Time of Daughters II

by Sherwood Smith

  “Count on it. Listen, Senrid. My suggestion is, start from the east end. As for illusion, that can be broken so easily, and then you not only become suspect, every scribe is suspect as word spreads. Don’t use magic unless you’re desperate. The most effective disguise doesn’t require magic, is simple, and most of all, forgettable.”

  Royal runners were taught to be observant and unobtrusive, but Quill understood that now he was consciously going to use those skills to be a spy.

  Camerend said, “First, let your jaw hang down while keeping your lips almost closed. Like this.” He turned away from the sunset, the lurid colors reflecting off his face as it lengthened and took on a bovine aspect. “Don’t look at your auditor, but past them.” His gaze went slack-lidded and unfocused. “Second, add either a stutter or else a dawdle phrase in each sentence—whichever one comes easier for you.”

  “Dawdle phrase?”

  “Each sentence prefaced, or punctuated, maybe both, with phrases such as you might say, or so to speak, or to put in in a word, and then add ten words. If you can get two or more dawdle-phrases into a sentence, speaking slowly and mildly, repeat yourself frequently, I guarantee they’ll bustle you to a desk, and then ignore you as if you were not there. Copyists are already considered the lowest and most boring of all scribes.”

  “Jaw hanging. Dawdle phrase,” Quill said. “Repeat.” He looked up.

  Camerend added, “And resist the urge to embellish. You don’t want to be memorable. Vanda, my former partner now living up in Idego, on an assignment to the Nob during our young years couldn’t resist adding clumsiness. For fun. It resulted in our being kicked out of not only the garrison but the town, the two sides united in cursing the stupid Marlovan stable hand who broke crockery and footstools. Disruptive habits are remembered. Slumped shoulders aren’t.”

  “Got it.”

  “Practice, while you copy out the testimonial papers I used, so the handwritings will match. I’m afraid these were all chosen for their tediousness, so you’re in for some boredom. It’ll take you a couple of weeks to build a convincing portfolio, but you can practice your dawdle and your cow face while you copy.” He smiled up at the emerging stars. “Do you know, I never get tired of being here to watch the sun rise,” he indicated the eastern plains, “or set.” A tip of the chin toward the rolling hills and the forest, now dark, to the south, before he turned to lead the way down the long staircase.

  Following his father, Quill wondered if that was a result of Camerend having spent his young years as a hostage longing for home.

  The copy task was as wearisome as Camerend had warned, but it was time well spent; Quill figured he had the month or six weeks it would have taken to ride to the southern pass to ready himself.

  After those two weeks, he transferred by magic to Anaeran-Adrani, well outside Elsarion, to the scribe guild in a town Camerend had spent time in. There he bought the correct fabric for scribes on this side of the border, and made himself a robe. During the three days it took to finish it, each day he took a walk from his inn to the guild house, listening to people talking in the streets, and conversation in eateries.

  There was plenty to hear.

  On this side of the mountains, with news traveling with the speed of magic rather than of horse, everyone had heard of Mathias Elsarion’s defeat—rumor accelerating as survivors of the attack emerged from the southern pass, spreading their horror stories. Trade caravans halted! Merchants cancelled planned journeys! Trade disrupted everywhere! People stranded without jobs!

  By the time Quill was ready to try the local guild house, he understood the turmoil of this otherwise quiet town. It was at least a week’s ride from the road to the southern pass, yet many people were packing up to go elsewhere in case the horse barbarians boiled up the pass in a frenzy of vengeance.

  Not everyone was leaving. At the guild house, Quill found a cluster of newly-made scribes hoping to slide into a job vacated by alarmists. A sour-faced woman about his own age was in the middle of disparaging young men bored with apprenticeships, who downed tools and streamed toward Elsarion to volunteer for their lord’s army. “My brother being one,” she said. “Thinks fighting will be much more fun than drudging at a trade the family pushed him into.”

  A young man cracked his knuckles, then said, “I’ve got a cousin yelping at everyone that if you go, they pay, and you could become a duchas over the mountain—it being even bigger than our kingdom.”

  “Yes,” drawled a tall, bony scribe, slouched on his bench. “So Lord Mathias sends a bigger army over there, and this time he wins, and what then? You can set yourself up as a duchas in a land where everyone says they eat and sleep on the stone floors of Iascan castles, wearing hemp and straw, and you have to have fifty guards around your bed every night, because otherwise every man, woman, and child will be coming at you with a knife. I’ve heard all about those Marlovans!”

  “Let them stay on their side of the mountains.” A short, round scribe made a spitting motion to the side. “But nooooo,” she cooed. “Lord Mathias just had to go poking at the hornets’ nest with a stick.”

  “Which will bring all the hornets back to sting us,” a third stated grimly, crossing her arms with a thump. “Who didn’t do anything to them. My ma says we’re crazy to stay in town, but everywhere clear to Shiovhan, they say they’re full up—only hiring those they trained.”

  “I heard the same,” the second scribe said, flicking her fingers like shooing insects. “Lasva Pree told me last night that half the staff here is also running, all the plum jobs open. I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t all get hired.” She included the room with a wave of her hand.

  She was right.

  Quill was asked little more than his age, his guild status, and where he’d been trained. He provided the answers that Camerend had recommended, and was promptly hired by the overworked seniors, for with the town in flux everybody was writing letters or making copies of their accounts before they decamped a prudent distance to await events.

  The rest of his month he spent working on his accent, acquiring another Adrani scribe robe, then pounding the hem with rocks and scrubbing the color out of the shoulders and seams to make it look worn—the people at the main guild house had been too desperate to notice a very new robe, but he wouldn’t count on that being true at the pass, if the Adranis were really as jumpy as rumor claimed.

  The first flurries of snow had crowned the mountaintops when he set out. He discovered that though trade had nearly halted, the outposts in the pass still needed supplies, and the infrequent supply caravans that had been promised double pay.

  The chief drawback of beginning at the Adrani end of the pass was its proximity to Elsarion. The chance of running into Thias Elsarion was higher, but Quill gambled on Thias, raised to aristocratic comfort, being reluctant to flail around the pass at the start of winter unless given a reason.

  Quill was determined not to provide that reason.

  The weeks flew by.

  Four days before New Year’s Week, Connar galloped back into the royal city at the head of an honor guard, banners snapping as snowflakes whirled around them, stippling horses and gray coats and helms.

  Word sped through the castle, and Noddy ran down to the stable yard, kicking up fresh powder as he greeted Connar.

  Lineas joined those along the sentry wall. She rejoiced to see Connar’s happiness, visible from the distance, as below, he and Noddy greeted each other.

  “What news?” Connar and Noddy asked at the same time, then laughed. Ranet and Noren reached them, and gloved hands flickered in Hand as the four crossed the slushy yard, the cold wet wind kicking up around them.

  Connar had gotten into the habit of doing a sweeping inspection of defenses: where sentries were placed, what weapons they bore, how alert they were. He was aware that many of the male heads turned to watch Ranet walking at his side, the wind pressing her robe against her form. A quick glance: her attention wasn’t on them, but on him, a smile tha
t brightened more when he grinned at her.

  “Ranet.” He kept forgetting that she was no longer a scrawny teen.

  “Good ride?” she signed.

  He turned his hand up and rolled his eyes toward the sky, his mouth awry, and she laughed softly, her breath clouding.

  Unaware of this quick exchange behind him, Noddy finished listing who among the jarls had arrived.

  “What about Ivandred Noth?” Connar asked.

  “First arrival. He was up there with Da first thing. Da hasn’t said much.”

  “So there’s no proof of any conspiracy down there?”

  “None, but Noth was really angry about it. Both his stepsons went off to Sartor on some excuse or other, and the jarlan stuck to the festival story. So Noth’s increased the patrols, but Da says that’s like sitting in the barn after all the horses stampeded out. As for everyone else, no real news.”

  Connar’s mind shot eastward, as had become habit: Quill, riding his fastest, had probably just reached the western mouth of the southern pass. If he hadn’t been stranded in a snowstorm somewhere around Lake Wened.

  Connar was content to wait. No one was attacking anywhere with the brunt of winter still coming. And nothing was going to ruin the prospect of his official promotion before the jarls. He was at last where he’d always wanted to be, commander of the entire King’s Army. It remained only to stand before the throne and lay his sword before Da’s feet.

  But his exhilaration dissipated as the day waned. Until now, he and Noddy had avoided the jarls at Convocation, except at the banquet, which they’d decamped from as quickly as possible. But the jarls had listened to every scrap of gossip culled from sons, nephews, and various Riders about the princes who would one day be expected to lead them. If they didn’t turn on each other the way Olavayirs had in past generations.

  Abruptly Connar found himself cornered by jarls at every turn, congratulating him on his victories, then almost in the same breath, offering him long-winded advice on how to defeat that Elsarion shit once and for all—usually by listening to, or promoting, their own sons or Riders’ sons or cousins.

  The most obnoxious of these, by far, was the huge, loud Jarl of Gannan, who interspersed his bad advice (“You run our boys straight up the mountain and watch those Adranis piss themselves in fear, ha ha!”) with loud hints for praise of his second son, “You named him Cabbage. I have to admit I didn’t much like that, until I found out that ‘cabbage’ is now your academy slang for smashing the enemy, har har har!” It was a loud, crashing, utterly humorless laugh that irritated Connar to the back teeth.

  Connar was saved only by the watch change summoning him upstairs to meet the family for dinner, and he had yet to make it to the garrison.

  When he reached the king’s suite, Danet took one look and said, “What’s amiss?”

  Connar opened his hand, but she waited for an actual answer. He tried for lightness. “I’m beginning to see why Da hates Convocation.”

  Danet snorted.

  Noddy glanced over. “I promised two jarls I would recommend their sons to you. Oh yes, and the Jarl of Gannan asked me to tell you that he will help you plan the attack on Elsarion, and he has a list to put forward as replacements for Halivayir and Yvanavayir.” Noddy added slowly, “They all seem to have someone to suggest for Yvanavayir.”

  Arrow entered on those last words, trailing bristic fumes. But his eyes were clear. “Welcome to my life, these past years. Ho, ha! Grin and bear it, but don’t agree with anything, unless we’ve already planned it.”

  Connar flipped up the back of his hand in the direction of the state chambers. Arrow gave another crack of laughter, and dinner progressed happily.

  Before they all parted, Danet caught Connar by the arm. “I told the others, and now I’m telling you: I want grandchildren, the sooner the better. Let the rest of the kingdom see prospective order for the future as well as now.”

  Connar sent a panicked look at Noddy, who’d paused just outside the door, looking both sympathetic and unsurprised, and Connar understood that he’d already been hearing a lot about grandchildren.

  Danet went on, “I told Ranet to get her girls to brew up gerda-herb as soon as you rode into the stableyard.”

  “Ma,” Connar said on an exasperated note.

  “That’s all I have to say.” Danet patted his shoulder—and said more anyway. “You know families are my domain. You boys have done well securing our present day. It’s our responsibility to look to the future.”

  “Right, Ma,” Connar said, and made his escape, his head already panging.

  As Lineas was no longer assigned to the royal family, she could only go to the residence floor if summoned, which meant she saw none of the royal family after Connar’s arrival. She discovered as the day progressed that she was now part of those hearing castle gossip second and third hand.

  She worked an extra watch at the roost message desk, for the royal runners were hard put to keep up with all the errands with so many of them out on the road. Between logging messages, passing them along, and copying those needing copying, she imagined Connar’s happiness blazing through the day as he celebrated his impending promotion. Surely he wouldn’t think of her anymore. Or if he did, if she said something, he’d shrug and....

  What would she say? Her imagination always foundered on the exact words. She just wanted him to be quit of her without her having to say anything at all; it was then, as she tidied away her writing utensils, she realized that he had always been the one to reach for her when he wanted her. She had never dared to reach for him. Nor had he encouraged her to.

  And that had suited her, as whenever he was home he was never far from her thoughts. At sixteen, all the romance had been in her head. He had provided the handsome face and body.

  When she was sixteen, that had been enough. But she wasn’t sixteen anymore. Round and round her thoughts went.

  When at last the night watch rang, she walked tiredly down the back stairs toward her room at the far at the end of the royal residence floor, up against the old harskialdna tower, where the royal runners assigned to the royal family had their rooms; though she was no longer Bun’s runner, nobody had reassigned her living space in the two years she was away. She yawned tiredly as she reached to light a candle, then paused when she heard the ring of bootheels echoing down the stone hall outside her room.

  She knew that walk. Quick as instinct she dashed to the side of her door and stood by the hinge as Connar rapped twice. Lineas pressed her forearms against her belly, holding her breath. She was a coward—hiding was stupid—but she didn’t move, viscerally aware of him an arm’s length away on the other side of the ancient wood of the door.

  He rapped again, then unlatched the door, which had no lock. The door pressed against her arm as he glanced in; she turned her head and saw what he saw: the neatly made bed, the plain table, the window slit which she never put stuffing into, preferring the flow of air even in winter cold.

  The door closed with a click and his steps moved away down the hall. She let out a long, shaky breath, and discovered that her forehead and palms were damp, her heart banging frantically against her throat. Why had she hidden like that? It could have been so humiliating! She stood there staring at the dim blue sky through the window slit, partially blocked by the bulk of the harskialdna tower, which sheltered her from the cold east winds.

  She had, for the first time, avoided him. It felt like a new road taken, though she knew it really wasn’t. It was only avoidance. But she was tired, her heart sore; he hated talk, but she would either have to explain or go back with him, which no longer felt right.

  So think! First, he would probably come back, or send Fish. So she had to find somewhere else to sleep. Somewhere no one would discover her, so she wouldn’t have to lie. Her thoughts automatically turned to Quill, whom she longed to ask—and then it struck her, there was his empty room up in the lair.

  She dashed to her trunk to fetch clean clothes for the morrow, th
en slipped out, down to the far stairs above the baths, and up to the third floor.

  She darted across the empty hall, unlatched Quill’s door, slipped in and shut the door noiselessly behind her. She stood there in Quill’s bedroom, which was only marginally larger than hers, but like all the rooms on the third floor, had a fireplace—empty now, of course.

  She undressed quickly and climbed shivering under his covers, which smelled of him. She pressed her face to his pillow, sniffing the slight scent until it was gone; as her own warmth pooled around her and she began to slide down into the realm of dreams, it came to her that never, in all these years, had she ever even thought of sleeping in Connar’s splendid chamber when he was gone on duty.

  But here, she felt safe.

  Connar had gone back toward his own room, restless and annoyed, then halted when Ranet opened the door to her suite across from his. “Come to my bed,” she invited, as Lineas had advised her when they had talked what seemed so long ago.

  Those words about grandchildren echoed in his ears, and he looked at her leaning in the doorway, the enticing curve inward at her waist and out over the flare of her hip. Definitely not that twig of a teen anymore. They were married. So why not?

  Ranet rejoiced as he followed her into the warm room, clean and orderly, except for the scent of a cedar spray she’d tossed onto the fire stick in the fireplace when she heard his footsteps through the crack in the door, for she’d watched him go down the hall, then heard him come back empty-handed. So far, she was thinking, it was just as Lineas had said: He comes to me out of long habit, I think. If the rumors are true that he gets asked by all these others, then he’s not used to asking, right? So you should invite him, the way women did in the old days.

  So far, Lineas was right.

  But that didn’t last.

  When Connar joined Ranet in the bed, she reached for his shoulder, remembering what Lineas had said about him liking her to work the knots out of his muscles. “Do you want me to rub your back?”