Time of Daughters II

by Sherwood Smith

  Jethren considered that. Distances, how long it would take to muster once the decision was made. Then that journey up the north coast of the peninsula. That side might be marginally easier, but no one would attempt it in winter, with no shelter and a long supply line.

  The surface of his mind turned these facts over, but he was aware of the high moral ground. Surely it was time for a reward.

  And Connar said, “Excellent map. Everything I wanted.”

  Here it was!

  Then: “Didn’t you once say you wanted to run the academy?”

  Jethren hesitated, expecting almost anything but that. Then his mind arrowed straight to Ranet, who his Nighthawk men had reported was now the academy headmaster. “Yes.” But the word had a rising inflection—question.

  Connar’s brow furrowed. “You said once the training you had at Olavayir was tough.”

  “Yes.” Amazement seized Jethren. Was it possible that he could bring in the Vaskad training already?

  “That’s what I want at the academy. If it takes the Bar Regren a year to harass the Idegans into striking back and taking the Nob, so much the better. That gives you a year with the seniors. Get them ready for the games.”

  “Games?”

  Connar smiled.

  Ranet found out midway through winter, when Danet asked Connar if he wanted to meet with them all, as had become habit, to plan the new academy year. It was no more than a courtesy question, because he was now king, and he’d handed off headmaster duties. But to her surprise, he said to set up the meeting. He’d be there.

  He was—with Jethren. “Everything you do with selection and logistics is excellent. Don’t make any changes. But I want Jethren to oversee the training,” Connar said, aware that no one would gainsay him now.

  Ranet didn’t argue. She said, “I can see that you’d want one of your captains training your future captains.” And she was the first to leave.

  She walked to her room, determined to get her emotions combed out. Connar didn’t hate her. But that wasn’t the relief she would have expected. Hatred seemed preferable to indifference.

  When winter showed its first signs of relenting, it was time to haul the academy’s furnishings out of storage, and begin the logistical toil of readying for another season.

  One of those tasks was meeting with Jethren.

  Ranet decided the meeting ought to be held in the headmaster’s building, which during the past couple of years had only been used for overflow supplies.

  Jethren arrived, with words ready on his lips. This was their first face to face, and he felt like a boy. “I’m to tell you that Sindan Monadan will be the master in lance training,” he said.

  Ranet retorted easily enough, “And you’re the fifth person to inform me. Pass along the chain that I have been duly informed.” She pointed to the chalkboard, where the name “Monadan” had been written in among the other masters’ names.

  He laughed, a sudden sound that made him look a lot younger. Her incipient distrust eased somewhat. Laughter could do that, she knew. She said, a shade more cordially, “What changes did you have in mind? If it’s complicated, we’ll need to call meetings with the masters.”

  He opened his hands. “Begin with a single rule change for the seniors. The rest can come. The rule is this, the last in any exercise gets a beating.”

  She frowned. “What kind of beating?”

  “Nothing that lays them up.” Jethren gave a short laugh, more a bark, and she felt the dislike returning. “What use is a barracks full of wounded? At Olavayir, we got five across the shoulder blades. Incentive to work harder.”

  Ranet bit down on a protest. Danet had absolutely forbidden beatings for the queen’s training. Serious troublemakers had been sent home. The same had held true in Senelaec.

  But beatings were traditional in the academy. And anyway, this seemed to be what Connar wanted.

  She said, “If that’s all, then I don’t think we need to call for extra meetings. You can explain when the masters meet for schedule discussion.”

  Which meant they were done. He left, disappointed, but not surprised.

  When the masters met, once they’d covered the schedule, Jethren explained the new rule. Ranet watched the masters accept it with mild expressions of interest, question, and a couple of downward glances of doubt. But no one complained. They were too used to obeying orders.

  Jethren said, “Once they get used to it, train them to handle it themselves. It becomes the riding, or flight, captain’s responsibility.”

  “Ten-year-olds hitting each other?” Baldy Faldred, the writing and mapping master, asked.

  “Seniors only,” Jethren said. “This year. And remind them they’ll be going up against a garrison company at a wargame this summer.”

  Spring arrived stealthily. There was still snow in the shadows when the academy began filling up. Up in the gunvaer’s suite, Danet reflected on how the idea of a new year could vary so much. They counted the year change from when the sun was farthest north, but the farmers—and in the city, the academy—regarded those winter months as part of the old year.

  The new year began for half the city when the academy bells tolled for the first time, calling the youngsters to inspection. Sometimes she watched through Noddy’s windows, enjoying the fresh young faces below. Arrow would have liked seeing how his academy had become so much a part of Marlovan life.

  Noren stood beside Danet, awareness extended to everyone busy outdoors again after so long between walls. Spring light and work one liked were so simple, but so powerful in creating happiness.

  Ranet was too busy with the unending stream of demands to think about such things. Everything seemed to be satisfactory. But there was that one new change.

  As the first month came to an end, and the spring rains lightened up for a brief period, Noren and Ranet went out riding together. It had occurred to Ranet that when one wished for private conversation with a hearing person, going outside where one could see who was within listening range was preferable to trusting in walls and halls, where anyone might be lurking. But with someone who relied on sight and not sound, outdoors was not necessarily private—then, the walls and halls served best.

  Noren knew all the spots where trees or land obscured them, however briefly, from the scrutiny of sentries on the city or castle walls. She reined up under the branches of an old tree, and signed, “You’ve been worried about that new rule.”

  “It’s...not what I thought would happen. At first they thought it was funny. Then—maybe it was those two weeks of rain—they seemed, oh, grim. At the same time, the masters had to land on the ten- and eleven-year-olds because they just had to mimic their elders, taking it upon themselves to begin smacking around their slowest.”

  “That’s annoying.”

  “Yes, but not surprising. And the masters said it was no different than breaking up fights. So, nobody’s questioned this new rule.” Ranet stroked her horse’s neck to keep her hands busy, glanced at Noren’s waiting face, then snapped her fingers together. “Some even love it, Jarend Olavayir being one of them.”

  “He relishes rules, that one,” Noren responded. “And I suspect he likes seeing the Mareca girl get thwacked when she’s last in the obstacles runs because she’s so short.”

  “True,” Ranet said. “But she shrugs and declares her mother is ten times harder at home. And she’s always first in the ride-and-shoot, which means more to the youngsters than running obstacles. Anyway, they’re adjusting. I’m not sure whether to be relieved or not that they all seem to think it one more rule.”

  “They’re warriors,” Noren reminded her. “They have to be harder than the enemy.”

  Noren sighed, thrown back to early childhood. It had taken reaching adult age to realize that her mother had foreseen from the beginning that her daughter would likely be called upon to replace the false Ranet that Braids had been until he was nearly sixteen. There had been no words spoken, except—Ranet understood now—there had be
en expectations.

  But Ranet had been a child, with childish boundaries, which didn’t extend any farther than Sindan-An castle—and her worst enemy, a Keriam cousin named Gdan, whose sarcastic teasing had caused many fights.

  Ranet remembered her mother talking repeatedly about the difference between self-defense and sneakily starting a fight, then claiming to be a victim. Finally, when Ranet was ten, her mother had taken her onto the walls, where no one could hear them. When you’re around Gdan you are never your best self, she had said. You are only your angry self, thinking this time you have to win. But there is no real win, there is only the next time.

  I hate her, Ranet’s own voice echoed in memory—sounding a lot like Iris.

  Feelings are feelings. Sometimes you can’t change them. But you can change how much you see her. Stay away from Gdan, so that you can be your best self.

  Ranet explained that. Noren watched with her serious face as Ranet finished, “I struggled so hard to be my best self. Two years later Aunt Calamity came, and asked if I wanted to go to Senelaec, and I—oh, never mind that. My point is, does hitting the last person in an exercise truly bring out the best self?”

  Noren swatted at a fly buzzing around her mare’s ears, then responded, “I think whoever you ask will give you a different answer.”

  Ranet laughed, turned the subject to Bunny’s exuberant letter from Hesea Garrison—which she found the most fascinating place in the world, mostly because it was not the royal city—and the conversation sank into the back of both their minds.

  Summer ripened and the earliest leaves began to wither in the dry glare of Lightning Season when it was time for the seniors to depart for the wargame. Jethren was to command them. Ranet reasoned that it made sense. If he was in charge of training, then he should be the one to ride at their head to see how that training did in the field. She would never go into the field.

  So Ranet watched from the walls as the seniors trotted out behind Connar and Jethren, banners fluttering in the hot, dry winds, their blue as intense as the sky.

  The seniors rode southward, camping along the way and drilling industriously in anticipation of meeting Hesea Garrison’s best under the famous Rat Noth in a mock battle, with the king watching! So much more fun than those poor babies back at the academy, with their silly Victory Day games!

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Everyone knew about the new senior wargame, of course. There was even a flurry of wagers among the royal castle guards and in the city.

  The rest of the academy still had Victory Day games to look forward to, and the city, of course, would celebrate whether or not there was an academy.

  Victory Day meant extra work for the castle staff, except up in the state wing, as few wanted to be away from home for Victory Day.

  Almost three weeks passed, and the festival was two days off when among the celebrants and merchants streaming into the royal city came a dust-covered couple dressed in wagon-driver dull green. The man wore an eye-patch, his head down as though to protect his single eye from the glaring brightness of Lightning Weather.

  The woman drove the wagon, and the man rode in back with the baskets of jugged sage honey, which identified their origin only if you knew that the right sage for this honey grew on the slopes of the eastern mountains.

  They made their way to one of the inns popular with the market regulars, and while the man stabled the horse and stayed with their goods, the woman made her way among the festival crowds to the royal castle, where she asked the duty runner to find Lineas the Royal Runner.

  Lineas was up on the third floor, helping with tedious chores such as list-copying when word was passed along. She went down to the stable, where a woman her own age waited, someone Lineas had never seen before.

  When Lineas stepped from the shadowy archway into the bright light, she was distracted by the luminous quality of the Lanrid ghost she had assumed for so long was Evred, king for a day. Lanrid’s coloring was jewel-toned and clear, from his bright hair to the deep blue of his tunic and the shimmering gold thread of the leaping dolphin on his chest.

  Lineas blinked past that to the tense-looking woman standing in the yard, licking her lips.

  Lineas said, “You asked for me?”

  The woman shifted her gaze to one side and then the other, licked her lips again, then said, “You wanted some of our sage honey?”

  Lineas blinked. “What?”

  The woman’s lips tightened, and she said, “I have some for you. A...a gift.” She turned away, walked a few steps, then turned back expectantly.

  Lineas had only the copy duties, which anyone on the third floor could do. Curious, she followed the woman out the castle gate, and down the broad street leading toward the city center.

  The woman walked fast, head bent, in silence. Lineas followed, curiosity intensifying. When they reached the main street, the woman’s pace faltered, and she halted. Turned. Said, “So...someone told us—me—you are with the king. A favorite.”

  “No.” Lineas didn’t hide her surprise as she held up her hand with the ring on it. “That’s in the past.”

  The woman’s lips parted as she gazed at the ring. Then she crossed her arms. “I was told you’re kind. That you don’t blab.”

  “I’m glad,” Lineas said, amusement bubbling inside her. “To whom do I owe these compliments?”

  Another surprise. That seemed to be the wrong question, for the woman’s face lengthened in panic. Then a blink, and her expression shuttered.

  Lineas sighed. “I walked away from some very tedious work that I don’t like leaving for someone else, so if you’ve nothing else to say, I’ll return to work.”

  “No!” The woman snatched at the air, licked her lips again, and squared her shoulders. “If—someone—wanted to talk to you. And didn’t want that blabbed around. Would you heed their wishes?”

  Lineas sighed again. “If someone is not causing anyone harm, I certainly would respect their wishes for privacy. If that’s what you’re asking.”

  “You would?” The woman stepped closer, her voice dropping, her pupils huge in staring eyes. “You promise?”

  Lineas held her hands out. “I promise.”

  “Good.” The woman stood there, lips compressed, breathing heavily. “Good, good.” Then she turned abruptly. “Come.”

  The woman walked fast, pausing at each intersection to look about intently until they crossed the square toward the huge, rambling inn where tradespeople and caravanners usually stayed.

  She ducked around a corner, then under an archway into a tiny court. They crossed that and squeezed around stacked baskets to a door under an overhang. Another long, desperate glance back at Lineas, then she seemed to come to a decision, and opened the door to a room with a tiny window that was tightly shuttered in spite of the stifling heat.

  Lineas stepped warily into the thick gloom, the air pungent with the sweat of desperation. A man sat on a mat next to a tiny table, bedroll on the other side. The man was big, even hunched over, his lineaments somehow familiar.

  The woman lit a candle. Lineas was going to protest against the added heat, then paused when recognition came: “Aren’t you Kendred? First runner to Cab—ah, to the Jarl of Stalgoreth?” Who was now dead.

  The woman backed to the closed door, looking terrified.

  Kendred, who had been wearing an eyepatch, lifted it up. “I guess my disguise wasn’t so good,” he said slowly. “Spring, close the door. It’s all right. I called her here, right?”

  “Why would you need a disguise?” Lineas asked.

  Kendred and the woman named Spring exchanged looks. Then she darted forward and sat down close to Kendred’s side.

  Kendred said, “You didn’t know that people have been searching for me?”

  Lineas opened her hands. “I’ve been working as a scribe for Nadran-Sierlaef. My duties concern lists and petitions.”

  At Noddy’s name, Spring whispered something and made a quick urging motion with one hand.

>   “He can’t do anything,” Kendred whispered back fiercely enough that Lineas heard it easily. Then he turned to Lineas. “I’m going. Out of the country. The healers did what they could for my knee. But the way it shattered, I can barely walk. It’s said that healers down south over the sea can fix anything. So we’ll work our way across. But first...I think honor requires me to say something.”

  Spring keened under her breath.

  Kendred’s voice hardened. “I have to. I don’t know what you can do. That is, if you don’t sic the king’s men onto me. I know he’s had Jethren’s spies sticking their noses all over, but nobody liked them in Stalgoreth. Them and their Olavayir superiority.”

  Spring keened again.

  Kendred muttered, “I’m going to say my say. If she rats, she rats.” Then back to Lineas. “You didn’t. At Gannan.”

  Lineas said, “I won’t promise if someone is going to be harmed in any way.”

  Spring said fiercely, “The only one’t’ll be harmed is him.” And to Kendred, “Give it to her. Do it the way you pledged.”

  Kendred sighed, then held out a much-folded paper, sealed. “If you’ll promise me to wait a week before you read it.”

  “I need my own assurance,” Lineas said gently.

  “The harm has already been done,” Kendred said so bleakly that alarm tightened the back of Lineas’s neck. “The threat is only to me. Give me a week, then read it. Do whatever you think is right after that. Just give me that week. No one will take any hurt of it, any more than’s already happened.”

  Lineas agreed, took the paper, and slid it into her robe pocket. Spring jumped up, dashed to the door, then came back with a jug of honey. “Here.” She pressed it into Lineas’s hands, her dark eyes pleading. “It’s good. Some say, the best.”

  “Thank you,” Lineas said, more confused than ever, and left, the jug cradled against her side, the paper a weight in her inner pocket.