Time of Daughters II

by Sherwood Smith

  Noddy said fervently, “That’s what I want. Just like Uncle Jarend. Then I can stay in my own room.”

  “That’s right,” Danet and Connar said at the same time.

  Danet sighed with relief as Noddy slowly got to his feet, swaying, for he had also gone without food since the previous day.

  “We’ll summon the castle now, so that people see order. Then, Connar, I suggest you declare the memorial for tomorrow night. I don’t think any of us can face it tonight.”

  Connar understood “Noddy” for “any of us.” He turned up his palm in agreement.

  Danet went on, “While we assemble the castle, you boys get something to eat. Clean yourselves up. You don’t have to wear the formal House tunics until tomorrow, but it’s important to change your clothes, and to look like you mean what you say. People need to see you being firm. Both of you.”

  When the nightwatch bell rang, the entire castle save the night sentries gathered into the throne room, where the jarls’ benches had been moved to the walls by the household runners.

  The royal family walked down to the state wing in silence, Connar gritting his teeth against the urge to strike Bunny, who kept sniveling. One fast look sent Noren and Ranet stepping to Bunny’s side, and holding hands with her.

  The three women walked in together behind Danet, who followed her sons into the throne room. They lined up in a row before the empty throne, Noddy—bandaged under his best day coat—looking at Connar and Danet for reassurance before he stepped to the edge of the dais, gripping Arrow’s sword.

  Those old enough to remember the events of thirty years ago found it eerie, how much Nadran-Sierlaef resembled Jarend Olavayir, but there was no slim, bucktoothed figure standing next to him. Instead, there was Connar, a tall, magnificently built young man so strikingly handsome it was difficult to notice anyone else in the room.

  Noddy began in a soft mumble. People in the front leaned forward, turning their heads to hear. “The king died during the night. In his sleep.” In his distress he held tightly to Arrow’s sword, forgetting Hand, but Ranet took care of that with suitable grace. As most of the castle was fluent in Hand as well as speech, Noddy’s words reached farther than his voice.

  Noddy stepped back, handing Arrow’s sword off to Connar. “My first and last act as king is to appoint my brother Connar in my place.”

  Whispers whipped through the gathering in a susurrus as Connar stepped to the edge of the dais in front of the throne. “We’ll hold the memorial for Anred-Harvaldar tomorrow night.”

  More whispering—it was traditional for the memorial to happen at midnight the day the king died, but who was going to complain?

  Jethren stood in the back, exalted and worried by turns. What had happened? Connar was angry, that much was clear.

  Then, as Connar raised the sword, Moonbeam’s breathing changed. Jethren shot him a look. The mad, ardent grin caused his blood to chill: Moonbeam had been crazy all day, signing constantly that his ghosts were still not real, why weren’t they real? Since morning, Jethren had already given him more doses than he had for a year. Moonbeam was going to need a new target, that much was clear.

  On the other side of the room, Lineas pressed her palms together, grieving for Bunny, whose silent tears gleamed in the torchlight. She grieved for the king, who had reminded her of Lightning Weather—warm and bright, though dry and sometimes fiery.

  She grieved for Noddy and Connar, though she couldn’t say why, except that she feared the burden they shared. As she watched Lanrid Olavayir’s bright ghost walk through the walls, cross the room through the whispering crowd, and then vanish through the west wall, she shivered, then saw that the royal family was walking out. People began to disperse, now talking loudly as everyone speculated to his or her neighbor on the scarcest of actual facts.

  Connar accompanied Noddy upstairs and to his rooms. Noddy wandered to his bedroom, and Connar slipped out, handing the sword to Fish to put away. He saw the women in the gunvaer chambers, Danet peering anxiously out.

  Connar walked in because he must, though everything felt unreal. Impatience mounted inside him, and he fought it as the inner voice whispered, king. “Everyone is tired,” he said. King. “I want to settle a few things, then get some rest. Tomorrow will be difficult.” King, king, king.

  He walked out, and to his room down the hall, aware that runners were already tidying the king’s suite. Outside his chamber, he found Jethren, and inside Fish. There was nothing about either of them to suggest they had been speaking. Good.

  But they were Nighthawk men, or related to Nighthawk men. King.

  Connar entered his bedroom without giving orders to either, so perforce they waited in place. He opened his trunk, slipped knives into the inside loops of his boots, then exited. “Both of you. With me.”

  He led the way down the hall to the back stair that led to the baths, and then took the passage off the halfway landing. Everyone who had gathered in the throne room had had plenty of time to disperse.

  Of course Hauth would have followed Pereth back to the quartermaster’s, where he usually sat holding court. Connar remembered that vividly.

  Hauth was indeed there, exalted and garrulous, celebratory drink at hand. At last, at last, justice had been served. Not completely—there was still that lump of a Sierlaef—but the rest of eagle clan were all women, who could chatter all they wanted but would never hold a throne.

  Now, for the king to turn to those who had been loyal from the very beginning. So when Connar walked through the door, Hauth laughed. “We were just talking about you, how very fine you looked! And how much better you will appear when you take the throne tomorrow—”

  “Was that you?” Connar said.

  The lance master stuttered to a stop. “What?”

  “Someone slipped bristic to my father. It killed him. Was that you?”

  Fish stared, shocked. Jethren’s breath hitched, terror slamming his heart as he thought, It couldn’t have been Moonbeam? And he remembered his father’s warning.

  Another dose, definitely—and keep him dosed.

  Hauth drew everyone’s attention with an exultant laugh. He snapped open the roll of paper he had carried every day, saying, “Connar-Harvaldar, I wonder if your father was there.”

  It was Connar’s turn to exclaim, “What?”

  Hauth smoothed the paper with worshipful strokes of his fingers. “This is Lanrid Olavayir. Your real father, your true father. He is following you around. He might be in this room with us now!”

  Connar stared down at that wrinkled, smudged scroll, which he recognized as the sort of paper Fish carried for the occasional times he had to write messages for Connar. He took a step forward, saw the drawing, and memory struck him, sharp. Clear. Chalk Hills. Lineas acting strange, drawing the ghost she claimed to see, though she had a broken arm.

  “We all recognized him,” Hauth went on in that ringing, jubilant voice. “She even put in the chipped tooth!” Hauth brandished the paper so it rattled, holding it higher, almost in Connar’s face. “Do you understand? That girl drew a perfect likeness of Lanrid. It’s clear proof that his spirit has been following you around, Connar—it was time, past time, but here you are, king at last—”

  On that past time, Connar’s fingers found the knife hilt. He straightened up and with all the strength in his body stabbed the blade through that obscene paper, straight into Hauth’s heart.

  Retren Hauth’s eye widened in shock, pain, betrayal, then rolled upward as he fell heavily.

  Quartermaster Pereth screamed, “What have you done! What have you done!”

  Connar snapped, “Which one of you acted for him? I know it was Nighthawk. No one else would have crept into my father’s room to drown him in bristic until he died.”

  He gazed from the quartermaster’s stark, staring eyes to Fish’s open-mouthed shock. Could he be wrong?

  No. He was not wrong. Hauth might have used one of his relatives, or one of the other Nighthawk shits, but he w
as very certain he was not wrong.

  He pointed to the knife. “I’m king now. And I will fly the eagle banner. Dolphin clan is dead. If I ever hear the words ‘Nighthawk’ again—ever—I’ll have every one of you flayed at the post for treason.”

  Connar’s hands shook. He gripped them behind his back. “Jethren.” He shot a fast glance at the blond man by the door, his face impassive, except for the vein beating in his high forehead. “Make this go away.” He pointed at Hauth’s fallen body, then walked out.

  He didn’t get ten steps before he spotted a tall blue-robed figure framed in the archway leading to the supply wing.

  “Quill.” The word came out on an exhaled breath.

  Quill said, “I was sent to find you by Commander Noth. Someone said they saw you coming this way.”

  King, said that inner voice.

  Connar’s lips curled in a smile. Despite the headache still hammering at his skull, he drew in a deep breath. King. Another word for “investigate” was “spy.” Quill’s name had been spoken far too often lately, always in reference to state or military affairs.

  “Quill,” he said, his teeth showing in a smile that caused Quill’s muscles to tighten to readiness. “Just in time to take me on a tour of the third floor.”

  King. The word was unspoken, but it lay in the air between them.

  Quill laid his fist to his heart. “As you wish.”

  Fish, without further orders, stayed behind Connar as the other two walked in silence through the castle byways. Neither spoke until they reached the second floor landing in the royal wing.

  They started up the stairs, Quill saying conversationally, “Of course we haven’t had time to clean for an inspection, but you should find everything in order. Mnar Milnari—who is presently on her way back from Darchelde, after attending her mother’s memorial—would not tolerate anything but scrupulous neatness.”

  As he mounted the stairs at a leisurely pace, he went on in that pleasant voice, discussing the layout of the third floor. “...and the fledges’ study area is the same room as the old royal nursery,” he was saying as they breached the top stair.

  Connar glanced around. The usual royal runner lurking at the top was missing. Neat it might be, but discipline was clearly lax. He laughed to himself, as Quill began the tour. “To your right here is the library, with the study materials for the students. You’ll find these are copies of what the scribes over in the state wing use....”

  And so it went. Room to room. Desks, pens, paper in every state of preparation, draped to dry, cut and stacked, rolled into scrolls waiting to be sent. Royal runner students of all ages peeped curiously out, hands going to chests as Connar walked by.

  The living areas were various sizes, some reflections of the rooms on the second floor. The masters each had rooms that looked small to Connar. Students shared rooms, two or more to each.

  He could not tell which room was Lineas’s. She had not appeared.

  In one large chamber, a map on the wall, with runners’ roads marked. On the other side of the room lay a book with what Quill said was the spells the students with an affinity for magic studied from, and there on a table lay buckets and fire sticks for practice.

  It was all in order. Even boring. But when they had returned to the landing, Connar said, “Very fine. I’ll review your drills in the morning, along with Fish here.”

  Connar indicated Fish, still at his heels.

  “Fish will take over as chief of the royal runners, as of tomorrow. Quill, you may show him everything again tomorrow, then you will join my brother over at the state wing. He’s going to need the extra scribes, and I understand you were very helpful to my father.”

  Shock rang through the listeners all up and down the hall.

  “As you wish,” Quill said.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Shendan Montredavan-An had put together what the royal runners called the invasion plan. That meant Bloody Tanrid or one of his minions coming up to the third floor to “inspect.” Often enough those inspections had included pawing through people’s trunks and shelves to look for weapons, as runners were not permitted to carry weapons unless going for a run outside the gates. Letters and messages were also seized and read in the hunt for conspiracy—no one dared to tell Tanrid-Harvaldar to read a few of his own royal histories, which would have made plain that those of his predecessors most tireless in hunting conspiracies tended to generate them.

  There were some quiet years, and then Mathren’s grip on the royal city had reinstituted the surprise raids. During Arrow’s reign, “inspection” had slowly dwindled to a drill once a month. The younger fuzz and fledges were thrilled if they were on duty at the top of the stairs and they heard the word “inspection” in the middle of some otherwise innocuous talk.

  Because of this, they grew up knowing to avoid that word while coming up the stairs. So as soon as the duty runner at the top of the stairs heard Quill’s genial voice carrying up the stairwell, “Of course we haven’t had time to clean for an inspection...” he thought, practice? Real? Didn’t matter.

  He grabbed the nearest person, made the sign for inspection, and so it went. By the time Quill and Connar had come halfway up the steps, all the magic books had been flung into a trunk and the waiting transfer token slapped against it. Soon followed the royal runners’ archives, and finally, the matched pairs of wrist knives used in the Fox drills.

  The royal runners kept silent through the tour as their chief talked on and on, and the handsome, seldom-seen prince—soon to take the throne as king—looked about appreciatively. On the surface, everything was pleasant, polite, friendly. And it wasn’t as if the second floor hadn’t been upstairs plenty of times. The gunvaer was seen a lot when Mnar Milnari was present. But they all felt the tension underscoring that inspection. Quill didn’t do things without reason.

  Then, just before he left, the new king delivered the stunner: Quill was no longer chief. What was worse, they had a total outsider catapulted to the top.

  When the royal runners were alone again, and Quill had dispatched a transfer token to the Darchelde Destination as an all-clear, he said, “Everyone into the lair.”

  A puff of air from the inner chamber indicated a magic transfer. Quill stepped in and found Lineas, her hands clasped to elbows, her face greenish as she swallowed convulsively.

  “Trunks all right?” Quill asked, coming forward, arms open so she could lean against him.

  “Fnor sent me first, as I was right there. Someone had to drag those trunks off the Destination,” Lineas said.

  One of the first lessons in magic was that two objects cannot occupy the same space. The heavier they were, the harder the incoming object would shove against anything in the spot where things appeared. Trunks could explode into splinters, sending the contents scattering. “I heard Connar and, well, I know he hasn’t said a word to me since he got back from Stalgoreth. But I felt such tension.”

  “Yes,” Quill said, soberly. “Listen. The first thing you should know is that I’ve just been replaced by Fish Pereth.”

  “Fish? But why him? He’s not one of us.”

  “I suspect,” Quill said with gentle irony, “that’s why Connar placed him here.”

  Lineas lifted her hands, palms out. “Do you think he wanted it?”

  “He looked just as shocked as you look right now. The gunvaer asked me to investigate who might have given the king that bristic. I was there combing the night guard report until the summons to the throne room. After that was over, I headed straight back, meaning to copy that report to compare to our list of movements seen last night, when Noth asked me to find Connar. Someone had seen him heading toward the quartermaster’s. When I got there, I found Connar and Fish, and I swear I smelled blood. I also saw Fish’s face. He looked like a man whose bowels had gone cold.”

  She said, “Something must have happened! I know the new runner at the supply desk. Do you want me to ask her—”

  “No.” Quill gripped her hand
s. “It might only be reaction to the king dying. But whatever it was, I’d rather your name not be associated with anything at the quartermaster’s.”

  Lineas remembered the shocking news that the king hadn’t just died in his sleep. Speculation right now was worthless. So she said, “People are going to miss the king.”

  Quill smiled sadly. “I miss him, and I scarcely ever saw him, except to be sent off to the far corners of the kingdom. But Arrow was a good man, and a good king. The two don’t always go together,” he added, and there was the wry Quill she knew. But then the sardonic quirk at the corners of his mouth, not quite a smile, vanished. “I’ll find out what happened at the quartermaster’s. Without drawing notice.” He passed a hand over his eyes. “Right now, we’ve got a night to transform this place for Fish to run.”

  Lineas rubbed her hands up her arms. “Fish. I don’t know what to think. I do remember that you older boys didn’t like him.”

  “There was little to like in those days. His older brother was worse, far too ready with his fists, especially toward us younger ones. But the past is immaterial. For everyone’s sake I need to extend a genuine welcome. I want Fish to be able to ask me questions. Maybe even to ask my opinion. Insulting him is not going to gain me anything but him wanting to get rid of every sign of me. That’s human nature.” Quill opened his hands.

  Lineas knew he wasn’t willing to speculate farther, not while so much had changed so rapidly. Not with Connar at the center of it.

  So she forced her mind to practicalities. “What about Fox drills?”

  “Everyone will do fuzz drills for now. No double knives. The fuzz drills are enough like the garrison drills that Fish will be able to lead them. All magic studies will have to be resumed at Darchelde, which means more transfers.”