Time of Daughters I

by Sherwood Smith

  As always, there was the question of how much to tell, and the futile wish that the boundaries of trust and obligation would be clear.

  Hliss knew nothing of the golden notecases or the royal runners’ own communication net. Though she and the king were no longer lovers, Arrow still liked coming by to talk to her and catch up with news of Andas. Camerend’s guilt over the fact that he could provide her with daily reports on Andas’s doings, but did not, was something he had to live with, and ameliorate as best he could.

  As to kingdom affairs, he was practiced in talking around what he knew. “So far, we couldn’t find evidence that the raiders are Adranis. Or even their hirelings.”

  Hliss had been thumbing tired eyes. They had gone to sleep scarcely half a watch ago. She looked up. “Then who is it?”

  “We’ll find out more when the scouts return, of course,” he said, the usual preface. “All we know is that the Adrani king is not behind the attacks—he’s too busy with matters on his eastern border. We’re not certain about the Elsarions, a very powerful duchas family up there on the Adrani western border. They owe fealty to the Adrani king, but they have a lot of power in their own territory. We may as well call the Elsarions petty kings.”

  “Elsarion,” Hliss repeated on an interrogative note. “Where have I heard that name before?”

  “If you studied history beyond our borders, which we runners are required to do, you’ve probably heard that Sarias Dei—the ancestor the present duchas is named for—lived among us a century ago, until she married into the Elsarions. Her descendants are reputed to be ambitious as well as handsome, charming, and everything you always hear about the Deis.”

  “I remember now. What I heard was that you can’t trust the Deis,” Hliss said, smiling. “That was Mother’s opinion, of course.”

  “Currently, according to the last report I received, the new Elsarion duchas is a young woman with a younger brother around the crown prince’s age.” Perhaps it was time to visit them, making shared family tree an excuse, to discover what he could about them.

  “What will it mean, if Arrow sends his army there?” She fought a yawn, her eyes watering.

  He said, “I can’t predict for certain, of course. Perhaps a show of force might cause the troublemakers, whoever they are, to withdraw and reflect.”

  Hliss lay back with a sigh. “I hope you’re right.”

  His calm conviction reassured her; so far, everything Camerend said seemed to be so. He noticed things. He’d asked royal runners passing anywhere near Farendavan to take the time to stop there, just so they could bring word of Andas, though she had never asked him to. That he would do that meant as much as the letters themselves. Mother didn’t write, of course, but Brother did, and when he was riding with the Faths or one of the other clans, either his wife Tialan or his lifemate Hanred wrote.

  Of late Andas had added his own scrawls. There was even a picture of a fourlegged animal labeled Dusk, which Hliss guessed was a horse. Hliss treasured the much-folded, chalk-smeared drawing more than diamonds.

  Smiling over this memory, she let her eyes drift shut, soothed by the quiet rustle as Camerend dressed.

  He dropped a soft kiss on her brow and left, breathing in the clean, heady scent of green things after the rain. Tiny wildflowers were already springing up in cracks between the stones, adding a trace of scent to the air. He splashed rapidly through the courts, reflecting that the castle bees would be out in force before the sun topped the distant hills. Sometimes the creatures of ground and sky made more sense than the humans who disturbed their ancient patterns.

  He ducked through the north end archway—and nearly ran into the two princes rushing in from the opposite entrance. “You’re up early,” he exclaimed, and watched Noddy blush deeply as he looked away, poor soul. He was still sneaking over to watch Lineas drill with the queen and her runners, and thought he wasn’t noticed.

  Connar’s wide gaze, blue as the summer sky emerging from the clouds outside, pinned Camerend. He asked breathlessly, “Is there any news?”

  Camerend smothered a laugh as they started up the stairs together. “As it happens, I believe that at this moment the king is meeting with Commander Noth as well as Headmaster Andaun for his weekly report. If that meeting didn’t get cancelled, you should hear the very latest at breakfast.”

  Connar knew that the headmaster met with Da weekly, but that was always at night. Why so early in the morning, and with Commander Noth there, too? Everyone talked about the King’s Riders going east—they were only waiting on the scouts.

  Maybe Da wanted to take the seniors!

  Maybe he wanted to take Noddy and him, Connar thought, heart thundering against his ribs. He and Noddy turned off down the second floor hallway as Camerend kept going up the stairs to the royal runners’ floor.

  The princes checked with Ma’s third runner Sage, on duty at the queen’s outer chamber, to discover that indeed, the king was gone, so breakfast would be late.

  Connar said he’d go to his room to catch up on his sleep, went inside, then peeked out after the count of ten. As expected, Noddy was loping back down the hall toward the window at the far end, from which Connar knew that Noddy watched Lineas drilling with Ma, Bun, and their runners. Connar had never gone. He had no interest in a pale, freckled little stick like Lineas.

  Connar stood poised, breathing hard. Tomorrow was the last combined senior game, and he and Rat Noth were the only ones left for their third commands of the season. Whichever one triumphed would be enemy commander against Ghost Fath in the week long all-academy Great Game out somewhere in the plains.

  And here he was, everything in place to make that happen: the family busy, the headmaster as well. A true commander noticed the best circumstances in which to act, like Inda Harskialdna when he took over the pirate ship.

  And a true commander learned everything he could about the enemy, in order to win with the least cost to his own men.

  He glanced at the stairway. In practical terms this scouting foray would be the deadliest sneak of his entire life. That was appropriate for the most important game of his entire life, his last chance to win that command over the entire academy.

  It has to be me in command.

  Conviction propelled him back down the stairs, and along one of the old servant halls to the empty state chambers, and out through the stable entrance to the parade ground, which was constructed to limit distractions to the horses going to and fro. He had to remain unseen by the sentries on the city wall, as the headmaster’s annex was located on the other side of the parade ground from the royal residence portion of the castle, where guards were the most alert.

  Elation pounded his heart in time with his footsteps as he ran through byways he and Noddy had discovered as boys. There weren’t many places one could escape the sentries’ eyes, but he and his brother knew them all.

  All you had to do was get to the inner north-south wall, then keep low. A pulse of regret when he paused at an intersection; he was so used to having Noddy at his back. But it was better this way. Noddy was terrible with secrets—not blabbing, but he got mopey if something bothered him.

  Connar ghosted along walls flanking the upper school barracks, where few boys would be. The lower school were confined to their territory on Restday, where they’d be playing around, but the upper school was nearly empty, boys either on liberty or else working off penalties in the barns or on the far walls as sentries.

  Keeping his head bent, Connar slipped along the corrals and, protected from view by the nearer stable, hopped the fence, crossed behind the mess hall, and then entered the headmaster’s building from the mess hall side. Again, no one was about.

  Heart drumming against his ribs, he ventured inside.

  It looked empty, but in fact, Connar was not alone.

  Up in the loft storage, one of the headmaster’s runners had wedged himself uncomfortably among dusty trunks. This small boy from the Tevaca clan knew that on Restday no one had duty, and the
headmaster had been seen setting out into the last of the storm just as the sun was coming up, so—gloating over his own cleverness—he’d retreated to the loft with a stolen feast of honeycakes.

  With a twelve-year-old’s appetite for any food at any time, the more delicious when illicit, Tevaca was about to get outside of his booty when footsteps caused him to freeze mid-bite.

  The headmaster was back already! Terrified, he leaned out, eyes stark...and in cat-walked one of the big lancer boys. Black hair. Was that the prince, Olavayir Tvei? Tevaca’s mouth dropped open. He watched in silence as the prince paused to sweep the room. Instinct caused Tevaca to lean back, only a heartbeat before Connar cast a quick glance up at the loft.

  Connar, seeing nothing, and remembering from his own days as a headmaster’s runner that the loft contained only trunks of old records, turned his attention to what he had come for: the wall behind the headmaster’s desk, where the big chalkboard was rested when it wasn’t taken out before games.

  As Tevaca leaned out with infinite care, not even daring to breathe, below, Connar grinned in triumph. There it was, the complete layout, boundaries and limitations, of the next game! And it was a nasty one—an infiltration assignment, the type Connar hated most. He studied the pins at various points around the city as well as outside the academy walls, which meant no horses. A real blister of a game.

  Connar bent closer to the pins, and spotted notes in fake Venn runes at each—obviously code that would have to be broken before they proceeded to the next site.

  At least academy codes were always simple. Royal runners were the ones who studied languages and codes; during the long, dull winter days when he and Noddy were small, Ma’s runners had given them paper chases over the castle with easy codes to solve, with something good to eat at the end of the trail.

  He scanned again, committing the map to memory, as Tevaca watched in trembling silence above. When Connar began his turn to leave, Tevaca jerked backward.

  Connar’s neck tightened, and he paused halfway to the door to look around more slowly. Had he heard...something? But he stood directly below the loft now, so of course he saw nothing out of place, and his mind was entirely on the headmaster and masters. It never would have occurred to him, with the entire castle as a retreat, that anyone would want to be in that room unless assigned to be there. He listened for a few heartbeats, aware that time was against him, and hearing nothing (again, Tevaca was holding his breath, the honeycake poised in one hand) he shook off the feeling and hastened out.

  Only when his footsteps had diminished did Tevaca breathe again. Olavayir Tvei! Was he supposed to be there? Of course he must, or why else would he be? The lancers were intimidating and incomprehensible to the smaller boys, the princes even more so, with their silent hand language.

  Tevaca crammed the honeycake into his mouth, chewing furiously. The fun had gone out of his booty, and with it, the taste. Worry, question, excitement boiled inside him. Someone else could turn up!

  That thought squelched what was left of his appetite. Sweeping the unfinished cakes into his grubby tunic, he closed one fist around them and with the other scrambled over the side of the loft, landing on the top of a cabinet, then on a table, and to the floor, scorning the ladder resting on the other side of the room.

  He stopped, horrified. If he had used the ladder, Olavayir Tvei would have noticed it for certain, and discovered him. Horror at the close call made him shiver as he bolted out the door.

  He skulked back to scrub territory, dumping the honeycakes in a cache for later—hoping some disgusting greedyguts didn’t nab them first. He kept low to north walls so that the castle wall sentries wouldn’t spot him. He didn’t straighten up until he reached safe ground. Then he sauntered casually in among the boys playing games, with an air of innocence so patently false that if anyone had shown the slightest interest in him, they would have dogpiled on him for summary interrogation.

  Pretty soon he was in on a game of racing beetles, but his mind stayed back in the headmaster’s annex. He wondered what Olavayir Tvei had been sent to do. Anything the big boys did was interesting.

  One thing for certain: secrets were only fun if people knew you had them, and it was so much better to speculate with someone else than hoot questions inside your own head.

  He considered the others, and once his beetle wandered off, he elbowed his particular friend, a freckle-faced urchin from the Faldred branch of the Zheirban Riders.

  “Where were you?” this friend demanded, well acquainted with Tevaca’s appetites. “Pigging extra breakfast buns?”

  “Way better. Want to know who I saw? But you can’t tell anybody....”

  As Connar got through the slow hours of Restday, he concentrated on his mental image of the map: destination the winter barn, clues at various sites around the city, fake runes to be deciphered.

  It was all useless if he didn’t come up with a plan. No, a set of plans, because this wasn’t an easy attack or defend problem. He had to defend his searchers, and then guide them to figure out the destination that he already knew, without anyone the wiser. And once they did that, there was still getting there ahead of the enemy.

  Was this how you did it, Inda, he wondered as the family settled in the queen’s suite, bread and wine at hand for Restday. The silence of Hand, usually so irking, helped him now. Nobody expected him to talk, so he could think about this new idea, that Inda had been no smarter than anyone else, just more sneaky at getting the inside line of communication. Then he’d put together his solutions before anyone knew what he knew. So of course they thought his victorious plans sprang from his head as if put there by magical spell.

  By this win Connar would prove that he was ready to move straight into command this very summer. A riding at first, of course. He knew better than to think that he’d be awarded anything larger, though Inda-Harskialdna was commanding entire fleets of pirates when younger than Connar was now. Mere trickery, he reminded himself as Noddy labored away at describing in Hand the overnight earlier that week. Maybe the records lied about that, too.

  But these days, nobody made riding captain before twenty, much less higher rank. Asking for it was the same as whining. He had to impress the elders so much that they gave it to him.

  When Restday Drum and dinner were finally over, Noddy suggested, as he always did, that they all take a ride. Connar knew why Noddy did it, of course: because Bun would always agree, which meant her royal runner would be along as protection. Which, in turn, meant Noddy could sneak peeks at her when he thought nobody was looking, which would keep him occupied, so that Connar could think.

  As they finished up the last of the strawberry tarts, Connar snapped an inquiring look at Lineas, who was helping Ma’s runners collect the dinner dishes. He wondered what Noddy saw in her. Connar liked both boys and girls, but they had to look like boys or girls—the angles on a boy, curves on a girl, both with smooth muscles. Lineas looked like she was made out of string under that dark blue robe she wore.

  “Go on,” Ma said, as Da went out the other door. “It’s a perfect evening, nearly a full moon.”

  Noddy was of course relishing the agony of being so near and yet so far. Lineas was unfailingly kind, but her tranquil gaze whenever they spoke made it clear she saw him simply as Bun’s brother. Though he kept hoping something would change, as usual she was more interested in watching the low shrubs for any passing bands of assassins to leap out than she was in watching him. At least she didn’t stare at Connar anymore, which gave him hope.

  They circled the city walls, riding over bridges that crossed the slow rivers of summer and dropping the reins to give the horses a night gallop along the northern wall, then curving around to the southwest and past the academy’s outer wall.

  The moon was well up when they rode back through the city gates. Above, a sentry waved a pennon now that the royal children were back, the bells rang for the night watch, and the gates swung shut behind them. At the stable, lanterns hung around a stal
l drew their attention. A tall, strongly built young woman strode out, pale braids pearlescent in the ruddy light. Despite the road dust nearly obscuring the dull blue of her runner’s robe, evidence of a very long ride, there was a swing to her walk and a lift to her clean jawline that arrested the eye.

  The royal siblings walked up, Bun saying, “Do I know you? You look familiar.”

  “Heyo,” she hailed, teeth flashing in a dimpled grin. “You have to be the royal family.”

  Bun said, “And you?”

  The runner smacked her palm to her magnificent chest and said, “Neit, mother-cousin to the Ventdors, Riders to the Jarl of Olavayir. You met my brother Floss. I’m the jarlan’s newest long runner. Just arrived. I’m sure your stable people are excellent, but Seafoam here likes my touch.” She patted her mare, and they noticed belatedly the eagle-clan blue edging her dusty robe, dark and dull in the ruddly lamplight.

  At once Noddy and Bun had to ask how Tanrid was—how Floss was—and in the general exchange while Neit finished currying Seafoam, Noddy found himself distracted by Neit’s frank appraisal, a laughing quirk to her eye.

  When the mare looked ready for a parade, and munched quietly, she closed the stall door. “Lead on,” she said.

  Bun did. They moved off in a group, Neit falling in easily beside Noddy, her long legs matching his stride. She moved with an unconscious swing of hip that drew Noddy’s eye, but when she smiled at him—she only had to lift her head a little, a new sensation for him—he blushed even redder and looked away. Under the torchlight she gave him a smiling up-and-down. “I must say, Floss was right about you. I do like a man who isn’t a weed.”

  She'd said “man.” Noddy’s mouth dried. But she didn’t wait for him to agonize about fumbling through a response. “Looks like I’ll have a night of liberty. Anywhere interesting to go on a Restday evening?”

  Even Noddy didn’t miss this subtle hint. She wasn’t Lineas, but....

  He grinned, blushing to the ears. He managed to stutter out an incomprehensible collection of syllables that she took as assent.