by Robin Hobb
“Kesey!” I said sharply.
The old soldier abruptly closed his mouth and nodded. “Right,” he said. He picked up his tin cup of coffee, wincing a bit, for the coffee had warmed the metal. “I’m thinking that perhaps you’d like to speak to Miz Kester in private. And seeing as how you’re her cousin and all, if I heard that right, ain’t a thing improper about that. So I might take this cup of coffee and go outside and sit for a bit.”
“Oh, we mustn’t drive you out of your own home,” Epiny decided firmly. “Nevare and I can sit outside.” And so saying, she rose. With her baby in one arm, she took my arm with her free hand and guided us out of the door. I barely had time to get my cup of coffee. She seemed content to let her own remain on the table.
The day seemed bright after the dimness of the cabin. We walked over to the cart and she sat down on its open tail. The horse shifted doubtfully in his harness. “Well,” she said, and then, as if it were the most important thing, she observed, “That was the most dreadful coffee I’ve ever tasted. How can you drink it?”
“I’ve been hungry enough lately to eat or drink anything that’s offered to me.” I took a mouthful. She was right about the coffee, but I swallowed it anyway and tried to keep my face under control.
She laughed sympathetically. “My poor cousin. When you come home with me tonight, I’ll do my best to remedy that. Between Amzil and me, we put some fair meals on the table. We are not as hungry as we have been, thank the good god. The supply wagons have come through at last, so there is plenty of plain food, bread and porridge and such. And the little gardens behind the houses have started to give up a bit of fresh vegetable now and then. But for a time there, I was certainly hungry enough to eat whatever was offered to me. Oh, I’ve chattered like a squirrel long enough. Tell me how you come to be here? What happened to you? How was that you and not you, that horrible night—”
I shook my head. “I’ll tell it all when both you and Spink can hear it.” In truth, I wanted to put off that reckoning a little while. Surely my cousin would no longer look at me so fondly once she had heard of my part in the raid. “Instead, you must finish telling me what has been going on here. You were starving?”
She nodded. Her eyes grew larger and her face paled. “The Speck raid destroyed all the food stored in the warehouses. People were left with only what they’d had in their homes, and the men in the barracks had even less. They salvaged what meat they could from the horses that had died in the fires, and tore apart the burned wreckage looking for anything, half a sack of flour or a scorched bag of grain. Anything. A few people had chickens that they were wintering over, but with their feed gone or eaten by people, there was no sense in holding back. So we ate all the chickens, what milk goats there were, the hogs—it was terrible, Nevare. It was like we were eating our hopes for the future. There is still hardly any livestock left in town, and half our troops are afoot. Those last weeks, there was next to nothing. I soaked out a molasses keg and then gave the children warmed molasses water. We had no hope at all.”
Despite the gravity of the tale, I had to grin. “And then Sergeant Duril arrived,” I filled in.
She cocked her head, a trifle surprised perhaps. “That he did. To save the day. I don’t know how that old man got through; the sides of his cart were muddy and his horses were next to dead. Oh, it was like a blessing from heaven to see that cartload of goods: flour, sugar, beans, peas, molasses, oil—everything we’d been longing for. I felt as rich as a queen when he knocked on my door and said, ‘Miz Epiny Kester? Your family has sent you some help!’
“But it wasn’t five minutes before every woman in town was standing in the street outside my house, staring at that food. Some of their little children were weeping and begging for a taste, and some were too starved to even do that. And Spink came out and sent them all home to get bowls and cups, so we could measure out shares for all, as far as it would go. I can’t tell you how I hated him, for all of half a moment! There we were, with our own little baby down to skin and bones, and he was giving our food away! But I knew he was right. How would I ever have faced any of them, if I had kept plenty of food for my own and let their children go empty?”
“Not to mention that they might have turned on you and simply taken it all, if shares hadn’t been freely offered.”
Epiny sighed. “Nevare, I never cease to be amazed at the darkness of your thoughts! How can you bear to think such evil things about people?”
“I think my life experience has had something to do with it.”
“Oh, such a sour outlook! But that isn’t what happened at all. We shared what we had, and just as we were down to thinking of making soup from the flour sack, the supply wagons came.”
A worry came to me. “What did you tell Duril when he was here? About me, I mean.”
She looked at me sadly. “Nevare, what do you think I told him? What did I owe a good man like that, who has risked all for us? I told him the truth.”
I lowered my eyes before her disapproval.
“Why did you think I would do anything else?” She scolded me. “He told me that he knew something of what had happened to you already, and that he was with you the night you confronted Dewara. He may not be an educated man, Nevare, and perhaps being a sergeant was the highest he ever rose in his life, but he has a lot of wisdom and common sense. It wasn’t easy for him to hear. But at the end of it, he nodded, and said he hoped you were still alive and might come home to give some comfort to your father. But even if you never came back, he said, ‘I won’t never think badly of him. I did my task the best I could, taught him all I knew about soldiering. If he sticks to that, he shouldn’t do too badly.’”
I had to ask the next question. “Did you tell him about the raid on Gettys? Does he know about my part in it?”
“Nevare, I don’t fully understand your part in it, so I could scarcely tell him. I was so drugged with laudanum, I can barely remember that night. I think I’m glad of that. You’ve said it wasn’t really you. I believe that. Why shouldn’t I believe that?”
I looked at my feet. “Perhaps because I’ve deceived you before.”
“Yes, you have,” she freely admitted. “And it still rankles. But I think we need to move past it, at least for today. You’ve had a very hard time, Nevare, but now you are home. And perhaps you have had nothing but bad news and hard times and sad tidings for too long. So. Let me share some good news with you.” Her smile suddenly widened. “Have you any idea how your family’s fortune has changed of late?”
“I’ve a hint of it. There was a gold strike near my father’s holdings.”
“Yes, but it’s so much more than that. I had a letter from your sister just a few days ago. Would you like to read it yourself, or shall I just tell you?”
“Do you have it with you?” I longed to touch paper my sister had touched, to see words written in her hand.
“I’m afraid I was a bit more flustered than that when I packed up my baby and ran out of my house! If I’d been thinking, I’d have brought it and a picnic basket! Do you want to wait until you finally visit my home?”
She was baiting me again. I shook my head with a smile and said, “Just tell me how Yaril fares.”
“Well, your sister has been absolutely brilliant for one so young. She said there was a day in your father’s study when he was not feeling well. And when she went to him, she herself nearly fainted. But as she fell, she saw you standing over her. She said that you showed her a place and told her that was where an important rock came from. As soon as Sergeant Duril returned, she made him take her out riding. From what she says, it was quite a trip, requiring them to camp overnight twice! But she found the place and it was the Sergeant who recognized the rocks for what they were: gold ore. I’ve no idea how he knew that’s what it was, but he did. And she was clever enough to know that it wasn’t on your father’s holdings, and that if she told others about it, there would be no gain to your family, just a wild rush of greedy people trying to
get what they could. So they spoke not a word to anyone. She sent the samples to the Queen quietly, suggesting that as all the lands there are the Crown’s, the monarchs would wish to know the value of what was there before unscrupulous men began to secretly mine it or they unknowingly gave it away in a land grant.” She grinned at me. “You’ll never guess who her courier was.”
I knew. I’d told Yaril she could trust him. “Sergeant Duril,” I said confidently.
She laughed delightedly. “No. You are not even close. Though the sergeant is a dear, dear man, and if ever I needed a trusty courier or a tutor for my son or someone to look after my holdings, I would definitely consider him a good choice.”
“Who, then?” I demanded impatiently.
She picked up her baby, kissed the little girl with a flourish, and then announced to me, “Caulder Stiet. There. What do you think of that?”
For a moment my mouth hung open. Then I replied darkly, “I fear she has played right into his hands.”
“Then you would be mistaken,” Epiny told me snippily. “For it was a conspiracy between the two of them, to get the samples to the Queen without letting Caulder’s uncle know that they had obtained them.”
“What?”
“Yaril saw it as a chance for them to build something, for themselves, perhaps together, perhaps not. They are both, she wrote, tired of being pawns in their elders’ games. Caulder is quite certain he wishes to marry her, but she has honestly told him that she is uncertain and does not wish to be married for many years yet. Still, they are friends enough to conspire. She and Caulder feigned a monstrous quarrel, with shrieking and broken crockery! You know, from the way she writes of it, I think she enjoyed it! She mentions she smashed enough cups from the old china that her father will have to let her buy a whole new set now.”
“That sounds like Yaril,” I admitted with reluctant admiration. I knew those cups. She had always hated the dogwood-blossom pattern.
“Well, it was enough of a to-do that your father finally ordered both of them to leave his house. And so of course, off they went, back to Old Thares, with Caulder taking the rocks in his baggage. He had quite a time getting them to Her Majesty, but he prevailed, and guess what? For service to the Crown, the Crown has issued another grant of land to your father, more than doubling his holdings, and adjacent land to Caulder Stiet himself, to be held in trust for him by his father, his real father, until Caulder reaches his majority. It’s almost like the Crown forcing him to take Caulder back as his son. No title for Caulder, more’s the pity, but he will at least join the landed gentry when he comes of age.”
“How nice for him,” I said dryly. The news of my father’s holdings increasing was good news, for it made Yaril an even more desirable bride. She would have better choices than Caulder Stiet, I hoped. The idea of the Stiet family having a holding adjacent to Widevale appealed to me far less.
“Oh, you sound so sour and old, Nevare! But let me finish.” The baby fussed again and she spent a moment hushing her. “The gold strike, once the King announced it, has completely changed Widevale. Yaril wrote pages and pages about it. The King has sent in his engineers and they have designed and built housing for the workers, and they are setting up the mining and the refining and all of those things right in the area of the find. In time, there will be a large town there, if not a city. And Burvelle’s Landing is the closest river port, and the nearest inn and shops and all of that! So it has absolutely boomed with population. Yaril writes that it has tripled in size, and of course the taxes and landing fees from the Landing all go into your father’s coffers, so the family wealth is suddenly quite spectacular. In fact, your part of the family is so wealthy that even my beloved mother suddenly finds her husband’s brother quite respectable and worthy of a visit. When Yaril wrote, my father had arrived and had just spent the day with your father, and Yaril said your father was up and walking about with a cane and almost acting like his old self. He planned to take his brother out on horseback the next day to look over the new land grant, and he hadn’t been on a horse for months! And Yaril and my sister, Purissa, find each other’s company very agreeable! Yaril is very excited that my mother has even hinted at taking her back to Old Thares for a season, so that she may be properly presented to society. I suspect that my mother will attempt to find her a better marriage offer than Caulder Stiet, but somehow I think that your little sister is more than capable of dealing with Lady Burvelle. I suspect that, if anything, Yaril will make a better match, but it will be someone of her own choosing. So what could be better?”
Her mention of her mother triggered another concern of mine. I tried not to sound accusing as I said, “You sent my soldier-son journal to your father, didn’t you?”
She paused, then faced me squarely. “I did. It seemed wisest to me then. I didn’t think Yaril was old enough to deal with the very frank things you’d written in it.” Here, despite all her aplomb, she flushed slightly. “And I feared that your father might destroy it. I believed there was too much valuable information in it to allow that to happen to it. So I sent it to my father, with a request that he leave it sealed. He is an honorable man, Nevare. I knew that he would respect my wishes, and I never, ever thought that my mother, of all people, would be interested in a soldier-son’s journal. I’m so sorry.”
“I have only a hazy idea of why you should be sorry,” I said gently. “But I’d like to know what became of it after she read it.” Whatever had become of it, I told myself that it was all my own fault for creating such a betraying diary. The magic had made me do it, I thought fiercely, trying to free myself from guilt on that score. And abruptly I realized the other half of that truth. “Let us understand one thing, Epiny,” I told her. “The magic was what spurred me to write that journal in such a way. It acted on me to create it, and it also acted on me to leave it behind when I fled. I suspect that you, too, were but its instrument when you sent it to Old Thares to fall into your mother’s hands. Whatever she has done with it is what the magic wished her to do. The magic is a powerful force, like a river. We can build our levees and dams, but when the river grows strong with rain and snowmelt, it breaks all the man-made barriers aside and flows in its rightful bed. And that is what it has done to us, and that odd current has carried it to your mother’s hands.”
I took a deep breath and tried to sound calm as I asked, “Do you know what she has done with it?”
She bit her lip. The baby snuggled against her seemed to sense her mother’s sudden worry, for she gave a squeaky cry and then was still again. “I know she wanted to take it to the Queen. My father was furious at the suggestion. I do not think he would read it after I asked him not to, but he would know something of what was in it. My mother would see to that. And he, he would not be pleased, Nevare, by the things she would surely tell him. He said that she did not seem to understand that anything she did that brought shame on the Burvelles of the East would reflect just as badly on our branch of the family. He says she is so accustomed to thinking of herself as superior to his family that she does not perceive that we would be painted with the same brush!”
Her voice had been rising and rising as her anger increased. Now little Solina stirred, lifted her head, and began to wail stridently. “Hush, dear, hush. Mama isn’t angry with you.” She gave me an apologetic sideways glance. “She is getting hungry. Soon I will have to feed her.”
“Must you start back to town then?” I asked stupidly.
For a long instant, she just stared at me and then I said, “Oh. Well, I’m certain that Kesey would be happy to offer you the privacy of his cabin for that.”
I gave her my hand to help her down from the cart. As we walked to the cabin, she said, “Sometimes I try to imagine my mother taking care of me as I take care of Solina. It’s hard. There were always maids and nannies and wet nurses when I was small. But I cannot imagine her carrying me and birthing me and not loving me as I love Solina. So sometimes I speak ill of her, but even when I do, I know that I love her
. Isn’t that peculiar, Nevare? She is vain and arrogant, and well, more clever than intelligent. She does things I don’t admire at all. And still I love her. Do you think I’m weak or foolish?”
My mouth twisted in a smile. “Do you think I’m weak or foolish for still loving my father?”
“Not at all.” She smiled sadly. “It is so strange, Nevare. Yaril writes that your father now speaks as if he deliberately sent you off to be a soldier, and that soon you will come home ‘covered in glory.’ She says that there are just parts of the past that he doesn’t accept anymore. He no longer asks for your mother or the other children. But he persists in believing that you will be his noble soldier son and gain renown.” She sighed. “He is not unlike my mother in that regard. Did you know she has forgiven me for marrying Spink? She even sent me a letter.”
“She did? Epiny, that’s wonderful!”
She smiled wryly. “It was full of questions about the success of Lady Kester’s water business and the baths that are to be built there. She wanted to know if there would be special accommodations ‘for family.’”
She laughed aloud at the thought of her proud mother claiming Lady Kester as “family” and then, at my puzzled expression, exclaimed, “Oh, I haven’t had time to tell you about that, have I? Dr. Amicas took seriously what we told him. He made a long trek to Bitter Springs and took back casks of the water to study. No one knows why, but it does seem to prevent or lessen plague outbreaks. And as Spink and I can both attest, it does wonders for the survivors. He tested it first on the Academy cadets, the ones who had suffered ill health since the plague outbreak. When they showed signs of recovery, he ordered more water be sent, and recalled many of the cadets who had been sent home as invalids. The recoveries have been amazing.”
I thought of Trist and the others and looked at her wordlessly.
“What are you thinking?” she asked me, worried by my silence.