Time of Daughters I

by Sherwood Smith

  Since the men had been taken off somewhere, the two women readied for bed as soon as the unhappy children fell into exhausted sleep: young parents learned to sleep when the babes did. Danet was hungry, but she suspected that it would take half a watch for Tesar to find the kitchens, and then who knew if anything would even be available.

  Danet woke early, hearing Noddy’s hungry cry. Once he was fed and settled, she peered out the wavery glass in the slit window at the blue light of dawn, then looked back at the bed, where Arrow now lay sprawled over her half. She had not even heard him come in.

  She decided to take some clothes, find the baths, and go exploring. But once she got outside the room, she gazed in either direction and thought, which way?

  Pick one.

  She remembered that the door to their suite had been on the right, which meant they’d come from that direction. She turned the other way and started off, counting doors as she went, so that she would be able to find her way back. She wondered who was behind all these other doors in both directions, if there was no royal family, and no Convocation, so presumably no royal guests besides them.

  Now that it was morning after a good rest, she noticed details: suite doors between landings on either side of the hall, and various sounds and smells on the cold, still air. That stairway had to lead to the kitchens, and the farthest one smelled slightly dank, like water over stone. Baths? She ran down the stairs, whirled around at the landing toward the next set of stairs leading below ground level—and bounced chest to chest off a tall man.

  Brown eyes. Ruddy light hair. It was the royal runner, the one who’d left them at Gannan Castle. The flare of attraction made her nerves tingle, and she stumbled back, aware of her entire face on fire. “You caught up with us—you really are fast! Or did you ride ahead?” Realizing she was babbling, she blushed even more. “I, uh, was trying to find the baths.”

  “You’re in the right place,” Camerend said, opening a hand toward the stairs. “Bottom of these stairs.”

  “Kitchens that way?” She pointed.

  “Correct,” he said in a slow, pleasant voice. “To your left are the royal suites. Down that way, the garrison. Over the stable, from the tower south, is scribes and heralds. The third floor above us in the center here is the royal runner wing, off limits by royal decree.” He pointed in the direction of each place he named.

  “Which tower holds the grand gunvaer?”

  He swung his arm in the opposite direction, and as she turned, her gaze slid over his sleeve straining against the curve of his upper arm, and she wondered if the royal runners learned weapons, too.

  Of course they would. How else would they defend themselves while always traveling? She twitched her gaze from him to his pointing finger, then to the glint of gold on one of the curled fingers: a marriage ring. That usually meant an oath-binding and some type of exclusivity.

  She croaked a word of thanks, and hustled past him down the stairs, toward the sound of female voices. It was a relief to discover that there were indeed women in the castle. They seemed to be scribe, stable, and weaver staff, judging by the bits of conversation she heard. Maybe the female runners bathed at a different time.

  She soon sat in hot water, her fist pressed against her ribs as she considered the encounter with the royal runner. She had never even talked to the man before, and here she was feeling as unsettled as if she were sixteen again. The head and the heart will take their own part, so the old saying went. But he wore a ring, which put him on the far side of an oath.

  She would use another stairway from now on, even if it took a little longer to reach the baths. In this gigantic castle, it ought to be easy to avoid him for the rest of the day, until that teenagerish heat died off.

  Camerend Montredavan-An to Isa Eris, at Darchelde

  My beloved: First, I hope you, Frin, and our little son are well.

  In accordance with your desires, I only write with good news. On my way to the royal city, I passed through Gannan, and as one of my number was on her way from the west, I was able to turn the Olavayirs over to her and ride into Zheirban so that I could visit Frin’s family, to see if they had any messages to carry. As you see, I folded this letter around their missive.

  Another piece of good news, I hope: the Olavayirs. I know your ambivalence about that family, which I share, but I rode with the jarl’s sons and their wives, and found them cheerful and determined upon maintaining the kingdom’s peace.

  Permit me to close by saying how much I miss you, give my respects to Frin, and I hope that we shall all soon be reunited.

  FOURTEEN

  Danet got back to the guest suite to find that Arrow’s second runner had located the kitchens. After consultation with Tesar, he brought up coffee and rye biscuits with shirred eggs, and a pot of some purple compote, enough for two.

  Arrow was awake, red-eyed and frowzy, tangled hair the color and texture of straw hanging down to his elbows. “There you are! Evred kept us up late drinking after Mathren left us. Damn, can he whine!”

  “Mathren?”

  “Evred. The best of it was, you know he and Lanrid grew up together...no.” Arrow rubbed his eyes and winced. “You didn’t know, did you? I keep forgetting you haven’t lived with us forever. Ma said it would be like that. Anyway, Lanrid was born here. Lived here with the prince until he was ten or so. He was a horse apple about it for years after he came to us. The prince and I, Me and the royal heir. We dog-piled him once, and wouldn’t let him up until he promised not to mention Evred in any form for a whole month. Then we scragged him again when he did it anyway.”

  “Did it stick?”

  “Sort of, but he ambushed every one of us first. And the war was on. It would have been on anyway, because he can’t breathe without strutting.”

  Danet had no objection to this judgment.

  Arrow grinned sourly. “So anyhow, last night. Once we were alone, Evred told me right out that he loathes Lanrid. In spite of all Lanrid’s fart noise how Evred followed him around, and tried to copy him, he said Lanrid was mean as a poison-snake and a good day was one he avoided him altogether.”

  He gave a crack of laughter, then slapped his hand over his mouth. Both parents held their breath as they glanced toward the nursery, but when no little wail issued forth, he went on in a lower voice, “When Lanrid got sent to us in Nevree, it was the happiest day of Evred’s life to see his back, even though it was my worst day.”

  He yawned fiercely. “The rest was whine, whine, whine, he wants to be king now, he doesn’t see why he has to wait a whole year and a half, he wants Hard Ride Arvandais—she’s the best rider in all Idego and the most beautiful and who should marry her but a king, only he’s not king yet, and whyyyyyyy….” Arrow sighed. “How’s Noddy?”

  “Sleeping,” Danet said. “I think he’ll be glad to be in one place. But Rabbit is miserable. He hates everything.”

  “There are some castle children,” Arrow said, surprising her. “Evred said the guards’ brats are always running wild garrison-side, and the rest out beyond the chicken yard and the kitchen garden. My brother is getting a tour of the garrison, so I’ll see if I can scout some out before Evred wakes up, if you’re starting on Ma’s orders about figuring out the kingdom tallies. Maybe Rabbit will be happier with someone to play with, until old Nunka can catch up with us.”

  “Then I’ll get to work,” she said.

  As the morning watch bell reverberated through the stone walls, Danet followed the royal runner’s directions and found Grand Gunvaer Hesar’s tower.

  While she toiled her way up the stairs, the old gunvaer waited, nearly blind, hoping that one or another of the newcomers would arrive. She had survived this long by learning patience, and practicing defensive obliviousness.

  When her servant announced Danet, she curbed her delight, and waited. It would not do to trust too soon. She had made that mistake twice, and both times people had died.

  Danet cautiously entered the first fine room she had seen
so far in the castle: a woven rug of blue and gold on the floor, two tapestries covering bare stone walls, carved wingback chairs made comfortable with thick cushions. By the fire sat one of these chairs, a tiny, withered old woman almost lost in it. Her milky gaze was diffuse, and Danet quickly looked away as the servant announced her.

  “You arrived yesterday, child?”

  “Last night, Hesar-Gunvaer.”

  “I commend your promptitude,” the cracked, thin voice murmured.

  Not knowing what else to say, Danet got right to business, quoting all that Ranor-Jarlan had ordered.

  “Good girl,” Hesar said slowly. “She is very right. Do not go to Mathren, or Kendred, or even Evred—he knows nothing whatsoever of the running of the castle or the country. What you must do is start at the kitchens. Tell them who you are, and that you wish to learn from the supply steward or his scribe. If they like you, they’ll introduce you to the royal scribes. I cannot guarantee anything beyond that point, but it’s always good to start low and work your way upward. No one pays much heed to the kitchens, as long as everyone gets fed.”

  The gunvaer shifted to inquiring about various Olavayir relatives, whom she invariably referred to as “little So-and-so” or “Young Such-and-such,” even if they were ancient at fifty or even sixty. Danet replied with what she knew, until she saw the old woman’s eyes close. She got up and walked noiselessly out.

  By the time she had trod down the long spiral staircase, she had planned her approach. Remembering how the kitchen staff at Nevree had closed ranks against her when she’d exposed the thief, she expected a long siege. When she entered, she explained who she was, adding, “At Nevree it’s my job to oversee kitchen and supply tallies. I’d like to learn how you do it here, and help if I may.”

  All heads swung toward a tall, grizzled, gaunt man who uncrossed his arms slowly. “I’m Amreth Tam, kitchen steward,” he said. “One of my assistants will give you a tour, and explain how we do things.”

  Danet touched forefinger to heart in salute, and the steward unbent a degree more. By the end of the day, Danet was not only permitted into the kitchen archive, she had learned two important things: one, this establishment was exponentially larger than that at Nevree, and two, however it had been in the gunvaer’s day, the royal castle staff was not at all united now.

  “Here it all is,” the steward said, a hand sweeping dismissively at the bound books in the stuffy little room. These books had been stored floor to ceiling in tightly packed rows against three walls, but the fourth wall was still half bare, books and papers stacked against the wall untidily. Her fingers itched to organize it.

  “You saw the slate outside, right?”

  She nodded, having passed by a huge slate fitted on one wall, with a basket of chalk bits beside it. Requisitions had been scrawled in many hands along this slate, some crossed off.

  Tam said, “On top of everything else I have to oversee, it’s I who has to make the time to transfer the finished requisitions to the paper, along with our own, and when the treasury scribe has marked it off, onto the list it goes, from which the treasury scribes take note, after which the list joins the others in that closet.” Tam waved his hand in a circle, fingers wiggling as though shaking off something noisome from his hand.

  “By rights a scribe ought to be copying the slate into our records, but oh no, the scribes are too busy with mighty affairs upstairs to trouble themselves with the lowly kitchens, which incidentally feed every mouth in the castle,” he said heavily. “Including their flapping yaps. But I’ve kept my complaints in my own domain. That’s the way to live longer.”

  Tam drew a deep breath, and, having enjoyed the satisfaction of unloading his very justified ire into fresh ears, he eased his tone. “At least I can say that, so far, anyway, there haven’t been any but the usual complaints of slowness if each area deals with the requisitions they fulfill, and chalk them off. Of course, I’m the one stuck with jotting down the list at the end of each day, for the paymasters will not heed anything but a list. So if you want to take on organizing it, well, you’d be saving me extra trouble that never ought to have landed on my shoulders.”

  “I’d be happy to get it all into order,” she said, sincerity ringing in her voice, and Tam smiled for the first time as he opened his hand toward the mess on the floor. He and his assistant left, both relieved to be rid of a duty that wasn’t theirs in the first place. If this scrawny Olavayir wanted the drudgery, she was welcome to it.

  At the end of a day’s work, she ran up to the grand gunvaer’s chamber to report her success, but the servant said that she was asleep, and not to be disturbed. Danet said she would return, and ran down to the guest suites in the middle of that long, lonely hallway to check on Noddy.

  She found Arrow there, changing into his House robe, Rabbit howling in the background. Arrow tipped his head backward. “The castle brats are too old, and too wild.” And when Danet sighed with disappointment, he went on, “Evred is waiting for us, and he likes us to dress for Restday. We’re supposed to eat supper with him.”

  Danet finished feeding Noddy and turned him over to a sulky Tesar, who hated child care, then shook out her fine royal blue robe with its modest gold-silk trim. Her first glimpse of Evred had not impressed her, but then nobody liked riding in cold rain.

  Her interest in the next king lasted no further than the eating of her first rye biscuit. “I notice Uncle Kendred isn’t back yet,” Evred began, his tone corrosive on “Uncle Kendred.” “What do you wager he never went to the mines at all, but is holed up at Silver Shield?” His voice rose and his fingers flexed, flexed, flexed as Arrow gazed fixedly at Evred’s gnawed nails.

  Evred seemed to become aware of Arrow’s gaze and whipped his hands behind his back as his voice dropped to an excruciatingly false, joking note. “Arrow, remind me not to take you there. It’s his favorite. The Captain’s Drum is better anyway, much more fun, and they don’t mind a scrap now and then, you just pay for the damage. The girls are more fun, too. Unless you like boys?”

  “Not for mattress-dancing,” Arrow said. “Danet does.”

  Evred didn’t even glance Danet’s way. She caught Tdor Fath’s gaze, and saw the faint line tightening her brow, then Danet noticed Jarend staring straight ahead, his jaw muscles twitching as his jaw locked. Another of his headaches? Who could blame him?

  “...Uncle Kendred might have found a new one and he’s tucked up tight with a couple of his favorites.” There was that hand-flexing again. “And who would stop him? They all call me Evred-Sierlaef, but it means nothing, not until I’m crowned. He’s really the king. He even lives in the king’s chambers.”

  “Really?” Arrow asked. “Why don’t you ask for those, at least?”

  “Not until I’m really king! And I shouldn’t have to ask. Everyone asks him, he gives the orders, and when we ride in and out, he gets the king’s fanfare, short one chord. Of course he’s in no hurry to let me be crowned, even though he pretends to be the humble regent....” And on and on he talked, so starved for congenial company—and so desperate for a validation that his auditors of course could not give.

  Not that Evred was aware of that drive, except subliminally. His awareness extended only to a gnawing restlessness, and his growing desire for freedom.

  That would come. Right now...he frowned at the newcomers. Danet was nothing to look at. Perfectly suitable for Arrow, but a king deserved a wife like Hard Ride Hadand, whose prowess everybody talked about. When Evred turned nineteen, he’d demanded that the royal runner going up the Pass to deliver messages carry a request for a drawing of Hard Ride Hadand. The Jarlan of Arvandais had sent him a sketch of her daughter galloping a horse. She rode like a centaur, and he’d been dreaming about her riding him ever since.

  She’d be the perfect gunvaer, Evred thought, despising these plain-faced, boring wives of his beaver-toothed, boring cousins.

  As the wearying evening drew on, Tdor Fath watched Jarend, whose throbbing head steadily worsen
ed the more he clenched his jaw against it, and Danet fought yawn after yawn as she mentally worked out what to say in her letter to Calamity, knowing that Fuss would probably be reading it, too.

  Once they were finally dismissed, Danet said to Arrow as they walked from Evred’s tower suite down the long, empty hall to their rooms, “I’m not going again. He obviously doesn’t think I exist when I’m right in front of him.”

  Arrow was annoyed because that loaded the burden of Evred’s company onto him, but they both had their orders, and hers had nothing to do with Evred. “All right,” he said.

  The second day, Danet started on her letter over breakfast, fed Noddy, and watched him struggling to grasp things and work his mouth into shaping little sounds. She found him entrancing, but when he was ready for sleep, she was more than ready to run downstairs and tackle the kitchen records.

  She could point to the exact time the scribes had abandoned those records and grudging kitchen staff had taken over. It wasn’t just the change in hand from neat scribal print to a jagged, but readable, scrawl, it was the lack of organization.

  At first the kitchen staff had gathered their daily sheets into the stiffened-canvas book covers without bothering to bind them. They’d stacked these on the floor rather than inscribing the range of dates on the spine and getting a stool to place them up on that fourth wall. After a time they’d apparently run out of book covers, the responsibility for making which was strictly confined to the scribe guild, and the closely written pages were stacked ever more sloppily on the floor in piles. She began organizing and tidying, occasionally stopping to read.

  Presently she got up to shake her legs and swing her arms, and looked around in wonder. How could people consider tallies boring? Here was the record of daily life in the royal palace. She eyed the tightly packed books on the three walls, and held her lamp up to scan the beautiful scribal script along the spine: yes, right here in the upper part of the third wall were the records from when Inda Algaravayir and Tdor Marthdavan lived in this very castle, under the reign of the great Hadand-Deheldegarthe. In those books were the records of what they ate, and somewhere in another archive would be records of what they wore.