Time of Daughters II

by Sherwood Smith

  Well, if it was dire, he’d speak, and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t plenty to do.

  “Very well.” She sat back down and picked up her reports.

  Vanadei slipped down the hall to where Lineas was supervising a class of fledges in handwriting. He paused in the doorway, caught her eye, and made the ‘feather’ sign, which was Quill’s name in Hand. Her eyes widened, and he backed away.

  While that was going on, Quill hastened through a fast bath, wrenching his mind determinedly to ordering duties in priority. It didn’t matter what he wanted, which was enough time to see Lineas face to face. Bitterness soured his gut, and he consciously fought it back. Duty. First, change out his gear for winter, including a couple of firesticks. Report to Mnar....

  When Lineas appeared in his open door, he was sitting on the edge of his bed in an unlaced shirt and brown riding trousers, wet hair hanging about his shoulders as he pulled on one brownweave riding boot. The other sat on the floor beside him; two knives and a sword lay beside him on the bed.

  He glanced up and froze. Gaze met wondering gaze, and the next thing she knew he’d crossed the room as she leaped to meet him.

  She locked her arms around him, he pulled her close, rocking them both as all their pent-up yearning flashed to desire. Dizzy before the ferocity of their heat, she longed for all the fabric between them to vanish, leaving them skin to skin. Closer.

  He groaned into the top of her head, and when she lifted herself up onto her tiptoes to fit herself against the evidence of his desire so that she could hug him even tighter, he groaned again, a different tone that made her chuckle into his chest.

  She lifted her face. They kissed, and kissed again, desperate as the sun-parched finding water at last. He barely had the presence of mind to whirl them about and kick the door shut behind him before they fell on the bed, bouncing the weapons to the floor.

  “There’s so much to...” he murmured into her lips.

  “Not now,” was all she said. “Not now.”

  He had never let himself get this far in his imagination. “The king. Said I could have till tomorrow morning. I was going to be good and leave today....”

  She grabbed him by the back of the head, and showed him how little she thought of his being good.

  Outside, in the hall, Vanadei heard the door slam, and smiled to himself. And for the rest of the watch, he lurked here and there, always in sight, and anyone who showed an inclination to look for either of them, he unapologetically sent off to distant parts of the castle, sure that they could be found there.

  As soon as Quill left, Arrow turned to Connar. “I always meant to wait until you reached thirty, or got some experience, whichever came first, to put you in command. After what you did up north—what you just said—I think you’re ready now.”

  The ferocity of Connar’s joy burned through him. He lost the words, nearly lost the world, but a correspondingly fierce effort focused him again as Arrow finished, “...and we’ll call all the garrison captains in at next Convocation to witness you getting your three gold arrows. Let ‘em all see it, everything orderly, no more about Olavayirs at each other’s throats. You’ll be right behind me in chain of command.”

  Arrow swung to his feet with a grunt. Now he could have that drink! Grinning at the happiness in Connar’s face, he said, “What was it, yesterday? When we went over to see Hliss, Noddy told me you should be promoted over him. He likes it over there at the state wing, and he hates the idea of running battles. I find all that astounding. I heard from everyone after that Chalk Hills business that you both were brave as well as skilled, and I remember what he looked like at the Victory Day Games, smashing lances.”

  He shook his head. “But that’s what he said. Even stranger, he really does read every word of those damn reports. He must have inherited Danet’s eye for lists and numbers. Better them than me . . Hah! Go get Noth. Let’s tell him.”

  Connar dashed out, scattering waiting runners, then stopped at his room and poked his head in. “Fish! Prepare to ride to Halivayir. All my winter clothes.”

  And he was gone again, leaving Fish to reflect on how fast the news would travel in the prince’s wake with him running about so exultantly.

  Fish knew what would come next: a summons to his father, where Uncle Retren was sure to be lurking around asking questions Fish couldn’t, or wouldn’t, answer, and handing out orders about how Fish was to influence the future king.

  Fish longed to ignore him, but he knew if he did his father would harrow him, then his mother would summon him into the city to hear a long lecture about The Importance of Never Forgetting His Dolphin-Clan Birth, and far worse, his brother would land on him like a pile of bricks—with a couple of his husky sentry friends along, in case Fish fought him off, as he had a few times. (Not that his brother cared a whit about who was king, as long as he got paid. He resented being lectured by their elders about Fish’s perceived shortcomings.)

  Wishing he were an orphan would not solve the problem. So the thing to do would be to first, delay until right before the watch change, after which he could plea orders, and second, to go with some kind of diversion in hopes of warding the usual harangue-and-harass about reporting Connar’s every word, thought, and deed. He couldn’t make something up, because between his brother the sentry, his father the quartermaster, and his uncle the academy master, they heard all the gossip as fast as it happened—so if they hadn’t heard it, they’d be certain to query. And land on him collectively and separately for lying.

  So...what? He looked around in despair. He also had to get things organized. Fish and the tailors had provided Connar with all new clothes, from the House tunic on down to two replacement summer coats, so once the carts from up north had finally caught up with them, they’d sat in Fish’s alcove untouched.

  The trunks contained all their winter clothes from those stiff winters at Larkadhe. He’d better get busy sorting those now, and get as much done as possible before the inevitable summons.

  Mentally considering and rejecting diversionary ideas, he prepared Connar’s saddlebags first, storing secondary clothes back in the trunks for the carts that would be sent off come morning.

  Then it was time for his own gear. He unlatched his trunk, threw the lid back, and pulled out his neatly folded heavy-linen winter shirts, trousers, drawers, and stockings, and set them aside. Then he grabbed his old runner’s coat, and paused as something crackled.

  Startled, he dropped the coat and reached in more carefully, and pulled out a somewhat crumpled drawing. When he recognized the sketched face, the aftermath of the Battle of Chalk Hills flooded his memory, including Lineas going on and on about ghosts.

  This would be perfect as a diversion, Fish decided. He didn’t believe in ghosts. Whether or not the drawing depicted Evred Olavayir, it was certain to get his father and Uncle Retren sidetracked into slandering Evred, or Lineas for pretending she saw ghosts, or any other subject that would (Fish hoped) use up the time he’d otherwise be interrogated and then harangued about Connar, until the watch bell released him.

  When the expected under-assistant showed up from the quartermaster’s, Fish said, “I’ll be there as soon as I carry out my immediate orders.”

  Then, smiling, he took his time to finish sorting his belongings, packing his gear bag with winter things and reorganizing his trunk with secondary winter clothes and spring and summer things.

  When he had calculated to a nicety how long he could dally before they’d start to get angry, he rolled up the drawing and headed for the quartermaster’s.

  Before his uncle could open his mouth, Fish said, “We’ve orders to ride north. I had to sort both our trunks. And I found something I’d nearly forgotten. Remember I told you about the Bar Regren attack at Chalk Hills?”

  His father opened his hand, and Uncle Retren said, “Connar’s first command, the success of which is almost exactly what Mathren—”

  Fish cut in before his uncle could gallop down the old familiar road. �
��I told you that Lineas claimed she saw Evred’s ghost. I don’t believe it, of course. But I saved this drawing she made of this ghost, because I wanted to ask you two, as you knew Evred better than I ever did. I was what, half a year old when he died?”

  He began unrolling the paper. “Anyway, I thought I’d ask. So if she makes any other such claims, I can counter with eyewitness accounts that, no, it’s nothing like Evred.”

  He snapped the paper open, and watched his father shrug. “That could be anybody. But it’s not Evred.”

  Hauth blanched, his lower face sagging.

  Fish had begun to say, “I thought so. She might have been hallucinating. She was running a fever after riding all afternoon with a shattered....” He stuttered to a stop at Hauth’s shock. “Uncle Ret?”

  The quartermaster slewed around, staring at his brother-by-marriage. “Ret? What’s wrong?”

  “That’s not Evred,” Hauth said hoarsely. “That’s Lanrid. To the li—”

  Such was the collective astonishment that no one laughed when Hauth choked off the word life.

  “That’s impossible,” the quartermaster exclaimed, all the more forcefully in an unconscious effort to make it undeniably true. “That girl is too young to have met him. She copied a drawing.”

  “She drew it right in front of us,” Fish admitted reluctantly. “No drawings of any kind in that room.”

  His father shrugged sharply. “She saw a drawing of Lanrid somewhere else. Remembered it. I’m told art-makers do that all the time.”

  Without hearing either of them, Hauth snatched the paper out of Fish’s fingers and stared at it as if he could devour it. His eyes gleamed with tears, the sight of which made Fish’s guts lurch. Impossible. It was just impossible. There was some perfectly ordinary explanation, some cheat on Lineas’s part, though he remembered that she’d been in terrible shape.

  “Why?” Hauth whispered. “Larkadhe...Lanrid was only there the once, before we rode up the Andahi Pass.” A deep breath. “But Connar was there.”

  “Ret,” the quartermaster began, though he wasn’t sure what ought to come after.

  Hauth looked up. “Didn’t you tell us she sees the ghost...here?” He extended trembling fingers at the file-and-supply crowded office, as if a ghost somehow lurked in the dusty, crowded corners.

  “That’s what she claimed,” Fish muttered, wishing he’d burned the damn drawing. Even a rant about The Future Great Connar-Harvaldar would be better than this weird talk of ghosts. What was worse, it was still going to lead right back to Connar.

  “Lanrid...is here,” Hauth repeated, his eyes still glittering with unshed tears. “Then went north, with Connar. Is he trying to watch over him? Or tell us something? Why?”

  “Ret,” the quartermaster cautioned. “Even people who believe in ghosts don’t talk to them, from anything I’ve ever heard. Ghosts can’t talk. They don’t breathe, or have a body in order to make a sound.”

  Again, Hauth didn’t seem to hear. “He’s in this castle...but why can’t I see him?”

  The quartermaster rolled his eyes at Fish, who sighed. “You know it has to be fake,” he said as he reached for it.

  Hauth struck his fingers away so hard and fast that pain shot up Fish’s wrist. “Touch it and I’ll cut off your hand,” Hauth uttered in a guttural whisper, veins standing out in his forehead. Then he sighed, wiped shaking fingers over his face, and muttered, “I have to think about this.”

  He rolled the paper with heartrending care, grabbed his cane, and walked out, shoulder-bowed.

  The quartermaster heaved a sigh. “Son, you shouldn’t have—”

  Fish slammed the door on his words.

  Lineas accompanied Quill to the stable very early the next morning, well before the single ring of the hour before dawn. Neither spoke; they had exchanged their farewells in his room, after he reported to Mnar Milnari.

  He rode off, ostensibly to the north, but as soon as he was out of sight of the sentries, he cut westward to a well-known path then veered southward toward Darchelde.

  During their precious night, neither she nor Quill had mentioned Connar, but his presence had been there, a potent if silent reminder. Neither had admitted even that. He understood the complexity of her situation. He was still euphoric, having not let himself even hope for her to turn to him; he had to let her decide how to proceed.

  All day Lineas’s emotions swooped from the pinnacle of elation to the depths of dread that she’d be ordered to accompany Connar. She worried even more about meeting up with Connar himself; she tried scolding herself for being unable to go from one lover to the next, the way Bun did, and many others. It was perfectly acceptable if one hadn’t made promises. She knew that, but all day, as she went from task to task with a tremble in her fingers and no appetite, she felt as if she were being ripped into two, right through the heart. The larger part going with Quill.

  Quill hadn’t said anything, which was such a profound relief. She’d even caught his reflective gaze on her, and sympathy in his smile; this situation was hers to solve. To clarify. But she wasn’t certain how to clarify it to herself.

  Meanwhile, rumors flew about the castle that the king was sending Connar to the north to begin winter training exercises, with a chosen company of elites. Each mention rubbed Lineas’s spirits raw as she worked hard to go about her tasks as usual.

  She counted the hours, shutting off what-ifs with the mental reminder that as long as no summons came, she would get a respite.

  But it would be just a respite. Connar would return for Convocation. At least, she thought, that would give her long enough to understand her own mind and heart.

  The sun crawled across the sky without anyone being sent to fetch her from classes or drill, until midafternoon when pealing trumpets heralded their departure.

  Lineas had been busying herself in the queen’s training tack room. On hearing the fanfares, she ran up to the wall to peer into the stableyard from the south tower. She saw Connar and Stick mounting up, spirits clearly as high as their snapping flags in the wintry breeze scouring across the plains.

  Connar rode with three golden chevrons gleaming on his coat, and behind, the cherished king’s banner, signaling to all that he was the royal shield arm, under direct orders from the king—and so could commandeer both men and supplies as needed in order to carry those orders out.

  Still nearly delirious with happiness, Connar insisted that Stick ride next to him. The entire castle turned up on the walls to watch them, the girls of queen’s training thinking the two young commanders impossibly dashing. Experiences of the past two years had planed most of the humor from Stick Tyavayir’s sharp-boned face, but many of those girls only found him the more attractive, and there were plenty who resolved to return to their drills with renewed effort in order to be chosen to join Braids Senelaec’s company, which everyone knew was to be expanded.

  “We’ll be rid of Elsarion sooner than later,” Arrow said when the last of the Riders vanished on the horizon. “See if we don’t.”

  Danet said nothing to that. Her mind went straight to what she now thought of as her girls, those who had come to the summer games and then queen’s training. Who she kept track of by letter.

  She had roamed her room, raging uselessly when word arrived of the deaths at Halivayir, and then of the Tlen girls, including the new bride; Stick Tyavayir’s future wife had died out there in the Nelkereth, trying to protect the Tlen horses. Evidence that women could, and did, die even if they weren’t part of the army.

  When she got back to the far side of the castle, where the girls were returning to their court, she caught Noren’s eye, and signed, “I talked Arrow into keeping Noddy home. I want grandchildren.”

  Noren’s heart lurched in her chest as smiled and opened her hand. It could mean anything, but she knew that the queen assumed assent, so in effect she was lying.

  She had always respected Danet-Gunvaer, and had come to love her.

  I did my best to explain t
o the gunvaer when she came to visit us that our blood is tainted, her mother had said before Noren left for the last time, but I knew the king would not listen. The day will come when the gunvaer will ask you to take gerda-herb in order to conceive a child. And you might be tempted, but if you are—

  I will remember my promise, Noren had responded.

  No, her mother chided gently. Don’t remember your promise. Remember your twin sister, terrified of thunder, strangers, and anything that draws her from her paths counted out by precise steps that nobody else can see. And remember my own brother, your Uncle Indevan, whose sensitivities we will never understand because he hadn’t the words, but their weight is so terrible the only place he can bear is a dusty archive in Sartor, where he must live his life behind a wall of ancient text. I thought when I had you girls that you at least would be safe, that we had a generation or two before we had to fear the waterfall again. But I was wrong. It’s now striking every generation. The Algaravayir line is too burdened. It must end with you.

  Noren dug into her trunk and pulled out the herb that carried a similar scent to gerda. The only effect it had, the healer had promised, was a tendency toward dry skin on hands and feet, and it left one somewhat thirsty.

  Then she called Pan Totha and Holly to her, and gave the precious herb-pouch into their hands. Even gossipy, cheerful Holly was silent as the three stood in shared conspiracy, understanding the lie that they must now live.

  TWENTY-ONE

  When Quill reached Darchelde, he went around to greet everyone, then, as was their habit, he and Camerend went up to the highest tower to look out over the rolling hills to watch the sun come down.

  Quill explained his orders, ending with, “I thought I’d put an illusion over myself before I go up the pass.”

  “Up from which end?” Camerend asked, hands clasped loosely, his gaze patient.

  Quill was about to say from the west—of course—then understood. He rubbed his jaw, aware that he should have thought his plan through. “They’ll scrutinize anyone coming up from our side, won’t they.”