Time of Daughters I

by Sherwood Smith

  Lineas rejoined Bun in the gunvaer’s chamber, where Sage had coopted her to help with setting out the dishes for the breakfast Danet was giving to Calamity and a group of jarlans and first runners connected by family.

  When Bun saw Lineas, she carefully set down the good ceramic plates and gave Lineas a tight hug.

  Lineas stiffened. Bun knew by now that Lineas had grown up with some mage or other in Darchelde who was sensitive to touch, and so Lineas had only had parental hugs on her home visits. But Bun was by nature tactile; the animals she spent so much time with responded strongly to touch, caress, rub, fondle. Bun had learned not to fondle people the way she handled animals, but she was a hugger. Lineas was startled, as always, then sighed and melted into the hug; she understood right away she had forgotten to school her face, and so she brought out a smile before they let go.

  “Are you all right?” Bun asked, wide eyes searching Lineas’s face. “What did Quill want to talk about?” She pressed her hands together, her expression hopeful. “Did he want to talk about me?”

  “I’m fine,” Lineas said, and deflected the truth with a truth. “Quill is like a big brother to me, because we both come from Darchelde. He just wanted to remind me that I’ve been skipping too many drills.”

  Bun’s eyelids flickered, but before she could speak, Sage clapped her hands. “We’re done,” she said, examining the table. “Unless you would like to stay for this breakfast, Bunny-Edli?”

  Bun wrinkled her nose. “And be the only girl while they bore on about the past, and people I never met? Come on, Lineas, let’s go visit Cloud and Silk,” naming two mares brought by the jarlans of Tlennen and Sindan-An respectively.

  They escaped as the jarlans began arriving.

  Carleas Cassad had come with two purposes in mind.

  Before riding to Convocation, she’d discussed with the jarl the questions about Colt, the academy, and a possible trip to Sartor for the magic to bring Colt’s body and identity to agreement.

  He’d said, “I see Colt’s situation as a Dei family matter, first. Colt and you are both Deis, with family experience in the question. As for admitting that Barend is not Carleas, this by rights is gunvaer business, but if there is to be trouble, then send for me. I’ll talk to the king myself.”

  So Carleas had decided it was time to address the gunvaer directly. At the end of the New Year’s Fourthday breakfast, Carleas kept herself busy finishing her coffee as the others left, the Jarlan of Marthdavan sending back a sympathetic glance.

  Danet immediately recognized the intent behind that apparent dawdling and turned an inquiring eye toward the Jarlan of Telyer Hesea, bracing for another attack on her ideas.

  Carleas stood in a formal stance and admitted to calling her son a daughter, to which Danet suppressed the urge to roll her eyes so hard they’d hear the clang all over the castle. She raised a hand to stem the obviously-rehearsed flow. “Yes, I know...evil Olavayirs, Bloody Tanrid, all the rest. My only question is this: Do you have a suitable girl to marry the Yvanavayir heir?”

  Much chastened by the gunvaer’s total lack of surprise, Carleas said humbly, “I do, and she’s quite willing. Chelis, daughter to my husband’s younger brother, is an excellent manager.”

  “Good. Then we’re done.” The gunvaer turned away.

  Carleas gripped her hands. “Not quite.” She drew a breath, and launched into her second prepared speech.

  Danet listened first mildly puzzled, then very confused by the tangle of pronouns. When Carleas came to a close, Danet said, “Let me get this straight. This now concerns an adopted daughter or a son? Which is it?”

  “That’s part of what makes it so difficult. The castle has been calling Colt she, but out riding, she’s he. He’s he. Then reverts to she at home, I guess to make life easier, because they’ve all known her since she came to us as an infant. But Colt is Rider-trained, wants to be a captain, and so—as he—wants to go to the academy, where captains are trained.”

  “All right, so Colt is a he, and wants into the academy? But doesn’t want to go to Sartor for magic transformation?”

  “Correct.”

  Danet clapped her hands together. “Come with me.”

  Arrow had just returned from the baths, clean but bleary-eyed. He glanced from Danet to Carleas, then sent Danet one of those private fiery looks that she successfully interpreted, so she said, “This concerns the academy. Therefore, you.”

  And without any prompting, she gave a succinct summary of the dilemma. At the end, she turned to Carleas, saying, “Have I stated it fairly?”

  “Fair enough,” Carleas said.

  Danet waited as Arrow gazed into the middle distance, his brow furrowed. At least, she was thinking, he wouldn’t hop out with his usual Inda didn’t have these problems in his academy. Then it struck her that Inda wouldn’t have considered it a problem, not after he’d gone to sea, learning marine defense with all kinds of people.

  It had been Hadand Deheldegarthe who—

  “Let me get this right,” Arrow said. “Your Colt is he out riding, but a she here.” He smacked his chest twice, left then right, then pointed at his crotch. “He wants to come to the academy, but doesn’t want to travel off to Sartor to get the girl parts cut off, or whatever the healers do by magic, and a prick grown on.”

  “In essence, that is correct,” Carleas said gravely.

  “And this Colt refuses to ride with the girls at the summer games—even with the understanding that Danet here wants to start up queen’s training again?”

  “Correct,” Carleas said. “Colt is Rider-trained, good with a bow but better with a sword, and near unbeatable with the double-stick. She—he—needs training to become a captain, which right now is only got at the academy. I thought I would ask, as I’d heard that Ranet Senelaec will be coming to the academy.”

  “That’s easy. No,” Arrow said.

  “Why not?” Danet asked.

  “Different situation. Completely different,” Arrow said with a flat-handed sweep. “For one thing, Ranet Senelaec won’t be coming as Ranet. He was a boy dressed as a girl. He’s coming as a boy.”

  He paused, thinking that explained everything, just to meet Danet’s eyebrow-lift of skepticism, and Carleas’s stony expression.

  He sighed, hard. “Look. I know people can get born into the wrong sort of body. Anyone growing up with Aunt Hlar, who was born my father’s brother Hal, knows that. Maybe if Colt came in at ten, and they all grew up together. Boys and girls are puppies at ten. But at seventeen? He can say he’s a he all he wants, but we’ve only got the one bath down there, and there’s no hiding the fact that he’s got she parts. Unless lightning bolts strike their eyes, those eighteen-year-olds, who only think about three things, sex, fighting, and sex, are going to be looking.”

  “So?” Carleas retorted. “Everybody looks, then they’re done.”

  “You don’t understand,” Arrow shot back. “We raise these boys training hard—it’s traditional to train them until a year or so after they get their full growth, which means coming into their strength. But with full growth comes sex. And at that age they think about it all the time. All. The. Time. We run them hard partly to build strength, but also to tired them out so much they sleep at night.”

  “So far you’re telling me the obvious.”

  He wiped a hand through the air. “I’m getting there. So they all bathe together. They grow up knowing there’s one end of the baths where the boys who like to play around with boys can get rid of saddle wood. Those who only like girls grow up knowing that’s the way it is, and they have to wait for rec time to go into town to the Sword, or wherever. It isn’t fair, but it’s the way it is. So what happens when I put someone in who looks like a girl the age of their partners at the Sword, but isn’t? If I issue special orders about your Colt, then she—he—becomes an object of resentment. See? I can tell you who will fight to get Colt’s attention anyway, and who will pick fights with her. Him. Damn. All I foresee is trouble,
making Andaun have to hammer them all, when there’s enough going on.”

  Carleas held up her hand. She thought his reasoning stupid, but she hadn’t expected any better from an Olavayir. “As you wish.”

  “Colt can be a Rider anywhere in the kingdom. But not at the academy. If you wanted to send someone,” Arrow stated with some heat, “you should’ve sent your boy Barend, who you told us was a girl named Chelis.”

  Carleas reddened. “As it happens, I don’t know that that would have borne out. My son never sought to be anything but what he was, which is...that is, he doesn’t see himself as a female, but his only interest is in textiles, color, and design. He’s certainly no use in a military sense. He was that way before he could speak.”

  Arrow knew the stories about the crazy Cassads. He said gruffly, “Such boys usually get peeled out early and sent off to the scribes, or back home to be prenticed.”

  “But all we had were the memories—”

  “—of Bloody Tanrid,” he cut in to finish with an exasperation that even she admitted was justified.

  They parted then, with expressions of somewhat strained mutual goodwill, Carleas to tell her husband that the king had rocks between his ears but at least the question of lying about Barend went better than she’d dared to hope, and Arrow figuring he’d gotten himself through that well enough, though he had a pounding head from too many cups of hot bristic the night before.

  Danet left, thinking: That’s it, Arrow said it himself. If we put girls in the army, we start them at age ten.

  That night, as usual, the young Olavayirs collected in Noddy’s suite, attended by Lineas, alert and observant—as far as her experience allowed. So she enjoyed the atmosphere of jokes and rambling anecdotes, careful not to look Connar’s way, though every remark, laugh, even the sound of his breathing filled her with the light of summer sunshine.

  So she was unaware of the way Connar watched Tanrid, whose popularity made Connar wary, and whose easiest remarks in retrospect seemed...not threatening, but odd.

  Like that comment on the tour right after his arrival, when he said that about looking out over the land from up high. Connar had taken that as pedantry at first. Tanrid did like his books, and offered quotations whether anyone wanted them or not. But what if that comment hinted at the possibility of possession—the way a king would look over his land?

  Connar tried to forget Hauth’s words, but he was discovering that consciously trying to forget something made him worry at it in sneaky ways. Like the fact that Tanrid was the true heir to the dead Evred, according to the old Olavayir treaty: That is, his father had been designated heir by treaty, and sons follow fathers. That was accepted tradition. Order.

  Uncle Jarend had said he didn’t want to be king, but what if his son did? Tanrid was older than Noddy, so someone could insist he was the true heir.

  Connar watched Tanrid, evaluating his every utterance, as Noddy avoided looking at Lineas—another thing she remained utterly unaware of.

  Noddy was very aware of her. He kept his eyes averted, but he listened for her sweet voice, so seldom heard. It reminded him of glass chimes he’d heard at a shop in the city, one that sold fabrics from other lands. And as for her face, people might say that pale, freckled skin was ugly, but he liked those freckles because they were part of her.

  It never would have occurred to Lineas that anyone would look at her for any purpose but to share a task or hand off an order. After that awful experience at the age of eight, she had preferred to enjoy her crushes quietly, because of course they would always be one way.

  At those nightly gatherings she oversaw the snacks of crisped rye biscuits with melted cheese and hot spice wine, enabling Tanrid’s first runner and closest friend, Halrid (Floss) Vannath—a cousin whose family was promoted after Lanrid’s cousins mostly died at the Pass—to sit with Tanrid, Bun, and the princes, and take part in the chatter.

  This particular evening began like the previous ones until Connar, conflicted and restless, heard Noddy’s relishing description of lancers’ games in a new and sinister light. Eldest sons didn’t attend the academy, except for Noddy as the future king.

  What if Tanrid, smiling over there as he listened to Noddy going on about the fun he and Ghost Fath had smashing hay targets, decided he wanted to come to the academy? It was possible, even at an advanced age—they’d learned that after hearing that the Senelaec boy was coming straight to lancers.

  He cut in, “I’m bored. Who’s for Sword?”

  Noddy swung around to eye him. “It’s blizzarding out there,” he protested. “We’d get lost soon’s we rode out the gates.”

  Floss wiggled his nearly white eyebrows. “You’ve got an entire castle full of good-looking girls. Why cross the city?”

  Noddy dropped his head and mumbled something.

  Tanrid leaned over. “Cousin, do you mean to say you don’t like any of them?”

  Noddy studied his hands, his ears crimson.

  Tanrid elbowed Noddy and cooed, “Your castle girls only like girls? Think we stink?”

  “Speak for yourself, jarl of farts,” Floss retorted, and eyed Noddy. “They can’t all be ring-bound. Or is there some rule that puts you two hounds out of reach?”

  “Of course not,” said Bun, aware of undercurrents she couldn’t define.

  Intensely aware of Lineas’s breathing a few paces away, Noddy muttered to the cup he was turning around in his hands, “They can’t say no, at Singing Sword.”

  “Of course they can say no,” Bun retorted, startled.

  Connar shrugged sharply. “The whole reason we go there is that they don’t say no.”

  “There’s a river of difference between can’t and don’t.” Bun opened her hands. “They say no, but they aren’t mean about it. Like Vnat in the bakery.” She turned to Noddy and said earnestly, “Say, you go in and you first notice...oh, Liet. But she only goes with girls. She’s friendly but not flirty. She introduces you to Nand, who only goes with boys. Nand is friendly and flirty and you forget all about Liet.”

  Noddy’s blush had burned right down to his neck. But as this subject had been goading him for months, he let the wine speak. “It’s all right, over there. But here. If you try to talk to some girl about something that isn’t a chore, or something, she turns away, or says she has to work, or she just says no, it all happens in a way that makes you wish you never spoke. And you never even tried to kiss her.”

  Tanrid and Floss exchanged pained glances, Tanrid wishing he hadn’t started teasing Noddy. He shifted, wondering how to get out of it gracefully.

  Connar didn’t trust Tanrid enough to ask what he saw in girls that made their intent clear. It wasn’t as if girls leaped into the baths with you and grabbed you, lance at the charge when they wanted a fast tumble, as they did at the north end of the academy baths. There was little or no talk—they knew what they wanted and they got it. The academy slang for that end of the bath was fun-and-run.

  But outside of the fun-and-run, where everyone knew the rules...he hated the uncertainty. While roaming the castle grounds, he and Noddy had both overheard Vnat and some of the older kitchen girls’ frank scorn in discussing the garrison men while they weeded the garden. Connar loathed the idea of his name coming up, and causing that jeering laughter. It was just as easy to go to the Singing Sword, where everything was a simple trade.

  Bun’s thoughts arrowed, as usual, straight to Quill. Until the day she noticed him leaning on the gate, watching the lancers practice evolutions, her sexual experiences had been fun. Experimental. None of those had given her that feeling of heat all over, that catch in breath that she got when just looking at him.

  Yet everything she tried didn’t get past his deference, that friendly...respect.

  She glanced at Noddy doubtfully. He looked exactly as miserable as she felt about Quill. She wondered if Vnat had hurt him, and decided to shift the subject. “At Sword, they get training in how to talk to people. I asked, my first time. Everything was so
interesting. I asked for a girl first, because I’ve been kissing girls since I was fourteen, but I never did anything else. Never wanted to. And that was fine.”

  Noddy still hadn’t looked up, but his ears weren’t quite as red, so she kept blabbing, “But when I decided to try with a boy, Branid—that’s his name—he told me that most of them are family, and grew up into the trade, the children serving the food downstairs, and helping with the drumming and dancing, and when you’re a teen, you can go upstairs and learn the skills there, if you want. He said it’s fun when you’re young, but his da said it’s not as fun after ten or twenty years of it, and so a lot of them marry off, or go do something else. Which is why it’s mostly young ones.”

  Tanrid felt terrible about his blunder. He saw Noddy looking less dejected after Bunny’s ramble, and jumped in to offer a description of his first time with the Nevree castle baker’s lusty daughter, who’d towed him into the cooling room to show him how to bake a cake. “She baked my cake, all right. Three times, until she was sure I had the recipe.”

  Floss snickered. Bun clapped her hands. Noddy smiled briefly, so Floss told them about his own first time, which at the time he thought a disaster of kingdom-shaking proportion. “I can see why nobody wants to be anybody’s first,” he said. “My sister told me that at the Rocking Horse in Nevree, they have people who only do firsts.”

  “I wonder if they laugh themselves sick afterward,” Tanrid mused. “At least you never hear about it if they do. Unlike that gabby you-know-who at home.”

  Noddy smiled, but still wouldn’t lift his head, with Lineas standing there; he wondered longingly what her experience was—having no clue that she had no experience at all. Lineas went as Bun’s runner to the Sword, but she always stayed downstairs to listen to the music and darn the socks that Bun was forever wearing out at heel and toe.