Time of Daughters II

by Sherwood Smith

  Noddy, suffering in a silence broken by an occasional deep sob, took his father’s cup because Da’s hands had handled it, and he also took Arrow’s hair clasp to send to Andas. Connar already had the sword. He picked up Arrow’s knives, unused these long years.

  Danet chose nothing from that pile—she already had piles of reports and notes scrawled in Arrow’s impatient slashing hand. Noren, who hadn’t known him well, preferred to keep her memories, rather than things, and Ranet picked up Arrow’s writing materials with a mind to saving them in case there was ever a prince to come. The girls already had little gifts Arrow often brought back from the city after he’d visited his favorites at this or that pleasure house.

  A couple of Arrow’s favorites from the pleasure houses had also come. They stepped forward, and one took a sash, the other Arrow’s comb.

  That left the runners, who either chose something or did not, then the few remaining items were placed in a pile and set on fire. They stood in a circle, flames lighting their faces: rank had ceased to mean anything in that moment. Young, old, male, female, all distinctions diminished, leaving them people in grief.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The city settled into its routine, business excellent. They had a handsome new king, famous for his prowess. He had an open hand with largesse, and the pleasure houses competed to draw his attention whenever he came into the city.

  For a time Connar expected Braids to show up and offer to resign his command, as Calamity Senelaec had said he would, but when the weeks sped by and there was no sign of him, he figured that the jarlan had managed to reach him with the news of the compromise.

  There was no response to Danet’s letter from the Jarl of Gannan. She and Connar, talking about it, figured that if he was going to raise a fuss, it would be at the Midsummer Convocation when Connar took the jarls’ vows.

  “We’ll prepare for that,” he said. Softly spoken, but his smile, the tone, was a threat.

  “Good,” she retorted stoutly. She had to get used to Connar’s style of ruling. Just as well he looked so intimidating. That old fart Gannan needed intimidation.

  Noddy didn’t like change, but within a matter of days he felt as if Quill had always been a part of the state wing routine. Noddy liked Quill. He was as patient as Lineas, and as clear in his ideas. He listened to all sides. Noddy did not know that Lineas and Vanadei had been discussing difficult issues with Quill long before the king was stricken, only that his ideas fit what they had been talking about. Noddy especially liked how much Quill knew about Marlovan history, past decisions, and mistakes. His suggestions were always good.

  The state wing was the civilian side of Marlovan government.

  Every village in Marlovan Iasca was within a week’s ride of a military outpost. Every town had an outpost. Every region had a garrison. Each decision they made over civilians was recorded by scribes, who funneled those letters by the regular runners to the state wing, where they were examined by the archive scribes, and separated out according to a complex table that had been evolving ever since the first Marlovan king. The fundamental understanding was that jarls dispensed their own justice, but people did have recourse to the king, even if getting their grievances aired was labyrinthine and time-consuming.

  Quill had always liked Noddy, but he was impressed by both his comprehension of the labyrinth, and his patience. He began to comprehend through Noddy’s anecdotes, related in that slow, deep voice, that he had learned governing in Larkadhe, when he saw the people whose petitions came before him. That had convinced him that no problem was ever too small for him, because these were not small problems to the people behind the petitions.

  Quill was acutely aware of how conditional happiness was. He relished these daily gatherings, talking and laughing with people he loved, as they got glimpses into the lives of Marlovans everywhere. This was the heart of government, he believed—though no one wrote songs about finding compromises between apple pickers and beekeepers, or discovering ways to get air into mines without endangering the miners. But he still sensed unseen shoals, and so he and Mnar Milnari kept the royal runners in inspection mode, outwardly cooperating with Pereth (who was doing his best to run a complicated branch he only partially comprehended) but keeping magic studies, and ferreting for the truth, to a very small number.

  Quill knew everyone in service throughout the royal castle. In the days after the memorial, at the midday break or in the sweltering evenings, it was easy to visit his friends among the staff—usually carrying a jug of fizz, or some fresh biscuits—to ask how everyone was, and make a request for examples of certain types of records for teaching purposes. Like how Supply finishes up records for those who have moved, been promoted, or died.

  Will I like it? Lineas had asked.

  Not at all.

  By tacit agreement, each night after they finished up in the state wing, Lineas walked Noddy back to his suite, joining him and Noren as often as not as they talked over their respective days. Then she continued up to the third floor.

  That left Quill and Vanadei back in the scribe chamber, which had a single window high above the parade ground. No one could listen in.

  “What is this MNA next to Retren Hauth’s name?” Vanadei asked, when Quill brought from his sleeve the copy he’d made of Retren Hauth’s supply and disposition records. “This looks like one of the gunvaer’s abbreviations.”

  “It is,” Quill said. “MNA means Mathren’s Nighthawk Army.”

  “Ah.” Vanadei laid the paper down, and Quill snuffed the lantern, so no one in the parade court below would see the lit window. They sat in the dim starlight, each scarcely more than a silhouette to the other. “The infamous private army. But surely with Mathren dead, that died, too.”

  “It did, and it didn’t. The survivors of their struggle for power after Mathren’s death ended up in Olavayir at Jarend-Jarl’s invitation. They had families. Before he retired, Sneeze Ventdor was pungently forthcoming about Kethedrend Jethren and his company being Nighthawk men, while talking to Stick Tyavayir. Neither paid attention to Fnor busy copying reports in the corner as they talked.”

  Vanadei turned up his palm; Fnor was one of their best young ferrets.

  “Here’s what concerns me. Fish Pereth might be explained away as Connar’s first runner, but Jethren was there at the quartermaster’s the night that Retren Hauth suddenly retired from nearly decades of blameless instruction at the academy—without even waiting for Victory Day, which he had helped run for years. I know I smelled blood that night. And those faces, that was the shock of sudden death. Even in Jethren, who is about as bloody-minded an individual as I’ve ever met.”

  “You think they killed Hauth?”

  “No, I think Connar did.”

  Vanadei started at that. “Why?”

  “Mmmm.” Quill got to his feet and leaned against the wall so he could look out at the sentry walk, torches winking ruddy red as the silhouettes of guards passed back and forth in front of them. “Considering that Connar is now king, which makes seeking justice for Hauth somewhat complicated, I think there are three more pressing questions. One being, is Nighthawk still an entity—which implies a goal—and second, is this goal related to those two spies of Jethren’s nosing around Stalgoreth, asking after Kendred, Cabbage Gannan’s first runner.”

  Vanadei fell silent. Earlier that day, Quill had received a note from one of his ferrets in Stalgoreth that two of Jethren’s scouts had been asking questions—

  ...but the healer who packed Kendred into the cart for the trip down into Alliance territory returned to Ku Halir. He’s known as Moss Toraca. He’s actually a farrier, but he was serving as field medic for that battle.

  “Vanadei, when you go back upstairs, I want you to contact Fnor in Ku Halir to spread the word to be on the watch for Jethren’s ferrets, who might appear and be searching for Moss Toraca.” Quill handed Vanadei the note, with descriptions of Sleip and Punch.

  “All right,” Vanadei said. “But what about th
is Kendred?”

  “That,” said Quill, “I think I have to investigate myself. But it’ll have to be Restday, when Noddy is with his family.”

  “You mean to go by magic?” Vanadei asked, grimacing.

  “Can’t be helped,” Quill said, though that method had its risks and limits. Besides the transfer reaction, there was also the matter of a Destination. He did not dare use Braids as a Destination, as he would never be able to explain away suddenly appearing right next to him.

  He also had no idea where Braids was, so he couldn’t find a familiar place nearby to use as a Destination, risky it itself. And even if he did, assuming he could make up some excuse for being in the area, he was no longer a royal runner. Anyone could innocently comment on having seen him in Tlennen, or Sindan-An, or Senelaec, or Wened Lake, when he was supposed to be copying reports in the state wing. “No, on second thought, I’d better contact Lnand. She really isn’t needed in Parayid anymore.”

  “Bringing me to your third question. You didn’t say what it was.” Vanadei packed his scribe materials together by feel, and got to his feet.

  “Right. That being, what do we do with the answers?”

  “I think Lefty Poseid is a very good idea as replacement for Cabbage,” Noddy said to Connar over breakfast one morning. “Did you know the Poseids are Iascans from that part of the north? Righty told me that once. The people there like Lefty. I saw that on my visit.”

  He looked away, the way he invariably did when mentioning someone gone. Then he said, “Connar, would you like to come to the state wing? See what we do there?”

  Hit by an image of his utter boredom in Larkadhe, Connar was about to refuse. Then the thought occurred that it might be worth the time to see exactly why Noddy needed three royal runners, rather than scribes. Vanadei made sense, as he was a first runner who could do scribe duties. Quill, Connar had assigned to Noddy to tie him down. But why was Lineas there?

  After an interminable session that was exactly as tedious as he’d expected, the only answer he could come up with was that Lineas had become a habit at Larkadhe. And everyone knew Noddy liked the comfort of habit.

  When the midday watch change bell rang, Noddy said, “Let’s break. Quill, will you ask my mother for the new customs tallies from Parayid?”

  “If she won’t let it out of her sight, I’ll copy the relevant pages,” Quill said, hand to heart.

  Noddy’s somber face eased to the lopsided grin that Lineas found endearing. He turned to Vanadei. “If you’ll explain one side of the Wheelwright accusations, and Lineas, you the other—”

  Connar spoke up from the wall he’d been propping. “Vanadei, your skills are equal to both sides, no doubt. Lineas, I want a tour of the archives.”

  Lineas started. She’d actually managed to forget Connar was there. She swallowed. He watched her throat working. “Very well,” she said, on a faint note of question.

  Outside the door, she tipped her chin up, giving him a considering glance. “The scribes can give you a better tour than I can.”

  He snorted. “I doubt that. Somehow it seems you royal runners know everything better than anyone else. Why else would you end up over here so often?”

  She said softly, “We go where we’re told to go.” The flatness of her tone made him hear the unspoken As you very well know.

  “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t welcome a break from wheelwrights squabbling.”

  “They came all the way here from Feravayir,” she replied in that same even, soft tone. “Their petition is important to them.” She didn’t look up, but she was intensely aware of him walking at her side. The sound of his breathing, even his scent, which her body still responded to.

  “More important than my time?” he retorted.

  As he contemplated her bent head, her face hidden by her frizzy, rust-colored hair, she tried to calm the thud of her heart, wondering what was in his mind. She knew it was not a matter of thwarted lust. For that matter, she didn’t understand her own reaction; while the attraction was still there, it was a thin thing, a guttering candle compared to the sun of her youth. She had no words for the tangle of emotions still existing between them. Maybe only the faraway Colendi did, they with their thousand terms for the vagaries of human passion.

  To business, then. “What part of the archive did you wish to see?”

  “Everything,” he stated. “Yes, I know we were given tours as boys, but I raced through as fast as I could. Noddy and I both did. Now it seems to me that I ought to find out what my predecessors did and didn’t do, don’t you think? Start at the very beginning.”

  “That isn’t in Marlovan,” she warned. “Though the scribes have been working on translations, most of the oldest records are in Iascan. First the Cassadas. What’s left of those.”

  “I can read Iascan,” he said, smiling. “Noddy and I were tutored by no less a figure than the legendary Camerend when we were small.”

  She knew he was mocking her, though there was no sign in face or voice. Her own face heated, and she turned away. “The gunvaer can show you the royal archive, which I have never seen. It’s what the kings and queens wrote themselves. Mainly letters, I understand, but other things as well. And of course there are all the legal archives, and garrison ledgers, and I’m certain you’ve seen the academy records.” She pointed in three directions.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I may as well start at the beginning.” He opened the door to the oldest archive, which had no windows, and had been purposely located deep within the building, away from the changing airs of the seasons.

  She left. Connar strolled along the shelves, sniffing the complexities of the air, identifying only dust and a whiff of mildew. He didn’t see the scrolls and bound books as he reflected on how much life had changed.

  Everything seemed settled. He considered Jethren’s report, brought by his second runner: No one had found Kendred, Cabbage’s first runner. He might even be dead. He definitely had been wounded. And as Cabbage had been riding alone when his horse blundered into Connar’s, Kendred was likely to have been a distance away. And visibility had been rotten.

  But Connar wasn’t certain.

  He looked around the quiet chamber, undisturbed for years and years. So very far from the noise of castle life.

  He turned away. He had research to do...but he didn’t have to begin it today.

  He left, retreating to the garrison, his own comfortable domain, relishing the signs in all those fisted salutes that he was now truly the one who made the rules.

  And so it was time to get on with that, right? He spotted Jethren leaning on the low wall behind the water butts at the army’s own court, separate from the guards’. Jethren was watching a single-stick match, but turned his head at Connar’s approach, then straightened, fist to heart.

  Always predictable. Connar laughed inwardly, but he was not displeased.

  “Any orders?”

  “No. Not now. Everything is as it should be.” Connar was in a good enough mood to share his thoughts. Jethren had done what he’d asked, and Hauth was gone forever. “I’m thinking ahead. Nothing changing before we get through Convocation at Midsummer. The jarls will be barking at me about this and that, and old Gannan will certainly howl the loudest. Once that’s over, I’m thinking that it’s time to get rid of the Nob.”

  Jethren’s head turned sharply, the feral grin Connar had seen on Skytalon flashing. And his mind went right to where Connar’s was: “Did you want the north shore mapped? If so, I volunteer.”

  Pleased, Connar said slowly, “That sort of expedition is usually for scouts. Not captains or commanders. You really want to go? I was going to promote you to command the Third Lancers under Rat Noth.”

  “No one maps as well as I do.” Jethren amended, aware that he dare not leave Moonbeam behind, “Well, actually, Moonbeam does better drawing.”

  “He can draw?”

  “Really well,” Jethren lied. “We can assess every castle and its defenses. The territory a
round them.”

  Connar turned unseeing eyes to the two men sweating in the court as they strove to catch his attention with their prowess. The kingdom was quiet. But there was the north, effectively yanked from under Da as a new king at his weakest. Connar knew it had still rankled, all those years later. And now he was dead, and couldn’t do anything about it.

  But Connar could.

  He could send scouts to assess the north, but who could he trust not to blab about it? The exhilarating idea of restoring the kingdom was merely an idea, one that depended on so many factors. First, getting rid of the Nob, as a lure to Idego. Then waiting to see if Idego took the bait and rushed up the north shore of the peninsula...and even then, his map of Lorgi Idego was at least a generation out of date the further it got from Andahi Castle.

  Then there was the strategic concern: Marlovans trained to defend their castles, and to face enemies in the broad plains.

  “Do it,” Connar said. “Once Convocation is over, we’ll have three years until the next, giving me three years of respite from the likes of Old Gannan and Zheirban. A lot can be accomplished in that time.”

  Jethren saluted sharply, grinning as if he’d been given a promotion. “We’ll be on the road by sunup.”

  Two weeks into his new rule, Connar summoned Royal Runner Chief Pereth down to the king’s suite. Pereth looked around, finding it mostly unchanged. All the same furnishings.

  Cheese Fath, Pereth’s replacement as first runner, went out and left them alone. Connar said, “Are you settled in?”

  Knowing Connar of old, Pereth gave the correct answer: “Yes.” Although “settled in” was debatable. He still felt that odd sensation of skating over ice, with all the waters and lake life invisible below.

  “They follow your orders?”

  Pereth gave in to impulse and said, “I haven’t given orders yet. Their rota is smooth. I still don’t understand it. I wasn’t trained up to it. But they all know it.”