Vorsha worked methodically, gathering each section and brushing it until it gleamed. “You have a tangle back here,” she said.
“Yes. I’m incorrigible,” replied Kestrel, eyes still closed. “What am I going to do without you when I’m married?”
They were both silent, struck suddenly by the casual finality of that statement. Vorsha continued brushing without pause. “Kestrel, are you certain about this? Marrying a Jadaren—yes, I know your father considers this feud outdated. And to tell the truth, I’ve never heard any evil of Arna. But just as there are Beguines who cannot overcome their hatred for House Jadaren …”
“Like Uncle Sanwar.” Kestrel’s voice sounded sleepy.
Vorsha hesitated, holding a thick skein of hair, and her hand trembled. But she forced herself to continue, and her internal shaking stopped. She desired Sanwar, yearned for his desire, and despised herself for it. But when it came to her brother-in-law, it seemed she couldn’t control her body. And Sanwar had promised to protect Kestrel.
“Just like Sanwar, yes,” she said, banishing the quaver from her voice. “Like your uncle, there are Jadarens who hate us, and will hate you, and will have you at their mercy in that great hulking hold they hunker down in. Who knows what could happen to you there?”
“They aren’t monsters, Mama,” Kestrel said, rising and embracing her mother. “And I plan to overcome them with my irresistible charm.”
Vorsha hugged her, suddenly and fiercely. In the brush she held over Kestrel’s shoulder, she could see the brown gleam of hair in the bristles. Kestrel pulled back and smiled.
“I’m tired with talking, and if I don’t stop looking through the account book, I’ll have visions all night of columns of figures swirling around me. I have to go to bed now, or I’ll fall asleep on the floor and you’ll have to carry me to bed, undress me, and tuck me in, as you did when I was five. Oh, Mama,” she said as the bright water sprang to Vorsha’s eyes. “Please don’t cry. It’ll be ages yet before I go. We have to negotiate, and I want to close the leatherwork accounts. And maybe Arna won’t even like my face.”
Vorsha wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and laughed. “I can’t imagine that, my sweet.”
She kissed Kestrel on the cheek and went to the dressing table, placing the brush next to the cup with the pens. With her back to Kestrel, she pulled out the hairs that clung to the bristles and tucked them into her palm.
Outside Kestrel’s room she examined her prize. Some of the hairs had broken, but she had at least ten, whole and complete, that shone with tints of walnut wood and amber. Holding them carefully to her breast, she walked quickly along the hall to the room where she would try to wash the smell of Sanwar off her thighs and pretend to sleep before Nicol came to bed. The hot tears came unbidden and streaked along the side of her face, as if driven by the wind.
JADAREN HOLD
1585 DR—THE YEAR OF THE BLOODIED MANACLES
Arna Jadaren held a twisted coil of paper between his thumb and forefinger and frowned at it.
“So far I’m not impressed,” he told Vidor Druit, who snorted and snatched the paper back.
“Nor was your uncle,” he said. “Which is why we’re going to see if House Beguine is more forward-thinking than you stick-in-the muds.”
Arna stirred the rest of the bits of paper that were piled in the small soapstone box his friend had brought.
“Careful,” Vidor told him. “They’re designed to be easy to ignite, and that’s all the samples I have at hand.”
Arna withdrew his hand. “So show me. What makes these marketable?”
“Watch,” said Vidor. He took the twist of paper and, with a quick jerk of the wrist, flicked it on the surface of the table. As it hit, there was a thin pop, and the paper blazed up in a tall flame, bright yellow, then blue as the paper crumbled to ash and the flame died. Curious, Arna rubbed the surface of the table with his finger, feeling only a slight warmth and a few grains of grit. There was a faint brown mark where the paper had flared.
“Useful, no?” said Vidor, his freckled face stretched in a grin.
Arna shrugged. “For what? A couple seconds of light? A trick for the children?”
Vidor shook his head. “You’re spoiled from easy living in this monstrous rock of yours. Come on the road with me, or a tenday exploring the wild, or even spend a day or so in a crofter’s hut. Somewhere where a servant isn’t ready at hand to light a fire whenever you want one. You can spend a few minutes striking flints together, and gods help you if they’re wet. Or maybe you have live coals left from the night before, but most likely not. Or if you’re very lucky, you have a spellcaster to hand. Or you might have a box of these, cheap and handy. All you need is a bed of twigs and tinder, and snap! The cantrip’s already spelled on it. Your weary goodwife needs no spells nor skill, just one of these to flick on the hearth. There’s another to sharpen a dull blade, and another to test if your well water is pure. And we’re working on more.”
“Hmm.” Maybe Vidor had a point. Arna took a twist and imitated Vidor’s action, flicking his wrist as he’d seen his friend do. The paper bounced against the table and emitted a weak fizzle. There was a singed smell in the air and the paper was blackened, but no flame showed.
“Ah, yes.” Vidor looked a little crestfallen. “Unfortunately, the success rate of the lots we’ve produced isn’t as high as we’d like.”
“You mean the fail rate’s higher than you’d like.”
“You need a wizard to impregnate the cantrip papers with the spell. Wizards don’t come cheap—none of the ones worth using, at least. Your workaday goodwife or man-for-hire doesn’t have the coin to pay for a box of these. And those with coin often enough have staff to light a fire, or sharpen the knives, or rid the room of fleas. We need to make them cheap enough to sell to market, so the wizard must work quickly. Out of a lot of twenty, one or two, three maybe, are duds. It won’t matter to the goodwife. She’ll just swear and reach for another, for she can afford plenty.”
He replaced the lid of the soapstone box on the little hoard of cantrip papers with a resigned air.
“Five to fifteen percent,” said Arna. “That’s a little high for a middleman to want to deal with. And the big Houses have their reputations to think of.”
“Hypocrite,” returned Vidor. “We all know the fruit seller who, stuck with a crate of spoiled plums, puts one in each basketful he sells, for no one cares about one bad plum, and that way all share the burden and lose nothing. We all do the same to one degree or another. Finding a shipment of cloth not up to standard and with the seller long gone, doesn’t your uncle sell them as ‘rustic-weave,’ and command as high a price as he can?”
Arna laughed. “Fair enough. So your goodwife might have to use flints for her fire, and sharpen her kitchen knives on her own whetstone. But what if the cantrip fails to tell of the bad water, when folk thought it would?”
Vidor flushed. “I had thought of that. I’ve told my cousin that those spells mustn’t fail, even though we must charge more for them. But as for the rest, they’re a way for those without riches to have the conveniences you and I take for granted.”
“It’s a clever idea, I’ll grant you that,” said Arna, distracted. “Vidor, when is it you go to Turmish?”
“I leave with the mule train tomorrow morning and join the Andula caravan that afternoon,” said Vidor, putting the small box with the fire cantrips away in his leather sample pack.
“And you are determined to solicit the Beguines?”
Vidor gave him an odd look. “We need backing and the promise of a substantial market to produce the cantrip papers, especially if we’re going to improve the reliability. House Jadaren has the scope to support the venture, but your uncle’s not interested. House Beguine’s an obvious place to try before I go farther abroad.”
He pulled the strap tight. “I know there’s bad blood between your Houses, but business is business, and you can’t expect—”
Arna laughe
d. “I wouldn’t dream of asking you not to go to House Beguine. In fact, I’d like to come with you.”
Vidor shouldered his pack. “As far as Sespech, you mean, as before? And have your uncle skin me alive for not nursemaiding sufficiently far from that merrow-den?”
“No,” said Arna. “I mean to go to Nonthal with you, as your assistant, to trade with the Beguines.”
“Funny,” said Vidor, flatly.
Arna hurried behind him as he left Arna’s rooms, through the maze of passageways that threaded the family quarters of Jadaren Hold.
It was many years since Gareth Jadaren had claimed the Giant’s Fist, shed the name of pirate, married the daughter of one of Beredel’s thanes, and exploited the nascent trade routes branching between Erlkazar and the Unapproachable East, and had finally died old and fat and prosperous, surrounded by his descendants and assured that the name of House Jadaren would endure. Between then and now, the tunnels that threaded the monolith like worms through cheese, excavated by some race lost to recorded history, had been cleared out and expanded by Jadaren workers. Caverns at the base of the gigantic rock were hollowed out further, creating shelter for caravans and great chambers to serve as meeting halls and places to feast and entertain. Additional hollows functioned as storerooms for trading goods as well as for supplies to meet the ongoing needs of the household, the servants, guards, and visitors. Tunnels that branched from both the base of the rock as well and the summit were enlarged until they resembled the hallways of some great palace, with steps carved out of the living rock leading from level to level, allowing easy passage from kitchens to banquet hall, bathing chambers to guest quarters, storerooms to the family’s chambers. Here and there large voids in the body of the monolith were broken into, and proved to be mirror-smooth bubbles of obsidian, or chambers full of white and amethyst crystal.
Sometimes in walking through the passageways that generations of Jadaren chatelaines had striven to make both comfortable and magnificent, laying carpets to cushion the feet and tapestries to delight the eye, it was easy to forget that one was in the center of a block of volcanic rock. Only the lack of outside light and the constant light of spellcast torches, flickering in the currents of air that the ventilation holes drilled perpendicularly through the monolith, spoiled the illusion that Jadaren Hold was like any other merchant’s house.
“I’m serious,” Arna told Vidor as they both squeezed against the wall to allow a servant girl bearing an oversize tray of soiled crockery to go by. “I don’t intend any prank or game. I’ve a good reason to see the Beguines for myself. Or at least one Beguine in particular.”
“Why is that?” asked Vidor. The hallway was clear, and he slowed to allow Arna to catch up with him.
“Because I’m supposed to marry her.”
Vidor stopped so abruptly that Arna had to stumble backward to avoid bumping into him, earning them both a glare from a second servant who was trying to balance a load of clean linens on her head. They both muttered an apology and let her pass before they proceeded, Vidor grasping Arna’s sleeve.
“Marry a Beguine! Are you mad? Your entire family would expire of shock!”
Arna shrugged. “It’s Uncle Bron’s idea. Or possibly Nicol Beguine’s. I don’t know who had it first. Not many, not even our trading allies, know about it, but we and House Beguine have been in negotiations for at least a year to bring an end to the feud.”
“But the feud has lasted for centuries!”
They were near one of the many alcoves scattered throughout the Jadaren Hold tunnel system, crafted for the convenience of any who desired to step away from the human traffic that sometimes streamed through the passageways, busy as any traveler’s path on a sunny day. Arna pulled his friend aside as yet another linen-laden servant—it must have been one of the twice-tenday cleaning days his aunt mandated—went by, glancing at them curiously.
“Yes, it has,” said Arna. “But can any tell why?”
“Well …” Vidor furrowed his brow in thought. “There was the matter of House Andula’s entire season of cider shipments being undercut, with House Beguine having a stake in it. And the disagreement with the Jeweler’s Guild. And that ship at Mulmaster, with Clan Testra’s half stake in it, burning after the crew fought one of House Beguine’s.”
“Yes,” Arna interrupted. “And we both could point to a double handful of fights, and raids, and downright sabotage throughout the years without even thinking hard. Some of them are even legendary, and the subject of songs and ballads—very dirty ballads, I might add. But is there a reason for them?”
“Pursuit of profit,” answered Vidor, with the confidence of a merchant’s child.
“Ah, profit, the blessing of Waukeen,” said Arna. “But does this bickering profit anyone in the end? We do dirty by the Beguines because they do dirty to us, and each expects it in return. The only reason for the feud is the feud itself. But the lives lost, people injured, and the good—gods!—the goods that might be sold or traded, wasted for the mere satisfaction of hurting an enemy. What’s the good of it?”
“There must have been a reason for the feud once,” said Vidor.
“Oh, likely. A very good reason, I would guess, considering the strength of the hatred, and how long it’s lasted. Even through wars and Spellplague and the fall and rise of cities. But does anyone remember it now? It’s buried beneath the fall of the years, forgotten, and it’s time we forgot the feud it spawned.”
“So you agree with your uncle, and with Nicol.”
“Of course. Why should a baker in Sespech have her flour spoiled by beetles because a Jadaren is trying to ruin a deal? Or a sailor’s wife be widowed because a Beguine mage cursed his ship and her load of Jadaren lumber? Why, in fact, should my beauteous self be endangered by a forgotten wrong?”
“Or my beauteous self for that matter, for the sin of being your friend?” said Vidor.
Arna grinned. “Correct entirely. Oh, Uncle Bron is wise as a serpent in this matter. But there is a complication. He and Nicol want a public testament to the end of the war. They want the advent of a new harmonious era to be crystal clear to everyone, family and ally as well as stranger. And what better way to do it than to marry the children of both Houses together?”
Vidor leaned against the polished stone wall and folded his arms, regarding his friend with sympathy.
“And what do you think of being the sacrificial ox?”
“I am of two minds. One agrees with Uncle Bron. An alliance with House Beguine will mean a new era of prosperity, and linking our two Houses together through marriage is a small sacrifice to pay—and no sacrifice at all, really, since the Beguine daughter would come to Jadaren Hold to train as its chatelaine.”
Vidor nodded. “That makes sense, since House Beguine has two daughters and a son to manage their affairs. And your other mind?”
“My other mind is selfish, and concerned with my own comfort, and would like to see my proposed bride before I commit myself for life. Sad, and I blush to admit it, but true.”
Vidor laughed and gave Arna a light shove.
“So you would like to come with me and spy out whether the Beguine girl is pretty enough for your exalted tastes, is that it?”
“Alas, but I am flawed. And think of this: it’s not fair for her to have to marry a man who doesn’t find her to his liking, is it?”
“Ever the gentleman,” said Vidor. “Very well, pack your gear and meet me in the caverns. We have to leave soon, and I won’t wait for you. And I expect you to do your share to sell my cantrips, by the way. None of these snide comments about quality and shoddy goods.”
The sun was just shy of being overhead by the time Vidor Druit and Arna Jadaren, accompanied by three seasoned guards, who had served the Druit household for a decade, and a pair of laden mules passed Jandi’s Oak. Over the years the way to Jadaren Hold had grown from a barely perceptible path to a wide road, capable of letting a small army pass. The long tongue of trees that once reached out from th
e branching of the Chondalwood and Thornwood had been pushed back, cleared for its wood and to allow the road to expand.
The great oak, so alien amid the other trees, was spared, and now grew flourishing and massive-trunked by itself, standing like a gigantic rooted guardian overlooking the road and the distant anthill of Jadaren Hold. Beneath the stretch of its branches was a small shrine, waist-high to a human, made of stacked lava stones. Before the shrine was a circle of similar stones, making a small fire pit that was now filled with cold black char.
“Wait,” called Arna, sliding off his horse. The horse, a short fat draft form, which Arna had tumbled off on a regular basis since the age of nine, snorted and rooted for grass at the stones at the side of the road.
“We’re late enough,” called Vidor.
Arna waved back in reply, but didn’t pause on his way up the slight slope to the shade of the oak above.
Under Jandi’s Oak it was very quiet, as it always was. Even when the road was busy, all sounds seemed to be muted to those who sat under its branches, and today, with the Druit party the only travelers nearby, the sole sound was the faint twitter of finches, invisible between the dark green leaves.
The black lava-rock shrine was little more than a simple pile of rocks, fitted together without mortar, and topped with a big geode that was broken open at one side, leaving a hollow area lined with a haze of tiny gray crystals. It was likely formed at the same time as the Giant’s Fist, in the same frenzy of volcanic activity that had made the black river of lava at the bottom of the valley.
Inside the crystal-lined hollow was a tiny figure, like a small doll, exquisitely braided out of dried grass stems or fine wooden fibers. Knotted around its neck was a length of green thread with three knots at the end. Arna ignored it and pulled out a small round of copper from an inner pocket of his jerkin. The tiny coin was pierced through, and a length of red string threaded it. Arna quickly tied a square knot in the middle of the string and laid it inside the geode, next to the straw figure.
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