Time of Daughters I

by Sherwood Smith

  Camerend remained silent, contemplating how clearly Hard Ride Hadand had taken pleasure in ordering the kill. That sort of craving was seldom sated this side of death.

  Shendan turned to watch grim-faced Hal Arvandais as he climbed down to take horse behind the slowly forming rows of Riders, once the last of the dead had been properly laid out and Disappeared.

  Shendan sighed, putting a hand to her aching lower back as she and Camerend retreated into the narrow passage between two towering rocks, out of sight of those below.

  “It’s done. We have about two months to try to figure out a way to mitigate the consequences,” Shendan said.

  It would take that long to dispatch a runner down the Pass to the royal city. There was no question of carrying the news by either magical notecase, or in person: the royal runners were already very strictly guarded by Mathren’s tight security, with constant surprise inspections down to the bottom layers of their personal trunks. Every message they carried was triple sealed and coded—though they knew the most important ones were borne exclusively by Mathren’s personal runners. Trust, over the past twenty years, was a scarce commodity in the royal city.

  Camerend turned his gaze southward into the gathering shadows of the Pass, as below, the half-dozen or less badly wounded of Lanrid’s once proud force painfully loaded their few surviving companions onto the horses and began the grueling journey south through the Pass.

  “Mathren will surely pester Kendred into calling for king’s service, if Kendred doesn’t think of it first—once he returns. We can’t stop that any more than we can stop the sun,” Camerend said, stating the obvious as a basis for discussion: the king could, in a time of war, demand one of every ten men between twenty and sixty.

  “We can’t prevent Mathren from going to war even if we had six months to plan.” Shendan sighed again, digging her knuckles into her lower back. “We are powerless to act, but not to speak. We use our magic to stay aware of events for a purpose, never lose sight of that.”

  Camerend heard the tremble in her voice, and though he would not say he knew his mother well—he’d scarcely seen her while growing up—he understood that she was speaking to herself as well as to him.

  Her voice firmed. “So let us consider how to communicate with those who can act. Go back. Use the time to get to know the second generation, who still do not know that the Jarl of Olavayir is dead. We need a better sense of how the jarl’s heirs will define eagle-clan’s place in these new events.”

  Her sorrowful profile turned toward the departing Idegans, Vanda riding at Hal’s side. “I’ll give Vandareth a chance to explain himself, for that is our rule. That was murder.”

  “Was it murder?” Camerend asked. “I don’t question you because he’s my brother in all ways except blood. But Hadand Arvandais enjoyed that massacre, and she made it clear that for her that was just the beginning. Vanda shot a killer who killed for the sake of killing.”

  “Is war ever lawful?” Shendan retorted. “I said I’ll talk to him. But you must accept that we’ve lost him, for I cannot have him back among us now; that was in no way self-defense.”

  Camerend gazed at the back of that shorn head, suspecting that Vanda wouldn’t mind exile as much as he would be missed. Camerend minded for him, but he had enough self-awareness to recognize that his ire on Vanda’s behalf was not far from the resentment he thought he had buried over his own life as a hostage, ripped from his home at the age of six.

  He laid his hand over his heart, his throat too tight for words.

  The two used their transfer tokens to return by magic, he to the royal city, and she to Darchelde.

  Below, the Idegans departed as the shadows filled the canyon, until all that was left was the drying blood.

  SIXTEEN

  “You reek,” Danet said when Arrow showed up in her room after an absence of three days. He winced at the sound of Rabbit’s howling, then scowled as Danet sniffed and made a face. “You smell like you bathed in bristic. You know I hate that.”

  “Can’t do anything about it,” he said shortly. “I keep getting the stone wall when I even try to talk to any of the Royal Riders. They’re letting Jarend drill with them, but they don’t talk to him, either, except about weapons and the like. Mathren told them my orders are to stick with Evred, and so I’m stuck sticking. Stuck sticking. Hah. Is that a joke? Sinna could tell us—if we could get him away from that shit Lanrid. Anyway, if Evred drinks, and he does, day and night, I have to. Keeps him from harassing Jarend, for one thing.”

  “Does he really have no responsibilities? No training of any kind?” Danet asked, skeptical.

  “Not that I’ve seen.” Arrow sighed. “He doesn’t seem to do anything besides gamble with those boys at Captain’s Drum, and pillow jig with the girls. He says Mathren won’t let him wargame or even handle real weapons in drill, for his own safety. And he refuses to drill basics, no weapons, like he’s five. Can’t say I blame him, really.”

  Danet sighed. “I overheard someone in the kitchen saying that he can barely read.” She felt Arrow’s shrug. There were always runners and scribes for that. “I can understand keeping him safe,” she said, dropping the subject of reading. “I wouldn’t want to be the guard who knocks the next king off his horse and breaks his arm.” Especially that king, she thought to herself. “What else does he do?”

  “Not much. Says any time he has ideas, the uncles tell him he’s too important to risk, or too young to understand. I thought my life was bad, dealing with Lanrid, but I’m coming to think we had the best of it, compared to life here in the royal city. No wonder Evred’s hot to get crowned. Then he can order them to shut up when he wants to ride out the gates for a day!”

  “It’s that bad?” Danet asked, for she had been missing her own riding. But the urge to read and understand everything was a far stronger craving. Once she’d completed her orders, she’d be free to do some exploring with Firefly—when the weather wasn’t sleet or snow.

  Arrow sighed. “He makes it out to be. Kendred lets him gamble as much as he wants, and you know we spend half our time at the pleasure houses, which are all safely within the city, with guards always waiting to escort us there and back.”

  Arrow yawned, as in the far room, Rabbit finally whimpered himself to sleep. Arrow began to doze off.

  When all was quiet at last, Danet lay awake, musing about pleasure houses. She could go if she wanted to. But she’d never been to one, so she didn’t know the etiquette, or even how much it cost. When she first used the Waste Spell for her monthly, Mother had given her the lecture about sex, then considered the subject closed. Until now Danet had never thought about it, but she suspected Mother had no lovers, nor visited the pleasure houses—being one of those who was happy sleeping single, once her duty was done.

  Danet hated going into any situation not knowing what to do, and anyway she was still trying to cure herself of watching for that attractive royal runner. That ring-bound royal runner. She kept catching herself looking for him, then being disgusted with herself.

  Danet resolved to find out which house local women preferred, as that Captain’s Drum sounded rowdy, loud, and she didn’t want to be anywhere near Evred. Then she too, slid into sleep, to be woken, as usual, by Noddy in the middle of the night, wet and hungry.

  Surely the carts ought to be arriving any day, she thought tiredly when at last she crawled back into bed.

  At last, Danet caught up with the kitchen records to the events of twenty years ago.

  As she ate a rye biscuit stuffed with shirred egg, she read the changes that signified the assassination of Evred’s royal parents, and assimilated all the new patterns, and then pushed on, rereading the succeeding pages, which she’d already read once before when assembling the stacks of loose papers into stacks for each year. Only now she knew the patterns—and so she was able to recognize the anomaly she’d sensed on her first read: a single name, Parnid, whose requisitions were always made and signed off by the same person
. A decade ago every two or three months, gradually increasing until more recently, every week or ten days, with gradually growing numbers of items.

  The requisitions listed were all for everyday things spread across various branches of support and supply. They’d started in small quantities, but that had changed from year to year, nearly imperceptibly. No one would notice without looking at all the records: the requisitions were for food, fodder, and equipment of various types, but if you looked at the rising frequency as well as the numbers, it had gone from enough for a riding to a wing, then enough for a flight of wings, and in recent times enough clusters of small stuff spread over every branch to furnish a battalion. Every other requisition was made by various staff members—there was Tesar’s name, for Danet’s and Noddy’s needs—and signed off by the person who supplied the requisition. All except Parnid.

  So she set the book aside, and went back to the kitchens to hunt down Amreth Tam. She found him, morose as usual, inspecting the cabbages the kitchen boys and girls had just brought in. He looked her way in question.

  “Who’s Parnid?” she asked.

  “Runner on the military side,” Tam replied, waving a dismissive hand. “Night watch is my guess. But at least whoever he, or she, is, they do see to their own fulfillment. The requisitions are usually chalked and checked off during the night.”

  She accepted that, and got out of his way, sensing his impatience. She started toward the stairway, deciding it was time to brave the scribes after all, for the paymasters were located somewhere in the scribes’ wing.

  She entered the scribe annex to find a large room filled with apprentice-aged people in their undyed robes with blue edging signifying the scribe guild, lounging around a table with ink, pens, and paper. Two were reading. At first she thought they were working on something interesting, but before the circle of angry faces turned her way, she glimpsed a map and notes of some kind of complicated game.

  None of them looked friendly. That included the girls among them.

  Danet turned toward the eldest of these, but the girl spoke first. “Guilds are off limits,” she said brusquely.

  Danet tried politeness. “I’m Danet Olavayir, and it was on the jarlan’s orders that I—”

  “I fell asleep after jarlan,” interrupted a tall boy lounging on a bench.

  “For me, it was ‘I am.’”

  Amid much more laughter than the comment warranted, the boy nearest the door turned blank blue eyes Danet’s way. “You Olavayirs stay on your side of the castle. You don’t need to come nosing over here.”

  “I just wanted to ask a question, about requisitions, and when—”

  “You’re a scribe chief?” a girl of about thirteen interrupted, looking around at her fellows for approval. When she got it, she crossed her arms and shrilled, “Get out!”

  Danet shut the door firmly behind her, and let out her breath in a huff. She refused to get angry, or feel humiliated. Either way, those snot-wads would win. She was obeying orders...and if she couldn’t check her lists against the paymasters’ lists, then there was another way to check: dispositions.

  Every person who lived in the castle had two personal lines in the lists: one, itemized supplies for daily existence, or dispositions; the other, items they ordered for themselves, which would be deducted from wages.

  She retreated to the kitchen cubby, thinking out her next step. All comestibles and raw materials were listed through the records she had just straightened out. By far the bulk of supplies was dispersed through the garrison, as the royal guard was the largest populace in the castle, seconded only by the castle staff.

  She walked over to the east end of the garrison, bordering on the barns that housed the milk animals. Here, in an old much-segmented building, resided the quartermaster and his staff.

  “I’m Danet Olavayir,” she said to the bored young man stuck at the front desk, copying out orders. “I’ve just finished straightening out the kitchen requisition records.”

  “Kitchen?” The young man’s face cleared. “Finally! We have enough to do having to run over there to chalk our requisitions on the board, since the scribes can no longer be bothered to bring the lists around to us, the way everyone knows it used to be done.”

  “I can believe that,” Danet said with a sympathetic air. “One thing I can tell you, they left things in a real snarl. I just need to check a couple of your records to make sure I have everything square. I don’t mean to make work for you—happy to do it myself, if you point me in the right direction.” She brandished her closely-written pages.

  As she’d hoped, the skinny young orderly (no older than Hliss’s age, sixteen, she guessed) took one horrified glance at the stack and said, “Help yourself. Right through there. You’ll see the year down the side of each shelf. Just put it back where you found it.” And he went back to his copywork.

  Danet slipped inside the stuffy building, and eyed shelves of stored books. At least everything was neatly labeled. She found the general lists, and checked, to discover that all those supplies Parnid had requisitioned were indeed noted, then leaned out to peek through the door. She spotted the boy at the desk, head bent, his bony shoulder blade working as he dipped his pen and wrote.

  So she slipped down the narrow room and turned twice before she found what she was looking for: lists of garrison personnel.

  She found Parnid listed sixteen years ago, and nearly put the book back. But she could almost feel Mother breathing down her neck, about to launch into her well-remembered lecture about unfinished work that makes more work for someone else.

  Danet stood there, dithering. She loved doing a good job at any time, but she especially wanted to complete this task. It would be so satisfying to solve the mystery, and besides, the jarlan trusted her. She doubted very much that she would get anywhere near tax records for distant garrisons, but at least she could execute this one task.

  And yet...she sensed that she wasn’t supposed to be in this space. Not that anyone had said anything. It was the way everyone stayed in their own little island, for she hadn’t missed that crack about the scribes, who certainly didn’t appear to be overworked. It was possible—she supposed—that for some reason they weren’t allowed over on this side, which made no sense that she could figure, but somehow it heightened this feeling, a tension, in the castle that made her want to watch her back.

  She tiptoed out, peeked at the boy, saw him writing. She hustled back and began checking the runners’ records, pulling book after book, only to discover that Parnid’s dispositions were perfectly normal. Always the same.

  Always the same?

  Frustrated and anxious, she forced herself to move with calm deliberation as she backtracked to look more closely, and then it struck her: Parnid was listed as having the normal dispositions that all runners had, but there were no personal items. Not so much as an extra candle or a pair of socks.

  She checked another year, and another. Same.

  She only stopped when she heard a noise from the front area, and quickly put the book back, making certain it was neatly in place. Then she walked out, past the boy who had apparently just received a fresh batch of copywork.

  “Thanks,” she said as she passed.

  He didn’t even look up.

  She hiked back to the kitchen cubby and sat on the floor, chin in hands, elbows on knees.

  What did it mean—no, the real question was, whom ought she to ask? The quartermaster wasn’t in charge of either garrison or royal runners. The grand gunvaer had said to avoid Commander Mathren, and the regent wasn’t back yet. Maybe the grand gunvaer to start with, then. It was time to feed Noddy anyway.

  She ran upstairs. When she got to their suite, she heard male voices: Arrow’s familiar tones, and another quiet, slow voice that sent a warm shiver through her.

  She opened the door, to discover Arrow sitting cross-legged opposite the royal runner at their little table.

  Arrow hailed her with unmistakable relief. “Danet! You remembe
r Camerend, right? Royal runner who took us south? Well, he’s got some questions, and I was, uh, summoned by Evred-Sierlaef.”

  Gradually details accumulated: Camerend, sitting straight and tall, his hair glinting golden in the candle light, his expression masked, except for the marks of tiredness under his eyes; Arrow fresh from the baths this late in the day, his hair even combed out, his horsetail fresh, when most of the time he pulled it up into its clasp first thing in the morning and forgot about it until the next day.

  Arrow and Evred were clearly heading to a pleasure house.

  Arrow slipped past her and was gone in three quick steps, the rap of his boot heels diminishing down the hall. Camerend waited patiently as she became aware that she still stood in the doorway. Reddening to what felt like fiery heat, she entered the room and shut the door.

  Tesar came out from the nursery with a kicking, wailing baby. “He’s dry. But hungry.”

  “Shall I go?” Camerend asked as Tesar handed Noddy down.

  With the swift movements that had become habit, Danet tucked the infant inside the loose robe that pregnant and nursing women customarily wore. The baby vanished within the warm fabric, uttered one shattered sigh of relief, and found what he sought.

  “My question actually relates to the little ones,” Camerend continued, making a conscious effort to settle to his task.

  He had spent a terrible night fighting against the images of death, and the echo of that beautiful young voice so suddenly cut off. He’d finally given up any pretense of sleep, as tired as he had been, and lit a lamp to deal with correspondence, and after that to come up with various questions in order to provide an excuse to introduce himself to the Olavayirs.

  He’d tackled Jarend first thing in the morning. The jarl’s heir—actually, the new jarl, though he did not yet know it—was huge, pleasant in demeanor, slow in speech and movement. His squint made it difficult to see any expression in that massive face.