The Lost Daughters

by Leigh Grossman

  No point in saying the obvious. How many times had Tenia had to remind me of that? I wanted to say something, though, if only to break the uncomfortable silence. Uncomfortable for me, anyway—Sperrin and my father both seemed to be perfectly happy to spend hours arguing without words.

  Finally, I settled for: “Why do you dip the blades in hot water?”

  The question didn’t seem to surprise Sperrin. He hefted the blades again to compare weight and feel before answering.

  “These practice blades are made from lein trees. It’s got the weight of metal, but a lot more give. It will bruise you but not break anything. The wood is tough to carve, but it gets malleable in hot water.”

  “I’ve never heard of lein trees.”

  “You wouldn’t, unless you’re a soldier or a gardener. The lein comes from the colonies. It only grows in hot, moist climates. They still import it, but lately most of what we’ve used in the Drowned City was grown in hothouses in the farm belt north of the city.”

  Not anymore, I realized. Without magic, there would be no more hothouses, no more food trains to the city. For my whole life, I hadn’t thought about how much of Ananya’s food supply depended on magic. From the grim set of the soldier’s face, I realized he already knew.

  “Sperrin, how long until people are starving?”

  “A few weeks, maybe. Your father would know better than me. The worst of it won’t be for a few months. People will be able to get by until winter.”

  “Can we get to Whitmount any faster? Maybe there’s something I can do there...to help.”

  “We’ll get there as quickly as we can. Traveling in this rain won’t help.” He tested the weight of the blades again, and finally seemed satisfied. “Come on, here’s something useful you can be doing now.”

  Sperrin

  Rainfall always meant training days to me. Days spent indoors meant time to hone skills and learn new ones. So that afternoon I began teaching Ketya to use the knives I’d given her.

  She seemed glad to be doing something potentially helpful, and just as happy to be away from her father, who retreated to the other bedroom and pointedly declined to watch. I wondered if Ketya would learn more quickly without her father watching, or if she was the sort of student who thrived on criticism. You’d have to be, with that man for a father, I suspected.

  We worked in my room. I piled the other pallets on top of mine to clear a flat stone arena of sorts. After the fifth time Ketya glanced at the open doorway to make sure her father wasn’t watching (he wasn’t), I latched the door shut as well.

  I started with stretching and some basic drills, and worked into simple slashes and thrusts, and even a few feints. Ketya took to the blades surprisingly quickly; I had taught knife fighting to many soldiers and she learned more quickly than most. She moved with a dancer’s agility, quick and lithe, not like the rough street-fighting power of most beginners. More power would have been helpful, were she fighting humans, but against fey it would likely be best for her to rely on speed and coordination and let the blade do most of the work.

  Quick learner or not, she had best hope that her first opponent was also a beginner.

  After a water break, I had her practice the moves I’d taught her, while I sat on the stack of pallets and called out steps. Again she responded quickly to the drills; but then she’d been drilled often enough by her father and teachers.

  “Enough,” I called out after an hour of thrust, slash, and counter drills. “Let’s not wear you out. More later.”

  “I can keep going,” she said. She fought in loose trousers and an oversized men’s shirt, tied at the waist and sleeves rolled up. Sweat soaked her arms and forehead, and soaked through the shirt in patches. Her long hair, tied back with a black ribbon, hung slack and damp. She’d looked visibly heavier on her feet the last couple of drills; she might still feel good, but I knew she was tireder than she thought: tired enough to hurt herself.

  “I know,” I said. “But take a break. Walk it off, then drink some water. You learned a lot.”

  “Enough to stay alive?” She breathed raggedly, struggling a little for air.

  “No.”

  “Then I want to keep going.”

  “You’ll learn better with a little rest. Don’t worry, I’ll teach you as fast as you can learn. I want you to be helpful on the road.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and seemed to mean it. How could the chancellor’s daughter seem so straightforward and sincere?

  Ketya paced around until her breathing eased. Unrolling one of her shirtsleeves, she used it to mop sweat from her forehead and hair.

  While she straightened herself, I checked the practice blades for damage or imbalance, to give her a bit of privacy.

  “It’s funny,” she said when she looked up again. “I worked just as hard as this when I learned dances, and they ran us hard sometimes at the Academy. But I’ve never been this sweaty someplace where there wasn’t a bathhouse waiting at the end of the day.” She laughed. “I suppose I should get used to life without bathhouses for a while.”

  “Till Whitmount, I would think. Maybe one of the earlier mountain forts. There are towns we’ll be passing by, but I don’t know what shape they’re in. Some of them will have evacuated to mountain forts.”

  She nodded. “What do...what do soldiers do? How do you stay clean?”

  “Sometimes it’s not a priority, I’m afraid. But here, you’ll be able to take a sponge bath. Warm or cold as you prefer. There’s a bucket by the stove.”

  The hideaway had cleverly engineered, if limited, sanitary facilities. The previous night, I had found myself oddly reluctant to explain them to the chancellor’s daughter, a girl around the age of my own child—even though I would have had no such reluctance explaining them to a teenage soldier of either gender. I’d been at a loss to explain the difference to myself—and eventually I’d showed her anyway—but something felt different.

  After she’d walked off the muscle tremors, Ketya sat near me on top of the pallets, massaging her right forearm.

  “So, I was wondering about something,” Ketya asked, not looking up from her forearm. She worked at it like a cat worrying at its forepaw.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “What’s hidden under the pallets?”

  This time I was the one glancing at the door. That girl is too quick to notice things. I’m not sure if it will save us all or get us all killed.

  “Why do you ask?”

  She looked up from her forearm. “It seemed odd that you wouldn’t move the one you were sleeping on. It would have opened up a lot more space on the floor. And then when you put the other pallets on top I figured you were trying to keep it from being kicked out of the way by mistake. If there was nothing under there, you would just pile the others in the corner, so you wouldn’t have to pick straw out of your bed all night.”

  “True enough,” I admitted.

  “So what’s under there?” asked Ketya again.

  “There’s an escape tunnel. I thought it might be better to leave it concealed, until your father’s condition is a bit more...stable.”

  “I understand.”

  Ketya walked over to the door and checked to make sure the latch remained shut. “Now will you show me?”

  I smiled in spite of myself. Ketya did have a sort of irrepressible energy. “Sure.”

  Lifting the stack of pallets off my own, I dropped each one back in its old position. Then I pushed my pallet and bedroll aside to reveal the ironbound trapdoor beneath.

  “There are stairs under here,” I said, and went to lift it.

  “Wait!” Panic edged her voice.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Have you been down there before?”

  “A couple of times, yeah. I followed the trail out so that I could find it in the dark if I needed to. There are storerooms and a couple of branchings down there, along with a well that draws on an underground stream in case water is low. Mostly food and firewood in the sto
rerooms, I was told. Why do you ask?”

  “There’s a rune on that trapdoor. Like the ones on the tomb.”

  “The soldiers’ tombs?”

  “No, the...other one.” She meant the barrow that led to the land of the gods.

  I let the handle of the trapdoor rest.

  Ketya walked over and examined the door more closely—presumably looking at the rune that I couldn’t see. “It looks like there’s no actual seal. Maybe it’s just a warning of some sort?”

  “Warning of what? The rock around us is riddled with iron and uncomfortable for fey or gods. Why would they come here?”

  Ketya shrugged. “I’m no expert on gods. I’m just telling you what I see.”

  “Do you still want to go down?” By way of answer she picked up one of the candles from its wall sconce and gestured for me to open the trapdoor.

  We walked down the stone stairway warily, into a small atrium with a vaulted ceiling. I supposed it had been a natural cavern before a channeler smoothed it out. Ketya took the lead, handing the candle to me. “I can see,” she told me. “The path is marked. The exit trail is that way, right?” She pointed, and I nodded. “And that way would be the storage rooms.” Again, I nodded. “Then we need to go this way instead.”

  We walked toward the well. Circling around it, Ketya stepped into a smooth-walled corridor I’d never known existed. Fifteen paces later she stopped abruptly, and put up a hand in warning.

  “Don’t come any closer. This is what the rune above was warning about. This door is loaded with seals and runes.”

  “Any idea what they are?”

  Ketya leaned closer. “I think so. Some of these I can read. Sort of. They’re similar to the one in Westbarrow, but these aren’t broken. The Westbarrow ones were opened from this side, too. I don’t think anything in there can get through unless we open it first.”

  “Let’s not try. It leads to the gods?”

  “I think so. I couldn’t tell you which god or where in their lands, but it’s a passageway from the Holy War.”

  “Strange place for it.” And then it hit me. “Wait. I know what this is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Toward the end of the war, there was talk of taking the war to the gods. Launching raids into their own lands. The gods would never have opened a passage here—it would be too uncomfortable to pass through. Also, this has always been in the middle of nowhere, but the gods liked quick surprise attacks. Their tunnels always opened near population centers.”

  Ketya winced, probably remembering the night of horror.

  “I think,” I said, “that this passage was created by our side. This was a passage for launching attacks. They built it here amid the iron so it would be hard for the gods to detect. The war must have ended before it could be used.”

  “How could we have created a passage to the gods’ world?” asked Ketya. “I thought only their magic could do that. At least, that’s what I was taught at the Academy.”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “I am beginning to think there are a lot of things about gods and their magic and the Holy War that it would be nice to know right now. Your knowledge of the treaty will help when we get to Whitmount, I’m sure.”

  Ketya sighed. “My father knows it a lot better.”

  “I’ve seen soldiers recover from the condition he has,” I said. “He had the shock of his life. We all did. It will take him time to adjust and be his old self again.”

  “You adjusted. I adjusted. Why can’t he adjust? We need him.” She almost cried the words.

  “I don’t know, Ketya. Soon, he’ll be his old self, I hope.”

  “I hope so too.” This time I did see a tear in the flickering candlelight. “Let’s go back,” she said. “I want another knife lesson, if you think we’ve rested enough.”

  “I think so.”

  She led the way back up the stairs in silence. Only just before the door did she turn and say to me, “But I think you’re right to hide the trapdoor from him.”

  Ketya

  When I asked Sperrin to teach me how to use the knives, when he brought me into his room that day, I expected to be pawed the way Dulcet the dancemaster at the Empress’s Academy had pawed me. I was prepared for it, physically and emotionally. At least I think I was. You do what you need to survive. And I needed to learn how to defend myself, more than I had ever needed to learn to dance.

  Instead, he treated me as if he thought he was my father. I knew he had a lost daughter somewhere and that I reminded him of her. But the way he stared at me, and the way he showed me how to do things as if I was someone he really cared about—I think in some ways that was harder to take emotionally than what Dulcet had done.

  I didn’t show it, of course. I needed to learn, no matter how hard it was.

  I was ready for him to hurt me. I wasn’t ready for him to act like he was my father.

  I wanted to scream. All I could do was take it out on the exercises.

  I wanted to say, I have a father.

  He’s right next door.

  I may fight with him sometimes, but he’s still my father. He may not be gentle like you are when he teaches me, but he’s still my father. I love him. And I know he loves me. Even if I haven’t done much to deserve it.

  Chapter 13

  Sperrin

  The Mountain Road: Eight days after the Loss

  The first day back on the road, I could already see trouble coming.

  We left the hideaway under cool weather and gray skies, but the air promised heat and humidity later in the day. Ketya had her knives back at her thighs, with the practice blades stowed in her pack. I had restocked our food and water from the hideaway’s supplies. I wasn’t sure how much hunting I would be able to do along the way, or whether we would be able to cook without drawing attention. A lot would depend on how far the trouble had spread, and how quickly. One vengeful god and that god’s allies destroying the Drowned City and wiping out Ananya’s magic was already an unimaginable disaster, even if the massacre was localized. But it was a disaster that could be countered, contained before the Central Alliance could attack in force. Perhaps the magic might be restored somehow under the Talisman of Truce: Ketya had implied as much. A more widely coordinated attack would leave fewer possible solutions. Would leave fewer people alive at all, and those few would be struggling for survival rather than solutions.

  The scale of the losses at the Drowned City did not portend well, but one could hope.

  Hope, but not foolishly: Soon after we left the protection of the hideaway, I took the three of us off the road as well. A narrow path led us through the rocky edge of the road and up a heavily forested hillside. The hilltop trail that overlooked the road was overgrown in places; it meant a lot more scrambling over rocks and encroaching underbrush than the barren flatness of the Mountain Road, designed for marching troops.

  Unlike the Mountain Road—mostly a wide, level sunken track running between rocky slopes—the trail let us see a lot more of the steep wooded hills around us, and left us less visible to potential attackers. On the other hand, its narrowness and rugged contours presented plenty of ambush opportunities. I didn’t feel the need to point that out to the others, even as the soldier in me couldn’t help but pick out potential traps and ambush sites in front of us.

  “What is this place?” Ketya asked, out of breath. We had stopped at a clearing surrounded by spindly mountainthorn trees, and the pungent fragrance of a century of fallen thorn needles filled the air.

  “It’s the old road, the hunters’ trail from before they cut the Mountain Road. It’s still used by hunters, and a few pleasure travelers—at least enough to keep it from being overgrown completely. Also, it’s sometimes used for military training, or to teach a group of pioneers how to clear roads.” I remembered my first kill, on one of those pioneer expeditions. “The trail used to link all the homesteads as well, but most of the folks who live out here are connected directly to the Mountain Road now.�
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  “Is this safer than the main road?”

  “It’s hard to tell. I would rather be overcautious until we know more about what dangers are looking for us. If the danger has passed we’ll know in a few days. Till then, best to stay out of sight as much as we can.”

  The chancellor sighed. While Ketya seemed to be growing more comfortable with the climbing, her father seemed less so. “I thought the point of your insisting on the Mountain Road was its obscurity. Now even that is too conspicuous.”

  For a politician known for his mastery of nuance and complexity, the chancellor seemed to have little patience for real-life winding trails, I thought.

  “That’s true for people,” I answered. “Probably less so for stone giants, though. No point in making yourself someone’s dinner.”

  Presumably I wouldn’t need to remind them of the half-eaten soldier in the tower at Longhold Hill. I saw Ketya go a little green with the memory, and put her water flask down half-drunk.

  She swallowed hard and asked, “When will we start to know? I haven’t seen anyone but us on the road. Not even many animals. Is it always this quiet?”

  No point in not being blunt. “You’ll hear more when you learn to be quieter.”

  She nodded.

  “But in answer to your other question, we may know a little more tonight. There’s a fortified homestead not far from here. In an hour or so, when we’ve gone a bit farther, the two of you will hide for a little while while I go and scout it. If all is well, we may be able to spend the night there.”

  Ketya

  Waiting in the hollow beneath the giant rock terrified me. Am I being quiet enough? I kept wondering. I had thought that I’d been quiet before, until Sperrin’s comment.

  As uncomfortable as the big soldier could make me, I felt a lot safer with him around.

  Even my father seemed cowed by our isolation; the one time I went to whisper something to him, he silenced me with a gesture.

  The wait dragged on. Sperrin had said to expect him back two hours before sunset. I watched the sun slowly creep toward the treeline, then cross behind the stand of grayleaves, reddening them briefly before the sky faded to dusk.