Time of Daughters II

by Sherwood Smith

  “They’ll hate that.”

  “As do I. Can’t be helped.”

  “Will you have to move rooms?” she asked.

  “Probably. May I move my trunk over to your room for now?”

  “Of course.” Lineas flexed her hands. “I just...feel....”

  He didn’t want her to sense the incipient threat that he was aware of. There was nothing they could do except be vigilant. He said quickly, “It’s been a strange night, but the royal family just lost Arrow. Grief grabs people differently. You were the one who pointed that out to me. Anyway, everyone is waiting. Probably full of questions.”

  She accepted that, and followed him to where the royal runners all sat on the floor mats, fuzz at the front. Lineas looked at those solemn young faces, the tight, childish shoulders, and knew they were not far from fear.

  “A change of king always brings other changes,” Quill said to the group. “But one thing that doesn’t change is our responsibilities.”

  Voices rose.

  “Why an inspection? Is there danger?”

  “Why did the new king demote you?”

  “Why an outsider?”

  “What’s wrong with how we—”

  Quill snapped his fingers and turned his palm out. Then—mindful of anyone who might be lurking in the hall or on the stairwell, listening—he said, “Inspecting the third floor is traditional when we have a new king. Camerend called for ‘inspection’ the night the previous king found himself with an empty throne. It turned out he didn’t want to come up here, but we were ready in case he did. As for why I was reassigned, I don’t know. I also don’t know why none of you were appointed to my place. So let’s talk about what we do know, which is altering the schedule to make things easier for your new chief....”

  In Hand, he said, “We will speak to you one by one.”

  Back at the quartermaster’s, for a long, excruciatingly suspended moment everyone stared down at Retren Hauth’s body.

  Finally the quartermaster wiped a shaking hand across the icy sweat on his forehead. “Just like Mathren,” he whispered. And then, with an accusing glance at Jethren, “We kept warning him. How much Connar hates dolphin.”

  Jethren said, “Moonbeam and I will take care of Hauth. But I don’t know what to report, and where, to make it go away.”

  The quartermaster slumped, his face so distraught he seemed to have aged ten years in less than an hour. “I’ll handle that.” He still spoke in a whisper. “Ret was solitary. The dispositions are easy enough. He’ll have retired for his health. And that’s what we’d better tell the family in the city. Connar is now king, so Ret retired.” He wiped his face again. “I’ll clean up the floor myself.” His mouth crimped as he looked down at the bloodstained drawing, mostly ruined. “That goes into the fire first thing.”

  Jethren had no argument with that.

  He and Moonbeam straightened Hauth out, and did the Disappearance Spell. Then they left the rest to the quartermaster, and walked out.

  As soon as Jethren got Moonbeam away from any possible lurking ears, he said, “You did it, didn’t you. The bristic.”

  Moonbeam stared back, pupils pinpoints in his ice-pale eyes. He signed: They still are not real yet.

  Jethren’s heart hammered. He said forcefully, “That’s because you acted without orders. You know you have to act on orders.”

  Moonbeam stilled, one hand caressing one of his knife hilts. How many was he wearing? Jethren knew he couldn’t take Moonbeam in a fight, and added quickly, “But you didn’t use a knife, so you can have another dose.”

  As he dug out the precious bellflower root, he wondered how much longer he could control him. But he was far too useful to kill. As Moonbeam drank down the dose, Jethren let out a breath of relief.

  “Fish Pereth?” Danet said the next morning over breakfast. Noddy was still sleeping, but all the women were there. “Isn’t that your first runner, a garrison runner? Does he even know how to write?”

  “Of course he writes. Who do you think copied out my reports?” Connar said, and reached for more coffee.

  He was in a good mood, the best he could remember. Hauth was dead. They’d kept the guards at the landings for now, but Connar was certain Hauth was responsible for that bristic. He’d clearly gone insane, the way he was waving around that soulsucking drawing and ranting about ghosts. But even if he hadn’t given the order, Connar was convinced that Nighthawk lay behind the murder. They now knew what would happen if any of them tried to touch Noddy.

  “There was nothing amiss with the royal runners,” Danet went on, her brow creased in question. No, in dawning worry.

  Connar suppressed impatience. “As I told Quill last night, his name always came up when Da talked about someone helping him. I figured Noddy will need him, especially now. Fish can direct the royal runners. Actually, they seem to pretty much run themselves.” He added, “Everything else will stay the same.”

  Danet’s expression eased. “All right, that makes sense. You might have waited, but, no, I’m not going to start squabbling with you over your decisions. Arrow and I talked things out. I hope you and Ranet will do the same, and I’ll confine myself to handing off my tasks to her.”

  “No,” Connar exclaimed. “When I said things will stay the same, I mean it. What you do—what Noddy has been doing—what the rest of you do, it’s all good the way it is. Why mess with it? I’d rather not even move rooms, except that Da’s map room is there, and his interview chamber is big. I think he’d like us using it all, instead of leaving it empty. But no one else needs to move, and you know I promised Noddy he could stay put.”

  He expected her to be pleased, but Danet said slowly, “All right, that makes sense, too.” She cast a glance at Ranet.

  Connar did as well, and met a gaze like a blow.

  Danet said, “Why don’t the two of you take this chance to discuss details. I have to go over to the scribes to oversee how the records get changed.”

  Noren got to her feet, hands flashing. “I’ll help Noddy. He’s still....” Her face reflected sorrow, and she walked out.”

  Bunny followed silently, used to being ignored by Connar. Danet gathered the runners with a sharp glance, and the door shut behind them, leaving Ranet and Connar alone.

  Before he could speak, she clasped her hands together. “The gunvaer means well, but I expect there isn’t really much for us to say. I understand that I’m a duty to you instead of a partner. And I’m willing to do any work that needs doing.”

  She waited, calm. Her gaze steady and cool from eyes shaped like Braids’s. They were cousins, he remembered. The adoration he was used to seeing—used to feeling caged by—had vanished, leaving her appearing very much older, without any of the sag of aging.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  She stirred, opening her hands and looking at them as if invisible words had been writ across her palms. Then she turned them down loosely on her thighs—shapely as always under the loose folds of her linen trousers and her summer robe. A spark of desire twitched low, but he suppressed it. Lying in bed and fending off chatter was the last thing he needed to be doing right now.

  Then she spoke. “If you mean, what do I want to do, I’m content doing exactly what I’ve been doing,” she replied. “However, if you are actually asking what I want, that would be for you to somehow find time for our children. I had to teach Iris that Noddy was not his da, nor Uncle Jarid, nor Grandda. Now I’m having to go through the same with Little Hliss.”

  His first reaction was irritation. This was not something immediate, like Da’s death. But he knew what Lineas would say, that few things were more important than the bonds of love and family. Irritation sharpened; why remember what she said? She was a hypocrite, her so-called bonds as self-serving as anyone else’s. Loyal as long as it was convenient, then find someone else.

  “Right,” he said. “But you couldn’t bring it up any time during the last six months, when things were quiet?”

>   “I don’t see you,” Ranet replied in that calm, even voice. “When I do, at Restday drum, I always made sure the girls are there, for them to see and talk to you. But you don’t stay long enough for me to get your attention.”

  His arms tightened and he suppressed the retort that the children didn’t talk, they climbed all over him with fingers sticky from jam tarts or honey biscuits, and Little Hliss slobbered. At least Iris knew the Waste Spell, but Little Hliss always seemed to smell of diaper.

  That was another hypocrisy. It was all right to say you didn’t like children, but you were not supposed to say it about your own. “I’ll be better with them when they get a little older. When we can have conversations,” he said.

  “When they go off to your academy.” It was not a question.

  “That, too. That’s what I know,” he added, hating how defensive he sounded.

  She heard it, too, and saw the signs of the annoyance he was trying to suppress. Neit was another who didn’t like children. All right, she’d said her piece, and would have to accept whatever he chose to do with it.

  She got to her feet and shook out her robe. “We will continue on as we have, then, until you say otherwise.”

  He rose as well, and left, aware that he felt off-balance, as though he’d missed something. But he hadn’t. Everything was settled—most particularly Quill, who would not be riding to Stalgoreth.

  He walked out, and Noren, who had been waiting, emerged from her room and came to Ranet’s. “Any changes you two worked out that we need to know about?”

  Ranet’s lovely face was smooth as ice. Noren knew Ranet fairly well. She would once have said really well, until the visit from the lively woman who insisted on being called Aunt Calamity.

  The Jarlan of Senelaec had been cheerfully loquacious, one subject being her sister, the former intended gunvaer. Aunt Calamity had said that Ranet was a great deal like her mother Fuss, who was now living deep within the Eastern Alliance territory—quiet until pushed to the limits, then her emotions would be like summer thunder.

  Noren knew that to be true. That is, she had seen Ranet upset. But she’d rarely seen her angry. She’d assumed that gentle Ranet didn’t get angry, though she could be very strict with the girls in the queen’s training.

  “Wolf and Fuss are a lot alike,” Aunt Calamity had said earnestly. “Braids as well. You really don’t want to see them angry. Well, you’ve heard about Braids on the battlefield, I’m sure. If Ranet had been at Tlennen Fields, or Ku Halir, she would have been riding right beside him.”

  Noren looked for signs of that anger now, but perceived a face as cool as snow as Ranet said, “There appears to be nothing to work out. We’re to continue as we were.”

  Noren signed acceptance, and left. When she was able to get the gunvaer alone, she repeated the conversation.

  Danet noted that Noren had waited until they were alone with the tallies. She sighed. “I confess my first reaction was relief. Only because I’m not ready to be kicked up to the tower as a senior gunvaer, though I know it’s coming. It should be coming.” She paused, fingers stiff, then signed slowly, “This is my fault. I once told the boys that whatever they worked out would be fine. As long as they were both agreed. What I meant was, I didn’t want to see them fighting.”

  Noren smacked the back of her fingers against her palm in emphatic disagreement. “No blame! Nobody wants that.”

  “I should have foreseen that Noddy might feel the way he does...but yes, I see what I missed: Ranet is left with a title and little else, as you are training to replace me. Do you want to train her?”

  Noren gazed at the wall, then replied slowly, “She has no head for numbers. But she is better than I am with the girls. And for that matter, with the boys over at the academy.” She looked up. “Now that Connar is king, he probably will not want to remain co-headmaster of the academy. We’ve all seen how reluctant he is.”

  “No, he has enough to contend with, armywise. So you’re saying Ranet ought to be head on her own?”

  Noren responded, “I’ll ask Noddy, but if he’s taking over all state matters, I know he’ll be relieved to hand it off to her.”

  Fish Pereth was very well aware of the irony of his present position.

  All night he’d listened to his father and brother go round and round about that bristic. Pereth suspected that Jethren was behind it, but one thing he was certain of, if Connar found out, there was no telling what he’d do. Fish still dreamed about Cabbage Gannan’s death.

  So now he was suddenly in a place he’d wanted badly when he was a boy. But he was no longer a boy. He’d gotten used to the danger of the battlefield, but this unasked-for promotion felt like a different quality of threat.

  As the day passed, he felt as if he glided along the ice on a deep lake. Quill had been an obnoxious know-it-all when young, but Fish remembered his own penchant for sneaking and tattling. Since Quill’s return from going around the country renewing baths and buckets a few years back, he’d been affable in their few encounters, doing his job competently and then getting out of the way. That same affability was there when Fish reached the third floor the next morning and found Quill waiting. As Quill took Fish through the routine of study, practice, and the rota for message-running, he was patient and attentive.

  The tedious explanations dragged on, always coming back to the complicated chalk slate on which each day was organized, and Fish began to feel more isolated than he ever had in his life. But there was no one to complain to. He’d spent all night with his terrified father, assuring him that if Connar wanted them dead, it would already have happened. His brother had avoided him at pre-dawn mess.

  When the bell clanged for the night watch, and it was time to get ready for the memorial, Fish—after a full night and day with no sleep—felt he’d fallen into one of those miserable dreams in which he’d lost an important message, his horse had escaped from its stall, and he tried to run, but he couldn’t move faster than a crawl, and Connar was somewhere in the distance, very angry.

  Fish faced the waiting royal runners, all waiting to be dismissed to ready themselves for the memorial, and forced himself to give his first order. “My name is David Pereth. I realize there is another David here. Pereth is fine, but I hate Fish.” And, palms turned up, “I guess we all ought to get ready.”

  They put two fingers to chests and dispersed.

  Quill started to move away. Fish—now Pereth—turned to Quill, and desperation drove him to say, “I didn’t ask for this change.”

  Quill’s eyelids flickered. He stilled, his profile bland as carved stone. Then he turned, smiling. “I’m always around if you have questions. And of course the others will give you whatever help you ask for.”

  Pereth tried again. “I’ll ask him to put things back the way they were.”

  Quill said, lightly, with sympathy, “I expect it’s too late for that.”

  Pereth stared—then heard his own words, back the way they were, and remembered that the king was dead. Quill had taken the larger meaning: nothing would ever be the same.

  The inescapable reminder was the king’s body laid out before the throne as torches along the walls leaped and flared, giving the banners on the high walls a semblance of moving in the wind.

  The royal family lined up, impressive in their blue and gold House tunics. Pereth, standing against the wall in his borrowed royal runner robe, and isolated among the rest of the royal runners, didn’t listen Connar’s speech past the announcement that as it was too late in the year to summon a coronation Convocation at New Year’s, it would be called for Midsummer, after which it would be put off for three years.

  Convocation. Pereth would be expected to organize the third floor’s part. He’d seen how hard the royal runners worked during Convocation. After he left Quill he’d gotten down to the second floor to find his personal things neatly packed up by Cheese Fath, his former assistant, and the chamber runner Pereth had appointed to deal with laundry, meals, and the like. Ap
parently Connar had promoted them to chamber runners.

  The last thing Pereth did before readying for the memorial, wearing the blue robe that Cama Tall, one of the royal runner masters, had loaned him, was to move his things into the empty room they’d shown him. It was twice the size of his chamber downstairs, and it even had its own fireplace. His small trunk looked absurd in that great, empty space, which he suspected had been Quill’s room.

  While Pereth’s thoughts turned inward, Lineas’s turned outward. She watched the torch flames flicker, throwing shadows over the watching faces as Connar passed a lit brand three times above the silent figure on the bier. The room had filled with more ghosts than normal, or maybe it was just that she saw more of them.

  She turned her head, seeking among them—and yes, there was Lanrid, who everyone had thought was Evred. The ghost faded and brightened like a flame; she watched, rapt, until it dimmed to liminality, and through it she beheld a tall pale-haired man gazing straight at her: it was Jethren’s first runner, the one with the odd name. What did they call him, Moonlight?

  His hand moved, almost too fast to follow: You see.

  Her lips parted as she signed back, You see them too.

  Voices rose in the Hymn to the Fallen as the Healer said the words of Disappearance, distracting her. Tears blurred the dais. She wiped her eyes, and Anred-Harvaldar was gone. The new king staring down at that empty stone, as behind him, Danet-Gunvaer wiped her eyes repeatedly. Noddy and Noren stood holding hands. At their other side stood Ranet, holding her two children, one asleep in her arms, the other a little figure pressed against her side, eyes huge.

  Ranet’s face was a mask. Bunny, next to her, could only see her profile, but sorrow poured ice water through her veins.

  Connar lifted his head. “Tomorrow is a day of liberty for all, sentries to serve half-watches.”

  It was over.

  The royal family walked out to the courtyard below the king’s suite, where Arrow’s runners waited with Arrow’s very few personal effects. Bunny’s heart overflowed with tears when she saw them, and she chose her da’s oldest robe, hoping it would retain his scent longest.