month or so before Victory Day, Connar had begun waking up with saddle wood, and in the baths, learned what the seniors called horseplay. While he enjoyed it while he was doing it, after it was over, his frustration rushed right back. Sex play, brief and intense, was all right, but it wasn’t winning.

  As he walked around in the still, balmy air, he encountered the usual stares, from both boys and girls. If he stared back at the girls, some turned red, others fussed around with their hair, or sidled in ways that drew his eyes downward to shapes he’d hitherto ascribed to his sister and mother.

  A girl caught his eye as she danced. He couldn’t take his eyes away from the swing of her hips, the shape of her butt when her robe fluttered and swung so enticingly, hiding and rev
ealing. But he didn’t know what to do, what to say to a girl. The boys in the baths were blunt. These girls acted in a way that he couldn’t interpret, and he hated feeling awkward.

  So he walked away from one group busy yakking and boring on about the competitions (who cared if that Senelaec strut with the two arrows turned out to be a boy?), and was looking for a way to distract himself when Fish Pereth, now a garrison runner-in-training, slunk up. Connar’s mood, already vile, worsened sharply the moment he spotted Fish’s protuberant eyes. At least the sight of him gave focus to his sour mood.

  “Get lost,” he snarled at Fish, whose habit when they were small of spying and then tattling had endeared him to no one in the academy versus garrison boy wars.

  “I was sent,” Fish said. He sidled furtive glances to either side in that way that Connar despised, then said, “He wants to talk to you.”

  “He?”

  Fish took a step closer, then said in an undervoice, “Uncle—Master Hauth.”

  Connar grimaced as he, too, glanced around. The soft summer air carried at least three competing ballads, rising and falling to the persistent beating of drums. Boys and girls ran, walked, strolled, and chased everywhere, in pairs, threes, groups. Connar was alone because he’d wanted to be alone.

  Connar sighed. It was clear he wouldn’t easily get rid of Fish, and anyway, whatever Hauth had to say might be less boring than all these boneheads bootlicking those who won golds. He rubbed at his bare left sleeve irritably, caught himself at it, and snarled, “Let’s get it over with.”

  Fish ducked smoothly in the narrow space between a saddlery and a glazier. Connar followed him through city alleys until they reached the extreme southwest corner of the castle, where the sheep wintered. They scaled the wall between the sentries, Connar wondering if this was always a blind spot, and would that come in use someday?

  They slunk from building to building, drifting outside the outbuildings and the back kitchen garden to the fields between, which the queen had made over to visiting girls. It was empty now. All the girls were in the city adding to the noise.

  Back around to garrison winter storage, and finally, they slipped inside a narrow hall, dusty, hot, stuffy, and smelling overwhelmingly of wool. Connar’s mood had not improved during the long, hot run. He wished Fish would speak only so he could tell him to shut up, but Fish had seen that scowl and prudently remained silent.

  When they reached a door, Fish stepped aside. Connar passed into the lamp-lit room, noticing irritably that Fish was half a hand taller.

  Connar stalked inside, and the door shut behind him. Connar crossed his arms, glaring at Hauth, who sat at the other end of the room, cane laid across a table, a pile of papers before him.

  Hauth looked up, expertly assessing Connar’s scowl despite the throbbing headache from the long, wearying day in the sun. The masters were responsible for the complex logistics of the competitions, as well as monitoring the boys; they’d risen well before dawn and worked ceaselessly until the Games were over, the animals stabled, the equipment stored, and the parade ground swept. But he already knew the heedless young took it all for granted.

  Hauth’s gaze slipped to the golden eagle stitched across the front of Connar’s House tunic, and his mood worsened. He said, “My winter orders will shift me out tomorrow. So we had to meet tonight.”

  “Why?” Connar demanded sullenly. “There’s no more point in those exercises, which by the way were worthless.”

  Hauth said, “Give it a year. You’ve barely started to grow.”

  “I mean everything.” Connar snapped his hand away. “I didn’t win anything this year. Nothing. And don’t tell me to wait a year. Inda-Harskialdna won every damned game from the time he was ten.”

  Goaded beyond endurance, Hauth retorted, “Inda-Harskialdna wasn’t the true king. And he was too stupid to take the throne when he could have.”

  Hauth shut his teeth, regretting the words as soon as they were out. They should have come out much later, after the boy got through the foolishness he was so clearly verging on: growth spurts, voice changing, beard and body hair, and above all, the unrelenting focus on sex. This was the age when all the adults around you were dolts, when you knew everything, when the future was as hazy as it was limitless, and everything you did was the first and most important event in world history.

  Connar’s sulky expression—which, on him, still managed to be magnificent, the more because as yet he had no idea of the effect of his splendid looks—altered to confusion. “What?”

  Hauth sighed. Maybe it was for the best after all. “The truth. Lanrid was being raised in secret as crown prince—the true heir to the royal dolphin-clan.”

  “So Mathren was going to murder Evred all along?” Connar backed away, rigid with disgust. “And this is the man you keep telling me was so heroic?”

  “Evred never would have held the kingdom. He was a drunken sot. Lazy. No discipline whatsoever. A drunken sot at twenty makes for the weakest sort of king. For a moment, forget what Mathren did, or intended to do. When there is a weak, lazy, drunken king, it’s not a matter of if, but when, someone stronger comes along, and we can hope their motive is for the good of the kingdom. Everything that Mathren Olavayir did was for the good of the kingdom,” Retren Hauth said, his voice husky with conviction. “Lanrid, your father, your real father, should have been king. He was meant to be king.”

  Connar was a few years short of truly understanding the complexity of that emotion, but he knew conviction when he saw it. He stared at Hauth, his wide, unblinking eyes reflecting the lamplight in twin points of gold. He’d gone so still that those flames didn’t so much as flicker.

  Then he whispered, “Impossible.”

  Hauth said, “My first loyalty is to dolphin-clan. Which is what you are. The last one.”

  Connar’s unwavering gaze shifted at last, and his hand shook as he passed it over his forehead, then it dropped. “But...what you’re saying....” He took a deep breath, and the anger was back. “I’d kill anyone who tried to hurt Noddy. Or Da.”

  “The king is not your da,” Hauth retorted. Why not, since he’d already gone this far.

  “Yeah, mine got himself slaughtered, and a lot of people along with him,” Connar said bitterly. “Chasing after a traitor. And my so-called mother tossed me into the midden. Ma—the queen, my mother. My real mother. The birth one is nothing. And the king, my father, didn’t have to take me in. I know they hated Lanrid, and especially hated Mathren the Murderer. I don’t care if he’s blood-related. He was a murderer.”

  “So,” Hauth leaned forward, his teeth showing, “was Inda-Harskialdna. To everyone he defeated. But it was always for a cause. For the kingdom. Mathren would have been the greatest of our kings. You’ve got his brains, and you’re getting his speed and strength. You’re still so young. Like every other boy your age, you can’t see it, you want everything now.”

  Connar passed his hand across his eyes again, then muttered, “What I see is, you seem to be telling me without telling me that I should be king.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which means killing my real family.”

  “I’m not telling you to kill anyone,” Hauth said quickly, seeing Connar poised to run. “I’m oath-sworn to train you, the last of the dolphin-clan. Because anything could happen. Has. And you have to be the first to admit that Nadran-Sierlaef isn’t all that...” fit “...excited about the prospect of kingship.”

  Connar looked sightlessly around the small room, without seeing the shelves of dusty account books. Finally he muttered truculently, “If you called me over here to tell me to make that ‘anything’ happen, I’ll...."

  Hauth said quickly, “What I wanted to tell you was to keep studying those papers I gave you. Work on self-discipline. Strength. Think about strategy, and tactics. It’s true that some seem to take to it naturally, just as some are naturally great singers, or any other skill you can name. Inda-Harskialdna was naturally great at fighting and command. Not ev
eryone is, or we would never talk about him. But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from his actions. Teach them to the Sierlaef, if you will, and help him improve. Just...keep learning.”

  Connar stared, aware that any other time, he would have really been annoyed at being dragged across the entire city by that slinking Fish, just to be jawed at about self-discipline and learning. But now, it was kind of a relief. Because he wasn’t being encouraged to be treacherous.

  “We can meet, or not, in the spring, as you choose,” Hauth finished. “I will continue to collect anything that I think might help you in your learning.”

  Connar banged the door open with the flat of his hand, and was gone in a few quick steps.

  Fish, meanwhile, had gone to fetch his father, as ordered. Quartermaster Pereth waited in the tack repair room until Connar stalked by, bootheels rapping on the worn stone floor, then slipped into the records room. “Well?”

  Hauth gave a succinct report.

  Pereth struck his hand against the lintel. “You lost him.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Hauth dug his thumb into the corner of his eye socket in a vain effort to relieve the pounding headache. “He’s at that age where anything will send them galloping wild into the wind. He’s still angry because he didn’t win any of the wargames he commanded this spring. I told Andaun not to put him up against Yvanavayir, but you know Andaun. Thinks it’s better for the princes to go against the toughest future captains.”

  The quartermaster accepted that, and Hauth said reflectively, “Anyway, this I’m sure of, he heard me.”

  “And stalked off in a temper.”

  “Which he inherited from that vile Iascan who gave him that black hair. He’s easily one of the most jealous, competitive boys in the entire academy.”

  “You think that’s a quality?”

  “If it enables him to overcome the mediocrity all around him, yes. It’s up to us to discipline him out of it. As for what I said....” Hauth’s smile was grim. “I know he’ll remember.”