Time of Daughters II

by Sherwood Smith

  “How?” Neit asked. “I know Rat hated hearing that about reunion. But he follows orders. He knows refusing orders gets you killed.”

  “There’s resignation,” Quill reminded them. “What if all the Noth captains resigned? They at least ought to know what Connar plans.”

  Neit whistled. Then said doubtfully, “But won’t Connar run his war himself? He seems so determined on it.”

  Quill said, “His command style is consistent: He likes to plan carefully beforehand, then lead from the front. He fights, but he doesn’t seem to command in the heat of battle the way Rat does, and Braids can, if pressed.”

  Neit said, “There’s something I could do, which is to suggest Rat have a family convocation. Give me a message from somebody in the royal family to run to Hesea Garrison, and I can be on the road today. Then I don’t have to face the gunvaer again, and lie. Or Noddy.” She frowned. “Has anyone sounded him out on the possibility he might support Connar’s attack?”

  Vanadei said, “Oh, yes. We did that while Connar was at Ku Halir. Even getting close to the subject raised a lot of anxious questions. Noddy is observant in his own way. There’s no possibility he’ll favor us invading Lorgi Idego.”

  Neit turned to Lineas. “Could Noddy talk Connar out of it?”

  Lineas looked away, her expression wistful. “I’m afraid not.”

  Vanadei said, “She’s right. Connar has always made the decisions between the two of them. The rare times Noddy won’t go along with Connar’s lead, Connar accepts it and goes on alone. Here’s my fear. I think this plan will destroy Noddy, whoever wins. He really liked the Idegans he got to know so well up at Larkadhe.”

  Neit slapped her palms to her thighs. “All right, then. I’m mum. I’ll cheer him up for a little while, but you’ll have to find some reason to send me southward.”

  Lineas had been thinking. “Why don’t we talk to Ranet?”

  Neit bit her lip. “Good idea. Though she’s mighty sore. I don’t think I want to go back to her quite yet.”

  “I’ll do it,” Lineas offered.

  And so, when Noren and Noddy reappeared, Lineas excused herself and ran back to the royal wing. She seldom saw Ranet, as their lives had completely diverged, so she had no idea what to expect.

  She found Ranet sitting in a welter of papers, as she began the process of figuring out barracks arrangements for the coming academy year. Her beautiful face reminded Lineas of carved stone as she looked up with polite question. “Lineas?”

  Lineas stole a look sideways, and seeing Ranet’s first runner busy brushing out a riding coat in the far room, used Hand to ask, “Could you invent some sort of message to send with Neit to Rat Noth?”

  Ranet stilled, her face lowered so that Lineas could not see her expression, but her tight shoulders betrayed emotions held in.

  Ranet’s first thought was that the royal runners had definitely known more than the royal family. Why hadn’t they told her? Then she remembered Henad’s letter. No one seemed to want to tell her anything, because she was the gunvaer. No, that wasn’t it. It was because she was so close to Connar.

  Close to Connar. What a howling mockery that was!

  Ranet looked up at Lineas’s freckled face, seeing the worry there. She asked, testing, “First, what is the real message?”

  Lineas said readily, “To encourage Rat Noth to consult his entire family. Maybe if they all unite, they might be able to talk Connar into not attacking Lorgi Idego.”

  “Good.” Ranet could accept that. “I will. But in trade, will you do something for me?”

  Lineas struck her palm to her heart. “As I am able.”

  “Two somethings. First, will you and Quill inform me when you come across things like Kendred’s confession?”

  Lineas’s mouth rounded. “Certainly. We didn’t...we thought....”

  “You thought to spare me, of course you’ll say. I don’t want to be spared. I don’t want decisions made for me. Second, will you tutor Iris?” And to Lineas’s clear confusion at the leap of subjects, “She is...difficult. The nursery minders can’t cope with her refusal to have anything to do with numbers, writing, or reading. She wants to draw. And lately she’s been in a pelter about learning to dance the way the foreigners do, though I think she just wants those colorful garments that look like they would shred in the first brisk wind.”

  “I don’t know how to dance like that,” Lineas said earnestly.

  “Learning to dance can be left to others. You royal runners seem to be trained with what could be called a royal education. And I know you are patient and kind.”

  Lineas saluted gravely. “I would be honored.”

  She ran back to the state wing to report her conversation with Ranet.

  The others listened in surprise, then Neit said gravely, “It sounds a bit like she’s punishing you.”

  Lineas looked puzzled. “Punishing? Me?”

  “Siccing that brat on you without warning.”

  “But Ranet did warn me that Iris is difficult.”

  “All right, I guess that’s fair. And you might not find her as wearing as I do. Every time I see her, she’s interrupting the adults by prancing around the room flapping her hands at the wrist and squealing, ‘Look at me, I’m a pony!’ or some such, and if she doesn’t get enough attention doing that, she finds something else to shriek about that you can hear clear down to the landings.”

  “Pereth has had to send down three different tutors,” Quill admitted. “And I tried as many before I was booted from the third floor. The problem with our royal runners is, they usually tutor those eager to learn. Or are at least well-behaved.”

  Lineas considered difficult people she had dealt with all her life, and said, “I’ll find a way.”

  Neit grunted as she got to her feet. “Better you than me. All right, I’ll go collect my urgent message and be off.”

  Winter set in hard. Between brief thaws, thick snow blew against walls in slanting drifts, sparkling a fierce blue-white in the low northern sun.

  Lineas spent her mornings with Iris, who looked so disconcertingly like her father, but whose personality could not have been more different. Iris never stopped talking, except to draw. She covered sheets and sheets with galloping and rearing horses, manes and tails flying. As Lineas was very deft at drawing, she gained Iris’s conditional trust by demonstrating tricks of perspective and shading, and soon drawing became a reward for getting through tedious lessons.

  As for the tantrums, Lineas did not try to cajole, scold, threaten, or bribe. She did what her father had done when she was very small and tried raging at the world: She walked out saying, “I guess we’re done for the day”—even if it had only been a quarter hour, as happened once. There were fewer tantrums after this unvarying response.

  Toward the end of a long month of cooped-up castle life, a flurry of excitement spreading from mouth to ears through the royal castle’s garrison was the first notice Jethren had that a new arrival had appeared out of the whirling snow.

  “Rat Noth is here!” The news carried as fast as the wind.

  Connar, at the other end of the castle, heard some of the excitement, before a wide-eyed young runner appeared. “Commander Rat Noth just rode in!”

  “Bring him up,” Connar said.

  And shortly after, Rat walked in, looking exactly the same as ever, though maybe the V at the top of his temples had broadened and his horsetail was a little thinner.

  “I wasn’t easy in my mind,” Rat began abruptly, as always. “So last month I sent around to my cousins. Uncles. We met in Algaravayir.” No mention of the very hard riding in the teeth of winter this must have entailed, but Connar had traveled enough to recognize it. “Talked it over. Plum said he’d write up what we said, and we’d all sign it if we had the same mind.”

  He handed off a grubby, much-folded piece of paper.

  Connar ran his eye swiftly down the pompous, almost tortured attempt at formal language that those who seldom wrote anythi
ng seemed to assume necessary at such times. His gaze came to rest on the list of names below the screed: Aldren Noth of Algaravayir, Ivandred Noth, Mouse Noth, old Lemon Noth, the Rider Captain in Marthdavan, Plum Noth from Telyer Hesea, and Flax Noth in Darchelde, which wasn’t even supposed to be involved in kingdom affairs, though Connar knew his father had ignored that old treaty.

  All had signed their given names, some of which Connar didn’t even recognize. The important point was, these represented nearly all the Rider and mid-level army captains from the entire south, saving only Jayavayir’s. The only Noth in command missing from that list was Vandas Noth, up at Larkadhe, who was obviously too far too reach.

  He could wave his hand and raise an army, spoke Jethren in memory.

  “I don’t want to resign,” Rat said plainly. “The army is my life. It’s the only thing I know. I’m good at it. So I’m coming to you now, before any orders have gone out. Ask you to wargame here, there, anywhere. Not to ride into Lorgi Idego.”

  “But we’ll win,” Connar said. “With you riding shield. There’s no one better.”

  Rat turned away, head bent, callused hands propped on his skinny hips. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Could be. But I’m thinking about after. Riding around for years, having to search castles and cottages for weapons, while they hate the sight of us. Rounding up resisters. Executing them. And you know it won’t just be men. It’ll be their sisters. Mothers. Granddas.” He shifted from foot to foot. “Think of how we’d be, if Elsarion had managed to take us. It’ll be the same over the mountains. They train like us. Enough of ‘em think like us. A lot of ‘em have relations on both sides of the mountains. Including the senior gunvaer. Those’ll be the first ones we’d have to cut down.”

  Connar stared in disbelief. “So what you’re saying is, you will refuse to obey orders?”

  Rat reddened to the ears. “I’m saying, I’m trying here to talk to you, before any orders have gone out. Nobody’s moved a foot. I’d rather resign than go up north against the Idegans, and I don’t want to resign. You can put me anywhere else. Even demote me to stable hand or riding master. I’d be good at either.”

  “It’s reuniting the kingdom,” Connar said, stunned.

  Rat shuffled his feet. “I’m not good at politics. But it seems to me it would only be reuniting if they sent Cama Arvandais down to Convocation, asking us to take them back. They aren’t. With Cama riding up the Prick to the Nob, what we’d be doing is a sneak attack, against people half the northerners know. And spending southern lives when they don’t see any benefit. They still complain about their taxes going to northern wars from a century ago, as well as the more recent ones.”

  When your horse throws you, or your opponent gets in a smart blow, there’s that heartbeat or two when you don’t breathe, you just stand there bewildered. But then the pain hits.

  The stun had worn off, and the pain struck, deepened by the anger of betrayal.

  Connar had had a lifetime of practice in hiding anger, which he’d believed since early childhood made him ridiculous, because he’d found other children’s loss of control risible. So he said, “When you get back to Hesea Garrison, hand off command to Pepper Marlovayir.”

  Rat Noth blanched pale, then his face reddened to the ears. But he said nothing. He saluted smartly, turned with a flare of muddy, wet coat skirts, and though it was snowing again, the sun already setting, he rode right out.

  Connar dismissed the runners with a wave of his hand, and stood staring down at that grubby paper as if it were a poisonous serpent until startled by a knock at the door, and Jethren’s voice, “Connar-Harvaldar. Someone said Rat Noth was here, but gone again?”

  “Come in.”

  Jethren heard the shortness in Connar’s voice, and his heartbeat accelerated. When he walked in, Connar tipped his chin down at the paper, resting like a dirty, wing-crumpled butterfly on the otherwise tidy desk.

  Jethren read it, then looked up as the implications set in. Infuriated—for it looked as if their carefully laid plans were being summarily thwarted—he couldn’t keep back a corrosive, “Seems to me you knew exactly what to do about idiots up in Stalgoreth.”

  Connar’s chin jerked up sharply.

  Jethren’s heartbeat throbbed in his temples. Clasping his hands tightly behind his back, he added, “And in the quartermaster’s.”

  Connar stared unblinking at him for what seemed an eternity. Then he turned away. “Do what you want.”

  He crushed the paper in his fist and pitched it into the fire. Then he walked out, leaving Jethren there with tacit approval. He walked to the landing, up the stairs. Royal runners parted like waves as he stalked into the roost, halting when he discovered Pereth and Mnar Milnari amid a welter of chalk boards and papers.

  “Send runners to the jarls. Cancel Convocation.” Connor paused, his mind sifting reasons. Then he remembered that he didn’t have to give a reason. He was the king.

  He walked out.

  As soon as Connar was gone, Jethren sped out, elated with triumph. He passed the landing guards and raced downstairs. He had a fair idea of the trajectory of Connar’s temper by now. Connar at that moment would cheerfully see Rat Noth dead at his feet, but he’d cool off. Maybe even send someone after Rat to try to woo him back. Keth Jethren had proved he was capable, over and over again. But still, as long as Rat Noth was alive, Connar would always reach for him first.

  Do what you want.

  What Jethren wanted was to be rid of them all. As he ran downstairs, he envisioned those Noths forming an army and riding against Connar to force him to give up riding into Lorgi Idego. If he refused, would they force him to abdicate? They even had a prince in Rat Noth, thanks to his marriage with Connar’s sister. They could put Rat on the throne, and who would be able to stop them?

  He found Rock Alca drilling at the garrison, and grizzled Hanred Leneit over at the armorer’s, looking over the slowly building stockpile to be taken north.

  A quick lift of the chin, and they followed him to his quarters at the army end of the garrison barracks, where Moonbeam sat staring out at the snow, honing a knife.

  “Our chance is here. But we have to act fast. Get the scouts,” he told Moonbeam. To the captains, “You’re riding out tonight.”

  Connar’s temper stayed hot. He rode into the city seeking obliteration, which as usual only lasted as long as lust did, then returned to the usual fitful sleep.

  At breakfast, Noddy said, “I heard Rat Noth was here yesterday. But he didn’t stay.”

  For once Connar was impatient with Noddy’s habit of stating the obvious. He reined it in hard, saying, “He rode back to Hesea with some changes in command.”

  “Oh.” Noddy passed on to other things, but Connar felt Ranet’s gaze.

  When he left, she followed him to his room. “Did he resign as well?” she asked.

  Connar’s temper flared white hot. “We can restore the entire kingdom with relative ease. Why is that so difficult to understand? Why do we have excellent captains frightened to do what they trained all their lives for? Is it because the army is full of women? The Noths are thinking like women!”

  Ranet’s lip curled. “How do women think?”

  Connar threw up his hands, fingers flexed and stiff. “You tell me! Tell me why you, a gunvaer, are not full of excitement at the prospect of regaining the kingdom we had a century ago. Is this what Tlennen-Harvaldar had to deal with when he sent his army up there?”

  “I don’t know. If he wrote down his thoughts, apparently the first Olavayir king saw fit to burn them,” she retorted. “But this much I can tell you, the Idayago of those days was rotten with corruption. People starving. Nobles fighting the king. We gave them all a better life, yes, but there were still people resisting our rule as conquerors and invaders all through Cama One-Eye’s life, and his sons’. That much is in the archives. I can show you where.” Annoyed as she was, it occurred to her he was at least talking to her.

  Or was. He shot her a look o
f acute disgust. “What possible use are old records? I’m reestablishing the kingdom, and doing it the quickest way possible, spending the least number of lives.”

  She wanted to yell Why do it at all? But she knew if she did she would lose him altogether. He was determined, and what’s more, she knew that at least some of the jarls would be delighted. The army as well. Battles meant glory and promotion.

  So she forced her voice to a semblance of normal. “I hope that means Rat and Bunny will be back. I miss her.”

  She walked out, leaving him aware of the fact that he had essentially given Jethren permission to get rid of Rat Noth entirely. He turned toward the door, seized with doubt, even remorse. He trusted Rat, a lot more than he trusted Jethren, who had always been jealous, that much had become clear recently.

  He had trusted Rat. Who’d gone behind his back to his entire damn family.

  Connar scowled at the map. Well, if Rat was going to abandon him in this treacherous way, then he was utterly useless. Might as well be dead.

  Rat Noth was subliminally aware of a tail, but he was moving too fast to do anything about it. When he had to be, he was as fast as the best grass runners. Traveling hard tended to make his chest get congested, stuffing his nose so he couldn’t smell rain on the wind. Usually a good sleep helped, but he couldn’t sleep, tired as he was. Angry, frustrated, worried, he could not prevent his mind from returning to that confrontation with Connar and reimagining it. But he always came up against his own failure. He was coughing hard when he clattered into Hesea Garrison and slumped wearily off his horse.

  As soon as she’d heard the fanfare announcing the return of the commander, Bunny got up and proceeded down the stairs as if walking on eggs, her fingers stiff at her sides.

  “Bun?” Rat croaked, ignoring the waiting runners. “Why are you walking like that?”