Danet’s expression eased. “If these Adranis, or whoever, are getting supplied from their side at the end of harvest, then sitting tight over winter so they can send raiders in spring…. Arrow, if Lnand finds that outpost suspicious, could you surround it and then capture the raiders directly as they come forth?”
Camerend’s lips parted, then he hesitated, watching Arrow rock back and forth, heel to toe, as he, too, scowled at the map. “It’s walled, you say? One thing I’ve learned is that when we took the first castles, it was Iascans who taught us siege warfare. Something we haven’t used much of since.”
Danet said sourly, “Let me guess. Starving people into surrender hasn’t much ‘honor’ in it compared to spitting someone on a lance.”
“Well, the risks are roughly even in a lance charge,” Arrow said in a reasoning tone, as if that made all the difference in the world. Maybe it did in his mind, but Danet made no distinction between one miserable death and another. “But one thing I’m sure of: If we laid on a siege over winter, they could sit tight in their warm outpost and laugh at us squatting up to our armpits in snow and ice.”
“Right,” Danet said. “Well, the military is your end.”
Arrow rolled the map, picked it up, and brandished it. “I’m going to show this to Noth. Make sure you find seed grain for the Senelaecs,” he added, and to the royal runners, “Good work, Ivandred. Go get some rest, then ride north. Camerend, have Lnand on the road by sundown, while the weather’s clear.”
Four steps, the door slammed, and he was gone.
Camerend and Quill rode out the city gates during the first real thaw of spring. Quill was about to depart on a tour of Marlovan Iasca, every castle, trade town, and village.
Camerend waited until they were alone under the scudding clouds reflected in drying pools here and there, surrounded by the a stubble of green as far as the eye could see. On the northern horizon a line of black dots moved toward the west, birds returning from the other side of the world.
Camerend halted his horse, and swept his hand around.
“Senrid,” he said, “this is your kingdom.”
Quill looked around the familiar low hills over which a cold wind softly soughed, knowing that his father did not mean it in any literal sense.
Indeed, Camerend went on as he reached forward to tousle the mane on his favorite mount, “That’s what Shendan said to me when I first rode out to make the renewal rounds.”
Quill had often wondered what it was like to grow up a hostage, surviving violent changes of king. But he’d learned that his father never talked about his past. Each new day is a gift, not to be wasted in regret, he’d said once when asked. Quill was only beginning to comprehend that that word “regret” told him all he needed to know.
Camerend went on, “Your grandson might very well say the same thing to his son, though by then the old exile treaty will be ended, and so our binding to Darchelde. Though we could be kings, we are not, and might never be. We can serve the people of the kingdom with or without a throne.”
Quill opened his hand to signify assent. It was as rare for his father to talk generally as it was to refer to his past. He was always present-specific, giving little away of his thoughts.
Maybe that’s the way you had to be when you grew up a hostage.
Camerend turned away from contemplating the hazy west under its patchy clouds, and considered how to address his smart, sensitive son without alluding to what he suspected was the quiet heartbreak of a first love. “This is your opportunity to see everything. To listen to people and their concerns. If it takes you five years, as it did me, no one will suffer for it. It’s early for renewal. I am giving you specific orders to travel, enjoy yourself, and listen to what people want to tell you about themselves.”
“All right,” Quill said.
Camerend’s brief smile faded to a pensive assessment. “Now’s the time, when you’re young, strong, and heartfree.” He glanced at Quill’s saddlebag, aware of his son’s hand flexing on that last word. Sorrow hurt his heart, but he knew there was no repairing such things with parental sympathy. At least his boy was young, and youth was resilient: by the time Quill returned, no doubt he’d come back with experience under his belt, his current hurt forgotten. “You have your notecase, and the transfer tokens?”
Quill turned up his hand. In an emergency he could perform transfer magic to a Destination at either Darchelde or Camerend’s study in the castle, where he had made a Destination. But transfer tokens were faster unless one was very adept at this dangerous, volatile magic. He wasn’t all that adept—practice hurt so very much.
“Fare well,” Camerend said, leaning out to clasp arms with his son.
“And you.”
Camerend turned his mount and began riding back.
Quill gazed back, his throat unexpectedly tight. His father had always seemed ageless, but Quill knew no one was ageless. His first stay would be Darchelde, which of course needed no magic renewal, but Shendan was very frail, unable to transfer at all anymore. She might not be there on Quill’s return.
As the dappled shadows from a budding tree passed down his father’s blue coat and over the flanks of his horse, Quill wondered about that wording, heartfree. Is anyone is ever truly heartfree? He knew his father had not been at his age, and had made a marriage Quill had once overheard called disastrous when the speaker did not know he was on the other side of a stack of scrolls. He knew the “disaster” was not aimed at him, but at the cost to his father.
Quill straightened around and tightened his knees, urging his fresh horse into an easy canter.
It was best to get away from the royal city. He’d seen signs over winter that Bunny’s interest was already waning. His absence should free her the faster. As for Lineas...no, it was better to get away until her lingering gaze in Connar’s direction wouldn’t matter.
TWENTY-THREE
Connar was still brooding over missing a possible attack on the eastern raiders a couple months later, as his Name Day came and went, and spring thawed the world.
So far, nothing had been said about the army riding out, at least. And besides, there was something to be said for being in the top year of the academy at last. The coveted senior barracks, with its own practice court, and closest to the mess hall, was finally theirs.
Connar and Noddy looked around on a rainy, cold morning, buoyant with triumph and anticipation. Both wore new coats, fitted and sashed. Anticipation revealed itself, despite careless attitudes and offhand talk, in the fact that everyone had showed up a day or so early, no matter how far they’d had to ride.
Connar, always listening, overheard someone laughing over the fact that the far south boys had holed up at an inn along the lower river for an entire week, so no one would think they were too eager. Rat and Mouse Noth found them hiding out there, and Mouse was busy telling everyone.
Which was the sort of reckless thing Mouse would do, Connar thought as he chucked the contents of his gear into the empty trunk at the foot of his bunk.
Then he turned around to see who had chosen where, and how much they’d grown. Secretly relieved to find himself the fourth tallest, he bent over to neaten the jumble in his trunk before the bell rang for inspection—some things didn’t change—then paused as Lefty Poseid dashed in, eyes wide. “The braids boy is here.”
“Where’d they put him?” Gannan asked, grinning.
Lefty jerked his thumb over his shoulder, his lip curling with the extravagant disdain of a senior for the barracks they’d lived in the year before. “With the rats.” That was the seniors’ pejorative for the class the year behind them, led by Rat Noth.
“Of course they put him in with the rats,” Gannan said, irritating Connar with the way he furtively looked around for approval. “He’s a rat. Are they duffing him up?”
“Dunno, but I’m going to see.” Lefty was gone, his retreating footsteps splashing from puddle to puddle.
Righty, his twin, bolted out the door in pursui
t, and the rest streamed after, hoping for entertainment, ancient rivalries temporarily lulled by the presumption of an interloper being thrust among them.
“Out,” honked a gangling seventeen-year-old, completely ignored by the seniors, who knew their rights. As this year’s leaders, they could go anywhere, a privilege they’d often enough bitterly resented in past years when seniors had seen fit to trample through their barracks.
They ranged themselves along the windows, looking in at a vaguely familiar face: their age, blond hair, a hand shorter than Connar. He was an ordinary enough boy, well put together, square chin, and a wide mouth made for smiling. He’d obviously just arrived, as he stood alone wearing a worn coat that had to have been handed down from a brother, his gear over his shoulder. He faced the rest of the rats, who stood in a semicircle.
Ignoring the new audience, Ran Senelaec said, “Which bunk is mine?”
Six hands pointed to the one by the door.
“Right there, Braids,” someone said, and flicked two fingers to an imaginary braid—braids in Hand.
Ran tossed his dusty, mud-splattered bag on top of the trunk at its foot and gave them a wry look, having expected both the nickname and the bed. “Worst one in here, right?” And when no one immediately answered, “That’s what I figured.”
Since his tone had been droll resignation without any heat or resentment, the tallest boy spoke both out loud and with hands, “At least in here, you won’t get rained on, as our door faces south. Weather never comes up from the south.”
“You might shiver,” Baldy Sindan-An put in, turning slightly as he signed, so that David Mareca could see his hands. “But at least you won’t smell Basna and Mareca there.”
“Says the biggest farter outside the stables,” Mareca’s hands flashed, his face wrinkled in a grimace of horror. “You’ll like the door come summer, Braids. Except yours is the first bunk in inspection.”
Ran, who in Senelaec had over winter become Rana, that day underwent another name change that day, one that would stick. He accepted it with a philosophical shrug, more interested in their speed in Hand. He and Cousin Ranet had begun studying the language after the Victory Day games—and as was usual among Senelaecs, what one did, everyone did. Braids had learned a lot, but these boys were so fast he had to concentrate to follow, as some didn’t speak at all. It was clear these boys were used to switching between languages without a thought, the same way his Sindan-An cousins switched between Marlovan and their Iascan dialect.
When the pause became a silence, Pepper Marlovayir said in a goading voice, “Do girls fart, Braids?”
“Like a stable after the horses get into the green grass,” he said, signing horses, eating, grass. He betrayed no reaction to the nickname.
Snickers and guffaws met this sally, then Braids glanced around. “Go ahead. Get ‘em out. I know you want to ask.”
Thus invited to interrogate him, everyone unaccountably dried up, until Nermand said and signed, “What was it like?”
“You mean, what was it like being a girl?” Braids asked, and on seeing an opened palm, “I don’t know, what’s anything like, when you’re used to it every day?”
“Did you really think you were a girl?” someone else asked and signed.
“I didn’t think about it at all. Neither did the others. Till we were, I don’t know, ten or twelve or so. It was in the baths when they first noticed I was the only one with a prick.” Memory: Fnor, who could sometimes be oblivious, asking why he was booted out of the girls’ baths. On account of she’s actually a he. Didn’t you notice “she’s” got a prick? To which Fnor had said round-eyed, She does? “Once they noticed, they thought it was hilarious.”
“Your prick?” one of the Marlovayir twins sneered.
“Well, that, and the fact that me being there was the best ruse since since....” He paused, side-eyeing the Marlovayir twins. Both his parents had warned him about starting anything. He could finish if the Marlovayirs went after him, and the Senelaec clan would back him to the hilt, but he wasn’t to start anything. So he said, “I got sent to the men’s bath side, but the rest of my time I spent with the girls.”
“Why?” someone else asked.
“Obvious,” a scornful voice rose from the Marlovayir side of the room. Braids didn’t look. “They didn’t want him here.”
“Why not?”
That same twin sneered, “Because he was a rabbit—”
Then a boy, hitherto silent, spoke up for the first time, “When he was born?”
The quiet sarcasm was met with a brief, reflective pause, and Braids wondered who this brown boy was: brown hair, eyes, skin, all much the same shade of dull wood. Apparently Brown was something important among them, judging by the lack of retort.
Braids said into the silence, “On account of the stories about Bloody Tanrid,” he said. “I guess we lost a lot of people in my family back then.”
“Pretty much everyone’s family lost someone then,” tall, quiet Hana Jevayir commented.
From the open window came the deeper voice of a senior, as lanky, sharp-boned Stick Tyavayir, as popular as Ghost, got right to the question all the oldest were most were curious about. “So if you lived with the girls, and they knew you weren’t one, you got laid any time you wanted?”
Braids had loved the camaraderie of his life as a girl, the jokes and stings, the horses and the rides in wind and sun. But those girls had become in some sense like sisters. Cub had offered to take him to the pleasure house at the end of winter, as Braids was almost seventeen, but all he’d really done was talk, trying to figure out who he was and how he was supposed to regard those longtime sisters. He was still growing, and wasn’t ready for sex with another person yet, but he could see in the faces around him what they wanted to hear.
So he said, “Sure.”
A chorus of howls rose around him.
“I knew it.” Stick smacked his hand to his forehead, his expressive face anguished.
“And you’re here, when you could be with a different girl every night?” someone else moaned.
Braids opened his palm. “The king invited me. I didn’t think invitations from kings had a ‘no’ choice.”
The whispers and mutters died suddenly, at the familiar clack-thud of Hauth approaching the door. The seniors faded back, their strut gone, as Hauth rapped out, “Inspection before evening mess.”
That sent the seniors in full retreat. Hauth then separated out Braids and the Marlovayir twins with a flick of his cane and a sharp jerk of his chin.
Braids looked sideways to see what he was supposed to do, then followed the twins at a wary distance.
Outside the barracks, Hauth said to the twins, “Everyone has been bored to annihilation hearing about your feud with Senelaec House.”
Both twins reddened.
Turning a merciless one-eyed stare from them to Braids, Hauth said, “There are rules for fighting among seniors. Anyone lacking self-control enough to squabble is unable to command. So when your group goes on overnight, you will be supervising the scrubs in stable duty. That’s the usual rule. In case you three are wasting time figuring ways around that, there are specific orders for you.” He glared at Braids. “Any sign of your boneheaded clan feud here, and you go home.”
To the twins, whose faces betrayed initial delight, “And you’ll go home too. Both of you. No questions asked. The night anything happens between the three of you, you’ll be riding out of the gates together, under guard.”
Pepper began, “But what if he—”
“That’s an order from the headmaster. Take it up with him. Do you three understand? Anything overt or covert, and you’re gone. We’re not going to lose a future battle because your two houses have shit between your ears.”
The twins three-fingered their chests, belatedly copied by Braids.
“Then get ready for inspection.” Hauth stalked away, aware of his hypocrisy. But the feud between eagle and dolphin clans was different, too much bloodshed t
o be overlooked. The stakes were not childish ruses and the occasional duel out on the borderland, but the kingdom itself.
And the boy who should be in line for that throne was ignoring him.
The twins dashed back inside, shaking rain off themselves. Braids followed, turning to the nearest boy who wasn’t a Marlovayir. “Who was that?”
As there are few pleasures superior to informing the ignorant, the rest of Braids’ news barracks-mates spent the remaining time before the bell offering highly opinionated descriptions of the masters.
While they talked, Braids learned how to organize his trunk (something he’d never done in his life) and how to properly sweep the floor, because of course the new boy would get stuck with this job, with many voices offering helpful critique.
After the headmaster came through to inspect and dismissed the boys to the evening meal, Braids followed, exhilarated and worried in a whipsaw of emotions. He was here at last, wearing Cub’s old gray coat, his hair in a horsetail, which at first had made his ears feel cold. It had been so strange to train his fingers to pull his hair up high on the back of his head, after years of braids.
On the way into the mess hall—which smelled like rye buns, cabbage, and grilled fish, like home—Braids spied that master with the single eye in a crabby face. Hauth, the others called him, the lance training master. Aware that he was terrible with a lance even after a winter of knocking around with one he and his brother had made, Braids ducked his head as he passed.
Hauth had already dismissed the Senelaec brat from his mind as someone of no importance. His single eye was on Connar, who—unlike every year since their first meeting—sauntered past him without a glance.
Safe in the knowledge that no boy or master could read the women’s code (with Senelaec additions), Braids wrote:
Rana Senelaec to His Family:
After a month they let us write letters home. Here is mine. Da, you were right. First thing out of their mouth they called me Braids. Everything is great except they talk so fast in Hand and have a lot of words we did not learn. If you fight you get stable duty at rec time or when the others go overnight. Baldy says it was the first rule on account of Bloody Tanrid. So, Ma, you can stop thinking the Marlovayirs will challenge me to a duel.
Time of Daughters I Page 55
