by Melanie Rawn
“You and Alin,” she began a bit awkwardly. “You know, I’ve never seen—”
“—men like us?” he interrupted bitterly.
“Two people who care so much for each other,” she finished quietly. “Except for Agatine and Orlin, you’re unique in my experience.”
Valirion shrugged. “Sorry. It’s just—I get angry sometimes. Mighty First Daughter Geria Ostin doesn’t approve of us.” Dark eyes glinted dangerously. “She has a new lover every other week even though she’s married. But according to her, we’re immoral.”
Sarra saw nothing unusual in Geria’s sexual habits, although she personally deplored promiscuity. A woman took lovers as she pleased, causing scandal only if she had no children to carry on her Name, and if her husband disliked it . . . well, that was the husband’s problem. But because she remembered Geria, she knew the real source of the First Daughter’s disapproval, and thus knew what Val would say next.
“Alin could fetch a good price. He’s Blood. They make expensive husbands. Geria had a girl all picked out for him and Alin told her to—well, let’s just say he left Ostinhold.”
“And . . . your own family?”
“Mother’s glad she won’t have to pay to make a husband of me.”
So much for Glenin’s wedding present, the abolishment of Bloods and Tiers, Sarra told herself. The system survived because, of course, everybody knew what everybody else was. Sons with Val’s preferences were still welcomed in lower Tiers; marriages need not be purchased for them. The marriage mart went on unchanged. It was obscene, almost as bad as slavery. It had long been on her List of What Must Be Changed for purely personal reasons; now she had another example before her.
Her mission to Ryka capsulized something else she intended to change. Attrition due to war, disease, or lack of female heirs had extinguished thousands of Names. Slegin would die with Agatine. Surely the Census Ministry—which had subsumed the Ministry of Bloods and Tiers—could trace descendants and encourage revival of lost Names. And for those in danger of extinction, sons could be allowed to pass their Name to a second or third daughter. . . .
Sarra became aware that her companion’s mood had darkened still further. She smiled. “Cheer up, Val. I bet it just kills Geria to see her Blooded brother consorting with a son of a Third like you!”
He snorted, then laughed aloud. “Don’t it just!”
Solingirt did his best to hurry, but even so it was nearly Tenth when they reached the Old Wall. During the rampages of the self-styled Grand Duchess Veller Ganfallin several centuries ago, Roke Castle’s citizens had withstood a long siege by withdrawing to the innermost fastness of the keep. The Old Wall had been demolished by the Grand Duchess’ army, but she hadn’t taken Roke Castle. The stones of the Old Wall were later carted away to build new homes. In one of these, Imilial Gorrst waited.
Alin practically pounced on the dinner spread on a rickety table.
“Slow down, boy!” the Warrior Mage laughed. “There’s plenty! I didn’t dare buy enough of everything for five, but there’s choice to make up for it.”
“Oh, you know him,” Val said. “If he sticks a fork in it and it stops wriggling, he’ll eat it.” Snagging a crab cake right out of Alin’s fingers, he munched, swallowed, and went on. “It’s Fifth less three minutes in Cantratown. We have plenty of time to eat before the place wakes up tomorrow morning.”
Alin returned the favor by stealing Val’s slice of onion bread. “We’ve time for a rest as well. I plan to arrive in the middle of the night.”
Temptation to ask which night was squelched by Sarra’s original vow of ignorance for sanity’s sake. If it was Alin’s job to keep track of where they were, it was Val’s to keep track of when. So she ate her share of food, and between mouthfuls asked why this house was deserted.
“Because we arranged it to be, of course,” Val replied. “There are places like this all over Lenfell. Some more comfortable than others, truly told, but all Warded and safe. Imi took care of the Wards before we got here, and she’ll set them again when we leave.”
“Ah,” Sarra said, as if she understood. When I find Gorynel Desse, he’s got a lot of explaining to do. Turning to the Warrior Mage, she went on, “Is there a chance this place has some extra clothes? Especially cloaks. The ones you’re wearing just beg the Council Guard to come after us.”
Kanto Solingirt drew himself straight, mustache bristling and shaggy brows knotted over his nose. “I gave up my regimentals when the Captal ordered it for safety’s sake, though it was a coward’s decree. I similarly gave up my position at St. Mittru’s Academy, even though I am a teacher born. But I will not give up my colors or the sigils of honored scholarship! I am not ashamed of being Mageborn, still less of the years I have served Lenfell as best I—”
“Fa,” Imilial said softly. “We put the others in danger.”
He harrumphed and looked sour, but eventually nodded. Privately Sarra both understood and deplored his attitude. She hated being unable to claim her own ancient name, colors, and sigil. Claiming them, however, was the quickest way she knew to get arrested. The choice of a coward, or the only choice for survival?
She changed the subject. “Have either of you ever been to Cantratown?”
“We left the Mage Academy when Mother died,” Imilial said. “Hunt week, 941. We’ve been in Kenrokeshir ever since. A quiet life with few out-Shir visitors, so I doubt we’ll be recognized—if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Exactly. I apologize for the indignity, but all four of you are now my personal slaves. Scholar Solingirt, my steward. Warrior Gorrst, you don’t look anything like a maidservant, so I think we’ll make you my guard, along with the cousins over there. Now, what was this about needing to be invisible?”
Valirion paused in emptying a wine bottle down his throat. He winked at Alin. “Told you.”
His cousin shrugged. “What you told me was, ‘She’ll think of everything.’ I haven’t heard much yet about getting us into the Ryka Archives.”
Sarra choked. “Where?”
“For evidence,” Alin said. “We’re to steal damaging documents.”
“To win support for the Rising from those who need written proof,” Val finished. “Any ideas, Sarra?”
“My dear children,” Solingirt smiled, “that’s what I’m for.”
Alin traded a glance with Val, who cleared his throat. “Begging your pardon, but—”
“Oh, I won’t skulk about by night. Nothing so energetic. There are easier ways of acquiring documentation. How do you think a Fourth Tier family like mine ‘proved’ they owned ten square miles of Rokemarsh?”
“Fa—?” his daughter asked faintly. “You forged—?”
He shrugged. “Simple enough. A good hand for classical calligraphy, a spell to age the paper and ink. The Vekke Blood never even missed the land, because we sold it back to them and used the proceeds as my dower. You see, Imi, your late unlamented grandmother wanted the Ladymoon wrapped in pink ribbon to compensate for wasting a Gorrst daughter on a miserable Solingirt.”
Val grinned. “So you sold land you didn’t own to the people who already owned it.”
“No, we bought it first,” the old man corrected. “Through the Vekkes, helped a bit by funds they provided.”
“What about your share of the Solingirt Dower Fund?” Sarra asked, intrigued by the deception, irritated by its necessity—and more than a little confused.
“Ah, my dear, you don’t know the Solingirts. Our Dower Fund has been a joke for three generations. All the First Daughters pay in as the law requires—but they pay in promises, not cash. And the year Imi’s mother married me, sixteen or seventeen of my cousins also married. As the third son of a fifth daughter of a very junior branch, I was last on the list for my rightful share.”
“But—that’s illegal,” Sarra protested.
“Easy to see you’ve never been part of betrothal
negotiations,” he said, smiling. “My predicament is nothing if not common. Besides that, the Gorrsts are odd about money. That which generates from land is vastly superior. If, for instance, I’d been a Talenir, with five barren mountaintops on Shellinkroth to our Name, it would’ve been a different thing entirely.”
“But the Talenirs are Fourths—and one of the poorest families on Lenfell!” Sarra exclaimed.
“Their poverty is tied to land,” Solingirt said. “My Name’s money comes from trade. Tainted.”
Val glowed with admiration. “Let me get this straight. You secretly bought land from the Vekkes with money secretly provided by the Vekkes which you then sold back to the Vekkes to gain a dower to marry a Gorrst. I love it!”
“Cousin Mittrian Solingirt’s idea. He acted as my Advocate in the matter—he was Tevis Vekke’s husband, you know. It amused them both no end to fool Mara Gorrst. By the way, you have a sister named for Tevis, Alin. And she was your great-grandmother,” he added to the startled Valirion.
“Oh, Val! Does that make us too consanguineous to be married?” Imi teased.
He gave a languishing sigh. “Alas, darling Domna, let us simply enjoy each other, with illicity adding felicity—”
“‘Illicity?’” she echoed. “Is that a word?”
Alin pulled a face and rolled his eyes ceilingward.
Solingirt rapped his knuckles on a wall. “To return to the point! I expect to be busy with pen and paper until spring, once we get wherever it is we’re going to end up.”
Sarra thought it over. “Do you know Anniyas’s handwriting? The paper she uses? The ink? The pen?”
“I’ve several examples of her signature—”
Oh, splendid. “Alin. Do you want official Council records or Anniyas’ private papers?”
He went very still. Valirion started to say something; Sarra hushed him with a gesture. Alin’s blue eyes began to sparkle wickedly.
“Very good, Domna. It’s not the whole Council we want to discredit. They’re mostly harmless. I was told to take whatever seemed suspicious. But if we—”
“Ha!” Valirion had tumbled to it. “Anniyas’s quarters! Pick up a couple of her letters for our Scholarly forger, get out fast—and if we see anything interesting along the way, grab it.”
Sarra nodded. “She may or may not have been foolish enough to have written down anything incriminating. If she has and you find it, good. If not—all we need is a sample of her handwriting to provide incriminations to order.”
Alin grinned, a golden wolf. “Domna, you’re a quick study.”
“Gut jumping,” Valirion muttered, dark eyes dancing.
“Thank you,” Sarra replied. “We’ll refine this when we get to Ryka. I’m still waiting to hear why we have to be invisible at Cantratown.”
4
Alin sat the watch that night. Again Sarra woke in the early hours, and again she learned things about her unacknowledged cousins. Alin was slower to speak than Valirion, but when he chose to speak, it was with total honesty.
Still, it took Sarra half an hour to get him started.
She began at the logical place: Ostinhold. She asked about his mother, which led to Sarra’s side of the story of Pinderon and the Minstrel, and thence to his siblings, and with Sarra’s prompting to the topic of his sisters’ marriages. Lenna and Tevis were now husbanded; Miram was resisting.
“She’s just your age, Domna,” Alin said. “The whole idea bores her.”
“I don’t want to get married, either,” Sarra admitted. “It seems an absurd amount of bother for very little reward.”
“You’re too young to be that cynical.”
“Twenty-two—a year older than you!”
“You’ve traveled in state,” he replied with a shrug. “Welcomed as a First Daughter, celebrated, honored. I sneak my way around the world’s shadows, and the last thing I ever want is to be recognized as a son of the Ostin Blood. I prefer it so—but that sort of life makes five years to every one.”
“Val seems to enjoy it.”
“He’s a Wastrel—in every sense of the word—whose one saving grace is that he cheerfully admits it. The Maurgens are well rid of him.” Alin laughed almost soundlessly.
“I hear you’ve known each other since you were children.”
“I think we knew each other before we were born.” He cast a quick glance at her, hunching a shoulder against the doorframe. “Does that sound . . . ?”
“No, Alin. It doesn’t sound odd at all.” Agatine and Orlin are the same . . . and my own parents, before—before. “It’s a feeling I’d like to have one day. Except—I’d be so scared of losing it,” she confessed. “Wearing it out. Watching it die.”
“That’s just it, Sarra. It doesn’t wear out and it can’t die. Nor can it be lost.” He hesitated, picking splinters from around the lock for something to do with his hands. “Just after I learned about my magic, Val left The Waste for nearly a year—a conspiracy between his grandmother and my sister Geria. I didn’t have an easy time with magic. When they sent him away, I expected I’d go mad. Actually waited for it to happen. But it didn’t. Because Val was here.” Alin placed two fingertips to his forehead, then his chest.
Did Auvry Feiran still remember Maichen Ambrai? Had he been a part of her until she died?
“You’re lucky, you two,” she murmured.
“I know. It isn’t that neither of us is scared. But everybody is, one way or another. You just get on with things.”
Sarra tucked her chilled hands into her pockets. “You’re too young to be so wise, Alin-O,” she said fondly.
For the first time she saw him smile—sweet, self-mocking, tender, his was a smile to mend hearts, not break them.
“If I were wise, would I be doing these crazy things?” He shifted to the window, peering through the grime to moonlit farmland outside. When he turned, the delightful smile was gone. “You were singing earlier. What was it?”
“Was I?”
He hummed a few notes. “D’you know the rest? The words?”
“It’s just a song my little brother Jeymi was singing the morning I left Roseguard.” How many mornings ago? Alin was right: this kind of life made weeks out of days. “It’s a children’s song.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you ask—”
“Do you know the verses?” he interrupted.
“Some of them.” She searched for the beginning words, and when she had them nearly fell off her chair. “Alin! It’s—”
“Yes. ‘The Ladder Song.’ Sing me what you know.”
“Oh, you don’t want me to do that. I couldn’t carry a tune if it was strapped to my back. I’ll just talk the verses.”
The nonsense song accompanied a jumping game nobody played after the age of ten or so. She supposed the succession of repeating opposites made it a teaching song of sorts, but otherwise it made little sense.
Long or short, short or long
This is called the Ladder Song
Near or far, far or near
Takes you there or brings you here
Far or near, near or far
Doesn’t matter where you are
Down or up, up or down
Climb the ladder round and round
Up or down, down or up
Ladder in a rocky cup
“So far, the same,” Alin mused. When she looked blank, he continued, “Each couplet describes a Ladder. ‘Round and round’ is the Double Spiral Stair at the Octagon Court. ‘Rocky cup’ is a dry well in Bleynbradden.”
“Of course! Alin, it’s brilliant! Who’d suspect a list of Ladders hidden in a children’s song?”
“Truly told, Sarra. But it has many versions, and changes in different parts of Lenfell. Children add or lose things, or mistake one word for another. Bards call it lyric shift. I want to hear the version they sing at Roseguard.”
She began again, dredging up memories ten years gone. She’d gotten rather good at that sort of thing.
“‘Sick or well, well or sick/Ladder built with fingers quick’—” Sarra almost bounced in her chair with excitement. “St. Maurget Quickfingers!”
“That’s how I read it, too, but I don’t know the reference. Keep going.”
Well or sick, sick or well
Ladder in the shepherd’s dell
Big or little, little or big
Ladder of the happy pig
Little or big, big or little
Ladder made of acorn brittle
She broke off. “I always thought that an odd one. I mean, brittle-sweet is made with all kinds of nuts and seeds, but acorns are too tough. So if ‘brittle’ is an adjective, it’s wildly inappropriate.”
Alin wasn’t interested in a culinary analysis. “Acorn? Not almond?”
“Acorn. As for the ‘happy pig’—” She fell silent, and another jump landed her on both mental feet. “Where do acorns come from?” As pale eyes darkened under frowning brows, she laughed. “What’s your Name sigil, Alin Ostin?”
He groaned faintly and covered his face with his hands. “St. Alilen, patron of crazies, have mercy on this poor madman! Another Ladder on Ostin lands?”
“Shake the family oak tree next time you’re home, and see what falls out,” Sarra advised. “Ever been to Domburron?”
Alin let his hands fall to his thighs. “Only when I can’t avoid it. Why?”
“Just off the Circle there’s a toy shop called the Pink Piglet. I never saw a happier grin on a shop sign in my life. Or on a genuine pig, come to that.”
“The Pink—?” He rallied. “What were you doing in a toy shop?”
She fought a blush, wondering if Alin had gut-jumping abilities of his own. Almost fourteen when Agatine and Orlin took her to Domburron, she’d not been too old to scorn a new gown for her favorite doll. . . .
“Buying presents for my little brothers, of course. Let’s go through the rest of the verses. We might end up solving them all tonight!”